I'm no liberal fan but we have a pretty good communications minister in Helen Coonan.
Define "good."
I'd say that she is to her portfolio as Jack the Ripper is to nursing. Still, in her defence she saw the gaping problem we have here - too many diverse opinions in the media - and she fixed it by stripping away the media ownership laws. Now finally a media mogul can own just about every media outlet in the land! About time too. Rupert was happy. Kerry would have been proud.
Broadband? Who needs that crap! The Liberals managed to stall it long enough and give Telstra a free pass - our tax dollars at work. Digital TV? What? After nearly a decade of pushing it, they still haven't given anyone a reason why they should bother. Communications in the bush? Well, if a farmer lives in the middle of nowhere, it's their own lookout. Why should the cities subsidise those rednecks who only go around providing most of the food we eat? Serves them right. Privatisation of Telstra? Well, lets hand pick a board with utter disregard to the public who pay them, and then give them masses of money! Better yet, let's give them a monopoly on the infrastructure we paid for through our taxes, and limited oversight, so that they can screw any newcomers to the game to the wall! Good policy for a happier Australia.
The only way I can characterise her performance as "good" is through the benchmark set by her predecessor, Richard Alston. A man so devoid of technology ideas and understanding that it's a wonder we ever got that new-fangled Intarweb thingummajig here. If he had his way we would've had the longest piece of string on Earth, stretching between the US and Australia, with tin cans on either end staffed by morse-code tappers. Compared to him, Helen Coonan is a shining light in the firmament of policy. Then again, tonight I flushed a few things that compared favourably to Alston in that portfolio.
I have to ask again - on which criteria is Helen Coonan a "good" performer? It's morbid curiosity, but I can't help but pose the question.
I agree! The worst thing is the way people from Slashdot come over to my house and force me to read the articles!
Those Apple-loving bastards! I hate the way they hold my eyes open and display the page in front of me. Sometimes, when I put up a lot of resistance, they read the articles to me at high volume, forcing me to hear them.
It's the worst thing, and... wait... this is what they do to you, isn't it? I mean, you're not able to just skip things you don't want to read are you? You're not one of those lucky, lucky bastards are you?
I just can't see any good business sense in this article. No real analysis, just opinions.
"Apple could drop Intel altogether and adopt AMD for its Macintosh PCs"
Why?
"However, it will be well worth it."
Why?
"In the meantime, Apple could have AMD deal with HP, Dell and a slew of its current customers without a direct conflict of interest. Hey, it's better than HP buying AMD and Dell having to go to HP for getting AMD chips, or vice versa. AMD acquisition by Apple makes perfect sense in as much of a non-threatening way as possible to Dell, HP and others."
Why? Why would Apple want to do this? How is Dell's benefit worth anything to Apple?
"Another benefit that Apple will reap out of this (other than adding another revenue stream) is to have complete control over its hardware from a cost standpoint."
Why add an unrelated revenue stream? It's not far from saying that Apple should get into woodchipping forests because then they can make the boxes they use in packaging. What do Apple know about managing a chip design company? They can't use the existing AMD managers (the company is struggling now, so they're clearly not exceptional managers).
Is it cheaper to buy in bulk in a competitive market, or to buy the company at a good price, rework the management to integrate it into your own structure, revamp all your products to use the new chips and market to the world how this won't cause a disruption?
I can't see any good business sense here, just a "wouldn't it be cool if..." article.
No way. Too expensive (Apple actually uses refurbs for their employees), Apple are in a unique position to do this, and aren't representative of other companies. This isn't a good example.
too difficult to manage from an IT standpoint, Really? Based on..? I don't necessarily disbelieve you, but a simple statement like that needs something behind it.
and really, do office drones need them? No. Think about it. They need access to databases if they are in sales/customer service, not a machine they can make home movies on. You've never heard of ODBC or networking then? Connecting to DBs on the Mac is just as simple as on the PC. If you want to run a terminal application for a mainframe session, that's pretty straighforward as well. I think you need to detail your experiences in connecting Macs to databases a bit more. I can't think of any reason why it would be hard, and my experience is that it's pretty easy.
