PC hardware and software has always been cheap but the fact that it is less expensive has always been more of a motivator to switch away from Apple. There has been no recent significant change in that situation and, to my knowledege, there are no new reasons that I'm aware of to switch from Mac to PC.
The argument being made is that while there are are no new reasons to switch from Mac to PC there are several new reasons to switch from PC to Mac so that this recent spate of switching, if its really happening, is probably biased more toward the Mac. The factors behind the switching seem to be the serious erosion in PC security (counter spin not withstanding ), serious disfunctionality in the core product like service pack 2 that causes many PCs to stop working, an inability to deliver an update to Windows with the promised features in a timely fashion, and an increase in appreciation for hardware design and user interface design inspired by the iPod.
It should be emphasized that a 1% increase in the number of Macs is a 25-30% increase in business for Apple but only a 1% decrease in business for the PC industry so that there is no reason for PC users to be alarmed or to try to figure out in their minds how this really isn't happening. From a statistical perspective it isn't happening. PCs will continue to dominate the market place by a large factor no matter what Apple does and Windows will dominate the market for a long time to come not matter what Apple and Linux do.
As long as Apple stays in business it will be a good thing for PC users because it gives PC manufacturers and Microsoft something to shoot for when they are trying ot make something cheap but functional for the majority of users who could care less about the quality of their computer experience. Most users just want something inexpensive that gets the job done (kinda like toilet paper) so that cheap is OK. On the other hand I wouldn't call Windows software inexpensive or necessaily cheap(if you ignore quality of support and security).
I'm on pins and needles here. I'm wondering if gravitational waves will be complicated enough to require an application of the new theory of intelligent design.
There is no reason to buy Apple products if you don't mind waiting 3 to 12 months for Dell and IBM to implement a poorly integrated version of Apple's hardware innovations, if you don't mind waiting 1 to 10 years for MS to generate a useable kludge of Apple's software innovations, and if you don't mind loading MS service packs that completely shut down your computer. The analogy using Lexus and Toyota isn't appropriate because Lexus and Toyota both make high quality products. Microsoft recently reorganized its software development effort and it wasn't because they were proud of what they were generating.
Considering the quality of the products, the sizes of their respective companies, their marketing budgets, and the free advertising by the hordes of sychophants who cluelessly attribute innovation to Microsoft I say that the crown for marketing effectiveness legitimately belongs to Dell and Microsoft.
MS also has the right to take careful aim and blow thier own foot off. I really hope that it comes to that. Almost every nation on the face of the earth will take note and resolve that their future will not be bound to the whim of a US company run by a petulant child. It will take a while but you may mark my word, almost every nation on earth (except perhaps the US) will eventually get around to explaining things to Microsoft in a universal language exactly who it is that runs their country. It has already started to happen and everytime MS pulls this mobster style "protection" scam it accelarates the process.
Well said. Defending bloat and sloth in this case sounds almost as hypocritical as Microsoft arguing for open standards in every instance where the proprietary standard isn't theirs while arguing that their proprietary standards are in the best interest of the consumer.
Microsofts interests and the users interests never align even though they may appear to in the short term. This is yet another ploy to get users on their side so that they can get a standard that they can subvert and use to bilk more customers with more low quality products. It is probably a bad standard for the reasons that Whiner-Bill is saying. What he isn't saying is what we'll be faced with down the road if we go to a standard that he likes and can bend to Microsoft's systematic program of tying everything to Microsoft core products.
Whiner-Bill is pulling the same boolshite with online music by pushing the idea that Microsoft wants to be a good guy supporting open standards. Microsoft has a history of doing everything it can to destroy open standards when it sees the opportunity and online music and DVD storage standards will not be an exception to this in the long term. Take a wild guess whose music service will work best with Windows once everyone has been conned into going along with their good guy position. Does anyone honestly believe that the service they will get will come close to the value that iTunes gives once Microsoft has got everyone by their music yinyang. Dream on.
The sad day has come when whats bad for Microsoft is always good for everyone.
You don't have to kill people to be evil. Most professional thieves are not mass murderers. Taking billions of dollars from millions of people via an illegal monopoly certainly doesn't kill anyone, at least not outright. On the other hand, anything that takes billions of dollars out of the economy without putting something back of near equal value will probably skew mortality rate statistics in a slightly negative way. Billions of dollars is a lot of money. I suppose that it is possible to maintain a perspective from which Microsoft products are a good value. Even in the fantastical situation where they were a good value there would still be the problem that the purchase of these products have become an effective tax by a private company on the general public because they are necessary and there is no longer any viable competition.
