Microsoft never got in trouble for putting its own products on its own desktop. It got in trouble for setting up vendor licensing deals that prevented OEMs from putting anyone else's products on the desktop.
There's absolutely no comparison between that and Google giving itself top billing for specific product searches. In the rare event that your Google search puts a Google service into the #1 slot, all the remaining paid ads appear on the same page. Google isn't shutting off competition by hiding other vendors ads, it's getting right in the thick of competition by showing users exactly what other vendors offer services that compete with its own stuff.
All we have here is some little bitch whining because there's a theoretical limit to his ability to buy the #1 slot in any category he wants. Boo hoo. If someone can give me a nice, solid financial breakdown of the difference in value between the #1 slot and the #2 slot, I probably still won't give a damn.
Y'know what else Google moonopolizes? The logo on its search page. Everyone who does a search sees that logo, and our whiny little bitch can't buy that, either, no matter how much he wants to.
That's true as far as it goes, but you also get more differentials at higher speeds. It takes roughly one second to identify a driving issue and react to it, so anything within one second's driving time of your current position can cause a differential. The faster you go, the larger that volume of 'one second' space gets.
And there's another differential you have to consider: the differential with safe impact speed. At 10-15mph, you can take a pothole or a chunk of thrown tire tread, or blow a tire, without much trouble. At 80mph, those become major problems, and will probably cause you to change speed and direction suddenly. That change becomes a differential for everyone else on the road. When they compensate, you get even more differentials, thus increasing the number of chances for someone to guess wrong and cause an accident.
Keeping a proper following distance can mitigate the problem, but go drive the speed limit in the fast lane for a while and see how good the people who drive over the speed limit are about maintaining following distance.
4) The remaining labels keep their stuff in the iTunes store and make even more money since they no longer have to compete with UMG offerings. And all the while, they keep chanting, "go get 'em Doug!"
Seriously, the game theory is against any single label that wants to pull out of the iTunes store. They'd just be handing away virtual shelf space and real front-page promotion space to their competition. They'd also end up making themselves less attractive to artists.. I mean, who would you to sign with, the label that will try to get you on the front page of the iTunes store or the one that won't sell you there at all?
The only way for the labels to hurt the iTunes store is for them all to pull out at once, and even that would hurt them far more than it would hurt Apple. For one thing, it would be a PR disaster with all the good spin going to Apple. For another, it would simply be throwing away revenue. Apple is something like the 6th largest music retailer in the US these days, and no label can afford to throw away that much of its revenue stream.
Besides, tough talk is all well and good, but look what happened to Target when it tried to boycott Disney for putting videos on the iTunes store: they dropped that idea as soon as Disney said, "so.. we'll just cancel your shipment of _Cars_ dvds then, shall we?"
I agree that Microsoft can have other reasons for being in a market than immediate direct revenue, but I disagree that this is about trying to crush the competition. For one thing, if that is their goal, they're doing a lousy job of it.
I can see both of these as moves to make sure Microsoft stays a relevant player in the markets for new hardware platforms, but I see Microsoft playing defense rather than offense.
Game consoles started out small, but now they're only a few components away from being regular desktop computers with some specialized graphics hardware. They represent a new hardware platform that uses an operating system, and Microsoft would be stupid to ignore a whole new class of computers until they were mature enough to compete head-to-head with the standard desktop PC, especially if a company as big as Sony was willing to adapt their console OS for regular PCs and start offering licenses to companies like Dell and HP.
The iPod was the first step in Apple's strategy for convergence between computers and home/personal electronics. The Airport express was the second, and the iTV will be the third. Microsoft has two reasons to want to stay relevant in that market: first, the devices themselves will need embedded operating systems, and Microsoft wants a piece of the embedded market. Second, as computers become more integrated with home electronics, being able to work and place nicely with other devices will become a selling point for the computer itself. If Apple takes over the living room, Microsoft will lose some (maybe a lot) of the desktop. Microsoft will need experience working in these markets and mature products it can offer to consumers if it doesn't want to be displaced.
Sure, the fantasy version of that is for Microsoft to extend its monopoly to both emerging markets, but it's rather more practical to say that they're working out on the borders to protect their core OS business.
Even so, Microsoft is a publicly-held, for-profit company, and a monopoly convicted of violating antitrust law. There's a limit to the amount of money you can shove down the garbage disposal before the shareholders get testy, and the DOJ doesn't have much sympathy for companies that leverage their monopolies by dumping products into other markets just to suffocate the existing market leader. In both cases, it's better for Microsoft to have a plausible revenue strategy.
Actually, IIRC, the government defined the market as 'desktop computer operating systems'. Microsoft wanted to define it as 'all operating systems', which would let them point to IBM and Sun in enterprise space, and whatever happens to be big in the embedded space. The court ruled that Microsoft had a monopoly in desktop operating systems and was illegally leveraging that monopoly to prevent the emergence of a market for browsers by driving the cost down to 'better than free'.
As for people investing in P2P companies, there's a difference between the market for software and the market for what you do with that software.
---- In any case, the question remains, if Apple can do that, why would Microsoft go backwards and begin the process of paying each label a buck in defensive licensing, when the predominant method of music sharing by this device is a less costly alternative to radio play.
Apple got more power out of this deal than the labels originally expected. The labels expected to give Apple a few years to invest in the iTunes store, then they expected to play hardball on things like variable-rate pricing and tighter DRM. Apple would have to cave in on those demands or the labels would pull their music and Apple would lose its sunk investment.. or so the labels thought.
In practice, the iTunes store grew bigger and faster than the labels expected, and Apple ended up being able to play hardball right back. iTunes store sales represent way too much easy money for the labels to give up for purely strategic reasons. And since Apple makes so little profit from music sales per se, shutting down the iTunes store would hurt the labels much more than it would hurt Apple.
On top of that, Apple was able to do some kung-fu with the DRM that the labels demanded, and locked the labels into FairPlay far more solidly than FairPlay locks consumers. Consumers have the option to use non-DRM'd music on their iPods, but the labels don't have any way to sell DRM'd music to iPod users except through Apple. They can't force Apple to support other DRM formats on the iPod, and they can't force Apple to license FairPlay to competitors then use that competition to force concessions from Apple.
Apple is giving the labels a firsthand education on why DRM sucks, but the labels don't seem to have gotten the joke yet.
I think both Microsoft and the reactionary fringe of management at the labels see the Zune as a way to break Apple's hammerlock on the labels. If the Zune gains a meaningful market share, the labels will be able to point to Microsoft as a prefered customer who's willing to play by the rules: charging perpetual rental fees for access to music, imposing draconian DRM, paying a per-device fee to the labels, and (just wait for it) letting the labels push variable-rate pricing into the market.
Unfortunately, consumers have different ideas about what they want, and next time contract negotiations roll around, I predict Apple will use Zune numbers to beat the RIAA to a bloody pulp on those very same issues.
For all the continued demand for a video iPod, a recent Gartner (I think) study showed that most people don't actually watch video on their iPods. They watch video on their computers. Sure, they may buy the stuff from the iTunes Store, but they don't bother to space-shift it over to the portable device. I'll be curious to see how much actual market utilization there is for iPod games, too.
My point is that Apple tends to be pretty good at identifying the things people will actually do with a device, and then shipping a product that meets those needs comfortably.
If market research showed that people actually listen to FM radio on their portable music players, Apple would probably consider the feature. But damn near every other iPod-killer-of-the-month has put "FM tuner" on its feature checklist, and consumers don't seem to care. Some have even ticked the "voice recording" box too, and again, nobody seems to care.
As for wireless, no way. I can see some potential benefits in getting rid of the cable, but you can't actually rid the iPod of its cable until someone invents a way to charge batteries over WiFi. Until that happens, you'll need some kind of wire to pump power into the little guy, and it's easier to plug a USB cable into the side of my laptop and begin syncing automatically than it is to plug a charger into the power strip under my desk and push some kind of 'Sync' button.