It was the first computer in our household, and in many ways by far the most significant.
I remember learning BASIC and assembly (Z80), playing Elite all through one night, playing games and learning lots of stuff.
And that little silver-paper thermal printer!
I've still got the 1981 ZX-Spectrum 48K in a box somewhere, with tapes of many games and that printer (and some spare 'paper'). The keyboard membrane has pretty much had it, making the computer almost useless, but one day I'll get a replacement, just for the nostalgia.
Microsoft may have great plans to make the Zune the world-beating portable device that everyone wants, but until they actually release something they've got only their Zune.
Any company can promise greatness. That takes nothing more than a few rumours, some conversations on the side and a few hints. It's easy to do.
Actually delivering greatness is hard.
Microsoft promises greatness, but delivered mediocrity. All we have now are more promises, but nothing more tangible. If I were buying a music device, I wouldn't factor in some nebulous promise like this. There's no substance and a poor track record.
Yes, extra interfaces are great for the differently-abled. You're spot on.
That's not what we're talking about here though. We need more than a handful of unusually handicapped users behind the next bit Thing (tm) or a new Good Thing (tm).
"You don't shout at your co-workers, do you? What makes you think you'd have to shout at your computer?"
You missed the bit where I said I work in an open-plan environment. That means speech recognition would bring a world where everyone talks all the time to enter a document. I don't have tall partitions between desks in my area, only low ones. I'd be hearing their documents all day. It's bad enough we have a radio station there. I think I would start shouting!
Typing is private. People like privacy and quiet to concentrate.
Speech is public. Everything said is known to the people around you (and even if it may not be, you must assume they heard it).
Speech recognition has lots of good things, lots of places it could work wonderfully. An open office is not such a place. The world of Star Trek isn't where we are now, and isn't even in the forseeable future.
And don't even get me started on the interface used in Minority Report! Worst interface concept ever!
I always like the way some people think of speech recognition as a Good Thing(tm).
Imagine using a computer in a quiet office with a speech recognition. Sounds good, doesn't it? That's the environment of the executive, where it might make sense.
Now imagine your work environment. I'm in an open-plan office here, and I can clearly hear the many people around me, even quite far away. Imagine if they were all talking to their computers!
Yup. Bedlam. Shouting. Not the office of the future, but like a stockmarket of the past.
Bill Gates has no vision. He's never had vision. He has business acumen, but never any vision.
You should be modded down, not because people are "Apple fanboys" but because you're making unsubstantiated claims. That's not insightful, that's trolling. Post something to back up your claim.
You added in a later post "The entire company is high end IT except the single HR person. It's a custom hosting/access company."
So you saw a high-end IT company that is Mac-only. Did you consider that they did their homework and decided on Macs for their own reasons? The alternative has to be that they're not smart enough to know what equipment to buy.
Isn't is simpler to assume that Macs fitted their requirements better than any other computer?
Maybe they need to triple-boot their machines, or the OS has features they don't see in Windows? Maybe they prefer less in-house support. There are plenty of reasons a company might go Mac only. Money is one reason they might not (and yes, it's a big one).
So which name-brand computer can you buy where these things don't void the warranty? This isn't an Apple thing or even a computing thing, it's normal for any product with a warranty. You can't open a device up, destroy it and then expect that the warranty will be honored.
The original poster was wrong to tie DRM with warranties - they've nothing to do with each other. The only reason for doing that would be to spread FUD.
While most Mac folks would think it anathema to do it, I've always had no probs with getting a Mac w/ only the CPU strength I want, then buffing out the hardware specs everywhere else once I got it home - saves tons of cash that way.
I've been a Mac user since 1991, and I always thought everyone did that! I've always assumed the Apple RAM and HDD prices are only there for people who like everything pre-done and don't want to crack their Mac open.
"When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."...
"Of course. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.
At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you. And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions."
"If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own," said Jobs."
I'd never heard of the DefectiveByDesign site before your post today (I thought it was a tag on Slashdot!) but these quotes stuck in my mind when I read them years ago. It looks like the music industry is catching up to Jobs' way of thinking.
