Look at step 1. There are two points there with the word "purchase" in them.
You can get a free demo for a while, but Microsoft ask you to pay if you want to go beyond 90 days. The professional version costs AUD $4300 for a one-year licence.
That's the top-end though, and you can probably get by with a cheaper version. Their website is glacially slow for me, so I didn't look any further.
Apple's a hardware company. Remember that. Everything they do is to sell their hardware. Any developer worth their salt can either work around this (OS X on their PC) or suck it up and buy a Mac.
Ballmer is doing his best to damage the platform's standing through silly arguments that his own business practices contradict (or is there some WinMo devkit for OS X and Linux? Hell, where's my Windows devkit for OS X?). The sad thing is that many people are willing to let his argument stand.
Apple have been giving away XCode for free with the OS since the public beta. The reason they do this is to remove a barrier for entry to develop for OS X.
I don't see that this was a move to compete against Microsoft. After all, when Apple started doing this, the platform was PPC and five years from going x86.
In short, you use statistical methods to improve quality to a target goal of no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. There's a process you go through - define, measure, analyse, improve, control (DMAIC), and the analysis part is kind of fun for the mathematically-inclined.
You can go as high as twelve sigma, which is some ridiculously small defect rate used in aircraft engineering (for example).
I'm a Six Sigma Green Belt, although it's been a couple of years since I've used it.
After about ten years with Microsoft pushing CE/WM and using whatever resources it could to gain adoption and marketshare, if it's not very common by now there's no chance it ever will be. I could be wrong, but I don't think so in this case - there's no sign of anything amazing in the pipeline from Microsoft, and the upcoming cuts to their staffing are all but killing development in many areas.
If Microsoft couldn't do it by now, what makes you think they'll ever do it?
It wasn't that the game was bad - I liked it and kept my subscription up since release even though I only played it a few times.
It was that rebooting my MacBook Pro from OS X into Vista became too high a bar for entry. It was just easier to load up WoW than to reboot and play WAR. When you use OS X for everything, and you have to quit all the apps and reboot for a game...
I wanted to love it. I bought a copy for myself (collector's edition) and a copy for my wife. We played for a few hours in total (I hit level 10!), but in the end, the game did not fit our need for casual gaming.
We didn't want an easy game or everything handed to us. We just wanted a game that was accessible. Booting to another OS sounds simple (and is) but after a while it becomes too much.
I'm ready to re-subscribe one day... I did like the game.
When Vista was released, the hardware requirements to run it well with all effects were pretty high, but not "outlandish" even then. A reasonable PC or Mac could run it and get the full Vista experience.
Here we are, a few years later and the requirements for Vista haven't changed but the average PC has moved on apace.
If Win7 has the same requirements as Vista, or even a little higher, most users will be fine.
Yes, and Apple try so hard to hide that the basic OS looks and feels substantially the same even after major upgrades.
Who could guess that there's a single OS 'theme' from their carefully crafted obfuscatory naming scheme?
"OS X 10.0" "OS X 10.1" "OS X 10.2" "OS X 10.3" "OS X 10.4" "OS X 10.5"
The basics are the same, although I'd be surprised if much of the OS code from 10.0 still existed in 10.5. Many, many features have been added though, both for users and developers.
Win 7 is Vista+1, which is what it needs to be. That's a good thing.
Sadly, the WoW forums are full of this sort of thing. Gloating, demonising new players, insulting anyone with the temerity to ask a question and the whole "your tears are like candy" thing, which would net a punch in the face in real life.
Lots of clones (ie total ripoffs from original ideas), some commercial games open-sourced by their owners and about three original games in there.
Yay for F/OSS.
Any truly original games released recently? On the commercial side we've seen some real innovation lately, but that list (which I hope is woefully out of date) shows OSS is less of a gaming platform than OS X.
As someone else said - why should we care that yet another FPS has arrived? What does it bring that's new, unique and interesting?
It's slang for "I'm far better than you" and tends to put people off. I know I stopped reading right there, which was a shame because the post was good up to that point.
You discount research, prototyping, testing and the entire design process by calling Apple an "ideas company." I could throw in the retail aspect of Apple (physical stores, online stores) as well.