If you don't get rid of the cable, the only reason for wireless is to transfer songs between iPods in the field, and the RIAA won't let that happen any time soon. Does anyone really think this stupid "three plays or three days" idea was Microsoft's first choice? That's as much of a concession to the RIAA as the $1/Zune tariff Microsoft ended up having to pay just to get titles for its online store.
If Apple was allowed to let people transfer songs between iPods in the wild, there'd be a $35 after-market connector with a docking port at either end, a 'Share this' item one click away from any song or playlist on the device, and the term 'podsex' would have even more traction in our collective vocabulary than 'podcast' does.
The Xbox is a loss-leader that draws game sales. It doesn't have to generate much profit itself since it falls in the "give away the razor and sell the blades" category. Having said that, though, even after several years of selling the device at a loss, Microsoft has not turned the Xbox into a market leader. The device has a respectable share of the market, yes, but it isn't extinguishing competition by any stretch of the imagination.
In terms of servers and browsers, Microsoft was able to leverage its monopoly position in OS distribution. Everyone who buys a Windows box gets the software too, whether they want it or not. IE is given pride of place on the desktop, and Microsoft was successfully convicted of breaking antitrust law to prevent OEMs from shipping computers that had any other browser preinstalled.
Microsoft can't make money by selling the Zune as a loss-leader for music sales because Apple has already set the price point for music sales at the just-above-breaking-even level. Apple makes its money selling hardware as a dongle and uses software/music as a not-quite-loss-leader to make the dongle worth buying. Maybe Microsoft thinks it can make a subscription-based business model work, but I'm damned if I can see how. Everyone else who's tried that model has seen very limited demand among consumers, and no one I know of has pulled enough revenue out of the deal to make the rewards worth the effort.
Neither can Microsoft leverage its dominance with Windows to push Zune sales. The Zune is a separate piece of hardware, so Microsoft can't bundle one with every computer Dell or HP happens to sell. Sure, Microsoft can bundle the Zune software with Vista, but so what? Just having the software on the computer doesn't compel people to go out and spend money on hardware that will make the software useful.
The big, unanswered question in Microsoft's Zune strategy is, "how do they expect to make any money off this thing in the long run?" At present, it doesn't look like they have a plan for that. They seem to be trying to make the RIAA's fantasy world a reality: one where consumers become numb to the idea that all electronic media will be wrapped in draconian DRM, that all electronic hardware will spy on the user and report back to Microsoft and the RIAA/MPAA, and eventually everyone will acquiesce to paying a perpetual rental fee for access to anything they want to watch or listen to.
That's not going to happen. That genie is already out of its bottle. It's too late to suffocate non-DRM'd media acquisition and distribution in its cradle because those technologies have grown up and are now strong enough to fight back. And Apple's had way too much success with moderate DRM for anyone to convince consumers that tight DRM is the only reasonable way to go.
The Xbox makes sense as a loss-leader because the games themselves are a revenue stream worth chasing. But with Apple holding song prices at just-above-breaking-even level, there's no secondary sale for the Zune to loss-lead.
Apple uses the iTunes store as a value-added proposition for iPod sales, and takes its profit from the hardware sale. The music is a not-quite-loss leader for the device.
How is Microsoft supposed to carve out a profitable market by selling the hardware at a loss and making just enough on music sales to keep its online store running?
The memo SCO complains about was written by a project lead from the Linux effort, and was distributed to a whopping total of eight programmers coming to the Linux project after having worked on AIX some time in the past. The whole gist of the memo was "given the litigation, it would be a good idea to have these people remove any sandboxes with AIX code in them before they start working work on Linux."
Only files on the programmers's personal machines were deleted. Anything that actually got submitted to AIX was in the central repository, which IBM produced to SCO five months previously.
Of the eight people who got copies of the message, four didn't delete anything, and the other four don't remember of they deleted anything or not.
The real kicker, as IBM points out, is that none of the eight people in question are listed in any of SCO's complaints about alleged IP infringement. If SCO thought these people had misappropriated methods or concepts from AIX and ported them into Linux, it was required to say so, specifically, before filing this motion as 'proof' that IBM was destroying evidence.
SCO's brief really boils down to, "We haven't actually accused these people of doing anything wrong. But if you adjust your tinfoil hat just right, you can see how their getting a memo to delete AIX files looks like evidence of a conspiracy by IBM management to destroy evidence related to this case." In practical terms, it's about half a step up from the Chewbacca Defense, and IBM's reply memo shows the Nazgul giving it the reaming it so richly deserves.
By exactly how much at, say, a 99% confidence interval?
What percentage of that change is the result of natural climactic variation?
What percentage is the result of orbital change?
What percentage is the result of increased solar activity?
What percentage is due to other atmosperic components, such as methane?
What percentage is the result of non-anthropogenic CO2?
What percentage is simply an artifact of error and statistical noise in the historical data?
Once you add all those factors together and include the cumulative margin for error of all your estimates along the way, how much is left that you'd be willing to take into court as 99% certain to be anthropogenic CO2-based temperature change?
And how many trillions of dollars worth of sunk investment in the global energy/industrial infrastructure do you want to throw away, thus lowering the global standard of living and disrupting the global economy, in order to counteract it?
---- This is true in all areas of science, yet science still manages to get done because most scientists are afraid of the blowhards.
Asymptotically, and usually over the course of decades. The Voice of Consensus for any given era tends to be somewhat less reliable. Lister was barred from practicing medicine because he proposed germ theory. J Harlan Bretz explained the Washington scablands correctly in the 1920s, but the geological community didn't come around to agreeing with him until the 1970s.
That latter example is actually quite relevant: it took the scientific community 50 years to agree on an interpretation of the physical data for an event which already occurred. The geology of the scablands is every bit as 'indisputable' as the raw data from antarctic ice cores, but it took the best minds in the field half a century to agree on what the data actually meant.
---- I'd say the first scientists to propose anthropogenic global warming were thinking outside the box. It's not like a bunch of scientists got together and said, "You know what'd be a great hoax?"
Not in so many words, but it's a well-established fact that people who want to push an agenda tend to inflate their numbers. The desire to persuade through contrast beats the long and complicated explanations intrinsic to scientific objectivity almost every time, especially when non-scientists start quoting 'scientific studies' in support of their agendas. As my statistics prof told us back on the first day of class, "always be leery of numbers that 'prove' what someone really wants to believe."
It doesn't take a conspiracy of scientists to start the echo chamber pumping. It just takes a paper that hits the resonant frequency of one of the many echo chambers that already exist. That starts the laypeople throwing uninformed opinions around, which in turn creates a spike in demand for informed opinions one way or the other. If the problem in question is at all scientifically interesting, it's too complicated to reduce to a YES/NO sound byte, so the scientists themselves start debating the issue. And since they debate through publication, their writings are picked up and polarized by civilian media agents like _Time_ and _People_.
Eventually, one side or the other gains a majority of hard-to-contradict arguments on the scientific side, and becomes the scientific orthodoxy of the day. Egos and cliques come into play, and the scientific community gets its own echo chamber going with regard to that issue. And God help us all if the politicians get involved, because there's a crew with few scruples about adjusting facts to fit the opinions of their target political contributors.
Meanwhile, the actual science chugs along in the background, gleaning bits and pieces of truth from either side. By the time a mature understanding of the subject emerges, the average person on the street greets it by saying, "oh.. yeah. I remember that."
---- It's all swell to quote stuff, but it's kinda idiotic to ignore any counter points.
That's a darn good summary of Monckton's opinion WRT anthropogenic-global-warming advocates. We have historical records of viking farms in Greenland circa 1000, where now we have glaciers, and of the Chinese expedition that sailed around the North Pole during roughly the same period without seeing all that much ice. The scientific link between increased sunspot activity and increased mean global temperature is, if anything, even more solid than the correlation between CO2 and increased temperatures. Those are counter-points that GW advocates have to consider. Unfortunately, some have taken the easier route of pumping the echo chamber and declaring that the debate has already ended.