You have to face facts - Jobs has a history and he's turning the music industry around. First he reclaimed the wasteland left behind by Napster, now he's pushing for unrestricted music and achieving some success. It's not a 'right place at the right time' thing, unless you completely discount the years of work to get Apple to the 'right place at the right time.'
No, science does not require repeatability with controls.
Consider Astronomy. That's definitely a science, but it's fairly hard to repeat the Big Bang, star formation or even planetary formation with controls.
Theory and observation, that's what science is about.
You observe a phenomenon, then construct theories about it. If the theories hold true for another round of observartions, you're doing Science! If the theories don't hold, you either change them (still doing Science) or refute the observations (stepping away from Science here).
(As an aside - changing the observations to fit the theory, or selecting only observations that fit the theory is anti-Science in its purest form. This behaviour actually attempts to extend ignorance and distort facts. Any attempt to do this is highly suspicious.)
It's considered really nice in the Scientific world to be able to perform an experiment, to better control observations. In those cases you have to have repeatability with controls. Then other people can perform your observations and see for themselves. That's even nicer. I'd go so far as to use the phrase 'peachy keen' here.
Science is all about observation and theorising, in an endless loop. Experiments are merely a form of observation.
The Microsoft Mouse.app (should be in/Applications) has a buttons panel, with left, right, wheel, left side and right side. Clicking the wheel provides the middle button, and rolling it provides other actions.
The mouse is an "Intellimouse Optical 1.1A" according to the sticker on the red translucent plastic underneath it.
I've got the basic Microsoft Intellimouse which handles left-clicks, right-clicks, middle-clicks, left- and right-side clicks as well. And the scroll wheel. All are configurable in any application or generally unless overridden.
Sounds like your mouse isn't well supported by the company that made it. These things are trivially possible (the APIs allow for up to 2^16 buttons on any input device) and others do it.
That beachball still appears for me sometimes, although successive OS updates have improved it greatly. I'm putting it down to my iBook these days, which is over three years old now. My wife's MacBook Pro is under six months old and rarely shows the beachball.
All Macs except portables come with a two button mouse. The portables have simple ways to 'right click' (two fingers on the trackpad makes a click a 'right click'). The single-button mouse isn't sold by Apple any longer. It hasn't been for a few years. You're out of date.
You say "apple will never open their system up to the tools that I need. Most of my engineering applications can't run in OSX..." So the solution would be for Apple to buy the company using the software you like and port it to OS X? Is that what you're saying? How else can Apple "open their system" to get get a third-party vendor to release a particular product for you? Do you understand business?
Buy a PC with the same power as a Mac for half the price? Sounds good! Where's the US$550 Core2 Duo laptop? What about the US$500 all-in-one unit (again Core2 Duo) with the small footprint or the US$1250 quad-core Xeon workstation? In fact, why not go to the next step and say that Macs cost a majillion times more than an equivalently spec'ed PC? You're about 5-10 years out of date.
"for the technology impaired apple is a great company." That quote stands apart. Is that like saying Microsoft is retarding Windows, or Linux is being dumbed down each major release? You confuse ease of use with simplicity. A lot of naive people do that. Every OS is moving towards better ease of use. If you think that's a bad thing, then you might want to detail why people should have to jump through hoops to get simple stuff done.
In the last year I've seen a number of blogs from former Microsofties, as well as the infamous Mini-Microsoft. Many of these talk about top-heavy management, unhappy staff, projects leading nowhere, ladder climbers and bleeding money through some product lines.
In isolation, individual blogs may be just some people blowing off a bit of steam, or may be representative of a few dissatisfied staffers.
Taken together, they paint a picture of a company that's in danger of losing its way.
It's hard to know just how representative the sum of these blogs is. They're all pretty self-selecting, after all. If they paint a relatively accurate picture, then Microsoft is missing some key things Apple's recently gotten right:
* Management who understand their products at every level and pitch them well. Anyone who's presented to a large crowd knows how hard this is, but Steve Jobs is a complete master at it.
* Getting the product's look and feel right first time. Pick up a new Apple product. Touch it. Look at the surfaces. They always look great. People react to this, equating professional finish with professional products.