I can have ideas, but that's a long way from having a shipment of products go to retail.
Apple are hard to pin down into a single purpose, but they're certainly more than an "ideas company."
Have you considered that it may not have been a lie, but giving what they thought was the right information at the time? Later on, it turned out to be false as new information came to light (ie a better diagnosis as Jobs moved from his alternative medicine plan to real doctors).
Also, consider that Jobs has little to gain personally from this. He's already wealthy enough that changes in share price won't matter too much.
You're falling afoul of Occam's Razor by adding in the conspiracy theory. The simpler explanation above is more likely.
You're spot on about the Dock being an application switcher and not a task (window) switcher, but really, when you've got 30+ windows open all you ever see in the Taskbar is a few letters for each. That might be enough, but my experience isn't so good with many windows in the Taskbar.
Once the song is recorded, there are NO COSTS WHATEVER to delivering a digital download.
Yes, network bandwidth is free, as are servers powerful enough to deliver millions of songs per day. I hear credit card companies offer micropayment systems for free as well.
You can dispute the price all you like, but you must accept that the delivery is absolutely not free, even in a digital world.
Yes, TechCrunch were making their own tablet. What happened to that, I wonder.
I love these sort of stories. Unsubstantiated rumours, speculation, hype and hope all mixed up into a story that is only a shade more believable than your average fairy tale.
The success of pundits with long-range Apple forecasts is not so much bad as utterly atrocious. I'll file this story in the "believe it only after it's announced by Apple" pile (aka garbage bin).
Slashdot Mirror
Have a read of this page from Microsoft:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/windowsmobile/bb264337.aspx
Look at step 1. There are two points there with the word "purchase" in them.
You can get a free demo for a while, but Microsoft ask you to pay if you want to go beyond 90 days. The professional version costs AUD $4300 for a one-year licence.
That's the top-end though, and you can probably get by with a cheaper version. Their website is glacially slow for me, so I didn't look any further.
Apple's a hardware company. Remember that. Everything they do is to sell their hardware. Any developer worth their salt can either work around this (OS X on their PC) or suck it up and buy a Mac.
Ballmer is doing his best to damage the platform's standing through silly arguments that his own business practices contradict (or is there some WinMo devkit for OS X and Linux? Hell, where's my Windows devkit for OS X?). The sad thing is that many people are willing to let his argument stand.
Apple have been giving away XCode for free with the OS since the public beta. The reason they do this is to remove a barrier for entry to develop for OS X.
I don't see that this was a move to compete against Microsoft. After all, when Apple started doing this, the platform was PPC and five years from going x86.
Six Sigma is a quality methodology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_sigma
In short, you use statistical methods to improve quality to a target goal of no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. There's a process you go through - define, measure, analyse, improve, control (DMAIC), and the analysis part is kind of fun for the mathematically-inclined.
You can go as high as twelve sigma, which is some ridiculously small defect rate used in aircraft engineering (for example).
I'm a Six Sigma Green Belt, although it's been a couple of years since I've used it.
I'm glad to see a true scientician posting some factoids.
Once WM is very common...
After about ten years with Microsoft pushing CE/WM and using whatever resources it could to gain adoption and marketshare, if it's not very common by now there's no chance it ever will be. I could be wrong, but I don't think so in this case - there's no sign of anything amazing in the pipeline from Microsoft, and the upcoming cuts to their staffing are all but killing development in many areas.
If Microsoft couldn't do it by now, what makes you think they'll ever do it?
They're bricking the language!
Rotten hackers.
I somehow doubt that the downfall of the game was due to the fact that it didn't cater to a niche of Apple fans.
I only gave my experience as another data point. I didn't claim to speak for everyone.
... but I cancelled a few days ago.
It wasn't that the game was bad - I liked it and kept my subscription up since release even though I only played it a few times.
It was that rebooting my MacBook Pro from OS X into Vista became too high a bar for entry. It was just easier to load up WoW than to reboot and play WAR. When you use OS X for everything, and you have to quit all the apps and reboot for a game...
I wanted to love it. I bought a copy for myself (collector's edition) and a copy for my wife. We played for a few hours in total (I hit level 10!), but in the end, the game did not fit our need for casual gaming.