---- As for the semantics of proving climate-change consensus vs climate change.... that's the entire point of the debate, isn't it? If we have a consensus, we have climate change? Without one, we don't have climate change?
First, that's exactly right. We have data from a thousand years ago which, according to some people, clearly shows a much greater period of global warming than we're experiencing right now. But other people say the data can be interpreted differently, and by their interpretation, that 'Medieval warm period' never even existed. And we don't even have to deal with climate models and predictions here.. everyone is working from the same body of observational data. We can't describe the weather of a thousand years ago with certainty, we can't describe the current weather with certainty, and we're even less certain about our predictions for the future. The predictions we can make are so fuzzy they're almost impossible to refute (and thus no longer deserve to be called 'science'), and run far enough in the future that everyone currently making the predictions will long since have retired or died before anyone can say whether they were talking out their hats or not.
The fact that the climate constantly changes is indisputable. Anything beyond that -- past, present or future -- is pretty much up for grabs.
Second, you're missing a larger theme in Monckton's article: Some GW advocates, Al Gore being one of them, have made statements to the effect that, "the scientific debate over global warming is over." To be polite, that's an exaggeration, and Monckton (and some senior climatologists) have called them on it.
---- There are only a few credible scientists among this climate-change denier lot, and they themselves are pretty old guard (e.g. Richard Lindzen, William Gray).
Lindzen suggests a reason for that at the end of this article:
Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.
Young scientists don't have the street cred to challenge the established orthodoxy (whatever it is at the given time), and they can't acquire credibility if they can't get published, can't get funding, can't get tenure, and can't even write a letter to the editor without a dozen people popping up to discredit their findings based on what the 'established' scientists say. If one is especially brilliant (and lucky), history might eventually put them into the list alongside Lister, Boltzmann, and all the other scientists who posthumously proven right, but that's hardly what most people would consider a Good Career Choice.
Heck, read the Wikipedia article on Lindzen himself which currently amounts to a debunking of his public statements, and begins with these editorial notes:
A Wikipedian has nominated this article to be checked for its neutrality.
To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
If that's how a senior and well-respected scientist is treated, what chance does a doctoral candidate have?
Both viruses and worms require automatic propagation. The distinction lies in what code performs the propagation.
Viruses take advantage of weak spots in other executable code. Macro viruses exploit a word processor's macro system. Boot sector viruses exploit the computer's boot loader. In every case, though, the virus takes advantage of some piece of already-existing piece of software that executes code automatically, usually without direct control or knowledge from the user.
A worm OTOH, is its own executable. It's essentially a self-replicating daemon. It does exploit weaknesses in a system's remote-execution code to propagate, but it doesn't require an interpreter. All it has to do is write its executable text to a block of memory, then trigger a fault which causes that block of memory to be treated as an executable.
Automatic propagation is the hallmark of a worm or virus, though. If Macarena can propagate every time someone opens an infected file, it's a virus. If you have to run a specific infection program to attach the payload to other files, it's not a virus, it's just a program that appends unwanted crap to other files.
Broadly speaking, 20% of computer sales generate 80% of the profit, while the remaining 80% of sales only generate the remaining 20% of profit.
Taking those numbers into account, Apple just reported something like $580 million in profit for the last quarter. Gateway (just slightly larger in market share) posted an $80 million loss. Dell (#1 in sales, moving roughly five times as many units as Apple) posted a $510 million profit for its last quarter. So we have two facts:
1 - Dell and Gateway (combined) sold roughly six times as many computers as Apple last quarter.
2 - Apple made roughly $150 million more profit than Dell and Gateway (combined) last quarter.
All in all, I think Apple will be delighted to remain a 'niche player' as long as they can rake in 80% of the money while only having to produce, ship, and support 20% of the machines.
It's more about Apple deliberately taking advantage of a weak spot in the Microsoft/OEM business model than underestimating Microsoft per se.
Microsoft has influence with the OEMs, sure, but it doesn't have the power to force them to adopt technology. MS can (and does) define its reference platform, but then the OEMs build the least expensive machine that's still arguably compatible with that platform.
Apple has the power to build wireless into all its laptops by default, and to drop the built-in modems. Microsoft can't tell Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba, (etc) to do the same. Apple sticks to the high-margin end of the price spectrum, so it can afford to make expensive components standard in its machines. Microsoft can build support for those components into its OS, but still has to wait for the OEMs to decide it will be profitable to make the hardware. Yeah, the PC market will get there eventually, but Apple can move faster and can get away with tighter integration between the OS and the hardware.
That's a competitive advantage. And it's an advantage that makes Apple attractive to Intel, since Intel wants someone to build markets for its new technology.
And while Apple is building flagship products for Intel's next-generation stuff, Dell et al will be making deals with AMD for low-cost clones of the stuff that was standard yesterday. They'll have to, because there's a lot of market demand for cheap, unsexy, legacy-compatible hardware. But ten years from now, the unsexy legacy stuff will be the new-and-exciting stuff Apple/Intel come up with two years from now.
---- But can someone more legally inclined tell me why his response shouldn't be "because I'm innocent until proven guilty"?
Because the motion in question basically says, "here's what we consider to be proof that he's guilty." Now it's Jack's turn to present his side of the story.
The law is an adversarial process. The courts define 'truth' as being any statement both sides agree to allow into the record (though technically they use the word 'facts' rather than 'truth'). Then the judge's decision has to follow logically from 'the facts' and the law.
Both sides in a case have the power to present any facts they want to have put in the record, and both sides have the power to shoot holes in any facts that the other side has put forward for consideration. First one side makes a motion, then the second side gets to make a response. Then the first side gets to state its argument again, taking the response into account, and finally the other side gets to make a second response. Then the judge decides what facts will go into the record, and everyone moves on to the next issue.
In this instance, Take-Two's lawyers have presented a motion that says, "Jack has acted in contempt of court, for these reasons," and now it's Jack's turn to poke holes in their argument.
---- It sounds like they've issued a petition to force Thompson to show he did no wrong.
Courts don't deal in notions like 'did no wrong'. They deal in dates, times, statements on record, and the law. Jack can respond by saying, "I never said that at all, and here's proof," or, "Take-Two took my statement out of context, and in-context it shows no contempt for the court," or he can admit to making the statements and argue about the rules of when judges are allowed to impose penalties for contempt. In fact, he can do all three at the same time. It's called 'arguing in the alternative'.
Regardless, though, this isn't about forcing Jack to prove his innocence. This is just Take-Two presenting an idea to the court, and the court giving Jack a chance to tear down as much of their argument as he can.
Granted, Apple doesn't use those processors, but I'm talking about chipsets and/or mobos. Intel does a product demo every year where it shows off the computer equivalent of concept cars.. new form factors, new emphases in usage, that kind of thing. They demo'd a machine with a very small footprint about the same time Apple released the Mac Mini, for instance. The Wow-factor had less to do with the CPU architecture and more to do with energy consumption, heat dissipation, and mobo design.
The Wintel OEMs looked at it, made appreciative noises, then went back to building machines with the same form-factor we've seen for the past twenty years.
Apple is willing to experiment with form factors, and cares about things like packaging and heat dissipation. And since Apple controls its entire product stack, it can float solutions to the level where they make the most sense. They have the option to make Quartz snappier or improve video playback by changing the chips on the mobo and then writing OS & driver code specifically tailored for those chips. And those are only the small changes that make sense during a shift from one CPU architecture to another. Once Apple's intel lineup has had time to settle in, the R&D collaboration between Apple and Intel has the potential to get really interesting.
---- I bet you anything there is a clause in the EULA that says something like "this software is not to be used in life support equipment, nuclear power plants, or other life-critical systems."
Even if it is, that doesn't automatically take Wintel machines out of the loop.