But, most importantly, you are right, it is possibly idiotic ( though it need not be said in a such hostile way) to compare Hitler with Bill Gates. Bill Gates isn't remotely as bad as Hitler. He would never kill even one person outright just because of their race or ethnicity. But this isn't exactly a brilliant recommendation for Bill Gates and any halfwit will tell you that it does not prove that he is not an evil man. On the otherhand maybe we should worship the guy who figured out how to get 95% of the computer using public to feel like it was their fault that they had so much trouble using software that they paid for. He also figured out how to get all of these same people to be happy about the disappearing options in a supposedly free market competitive system that was effectively destroyed by his obsession with nothing less than controll of the information systems of planet earth. If he succeeds then we'd all better hope that somewhere in their is a saintly person that is yet to manifest itself.
The oil monopoly was finally broken by the government. This, ultimately more critical, information technology monopoly has already survived the governments efforts to tame it. So even though Bill Gates isn't as bad as Hitler and Stalin there isn't anything to cheer about because his interests and yours are at odds whether you want to believe it or not and he is in the drivers seat. A lot of extremely bad doodoo can happen long before things hit rock bottom. Its not like there's some sort of reason to celebrate the successes of this man and its not like there are any remaining checks and balances that will be effective against the kind of power represented by the Microsoft bank account. It brings to mind some quotation about the effect of ultimate power on otherwise decent people.
My recent experience with service pack 2 is a great example of the big deal. While I've occasionally had a bad experience with my Macs, on average, my Windows systems, far and away, generates the biggest nonproductive computer suck on my time. I'll take the occasional hit from the Macs but I just don't need a steady quarterly beating that Windows meets out to me, especially when I have a deadline or the security ( in the sense of protection from corruption as well as in the sense of protection from bad guys) of my data is involved. What is most disturbing about all of this is that I have no choice but to use Windows. Because of Microsofts subversion of industry standards there are websites that I must use that only work with versions of IE that only run on Windows. Our government is complicitous in this matter because some of these sites are US government sites.
There is nothing objective, even handed, or remotely noble in pretending that the quality of these operating systems is remotely comparable or in promoting the idea that Microsoft is just another company producing just another good quality product. I'm sick of hearing people who don't value thier time telling me that they have no problems using Windows. "no problems" is obviously a much more interesting phrase for them than it is for me.
Its hard for me to believe that these writers are so incompetent that they can't manage to use Windows. On the contrary its more likely that these professionals, who use computers to get their job done every day, are exceptionally discriminating in the selection of the tools that they use. Their careers depend on it. They can't afford to constantly stub their professional toe and skin their knuckels using cheap hobbyists tools that they picked up on special in the bin under the big red cardboard sign near the exit of a discount store.
Computer software that is a constant security risk and whose security can only be improved according to its manufacturer by installing a dysfunctional service pack needs no one to give it a bad name. Software that refuses to save a file for no apparent reason doesn't need a bad rap it creates its own truthfully bad rap. Pushing stupid spin statistics about how everything else out there is just as defective and insecure will fool some people but not people who truly value their time and just want to get their job done. For these people the boolshite detector has a hair trigger. They don't worry about a few hundred dollars price difference when a cheap piece of trash sucks down a half a day of their professional time because they didn't happen to know something that means nothing and relates to nothing but the fact that the people who manufactured the software fracked up. For the rest of the population it seems that a good cleverly spun explanation/argument using statistics about why a PC is dysfunctional (but lets not forget inexpensive and fast) is a 100% substitute for a computer that actually is functional. Its quite and interesting social phenomenon.
Maybe the problem is that Dvorak doesn't distinguish between trash knowledge and real knowledge. Trash knowledge is all the things that you have to know to use a PC without stubbing your toe and skinning your knuckles while trying to get your work done without the help of a professional IT staff whose main job is to limit the use of the machines to the narrow range of things that they can do well without trashing files and fracking up in general.