* Focus on product lines, with no products bleeding more money with every unit sold. There's no Apple product I've heard of where each unit sold is a loss to the company. The units both R&D and then start to generate profit. Even iTunes with its razor thin profit pays for itself. This shows solid business planning, solid budgeting and is very well respected by the investors.
* Staff who keep pretty damn quiet about the internal stuff. Apple have a policy on communication, and very few staff feel they need to start some kind of Mini-Apple in response. Few companies allow staff to communicate, as it's just too easy for staff to send the wrong message. The company I work for is vast beyond the dreams of Apple or Microsoft, and we train all staff about external communications (in normal policy & procedure training). The impression Apple gives is that of a tightly run company.
Apple present as a company focused on a few core lines - home computing, professional media/art computing and entertainment. It's easy to see how just about everything they do fits those lines.
Microsoft are all over the place. Their core is clearly Windows and Office, but they've dipped metaphorical toes into media, gaming, tablet computing, robotics, handhelds, peripherals, mobile phones, web searching and more. Some non-core lines are very successful (XBox-360) but they all seem to be in the red, only able to be pursued due to the huge cash reserves brought in by the core lines. Few businesses would do this, even very rich businesses (such as GE) demand each product or division runs a profit and improves year on year. That's sustainable business practice, but Microsoft seems to believe deep pockets last forever.
Microsoft are looking tired, but they can pull things together. Cut some of the non-core lines loose - sell them off. Get out and understand how people want to use stuff before building a product (Zune wireless sharing is a notable failure here). Savage the management layers to shake out dead wood at *all* levels, review all current projects with a view to killing most of them and refocus the (smaller) company on the smaller range of product lines.
Microsoft can waste energy competing with Apple and Google, but they needn't bother. Neither is a threat and the market's easily big enough for everyone. The biggest enemy they seem to have is themselves and their existing products.
To recap a film metaphor - remember when Luke Skywalker went into that cave near Yoda's house on Dagobar? He met Darth Vader, then fought and killed him. The mask covering the head exploded, revealing Luke's own face. His greatest enemy at that point was his own nature.
Despite SecureWorks being quoted saying the Mac is threatened by the exploit demonstrated at Black Hat, they have provided no evidence that in fact it is," Apple Director of Mac PR, Lynn Fox, told Macworld. "To the contrary, the SecureWorks demonstration used a third party USB 802.11 device-not the 802.11 hardware in the Mac-a device which uses a different chip and different software drivers than those on the Mac. Further, SecureWorks has not shared or demonstrated any code in relation to the Black Hat-demonstrated exploit that is relevant to the hardware and software that we ship."
The bit about SecureWorks not providing evidence of the exploit is now borne out by their inability to provide any evidence since. Crashing a MacBook is not the same as taking control, and while it was recently claimed that it's a simple extension, the fact is that the exploit has not been proven.
Occam's Razor seems to be on Apple's side - they heard of an issue, couldn't get the details so they stared their own audit and patched the problems they found. Simple, straightforward, doesn't require invention of entities.
You need to get out more and read a bit of overseas news.
Your points may be good as far as they go, but they hardly capture the sum total of the Human Race. Still, if you feel this way and are certain that you're right, then go ahead - lead the charge into oblivion. You go on, and the rest of us will be along later.
Copywrite's got little to do with pricing levels. There's nothing to stop companies like Microsoft releasing their products at lower prices on the streets of Russia and China than they do on the streets of the US. This is the whole "what the market will bear" thing, after all. Capitalism was meant to be about that.
Given the above, how is copywrite law against the interests of the population and future economic power? Do you fundamentally disagree with the concept of copywrite, or do you disagree with the pricing models set up by US software companies?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, UMPC, we hardly knew you. ... in fact, that's probably one of the things that went wrong.
I'm no liberal fan but we have a pretty good communications minister in Helen Coonan.
Define "good."
I'd say that she is to her portfolio as Jack the Ripper is to nursing. Still, in her defence she saw the gaping problem we have here - too many diverse opinions in the media - and she fixed it by stripping away the media ownership laws. Now finally a media mogul can own just about every media outlet in the land! About time too. Rupert was happy. Kerry would have been proud.