A friend of mine develops industrial control systems, many of which are life-safety critical. The actual devices are controlled by PLCs, which are pretty damned bulletproof, but the control and monitoring software runs on Wintel machines. A Windows crash won't automatically wipe out the ammonia generating facility (where they heat natural gas to something like 5000* at 1500 atmospheres and then react it with superheated steam -- the walls of the control facility are 4' thick), but it will kill your ability to monitor the process, meaning you still have to hit the Big Red Button if you can't get the control interface back online within a reasonable time.
On a similar line, the Wintel machines in a hospital don't have to be running the life-support systems, they can just be storing all the patient records that doctors need to make diagnoses, set prescriptions, schedule treatments, and so on. A person who dies because the doctors couldn't get the necessary information in a timely manner is just as dead as the person who dies because the Machine That Goes 'Ping' BSOD'd at the wrong time. At an individual level, that doesn't generate much noise, but if someone dies because a major hospital's entire network goes down, the press will be on it like stink on sewage.
And while I'm sure Microsoft's legal team has already written the company an escape clause for just such situations (hell, they barely guarantee that there's a working CD inside the box), that won't stop someone who's just lost lots of money and face from suing anyway. At worst, they'll end up just as badly screwed as they were going in, and there's always a chance they might be able to win something. Besides, the court victory for Microsoft would be hollow, compared to the cost of the PR disaster and subsequent log-rolling to keep or win future contracts for large Vista installations.
Apple's market share is growing, and guess what: that growth had to come from somewhere. Apple is taking share away from the other players in the market. It's also interesting to note that while Apple is #4 is market share right now (behind Gateway, but not for long), their profits for this quarter were $584 million. Gateway (.3% ahead of Apple right now in sales share) lost about $80 million last quarter, and Dell (#1) had profits of about $510 million for its last quarter. In other words, Dell and Gateway had to sell something like six times as many computers as Apple to make $160 million less than Apple did over the last quarter.
---- Dell and HP will continue to grow.
That's debatable. Dell and HP sell a lot of $300 computers at either a razor-thin profit as an actual loss-leader. A company that buys 1500 cheap desktop units for the workers will also buy a couple hundred high-end laptops for the executives.. and the laptops probably bring Dell more actual profit than the whole consignment of desktops. Thing is, Apple's growing market share is coming from the $1500-5000 price range, where Dell and HP make their real money.
Apple will be absolutely delighted to see Dell and HP ship 80% of the computers sold in the market, as long as that 80% comes from the sub-$1k, $2-profit-per-unit loss-leader segment. Meanwhile, Apple will sit happily on the 20% of unit sales that generate 25% profit on a $1500-5000 sale per machine.
---- How many small incremental features can be added to the iPod before people look the other way? Rivals are offering similar devices with more features at a lower price.
And consumers voting with their wallets don't give a shit. Those lower-priced units with similar features also offer a lousy user experience, which is just certain to get better now that Microsoft has jumped firmly astride the fence with its dual Zune-to-be-coming and Plays-for-Sure-Unless-It-Doesn't initiatives. The numbers for the past several years show that Apple holds about 75% of the global market and everyone else competes for the remaining 25%. Any competitors who want to take market share away from Apple have to do better than 'similar features (but lousy usability) at a slightly lower price'. They have to offer something that's significantly better. And since the competition is currently stuck in "which one sucks least?" territory, that isn't likely to happen any time soon.
---- Apple is sunk without a strategic alliance and a different strategy.
Apple is making money hand over fist in a market where everyone else is fighting to survive. And if you want a strategic alliance, wait 'til the cross-pollination between Apple's R&D and Intel's R&D starts to kick in. Apple is willing to push new technology into the market, where the Wintel manufacturers wait to adopt (or release) technology until a trend is established (look how long it took to get rid of parallel ports). Intel has spent years developing concept platforms that none of the Wintel OEMs have been willing to take to market. Apple wants an edge on technology, Intel wants a vendor to showcase its new tech. And now the two are working together.
Nah, they're just stuck in the old "Apple makes an OS, Microsoft makes an OS, Microsoft makes more money, so Apple should mimic Microsoft" mindset.
Aside from the fact that Apple and Microsoft are in completely different businesses (Apple sells vertically integrated systems in the consumer market, while Microsoft sells a software component to the business OEM market), the idea that the little fish should try to mimic the big fish is just plain stupid. The big fish are big because they already have a lock on all the easy feeding grounds, and they're not going to let those go without putting up a fight.. and a little fish who tries to take on a pissed-off big fish is fish food.
Of course, Gartner sells analyitic reports to people who don't want to know that Apple and Microsoft are in different markets. It's soothing noise for the people who want an excuse not to buy Apple stock, despite of the good numbers, because change is scary. Reports like this let timid investors feel good about sitting back and waiting another ten years to see whether this 'Apple fad' continues.
Fair enough.. It can be hard to distinguish between subtle irony and brute cluelessness around here.
--- However I did not know that three or more orbits could not be predicted.
Yep.. officially it's known as the n-body problem, and it's one of the great 'oh crap' moments in the history of science. People really wanted the universe to be simple and predictable, and learning that the orbits of the planets are undecidable was roughly as much of a shock to 18th-century scientists as the discovery of irrational numbers was to the greeks.
-- But does that mean that in the 300 years between Newton and Einsten everyone should have dismissed Newton because at some point a more refined theory is going to come along? No, of course not
Phlogiston.Ylem.Lamarckism.Hilbert's program, which was the possibly the noblest and most rigorous formulation of Pythagoreanism. The fact that Newton was mostly right doesn't negate the fact that whole realms of once-respected scientific thought have been completely tossed out because a new and fundamentally different theory came along.
You're also working from an implicitly linear notion of science.. the idea that we can carve out a general theory which will continue to remain valid as we fill in the fine details. It follows from linear mathematics, where the size of a change in the initial conditions is proportional to the change in the final result. Linear systems are nice because you can always define a value of 'small' for which small variations in the initial conditions can be safely ignored.
Nonlinear systems (like the weather) don't work that way. There's no safe definition of a 'small' change, nor is a change that's safely small at position X guaranteed to be safely small at position Y.
-- Who is "the other side"? It's certainly not climate scientists, the people actually studying it.
Apparently you missed the bet between the English climatologist who supports the CO2-based model of global warming and the Russian who supports the increased-solar-activity model. Or any of the articles by Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at MIT. There's significantly more debate over the importance of global warming, its mechanism, and the impact of human behavior on global warming than Al Gore would have you believe.
-- Which variable exactly is it you are disputing?
How about the causes of natural variation in global temperatures from one decade, century, or millenium to the next?
How about the exact contribution of CO2's infrared absorption on global mean temperature?
How about our measurement of global mean temperature itself? Different mechanisms give different results. Our long historical records only account for surface temperature, and we have practically no record for temperatures in the upper atmosphere.
How about the standard deviation of the global mean temperature over the historical record? If we take a simple deviation, the increase observed over the last century pretty much disappears in the 3-sigma (95% confidence) range of natural variation. GW advocates prefer to measure sigma on the 'moving range' of the sample, which cuts sigma roughly in half, thus leaving about half a degree of change outside the 3-sigma range and therefore definable as an anomaly.
How about the exact conditions necessary to say with 95% certainty that X degrees of global mean temperature change over the last century can only be attributed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and not to natural climactic variation, variation in solar activity, data error, or any other cause?
-- Precisely which part of this are you disputing?
The part where you show specific, evidentiary corrleation between anthropogenic CO2 levels and global mean temperature. For all the data you've cited, you still do a handwave by saying "it's obvious" at that point. Let me illustrate with an analogy:
Let's say we drop water balloons from a 100' tower and measure the spread of the splash pattern. It is scientifically indisputable that the size of the splash is related to the speed of the balloon at the moment of impact, and that the speed is directly related to
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Microsoft never got in trouble for putting its own products on its own desktop. It got in trouble for setting up vendor licensing deals that prevented OEMs from putting anyone else's products on the desktop.