Its a sad fact that many noncomputer professionals are strutting proud of the fact that they can master a PC. They act as though there should be something to master in the first place. How did we get to a situation where its the user who feels inept when its the software manufacturer who should be subjected to class action law suits and prosecution for fraud.
I believe that, directly or indirectly, an unjustifide emphasis on execution speed is the one of the biggest causes of the failure of software projects. The problems usually begin with the choice of implementation languages. Programming languages should be chosen for the ease and cost effectiveness with which they can be used accurately and reliably generate a correct and maintainable application that satisfies the customer. In my experience selecting a language because it is "faster" than another language before it is even known what the speed issue is for an application is just a costly mistake.
For speed critical parts of an application an experienced C++ programmer might be a without-which. A tool like JWrapper can be used to connect a Java application to an optimized C++ library. Speed requirements should usually be dealt with towards the end of the development. Most of the execution time is usually spent in a small fraction of the code. Only that portion of the code should be optimized because optimizations can be costly to derive and implement, costly to maintain, and more difficult to verify.
In the interest of peacefull coexistence we might all agree that: 1. Java is sometimes too slow 2. C and C++ programs sometimes have memory leaks. 3. Writing efficient, reuseable, object oriented programs in C++ can be an extremely subtle business and, as a result, good and efficient C++ programmers are harder to find.
Sorry I'm right.
You can't write software if you have no idea what its supposed to do.
If you don't want to talk about it that way then that's fine.
See you after your heart pump surgery.
I wonder how many brilliant Microsoft engineers it took to come up with this brilliant "innovation". This wouldn't be one tenth as funny if it weren't true.
Sony's idiotic and twisted logic seems to go somethingl like this :
Since Apple won't do what Sony wants them to do then Sony will make all of Sony's customers suffer
and, therefor, this suffering is Apple's fault.
If Sony cared about their own customers they would write a few lines of code
so that their customers could work from a copy in memory. Forcing customers to make
an unprotected CD is deliberately punishing the customer and deliberately
violating their DRM all in an effort to extort something from Apple.
Sony can't take their own medicine and they definitely can't have
any more of my money.
These remarks by Linus are being taken out of context. For most programming jobs you have a customer who specifies what they want. So a specification is part of the deal. To the extent that the specification doesn't exist somewhere, even if its just in the head of you and the customer, you are guaranteed to have serious problems getting paid and ending up with a satisfied repeat customer.
I think that a lot of impressionable beginning programmers are going to take these remarks out of context and are going to have problems on their next few interviews.
According to Red Hat Australia the guy refused to run a diagnostic :
"We asked the customer to do a diagnostic test and the customer never responded, so it was impossible for us to address the issue," Mr McLaren says.
This was written by passive agressive person making all the right noises about objectiviity while doing everything possible to insure failure. His ultimate agenda was to do as much damage to Linux from his little podium and he seems to have succeeded. When his hardware problem comes back I'm sure that he won't be writing another article about how he had to actually reformat the harddrive and reinstall just to get Windows to boot.
Currently mechanisms for generating fusion consume more energy than they generate through fusion. If someone finds a mechanism for generating fusion that allows for the recovery of enough of the input energy then breakeven could happen sooner rather than later.
Sounds like you've got the "right formula" sorted out. Now that this idea has been unveiled it'll all be over soon. A hoard of high quality open source programmers will now descend on the problem with vast donations of free time. The rest will be history shortly.
I can't wait, we're gonna have better cheaper music players and better cheaper access to more music. Apple will be stardust and Microsoft will be so completely blown away that they'll have no idea what hit them. Why didn't I think of this one.
I see what your saying now but now that my eyes have been opened its also clear to me that they plan to come for you before engaging the mass market engine.
"Also, keep in mind that iTunes makes Apple a huge amount of money. In other words, Apple is clearing a very large margin, so they are not really in a position to act like the friend of the consumer."
The responses to your post seem to suggest that you are ill infomred or that you are deliberately distributing misinformation.
Slashdot Mirror
PC hardware and software has always been cheap but the fact that
it is less expensive has always been more of a motivator to switch away
from Apple. There has been no recent significant change in that
situation and, to my knowledege, there are no new reasons that
I'm aware of to switch from Mac to PC.
The argument being made is that while there are are no new reasons
to switch from Mac to PC there are several new reasons to switch
from PC to Mac so that this recent spate of switching, if its
really happening, is probably biased more toward the Mac.