Broadband? Who needs that crap! The Liberals managed to stall it long enough and give Telstra a free pass - our tax dollars at work. Digital TV? What? After nearly a decade of pushing it, they still haven't given anyone a reason why they should bother. Communications in the bush? Well, if a farmer lives in the middle of nowhere, it's their own lookout. Why should the cities subsidise those rednecks who only go around providing most of the food we eat? Serves them right. Privatisation of Telstra? Well, lets hand pick a board with utter disregard to the public who pay them, and then give them masses of money! Better yet, let's give them a monopoly on the infrastructure we paid for through our taxes, and limited oversight, so that they can screw any newcomers to the game to the wall! Good policy for a happier Australia.
The only way I can characterise her performance as "good" is through the benchmark set by her predecessor, Richard Alston. A man so devoid of technology ideas and understanding that it's a wonder we ever got that new-fangled Intarweb thingummajig here. If he had his way we would've had the longest piece of string on Earth, stretching between the US and Australia, with tin cans on either end staffed by morse-code tappers. Compared to him, Helen Coonan is a shining light in the firmament of policy. Then again, tonight I flushed a few things that compared favourably to Alston in that portfolio.
I have to ask again - on which criteria is Helen Coonan a "good" performer? It's morbid curiosity, but I can't help but pose the question.
I agree! The worst thing is the way people from Slashdot come over to my house and force me to read the articles!
Those Apple-loving bastards! I hate the way they hold my eyes open and display the page in front of me. Sometimes, when I put up a lot of resistance, they read the articles to me at high volume, forcing me to hear them.
It's the worst thing, and... wait... this is what they do to you, isn't it? I mean, you're not able to just skip things you don't want to read are you? You're not one of those lucky, lucky bastards are you?
I just can't see any good business sense in this article. No real analysis, just opinions.
"Apple could drop Intel altogether and adopt AMD for its Macintosh PCs"
Why?
"However, it will be well worth it."
Why?
"In the meantime, Apple could have AMD deal with HP, Dell and a slew of its current customers without a direct conflict of interest. Hey, it's better than HP buying AMD and Dell having to go to HP for getting AMD chips, or vice versa. AMD acquisition by Apple makes perfect sense in as much of a non-threatening way as possible to Dell, HP and others."
Why? Why would Apple want to do this? How is Dell's benefit worth anything to Apple?
"Another benefit that Apple will reap out of this (other than adding another revenue stream) is to have complete control over its hardware from a cost standpoint."
Why add an unrelated revenue stream? It's not far from saying that Apple should get into woodchipping forests because then they can make the boxes they use in packaging. What do Apple know about managing a chip design company? They can't use the existing AMD managers (the company is struggling now, so they're clearly not exceptional managers).
Is it cheaper to buy in bulk in a competitive market, or to buy the company at a good price, rework the management to integrate it into your own structure, revamp all your products to use the new chips and market to the world how this won't cause a disruption?
I can't see any good business sense here, just a "wouldn't it be cool if..." article.
No way. Too expensive (Apple actually uses refurbs for their employees),
Apple are in a unique position to do this, and aren't representative of other companies. This isn't a good example.
too difficult to manage from an IT standpoint,
Really? Based on..? I don't necessarily disbelieve you, but a simple statement like that needs something behind it.
and really, do office drones need them? No. Think about it. They need access to databases if they are in sales/customer service, not a machine they can make home movies on.
You've never heard of ODBC or networking then? Connecting to DBs on the Mac is just as simple as on the PC. If you want to run a terminal application for a mainframe session, that's pretty straighforward as well. I think you need to detail your experiences in connecting Macs to databases a bit more. I can't think of any reason why it would be hard, and my experience is that it's pretty easy.
It was the first computer in our household, and in many ways by far the most significant.
I remember learning BASIC and assembly (Z80), playing Elite all through one night, playing games and learning lots of stuff.
And that little silver-paper thermal printer!