There's absolutely no comparison between that and Google giving itself top billing for specific product searches. In the rare event that your Google search puts a Google service into the #1 slot, all the remaining paid ads appear on the same page. Google isn't shutting off competition by hiding other vendors ads, it's getting right in the thick of competition by showing users exactly what other vendors offer services that compete with its own stuff.
All we have here is some little bitch whining because there's a theoretical limit to his ability to buy the #1 slot in any category he wants. Boo hoo. If someone can give me a nice, solid financial breakdown of the difference in value between the #1 slot and the #2 slot, I probably still won't give a damn.
Y'know what else Google moonopolizes? The logo on its search page. Everyone who does a search sees that logo, and our whiny little bitch can't buy that, either, no matter how much he wants to.
---- Differentials in speed cause accidents.
That's true as far as it goes, but you also get more differentials at higher speeds. It takes roughly one second to identify a driving issue and react to it, so anything within one second's driving time of your current position can cause a differential. The faster you go, the larger that volume of 'one second' space gets.
And there's another differential you have to consider: the differential with safe impact speed. At 10-15mph, you can take a pothole or a chunk of thrown tire tread, or blow a tire, without much trouble. At 80mph, those become major problems, and will probably cause you to change speed and direction suddenly. That change becomes a differential for everyone else on the road. When they compensate, you get even more differentials, thus increasing the number of chances for someone to guess wrong and cause an accident.
Keeping a proper following distance can mitigate the problem, but go drive the speed limit in the fast lane for a while and see how good the people who drive over the speed limit are about maintaining following distance.
4) The remaining labels keep their stuff in the iTunes store and make even more money since they no longer have to compete with UMG offerings. And all the while, they keep chanting, "go get 'em Doug!"
Seriously, the game theory is against any single label that wants to pull out of the iTunes store. They'd just be handing away virtual shelf space and real front-page promotion space to their competition. They'd also end up making themselves less attractive to artists.. I mean, who would you to sign with, the label that will try to get you on the front page of the iTunes store or the one that won't sell you there at all?
The only way for the labels to hurt the iTunes store is for them all to pull out at once, and even that would hurt them far more than it would hurt Apple. For one thing, it would be a PR disaster with all the good spin going to Apple. For another, it would simply be throwing away revenue. Apple is something like the 6th largest music retailer in the US these days, and no label can afford to throw away that much of its revenue stream.
Besides, tough talk is all well and good, but look what happened to Target when it tried to boycott Disney for putting videos on the iTunes store: they dropped that idea as soon as Disney said, "so.. we'll just cancel your shipment of _Cars_ dvds then, shall we?"
I agree that Microsoft can have other reasons for being in a market than immediate direct revenue, but I disagree that this is about trying to crush the competition. For one thing, if that is their goal, they're doing a lousy job of it.
I can see both of these as moves to make sure Microsoft stays a relevant player in the markets for new hardware platforms, but I see Microsoft playing defense rather than offense.
Game consoles started out small, but now they're only a few components away from being regular desktop computers with some specialized graphics hardware. They represent a new hardware platform that uses an operating system, and Microsoft would be stupid to ignore a whole new class of computers until they were mature enough to compete head-to-head with the standard desktop PC, especially if a company as big as Sony was willing to adapt their console OS for regular PCs and start offering licenses to companies like Dell and HP.
The iPod was the first step in Apple's strategy for convergence between computers and home/personal electronics. The Airport express was the second, and the iTV will be the third. Microsoft has two reasons to want to stay relevant in that market: first, the devices themselves will need embedded operating systems, and Microsoft wants a piece of the embedded market. Second, as computers become more integrated with home electronics, being able to work and place nicely with other devices will become a selling point for the computer itself. If Apple takes over the living room, Microsoft will lose some (maybe a lot) of the desktop. Microsoft will need experience working in these markets and mature products it can offer to consumers if it doesn't want to be displaced.
Sure, the fantasy version of that is for Microsoft to extend its monopoly to both emerging markets, but it's rather more practical to say that they're working out on the borders to protect their core OS business.
Even so, Microsoft is a publicly-held, for-profit company, and a monopoly convicted of violating antitrust law. There's a limit to the amount of money you can shove down the garbage disposal before the shareholders get testy, and the DOJ doesn't have much sympathy for companies that leverage their monopolies by dumping products into other markets just to suffocate the existing market leader. In both cases, it's better for Microsoft to have a plausible revenue strategy.
Actually, IIRC, the government defined the market as 'desktop computer operating systems'. Microsoft wanted to define it as 'all operating systems', which would let them point to IBM and Sun in enterprise space, and whatever happens to be big in the embedded space. The court ruled that Microsoft had a monopoly in desktop operating systems and was illegally leveraging that monopoly to prevent the emergence of a market for browsers by driving the cost down to 'better than free'.
;-)
As for people investing in P2P companies, there's a difference between the market for software and the market for what you do with that software.
I'm just picking nits, tho'.
---- In any case, the question remains, if Apple can do that, why would Microsoft go backwards and begin the process of paying each label a buck in defensive licensing, when the predominant method of music sharing by this device is a less costly alternative to radio play.
Apple got more power out of this deal than the labels originally expected. The labels expected to give Apple a few years to invest in the iTunes store, then they expected to play hardball on things like variable-rate pricing and tighter DRM. Apple would have to cave in on those demands or the labels would pull their music and Apple would lose its sunk investment.. or so the labels thought.
In practice, the iTunes store grew bigger and faster than the labels expected, and Apple ended up being able to play hardball right back. iTunes store sales represent way too much easy money for the labels to give up for purely strategic reasons. And since Apple makes so little profit from music sales per se, shutting down the iTunes store would hurt the labels much more than it would hurt Apple.
On top of that, Apple was able to do some kung-fu with the DRM that the labels demanded, and locked the labels into FairPlay far more solidly than FairPlay locks consumers. Consumers have the option to use non-DRM'd music on their iPods, but the labels don't have any way to sell DRM'd music to iPod users except through Apple. They can't force Apple to support other DRM formats on the iPod, and they can't force Apple to license FairPlay to competitors then use that competition to force concessions from Apple.
Apple is giving the labels a firsthand education on why DRM sucks, but the labels don't seem to have gotten the joke yet.
I think both Microsoft and the reactionary fringe of management at the labels see the Zune as a way to break Apple's hammerlock on the labels. If the Zune gains a meaningful market share, the labels will be able to point to Microsoft as a prefered customer who's willing to play by the rules: charging perpetual rental fees for access to music, imposing draconian DRM, paying a per-device fee to the labels, and (just wait for it) letting the labels push variable-rate pricing into the market.
Unfortunately, consumers have different ideas about what they want, and next time contract negotiations roll around, I predict Apple will use Zune numbers to beat the RIAA to a bloody pulp on those very same issues.
'Tain't a market if there ain't no money.
Ecosystem, maybe. Market, no.
Not likely on either score.
For all the continued demand for a video iPod, a recent Gartner (I think) study showed that most people don't actually watch video on their iPods. They watch video on their computers. Sure, they may buy the stuff from the iTunes Store, but they don't bother to space-shift it over to the portable device. I'll be curious to see how much actual market utilization there is for iPod games, too.
My point is that Apple tends to be pretty good at identifying the things people will actually do with a device, and then shipping a product that meets those needs comfortably.
If market research showed that people actually listen to FM radio on their portable music players, Apple would probably consider the feature. But damn near every other iPod-killer-of-the-month has put "FM tuner" on its feature checklist, and consumers don't seem to care. Some have even ticked the "voice recording" box too, and again, nobody seems to care.
As for wireless, no way. I can see some potential benefits in getting rid of the cable, but you can't actually rid the iPod of its cable until someone invents a way to charge batteries over WiFi. Until that happens, you'll need some kind of wire to pump power into the little guy, and it's easier to plug a USB cable into the side of my laptop and begin syncing automatically than it is to plug a charger into the power strip under my desk and push some kind of 'Sync' button.