The factors behind the switching seem to be the serious erosion in PC
security (counter spin not withstanding ), serious disfunctionality in the
core product like service pack 2 that causes many PCs to stop working,
an inability to deliver an update to Windows with the promised
features in a timely fashion, and an increase in appreciation for
hardware design and user interface design inspired by the iPod.
It should be emphasized that a 1% increase in the number of
Macs is a 25-30% increase in business for Apple but only a
1% decrease in business for the PC industry so that there is
no reason for PC users to be alarmed or to try to figure
out in their minds how this really isn't happening. From a
statistical perspective it isn't happening. PCs will continue
to dominate the market place by a large factor no matter
what Apple does and Windows will dominate the market
for a long time to come not matter what Apple and Linux
do.
As long as Apple stays in business it will be a good thing for PC users because it gives
PC manufacturers and Microsoft something to shoot for when they are
trying ot make something cheap but functional for the
majority of users who could care less about the quality
of their computer experience. Most users just want something inexpensive
that gets the job done (kinda like toilet paper) so that cheap is OK.
On the other hand I wouldn't call Windows software inexpensive
or necessaily cheap(if you ignore quality of support and security).
I'm on pins and needles here. I'm wondering if gravitational waves will be complicated enough to require
an application of the new theory of intelligent design.
There is no reason to buy Apple products if you don't mind waiting 3
to 12 months for Dell and IBM to implement a poorly integrated
version of Apple's hardware innovations,
if you don't mind waiting 1 to 10 years for MS to generate a useable kludge of
Apple's software innovations, and if you don't mind loading MS service packs
that completely shut down your computer. The analogy using Lexus and Toyota
isn't appropriate because Lexus and Toyota both make high quality products.
Microsoft recently reorganized its software development effort
and it wasn't because they were proud of what they were generating.
Considering the quality of the products, the sizes of their
respective companies, their marketing budgets, and the free advertising by
the hordes of sychophants who cluelessly attribute innovation to Microsoft
I say that the crown for marketing effectiveness legitimately
belongs to Dell and Microsoft.
MS also has the right to take careful aim and blow thier own foot off.
I really hope that it comes to that. Almost every nation on the face of the earth
will take note and resolve that their future will not be bound to the whim
of a US company run by a petulant child. It will take a while
but you may mark my word, almost every nation on earth (except perhaps the US)
will eventually get around to explaining things to Microsoft in a universal
language exactly who it is that runs their country.
It has already started to happen and everytime MS
pulls this mobster style "protection" scam it accelarates the process.
Well said. Defending bloat and sloth in this case sounds almost as hypocritical as Microsoft arguing for open standards in every instance where the proprietary standard isn't theirs while arguing that their proprietary standards are in the best interest of the consumer.
Microsofts interests and the users interests never align even though
they may appear to in the short term. This is yet another ploy to get users
on their side so that they can get a standard that they can subvert and use to bilk
more customers with more low quality products. It is probably a bad standard
for the reasons that Whiner-Bill is saying. What he isn't saying is what we'll be faced
with down the road if we go to a standard that he likes and can bend to Microsoft's
systematic program of tying everything to Microsoft core products.
Whiner-Bill is pulling the same boolshite with online music by pushing the idea that
Microsoft wants to be a good guy supporting open standards. Microsoft
has a history of doing everything it can to destroy open standards when it sees
the opportunity and online music and DVD storage standards will not be an exception to
this in the long term. Take a wild guess whose music service will work best with Windows
once everyone has been conned into going along with their good guy position. Does anyone
honestly believe that the service they will get will come close to the value that iTunes gives
once Microsoft has got everyone by their music yinyang. Dream on.
The sad day has come when whats bad for Microsoft is always good for everyone.
You don't have to kill people to be evil. Most professional thieves are not mass murderers. Taking billions of dollars from millions of people via an illegal monopoly certainly doesn't kill anyone, at least not outright. On the other hand, anything that takes billions of dollars out of the economy without putting something back of near equal value will probably skew mortality rate statistics in a slightly negative way. Billions of dollars is a lot of money. I suppose that it is possible to maintain a perspective from which Microsoft products are a good value. Even in the fantastical situation where they were a good value there would still be the problem that the purchase of these products have become an effective tax by a private company on the general public because they are necessary and there is no longer any viable competition.