I've still got the 1981 ZX-Spectrum 48K in a box somewhere, with tapes of many games and that printer (and some spare 'paper'). The keyboard membrane has pretty much had it, making the computer almost useless, but one day I'll get a replacement, just for the nostalgia.
Microsoft may have great plans to make the Zune the world-beating portable device that everyone wants, but until they actually release something they've got only their Zune.
Any company can promise greatness. That takes nothing more than a few rumours, some conversations on the side and a few hints. It's easy to do.
Actually delivering greatness is hard.
Microsoft promises greatness, but delivered mediocrity. All we have now are more promises, but nothing more tangible. If I were buying a music device, I wouldn't factor in some nebulous promise like this. There's no substance and a poor track record.
Yes, extra interfaces are great for the differently-abled. You're spot on.
That's not what we're talking about here though. We need more than a handful of unusually handicapped users behind the next bit Thing (tm) or a new Good Thing (tm).
"You don't shout at your co-workers, do you? What makes you think you'd have to shout at your computer?"
You missed the bit where I said I work in an open-plan environment. That means speech recognition would bring a world where everyone talks all the time to enter a document. I don't have tall partitions between desks in my area, only low ones. I'd be hearing their documents all day. It's bad enough we have a radio station there. I think I would start shouting!
Typing is private. People like privacy and quiet to concentrate.
Speech is public. Everything said is known to the people around you (and even if it may not be, you must assume they heard it).
Speech recognition has lots of good things, lots of places it could work wonderfully. An open office is not such a place. The world of Star Trek isn't where we are now, and isn't even in the forseeable future.
And don't even get me started on the interface used in Minority Report! Worst interface concept ever!
I always like the way some people think of speech recognition as a Good Thing(tm).
Imagine using a computer in a quiet office with a speech recognition. Sounds good, doesn't it? That's the environment of the executive, where it might make sense.
Now imagine your work environment. I'm in an open-plan office here, and I can clearly hear the many people around me, even quite far away. Imagine if they were all talking to their computers!
Yup. Bedlam. Shouting. Not the office of the future, but like a stockmarket of the past.
Bill Gates has no vision. He's never had vision. He has business acumen, but never any vision.
Got anything to back that up?
You should be modded down, not because people are "Apple fanboys" but because you're making unsubstantiated claims. That's not insightful, that's trolling. Post something to back up your claim.
You added in a later post "The entire company is high end IT except the single HR person. It's a custom hosting/access company."
So you saw a high-end IT company that is Mac-only. Did you consider that they did their homework and decided on Macs for their own reasons? The alternative has to be that they're not smart enough to know what equipment to buy.
Isn't is simpler to assume that Macs fitted their requirements better than any other computer?
Maybe they need to triple-boot their machines, or the OS has features they don't see in Windows? Maybe they prefer less in-house support. There are plenty of reasons a company might go Mac only. Money is one reason they might not (and yes, it's a big one).
So which name-brand computer can you buy where these things don't void the warranty? This isn't an Apple thing or even a computing thing, it's normal for any product with a warranty. You can't open a device up, destroy it and then expect that the warranty will be honored.
The original poster was wrong to tie DRM with warranties - they've nothing to do with each other. The only reason for doing that would be to spread FUD.
While most Mac folks would think it anathema to do it, I've always had no probs with getting a Mac w/ only the CPU strength I want, then buffing out the hardware specs everywhere else once I got it home - saves tons of cash that way.
I've been a Mac user since 1991, and I always thought everyone did that! I've always assumed the Apple RAM and HDD prices are only there for people who like everything pre-done and don't want to crack their Mac open.
Jobs has been saying Apple doesn't want DRM since at least 2003.
e ve_jobs_the_rolling_stone_interview/
...
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5939600/st
"When we first went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago. It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."
"Of course. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.
At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again. The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner. They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you. And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason we did, I think, is because we made predictions."
http://www.macworld.com/news/2002/03/04/jobs/
"If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own," said Jobs."
I'd never heard of the DefectiveByDesign site before your post today (I thought it was a tag on Slashdot!) but these quotes stuck in my mind when I read them years ago. It looks like the music industry is catching up to Jobs' way of thinking.