If you don't get rid of the cable, the only reason for wireless is to transfer songs between iPods in the field, and the RIAA won't let that happen any time soon. Does anyone really think this stupid "three plays or three days" idea was Microsoft's first choice? That's as much of a concession to the RIAA as the $1/Zune tariff Microsoft ended up having to pay just to get titles for its online store.
If Apple was allowed to let people transfer songs between iPods in the wild, there'd be a $35 after-market connector with a docking port at either end, a 'Share this' item one click away from any song or playlist on the device, and the term 'podsex' would have even more traction in our collective vocabulary than 'podcast' does.
The Xbox is a loss-leader that draws game sales. It doesn't have to generate much profit itself since it falls in the "give away the razor and sell the blades" category. Having said that, though, even after several years of selling the device at a loss, Microsoft has not turned the Xbox into a market leader. The device has a respectable share of the market, yes, but it isn't extinguishing competition by any stretch of the imagination.
In terms of servers and browsers, Microsoft was able to leverage its monopoly position in OS distribution. Everyone who buys a Windows box gets the software too, whether they want it or not. IE is given pride of place on the desktop, and Microsoft was successfully convicted of breaking antitrust law to prevent OEMs from shipping computers that had any other browser preinstalled.
Microsoft can't make money by selling the Zune as a loss-leader for music sales because Apple has already set the price point for music sales at the just-above-breaking-even level. Apple makes its money selling hardware as a dongle and uses software/music as a not-quite-loss-leader to make the dongle worth buying. Maybe Microsoft thinks it can make a subscription-based business model work, but I'm damned if I can see how. Everyone else who's tried that model has seen very limited demand among consumers, and no one I know of has pulled enough revenue out of the deal to make the rewards worth the effort.
Neither can Microsoft leverage its dominance with Windows to push Zune sales. The Zune is a separate piece of hardware, so Microsoft can't bundle one with every computer Dell or HP happens to sell. Sure, Microsoft can bundle the Zune software with Vista, but so what? Just having the software on the computer doesn't compel people to go out and spend money on hardware that will make the software useful.
The big, unanswered question in Microsoft's Zune strategy is, "how do they expect to make any money off this thing in the long run?" At present, it doesn't look like they have a plan for that. They seem to be trying to make the RIAA's fantasy world a reality: one where consumers become numb to the idea that all electronic media will be wrapped in draconian DRM, that all electronic hardware will spy on the user and report back to Microsoft and the RIAA/MPAA, and eventually everyone will acquiesce to paying a perpetual rental fee for access to anything they want to watch or listen to.
That's not going to happen. That genie is already out of its bottle. It's too late to suffocate non-DRM'd media acquisition and distribution in its cradle because those technologies have grown up and are now strong enough to fight back. And Apple's had way too much success with moderate DRM for anyone to convince consumers that tight DRM is the only reasonable way to go.
A loss-leader for what?
The Xbox makes sense as a loss-leader because the games themselves are a revenue stream worth chasing. But with Apple holding song prices at just-above-breaking-even level, there's no secondary sale for the Zune to loss-lead.
Apple uses the iTunes store as a value-added proposition for iPod sales, and takes its profit from the hardware sale. The music is a not-quite-loss leader for the device.
How is Microsoft supposed to carve out a profitable market by selling the hardware at a loss and making just enough on music sales to keep its online store running?
The memo SCO complains about was written by a project lead from the Linux effort, and was distributed to a whopping total of eight programmers coming to the Linux project after having worked on AIX some time in the past. The whole gist of the memo was "given the litigation, it would be a good idea to have these people remove any sandboxes with AIX code in them before they start working work on Linux."
Only files on the programmers's personal machines were deleted. Anything that actually got submitted to AIX was in the central repository, which IBM produced to SCO five months previously.
Of the eight people who got copies of the message, four didn't delete anything, and the other four don't remember of they deleted anything or not.
The real kicker, as IBM points out, is that none of the eight people in question are listed in any of SCO's complaints about alleged IP infringement. If SCO thought these people had misappropriated methods or concepts from AIX and ported them into Linux, it was required to say so, specifically, before filing this motion as 'proof' that IBM was destroying evidence.
SCO's brief really boils down to, "We haven't actually accused these people of doing anything wrong. But if you adjust your tinfoil hat just right, you can see how their getting a memo to delete AIX files looks like evidence of a conspiracy by IBM management to destroy evidence related to this case." In practical terms, it's about half a step up from the Chewbacca Defense, and IBM's reply memo shows the Nazgul giving it the reaming it so richly deserves.
By exactly how much at, say, a 99% confidence interval?
What percentage of that change is the result of natural climactic variation?
What percentage is the result of orbital change?
What percentage is the result of increased solar activity?
What percentage is due to other atmosperic components, such as methane?
What percentage is the result of non-anthropogenic CO2?
What percentage is simply an artifact of error and statistical noise in the historical data?
Once you add all those factors together and include the cumulative margin for error of all your estimates along the way, how much is left that you'd be willing to take into court as 99% certain to be anthropogenic CO2-based temperature change?
And how many trillions of dollars worth of sunk investment in the global energy/industrial infrastructure do you want to throw away, thus lowering the global standard of living and disrupting the global economy, in order to counteract it?
---- This is true in all areas of science, yet science still manages to get done because most scientists are afraid of the blowhards.
Asymptotically, and usually over the course of decades. The Voice of Consensus for any given era tends to be somewhat less reliable. Lister was barred from practicing medicine because he proposed germ theory. J Harlan Bretz explained the Washington scablands correctly in the 1920s, but the geological community didn't come around to agreeing with him until the 1970s.
That latter example is actually quite relevant: it took the scientific community 50 years to agree on an interpretation of the physical data for an event which already occurred. The geology of the scablands is every bit as 'indisputable' as the raw data from antarctic ice cores, but it took the best minds in the field half a century to agree on what the data actually meant.
---- I'd say the first scientists to propose anthropogenic global warming were thinking outside the box. It's not like a bunch of scientists got together and said, "You know what'd be a great hoax?"
Not in so many words, but it's a well-established fact that people who want to push an agenda tend to inflate their numbers. The desire to persuade through contrast beats the long and complicated explanations intrinsic to scientific objectivity almost every time, especially when non-scientists start quoting 'scientific studies' in support of their agendas. As my statistics prof told us back on the first day of class, "always be leery of numbers that 'prove' what someone really wants to believe."
It doesn't take a conspiracy of scientists to start the echo chamber pumping. It just takes a paper that hits the resonant frequency of one of the many echo chambers that already exist. That starts the laypeople throwing uninformed opinions around, which in turn creates a spike in demand for informed opinions one way or the other. If the problem in question is at all scientifically interesting, it's too complicated to reduce to a YES/NO sound byte, so the scientists themselves start debating the issue. And since they debate through publication, their writings are picked up and polarized by civilian media agents like _Time_ and _People_.
Eventually, one side or the other gains a majority of hard-to-contradict arguments on the scientific side, and becomes the scientific orthodoxy of the day. Egos and cliques come into play, and the scientific community gets its own echo chamber going with regard to that issue. And God help us all if the politicians get involved, because there's a crew with few scruples about adjusting facts to fit the opinions of their target political contributors.
Meanwhile, the actual science chugs along in the background, gleaning bits and pieces of truth from either side. By the time a mature understanding of the subject emerges, the average person on the street greets it by saying, "oh.. yeah. I remember that."
---- It's all swell to quote stuff, but it's kinda idiotic to ignore any counter points.