We didn't want an easy game or everything handed to us. We just wanted a game that was accessible. Booting to another OS sounds simple (and is) but after a while it becomes too much.
I'm ready to re-subscribe one day... I did like the game.
When Vista was released, the hardware requirements to run it well with all effects were pretty high, but not "outlandish" even then. A reasonable PC or Mac could run it and get the full Vista experience.
Here we are, a few years later and the requirements for Vista haven't changed but the average PC has moved on apace.
If Win7 has the same requirements as Vista, or even a little higher, most users will be fine.
Yes, and Apple try so hard to hide that the basic OS looks and feels substantially the same even after major upgrades.
Who could guess that there's a single OS 'theme' from their carefully crafted obfuscatory naming scheme?
"OS X 10.0"
"OS X 10.1"
"OS X 10.2"
"OS X 10.3"
"OS X 10.4"
"OS X 10.5"
The basics are the same, although I'd be surprised if much of the OS code from 10.0 still existed in 10.5. Many, many features have been added though, both for users and developers.
Win 7 is Vista+1, which is what it needs to be. That's a good thing.
Sadly, the WoW forums are full of this sort of thing. Gloating, demonising new players, insulting anyone with the temerity to ask a question and the whole "your tears are like candy" thing, which would net a punch in the face in real life.
Lots of clones (ie total ripoffs from original ideas), some commercial games open-sourced by their owners and about three original games in there.
Yay for F/OSS.
Any truly original games released recently? On the commercial side we've seen some real innovation lately, but that list (which I hope is woefully out of date) shows OSS is less of a gaming platform than OS X.
As someone else said - why should we care that yet another FPS has arrived? What does it bring that's new, unique and interesting?
Isn't this the one where Microsoft's revolutionary Songsmith technology was used for the backing tracks?
Here's a sample: enjoy!
On top of that, a good OS will page out the unused application after a while, so it's taking up neither RAM nor CPU cycles.
It doesn't matter if the app is left open, it doesn't have any noticeable impact on the system for users.
It's probably the use of the word "sheeple."
It's slang for "I'm far better than you" and tends to put people off. I know I stopped reading right there, which was a shame because the post was good up to that point.
*they* may have fewer ulcers, but the people paying for the work get more.
The rebuttal matched the quality of the point, sadly.
You discount research, prototyping, testing and the entire design process by calling Apple an "ideas company." I could throw in the retail aspect of Apple (physical stores, online stores) as well.
I can have ideas, but that's a long way from having a shipment of products go to retail.
Apple are hard to pin down into a single purpose, but they're certainly more than an "ideas company."
Have you considered that it may not have been a lie, but giving what they thought was the right information at the time? Later on, it turned out to be false as new information came to light (ie a better diagnosis as Jobs moved from his alternative medicine plan to real doctors).
Also, consider that Jobs has little to gain personally from this. He's already wealthy enough that changes in share price won't matter too much.
You're falling afoul of Occam's Razor by adding in the conspiracy theory. The simpler explanation above is more likely.
I think that was sort of the point.
Just like messages such as "Keyboard not detected. Press any key to continue" (going from memory there)
You're spot on about the Dock being an application switcher and not a task (window) switcher, but really, when you've got 30+ windows open all you ever see in the Taskbar is a few letters for each. That might be enough, but my experience isn't so good with many windows in the Taskbar.
Once the song is recorded, there are NO COSTS WHATEVER to delivering a digital download.
Yes, network bandwidth is free, as are servers powerful enough to deliver millions of songs per day. I hear credit card companies offer micropayment systems for free as well.
You can dispute the price all you like, but you must accept that the delivery is absolutely not free, even in a digital world.
"Apple" "has" "more"
So, you're a fanboy, eh? Blind zealot, go back to your Mac.
Yes, intentionally quoting out of context is fun!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/
Yes, TechCrunch were making their own tablet. What happened to that, I wonder.
I love these sort of stories. Unsubstantiated rumours, speculation, hype and hope all mixed up into a story that is only a shade more believable than your average fairy tale.
The success of pundits with long-range Apple forecasts is not so much bad as utterly atrocious. I'll file this story in the "believe it only after it's announced by Apple" pile (aka garbage bin).