You have to face facts - Jobs has a history and he's turning the music industry around. First he reclaimed the wasteland left behind by Napster, now he's pushing for unrestricted music and achieving some success. It's not a 'right place at the right time' thing, unless you completely discount the years of work to get Apple to the 'right place at the right time.'
... and both are Science, which is the point.
No, science does not require repeatability with controls.
Consider Astronomy. That's definitely a science, but it's fairly hard to repeat the Big Bang, star formation or even planetary formation with controls.
Theory and observation, that's what science is about.
You observe a phenomenon, then construct theories about it. If the theories hold true for another round of observartions, you're doing Science! If the theories don't hold, you either change them (still doing Science) or refute the observations (stepping away from Science here).
(As an aside - changing the observations to fit the theory, or selecting only observations that fit the theory is anti-Science in its purest form. This behaviour actually attempts to extend ignorance and distort facts. Any attempt to do this is highly suspicious.)
It's considered really nice in the Scientific world to be able to perform an experiment, to better control observations. In those cases you have to have repeatability with controls. Then other people can perform your observations and see for themselves. That's even nicer. I'd go so far as to use the phrase 'peachy keen' here.
Science is all about observation and theorising, in an endless loop. Experiments are merely a form of observation.
The Microsoft Mouse.app (should be in /Applications) has a buttons panel, with left, right, wheel, left side and right side. Clicking the wheel provides the middle button, and rolling it provides other actions.
The mouse is an "Intellimouse Optical 1.1A" according to the sticker on the red translucent plastic underneath it.
I've got the basic Microsoft Intellimouse which handles left-clicks, right-clicks, middle-clicks, left- and right-side clicks as well. And the scroll wheel. All are configurable in any application or generally unless overridden.
Sounds like your mouse isn't well supported by the company that made it. These things are trivially possible (the APIs allow for up to 2^16 buttons on any input device) and others do it.
That beachball still appears for me sometimes, although successive OS updates have improved it greatly. I'm putting it down to my iBook these days, which is over three years old now. My wife's MacBook Pro is under six months old and rarely shows the beachball.
That's a bit of a weak troll.
All Macs except portables come with a two button mouse. The portables have simple ways to 'right click' (two fingers on the trackpad makes a click a 'right click'). The single-button mouse isn't sold by Apple any longer. It hasn't been for a few years. You're out of date.
You say "apple will never open their system up to the tools that I need. Most of my engineering applications can't run in OSX..." So the solution would be for Apple to buy the company using the software you like and port it to OS X? Is that what you're saying? How else can Apple "open their system" to get get a third-party vendor to release a particular product for you? Do you understand business?
Buy a PC with the same power as a Mac for half the price? Sounds good! Where's the US$550 Core2 Duo laptop? What about the US$500 all-in-one unit (again Core2 Duo) with the small footprint or the US$1250 quad-core Xeon workstation? In fact, why not go to the next step and say that Macs cost a majillion times more than an equivalently spec'ed PC? You're about 5-10 years out of date.
"for the technology impaired apple is a great company." That quote stands apart. Is that like saying Microsoft is retarding Windows, or Linux is being dumbed down each major release? You confuse ease of use with simplicity. A lot of naive people do that. Every OS is moving towards better ease of use. If you think that's a bad thing, then you might want to detail why people should have to jump through hoops to get simple stuff done.
In the last year I've seen a number of blogs from former Microsofties, as well as the infamous Mini-Microsoft. Many of these talk about top-heavy management, unhappy staff, projects leading nowhere, ladder climbers and bleeding money through some product lines.
In isolation, individual blogs may be just some people blowing off a bit of steam, or may be representative of a few dissatisfied staffers.
Taken together, they paint a picture of a company that's in danger of losing its way.
It's hard to know just how representative the sum of these blogs is. They're all pretty self-selecting, after all. If they paint a relatively accurate picture, then Microsoft is missing some key things Apple's recently gotten right:
* Management who understand their products at every level and pitch them well. Anyone who's presented to a large crowd knows how hard this is, but Steve Jobs is a complete master at it.