That's a darn good summary of Monckton's opinion WRT anthropogenic-global-warming advocates. We have historical records of viking farms in Greenland circa 1000, where now we have glaciers, and of the Chinese expedition that sailed around the North Pole during roughly the same period without seeing all that much ice. The scientific link between increased sunspot activity and increased mean global temperature is, if anything, even more solid than the correlation between CO2 and increased temperatures. Those are counter-points that GW advocates have to consider. Unfortunately, some have taken the easier route of pumping the echo chamber and declaring that the debate has already ended.
---- As for the semantics of proving climate-change consensus vs climate change.... that's the entire point of the debate, isn't it? If we have a consensus, we have climate change? Without one, we don't have climate change?
First, that's exactly right. We have data from a thousand years ago which, according to some people, clearly shows a much greater period of global warming than we're experiencing right now. But other people say the data can be interpreted differently, and by their interpretation, that 'Medieval warm period' never even existed. And we don't even have to deal with climate models and predictions here.. everyone is working from the same body of observational data. We can't describe the weather of a thousand years ago with certainty, we can't describe the current weather with certainty, and we're even less certain about our predictions for the future. The predictions we can make are so fuzzy they're almost impossible to refute (and thus no longer deserve to be called 'science'), and run far enough in the future that everyone currently making the predictions will long since have retired or died before anyone can say whether they were talking out their hats or not.
The fact that the climate constantly changes is indisputable. Anything beyond that -- past, present or future -- is pretty much up for grabs.
Second, you're missing a larger theme in Monckton's article: Some GW advocates, Al Gore being one of them, have made statements to the effect that, "the scientific debate over global warming is over." To be polite, that's an exaggeration, and Monckton (and some senior climatologists) have called them on it.
Lindzen suggests a reason for that at the end of this article:
Young scientists don't have the street cred to challenge the established orthodoxy (whatever it is at the given time), and they can't acquire credibility if they can't get published, can't get funding, can't get tenure, and can't even write a letter to the editor without a dozen people popping up to discredit their findings based on what the 'established' scientists say. If one is especially brilliant (and lucky), history might eventually put them into the list alongside Lister, Boltzmann, and all the other scientists who posthumously proven right, but that's hardly what most people would consider a Good Career Choice.
Heck, read the Wikipedia article on Lindzen himself which currently amounts to a debunking of his public statements, and begins with these editorial notes:
If that's how a senior and well-respected scientist is treated, what chance does a doctoral candidate have?
Both viruses and worms require automatic propagation. The distinction lies in what code performs the propagation.
Viruses take advantage of weak spots in other executable code. Macro viruses exploit a word processor's macro system. Boot sector viruses exploit the computer's boot loader. In every case, though, the virus takes advantage of some piece of already-existing piece of software that executes code automatically, usually without direct control or knowledge from the user.
A worm OTOH, is its own executable. It's essentially a self-replicating daemon. It does exploit weaknesses in a system's remote-execution code to propagate, but it doesn't require an interpreter. All it has to do is write its executable text to a block of memory, then trigger a fault which causes that block of memory to be treated as an executable.
Automatic propagation is the hallmark of a worm or virus, though. If Macarena can propagate every time someone opens an infected file, it's a virus. If you have to run a specific infection program to attach the payload to other files, it's not a virus, it's just a program that appends unwanted crap to other files.
Broadly speaking, 20% of computer sales generate 80% of the profit, while the remaining 80% of sales only generate the remaining 20% of profit.
Taking those numbers into account, Apple just reported something like $580 million in profit for the last quarter. Gateway (just slightly larger in market share) posted an $80 million loss. Dell (#1 in sales, moving roughly five times as many units as Apple) posted a $510 million profit for its last quarter. So we have two facts:
1 - Dell and Gateway (combined) sold roughly six times as many computers as Apple last quarter.
2 - Apple made roughly $150 million more profit than Dell and Gateway (combined) last quarter.
All in all, I think Apple will be delighted to remain a 'niche player' as long as they can rake in 80% of the money while only having to produce, ship, and support 20% of the machines.
It's more about Apple deliberately taking advantage of a weak spot in the Microsoft/OEM business model than underestimating Microsoft per se.
Microsoft has influence with the OEMs, sure, but it doesn't have the power to force them to adopt technology. MS can (and does) define its reference platform, but then the OEMs build the least expensive machine that's still arguably compatible with that platform.
Apple has the power to build wireless into all its laptops by default, and to drop the built-in modems. Microsoft can't tell Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba, (etc) to do the same. Apple sticks to the high-margin end of the price spectrum, so it can afford to make expensive components standard in its machines. Microsoft can build support for those components into its OS, but still has to wait for the OEMs to decide it will be profitable to make the hardware. Yeah, the PC market will get there eventually, but Apple can move faster and can get away with tighter integration between the OS and the hardware.
That's a competitive advantage. And it's an advantage that makes Apple attractive to Intel, since Intel wants someone to build markets for its new technology.
And while Apple is building flagship products for Intel's next-generation stuff, Dell et al will be making deals with AMD for low-cost clones of the stuff that was standard yesterday. They'll have to, because there's a lot of market demand for cheap, unsexy, legacy-compatible hardware. But ten years from now, the unsexy legacy stuff will be the new-and-exciting stuff Apple/Intel come up with two years from now.
---- But can someone more legally inclined tell me why his response shouldn't be "because I'm innocent until proven guilty"?
Because the motion in question basically says, "here's what we consider to be proof that he's guilty." Now it's Jack's turn to present his side of the story.
The law is an adversarial process. The courts define 'truth' as being any statement both sides agree to allow into the record (though technically they use the word 'facts' rather than 'truth'). Then the judge's decision has to follow logically from 'the facts' and the law.
Both sides in a case have the power to present any facts they want to have put in the record, and both sides have the power to shoot holes in any facts that the other side has put forward for consideration. First one side makes a motion, then the second side gets to make a response. Then the first side gets to state its argument again, taking the response into account, and finally the other side gets to make a second response. Then the judge decides what facts will go into the record, and everyone moves on to the next issue.
In this instance, Take-Two's lawyers have presented a motion that says, "Jack has acted in contempt of court, for these reasons," and now it's Jack's turn to poke holes in their argument.
---- It sounds like they've issued a petition to force Thompson to show he did no wrong.
Courts don't deal in notions like 'did no wrong'. They deal in dates, times, statements on record, and the law. Jack can respond by saying, "I never said that at all, and here's proof," or, "Take-Two took my statement out of context, and in-context it shows no contempt for the court," or he can admit to making the statements and argue about the rules of when judges are allowed to impose penalties for contempt. In fact, he can do all three at the same time. It's called 'arguing in the alternative'.
Regardless, though, this isn't about forcing Jack to prove his innocence. This is just Take-Two presenting an idea to the court, and the court giving Jack a chance to tear down as much of their argument as he can.
That's how the law works.
Granted, Apple doesn't use those processors, but I'm talking about chipsets and/or mobos. Intel does a product demo every year where it shows off the computer equivalent of concept cars.. new form factors, new emphases in usage, that kind of thing. They demo'd a machine with a very small footprint about the same time Apple released the Mac Mini, for instance. The Wow-factor had less to do with the CPU architecture and more to do with energy consumption, heat dissipation, and mobo design.
The Wintel OEMs looked at it, made appreciative noises, then went back to building machines with the same form-factor we've seen for the past twenty years.
Apple is willing to experiment with form factors, and cares about things like packaging and heat dissipation. And since Apple controls its entire product stack, it can float solutions to the level where they make the most sense. They have the option to make Quartz snappier or improve video playback by changing the chips on the mobo and then writing OS & driver code specifically tailored for those chips. And those are only the small changes that make sense during a shift from one CPU architecture to another. Once Apple's intel lineup has had time to settle in, the R&D collaboration between Apple and Intel has the potential to get really interesting.
---- I bet you anything there is a clause in the EULA that says something like "this software is not to be used in life support equipment, nuclear power plants, or other life-critical systems."
Even if it is, that doesn't automatically take Wintel machines out of the loop.