But, most importantly, you are right, it is possibly idiotic ( though it need not be said in a such hostile way) to compare Hitler with Bill Gates. Bill Gates isn't remotely as bad as Hitler. He would never kill even one person outright just because of their race or ethnicity. But this isn't exactly a brilliant recommendation for Bill Gates and any halfwit will tell you that it does not prove that he is not an evil man. On the otherhand maybe we should worship the guy who figured out how to get 95% of the computer using public to feel like it was their fault that they had so much trouble using software that they paid for. He also figured out how to get all of these same people to be happy about the disappearing options in a supposedly free market competitive system that was effectively destroyed by his obsession with nothing less than controll of the information systems of planet earth. If he succeeds then we'd all better hope that somewhere in their is a saintly person that is yet to manifest itself.
The oil monopoly was finally broken by the government. This, ultimately more critical, information technology monopoly has already survived the governments efforts to tame it. So even though Bill Gates isn't as bad as Hitler and Stalin there isn't anything to cheer about because his interests and yours are at odds whether you want to believe it or not and he is in the drivers seat. A lot of extremely bad doodoo can happen long before things hit rock bottom. Its not like there's some sort of reason to celebrate the successes of this man and its not like there are any remaining checks and balances that will be effective against the kind of power represented by the Microsoft bank account. It brings to mind some quotation about the effect of ultimate power on otherwise decent people.
My recent experience with service pack 2 is a great example
of the big deal. While I've occasionally had a bad experience with my Macs,
on average, my Windows systems, far and away, generates the biggest nonproductive computer suck on my time.
I'll take the occasional hit from the Macs but I just don't need a steady quarterly beating that
Windows meets out to me, especially when I have a deadline or the security ( in the sense of
protection from corruption as well as in the sense of protection from bad guys) of my data
is involved. What is most disturbing about all of this is that I have no choice but to use Windows.
Because of Microsofts subversion of industry standards there are websites that I must use
that only work with versions of IE that only run on Windows. Our government is complicitous
in this matter because some of these sites are US government sites.
There is nothing objective, even handed, or remotely noble in pretending that the quality of these
operating systems is remotely comparable or in promoting the idea that Microsoft is just another company
producing just another good quality product. I'm sick of hearing people who don't value thier time
telling me that they have no problems using Windows. "no problems" is obviously a much more interesting
phrase for them than it is for me.
Its hard for me to believe that these writers are so incompetent
that they can't manage to use Windows.
On the contrary its more likely that these professionals, who use
computers to get their job done every day, are exceptionally
discriminating in the selection of the tools that they use.
Their careers depend on it. They can't afford to
constantly stub their professional toe and skin their knuckels using
cheap hobbyists tools that they picked up on special in the bin under the
big red cardboard sign near the exit of a discount store.
Computer software that is a constant security risk and whose security can
only be improved according to its manufacturer by installing
a dysfunctional service pack needs no one to give it a bad name.
Software that refuses to save a file for no apparent reason doesn't need
a bad rap it creates its own truthfully bad rap.
Pushing stupid spin statistics about how everything else out there
is just as defective and insecure will fool some people but not people
who truly value their time and just want to get their job done. For these
people the boolshite detector has a hair trigger. They don't worry about a few
hundred dollars price difference when a cheap piece of trash sucks down a half
a day of their professional time because they didn't happen to know something that
means nothing and relates to nothing but the fact that the people who manufactured
the software fracked up. For the rest of the population it seems
that a good cleverly spun explanation/argument using statistics about
why a PC is dysfunctional (but lets not forget inexpensive and fast)
is a 100% substitute for a computer that actually is functional.
Its quite and interesting social phenomenon.
Maybe the problem is that Dvorak doesn't distinguish between trash knowledge
and real knowledge. Trash knowledge is all the things that you have to know
to use a PC without stubbing your toe and skinning your knuckles while trying to get
your work done without the help of a professional IT staff whose main job
is to limit the use of the machines to the narrow range of things
that they can do well without trashing files and fracking up in general.
Its a sad fact that many noncomputer professionals are strutting proud of the
fact that they can master a PC. They act as though there should be something to
master in the first place. How did we get to a situation where its the user
who feels inept when its the software manufacturer who should be
subjected to class action law suits and prosecution for fraud.