* Getting the product's look and feel right first time. Pick up a new Apple product. Touch it. Look at the surfaces. They always look great. People react to this, equating professional finish with professional products.
* Focus on product lines, with no products bleeding more money with every unit sold. There's no Apple product I've heard of where each unit sold is a loss to the company. The units both R&D and then start to generate profit. Even iTunes with its razor thin profit pays for itself. This shows solid business planning, solid budgeting and is very well respected by the investors.
* Staff who keep pretty damn quiet about the internal stuff. Apple have a policy on communication, and very few staff feel they need to start some kind of Mini-Apple in response. Few companies allow staff to communicate, as it's just too easy for staff to send the wrong message. The company I work for is vast beyond the dreams of Apple or Microsoft, and we train all staff about external communications (in normal policy & procedure training). The impression Apple gives is that of a tightly run company.
Apple present as a company focused on a few core lines - home computing, professional media/art computing and entertainment. It's easy to see how just about everything they do fits those lines.
Microsoft are all over the place. Their core is clearly Windows and Office, but they've dipped metaphorical toes into media, gaming, tablet computing, robotics, handhelds, peripherals, mobile phones, web searching and more. Some non-core lines are very successful (XBox-360) but they all seem to be in the red, only able to be pursued due to the huge cash reserves brought in by the core lines. Few businesses would do this, even very rich businesses (such as GE) demand each product or division runs a profit and improves year on year. That's sustainable business practice, but Microsoft seems to believe deep pockets last forever.
Microsoft are looking tired, but they can pull things together. Cut some of the non-core lines loose - sell them off. Get out and understand how people want to use stuff before building a product (Zune wireless sharing is a notable failure here). Savage the management layers to shake out dead wood at *all* levels, review all current projects with a view to killing most of them and refocus the (smaller) company on the smaller range of product lines.
Microsoft can waste energy competing with Apple and Google, but they needn't bother. Neither is a threat and the market's easily big enough for everyone. The biggest enemy they seem to have is themselves and their existing products.
To recap a film metaphor - remember when Luke Skywalker went into that cave near Yoda's house on Dagobar? He met Darth Vader, then fought and killed him. The mask covering the head exploded, revealing Luke's own face. His greatest enemy at that point was his own nature.
It would be wrong, if it were the whole truth.
a ck/index.php?pf=1
Despite SecureWorks being quoted saying the Mac is threatened by the exploit demonstrated at Black Hat, they have provided no evidence that in fact it is," Apple Director of Mac PR, Lynn Fox, told Macworld. "To the contrary, the SecureWorks demonstration used a third party USB 802.11 device-not the 802.11 hardware in the Mac-a device which uses a different chip and different software drivers than those on the Mac. Further, SecureWorks has not shared or demonstrated any code in relation to the Black Hat-demonstrated exploit that is relevant to the hardware and software that we ship."
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/08/17/wirelessh
The bit about SecureWorks not providing evidence of the exploit is now borne out by their inability to provide any evidence since. Crashing a MacBook is not the same as taking control, and while it was recently claimed that it's a simple extension, the fact is that the exploit has not been proven.
Occam's Razor seems to be on Apple's side - they heard of an issue, couldn't get the details so they stared their own audit and patched the problems they found. Simple, straightforward, doesn't require invention of entities.
You need to get out more and read a bit of overseas news.
Your points may be good as far as they go, but they hardly capture the sum total of the Human Race. Still, if you feel this way and are certain that you're right, then go ahead - lead the charge into oblivion. You go on, and the rest of us will be along later.
Copywrite's got little to do with pricing levels. There's nothing to stop companies like Microsoft releasing their products at lower prices on the streets of Russia and China than they do on the streets of the US. This is the whole "what the market will bear" thing, after all. Capitalism was meant to be about that.
Given the above, how is copywrite law against the interests of the population and future economic power? Do you fundamentally disagree with the concept of copywrite, or do you disagree with the pricing models set up by US software companies?
Why compete when you can just buy your customers?
Google made it big by producing a new, clean, fast and thorough search engine.
Microsoft just wants to give people money to use theirs.
Do they even *remember* what competition is about?