A friend of mine develops industrial control systems, many of which are life-safety critical. The actual devices are controlled by PLCs, which are pretty damned bulletproof, but the control and monitoring software runs on Wintel machines. A Windows crash won't automatically wipe out the ammonia generating facility (where they heat natural gas to something like 5000* at 1500 atmospheres and then react it with superheated steam -- the walls of the control facility are 4' thick), but it will kill your ability to monitor the process, meaning you still have to hit the Big Red Button if you can't get the control interface back online within a reasonable time.
On a similar line, the Wintel machines in a hospital don't have to be running the life-support systems, they can just be storing all the patient records that doctors need to make diagnoses, set prescriptions, schedule treatments, and so on. A person who dies because the doctors couldn't get the necessary information in a timely manner is just as dead as the person who dies because the Machine That Goes 'Ping' BSOD'd at the wrong time. At an individual level, that doesn't generate much noise, but if someone dies because a major hospital's entire network goes down, the press will be on it like stink on sewage.
And while I'm sure Microsoft's legal team has already written the company an escape clause for just such situations (hell, they barely guarantee that there's a working CD inside the box), that won't stop someone who's just lost lots of money and face from suing anyway. At worst, they'll end up just as badly screwed as they were going in, and there's always a chance they might be able to win something. Besides, the court victory for Microsoft would be hollow, compared to the cost of the PR disaster and subsequent log-rolling to keep or win future contracts for large Vista installations.
Complete, utter, and total shash..
---- Apple computers make up a tiny market share.
Apple's market share is growing, and guess what: that growth had to come from somewhere. Apple is taking share away from the other players in the market. It's also interesting to note that while Apple is #4 is market share right now (behind Gateway, but not for long), their profits for this quarter were $584 million. Gateway (.3% ahead of Apple right now in sales share) lost about $80 million last quarter, and Dell (#1) had profits of about $510 million for its last quarter. In other words, Dell and Gateway had to sell something like six times as many computers as Apple to make $160 million less than Apple did over the last quarter.
---- Dell and HP will continue to grow.
That's debatable. Dell and HP sell a lot of $300 computers at either a razor-thin profit as an actual loss-leader. A company that buys 1500 cheap desktop units for the workers will also buy a couple hundred high-end laptops for the executives.. and the laptops probably bring Dell more actual profit than the whole consignment of desktops. Thing is, Apple's growing market share is coming from the $1500-5000 price range, where Dell and HP make their real money.
Apple will be absolutely delighted to see Dell and HP ship 80% of the computers sold in the market, as long as that 80% comes from the sub-$1k, $2-profit-per-unit loss-leader segment. Meanwhile, Apple will sit happily on the 20% of unit sales that generate 25% profit on a $1500-5000 sale per machine.
---- How many small incremental features can be added to the iPod before people look the other way? Rivals are offering similar devices with more features at a lower price.
And consumers voting with their wallets don't give a shit. Those lower-priced units with similar features also offer a lousy user experience, which is just certain to get better now that Microsoft has jumped firmly astride the fence with its dual Zune-to-be-coming and Plays-for-Sure-Unless-It-Doesn't initiatives. The numbers for the past several years show that Apple holds about 75% of the global market and everyone else competes for the remaining 25%. Any competitors who want to take market share away from Apple have to do better than 'similar features (but lousy usability) at a slightly lower price'. They have to offer something that's significantly better. And since the competition is currently stuck in "which one sucks least?" territory, that isn't likely to happen any time soon.
---- Apple is sunk without a strategic alliance and a different strategy.
Apple is making money hand over fist in a market where everyone else is fighting to survive. And if you want a strategic alliance, wait 'til the cross-pollination between Apple's R&D and Intel's R&D starts to kick in. Apple is willing to push new technology into the market, where the Wintel manufacturers wait to adopt (or release) technology until a trend is established (look how long it took to get rid of parallel ports). Intel has spent years developing concept platforms that none of the Wintel OEMs have been willing to take to market. Apple wants an edge on technology, Intel wants a vendor to showcase its new tech. And now the two are working together.
Nah, they're just stuck in the old "Apple makes an OS, Microsoft makes an OS, Microsoft makes more money, so Apple should mimic Microsoft" mindset.
Aside from the fact that Apple and Microsoft are in completely different businesses (Apple sells vertically integrated systems in the consumer market, while Microsoft sells a software component to the business OEM market), the idea that the little fish should try to mimic the big fish is just plain stupid. The big fish are big because they already have a lock on all the easy feeding grounds, and they're not going to let those go without putting up a fight.. and a little fish who tries to take on a pissed-off big fish is fish food.
Of course, Gartner sells analyitic reports to people who don't want to know that Apple and Microsoft are in different markets. It's soothing noise for the people who want an excuse not to buy Apple stock, despite of the good numbers, because change is scary. Reports like this let timid investors feel good about sitting back and waiting another ten years to see whether this 'Apple fad' continues.
---- Just for the record, I was joking.
Fair enough.. It can be hard to distinguish between subtle irony and brute cluelessness around here.
--- However I did not know that three or more orbits could not be predicted.
Yep.. officially it's known as the n-body problem, and it's one of the great 'oh crap' moments in the history of science. People really wanted the universe to be simple and predictable, and learning that the orbits of the planets are undecidable was roughly as much of a shock to 18th-century scientists as the discovery of irrational numbers was to the greeks.
-- But does that mean that in the 300 years between Newton and Einsten everyone should have dismissed Newton because at some point a more refined theory is going to come along? No, of course not
Phlogiston. Ylem. Lamarckism. Hilbert's program, which was the possibly the noblest and most rigorous formulation of Pythagoreanism. The fact that Newton was mostly right doesn't negate the fact that whole realms of once-respected scientific thought have been completely tossed out because a new and fundamentally different theory came along.
You're also working from an implicitly linear notion of science.. the idea that we can carve out a general theory which will continue to remain valid as we fill in the fine details. It follows from linear mathematics, where the size of a change in the initial conditions is proportional to the change in the final result. Linear systems are nice because you can always define a value of 'small' for which small variations in the initial conditions can be safely ignored.
Nonlinear systems (like the weather) don't work that way. There's no safe definition of a 'small' change, nor is a change that's safely small at position X guaranteed to be safely small at position Y.
-- Who is "the other side"? It's certainly not climate scientists, the people actually studying it.
Apparently you missed the bet between the English climatologist who supports the CO2-based model of global warming and the Russian who supports the increased-solar-activity model. Or any of the articles by Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at MIT. There's significantly more debate over the importance of global warming, its mechanism, and the impact of human behavior on global warming than Al Gore would have you believe.
-- Which variable exactly is it you are disputing?
How about the causes of natural variation in global temperatures from one decade, century, or millenium to the next?
How about the exact contribution of CO2's infrared absorption on global mean temperature?
How about our measurement of global mean temperature itself? Different mechanisms give different results. Our long historical records only account for surface temperature, and we have practically no record for temperatures in the upper atmosphere.
How about the standard deviation of the global mean temperature over the historical record? If we take a simple deviation, the increase observed over the last century pretty much disappears in the 3-sigma (95% confidence) range of natural variation. GW advocates prefer to measure sigma on the 'moving range' of the sample, which cuts sigma roughly in half, thus leaving about half a degree of change outside the 3-sigma range and therefore definable as an anomaly.
How about the exact conditions necessary to say with 95% certainty that X degrees of global mean temperature change over the last century can only be attributed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and not to natural climactic variation, variation in solar activity, data error, or any other cause?
-- Precisely which part of this are you disputing?
The part where you show specific, evidentiary corrleation between anthropogenic CO2 levels and global mean temperature. For all the data you've cited, you still do a handwave by saying "it's obvious" at that point. Let me illustrate with an analogy:
Let's say we drop water balloons from a 100' tower and measure the spread of the splash pattern. It is scientifically indisputable that the size of the splash is related to the speed of the balloon at the moment of impact, and that the speed is directly related to