"I can only wish the OS market looked like this."
Why ?
Isn't 95% standardization good enough ?
It seems that the OS market "looked like this" for more
than the last decade.
a disturbance in the Farce.
I believe that, directly or indirectly, an unjustifide emphasis on execution speed is the one of the biggest causes
of the failure of software projects. The problems usually begin with the choice of
implementation languages. Programming languages should
be chosen for the ease and cost effectiveness with which they can be used accurately and reliably generate
a correct and maintainable application that satisfies the customer.
In my experience selecting a language because it is "faster" than another language
before it is even known what the speed issue is for an application is just a costly mistake.
For speed critical parts of an application an experienced C++ programmer might be a without-which.
A tool like JWrapper can be used to connect a Java application to an optimized C++ library.
Speed requirements should usually be dealt with towards
the end of the development. Most of the execution time is usually spent in a small fraction of the code.
Only that portion of the code should be optimized because optimizations can be costly to derive and implement,
costly to maintain, and more difficult to verify.
In the interest of peacefull coexistence we might all agree that:
1. Java is sometimes too slow
2. C and C++ programs sometimes have memory leaks.
3. Writing efficient, reuseable, object oriented programs in C++ can be an extremely subtle business and,
as a result, good and efficient C++ programmers are harder to find.
"there are other ways of communicating than documents"
This sounds way deep.
Sorry I'm right. You can't write software if you have no idea what its supposed to do. If you don't want to talk about it that way then that's fine. See you after your heart pump surgery.
Extreme programming does not forgo specifications.
www.extremeprogramming.org
Yet more evidence that Microsoft is run by clueless dweebs with a god complex.
I wonder how many brilliant Microsoft engineers it took to come up with this
brilliant "innovation".
This wouldn't be one tenth as funny if it weren't true.
Sony's idiotic and twisted logic seems to go somethingl like this : Since Apple won't do what Sony wants them to do then Sony will make all of Sony's customers suffer and, therefor, this suffering is Apple's fault. If Sony cared about their own customers they would write a few lines of code so that their customers could work from a copy in memory. Forcing customers to make an unprotected CD is deliberately punishing the customer and deliberately violating their DRM all in an effort to extort something from Apple. Sony can't take their own medicine and they definitely can't have any more of my money.
So if your heart fails and you need a heart pump its OK with you if they just use some shoot-from-the-hip programmer's software to run it ?
These remarks by Linus are being taken out of context. For most programming
jobs you have a customer who specifies what they want. So a specification is part
of the deal. To the extent that the specification doesn't exist somewhere,
even if its just in the head of you and the customer, you are guaranteed to have
serious problems getting paid and ending up with a satisfied repeat customer.
I think that a lot of impressionable beginning programmers are going to take these remarks out
of context and are going to have problems on their next few interviews.
According to Red Hat Australia the guy refused to run a diagnostic :
"We asked the customer to do a diagnostic test and the customer never responded, so it was impossible for us to address the issue," Mr McLaren says.
This was written by passive agressive person making all the right noises about objectiviity while doing everything possible to insure failure. His ultimate agenda was to do as much damage to Linux from his little podium and he seems to have succeeded. When his hardware problem comes back I'm sure that he won't be writing another article about how he had to actually reformat the harddrive and reinstall just to get Windows to boot.
Currently mechanisms for generating fusion consume more energy than they generate through fusion. If someone finds a mechanism for generating fusion that allows for the recovery of enough of the input energy then breakeven could happen sooner rather than later.
Sounds like you've got the "right formula" sorted out. Now that this idea has been unveiled it'll all be over soon. A hoard of high quality open source programmers will now descend on the problem with vast donations of free time. The rest will be history shortly.
I can't wait, we're gonna have better cheaper music players and better cheaper access to more music. Apple will be stardust and Microsoft will be so completely blown away that they'll have no idea what hit them. Why didn't I think of this one.
I see what your saying now but now that my eyes have been opened its also clear to me that they plan to come for you before engaging the mass market engine.
"Also, keep in mind that iTunes makes Apple a huge amount of money. In other words, Apple is clearing a very large margin, so they are not really in a position to act like the friend of the consumer."
The responses to your post seem to suggest that you are ill infomred or that you are deliberately distributing misinformation.