Could you all maybe explain again why it is so important to keep OSX off white box or non-Apple hardware in the West, and ALSO so important to have it running on generic non-Apple hardware in the third world?
Its not copyright, as I am sure was pointed out the last time this story was posted. Copyright protects in a rather restricted way against unauthorised copying and dissemination. Copyright could not protect against assessing or even decompiling software.
This is about Eulas. Now, the question of whether the Eula is valid and binding depends on two issues. First, can Eulas be binding? The answer is yes, depending on what the conditions are. The second is, will this particualr Eula be binding? I suspect no, since it will probably fall foul of consumer protection legislation and competition law. It is not cut and dried, and a case would be interesting, but probably most of the kind of testing that is being forbidden falls under the category of fair use.
Consider for instance a Eula that forbad you to test parts to destruction to determine whether they were actually meeting your quality standards. It would not hold up. Isn't this fairly similar?
Yes, but the question is, what is 'their' hardware? When the switch to Intel happens, Apple hardware will have the same relationship to other people's hardware that Johnny Walker Red Label (duty paid) has to Johnny Walker Red Lable (not duty paid). The hardware, except maybe for the case, will be identical. The difference will just be the brand and whether you have bought it from Apple or the OEM direct. Unbundling, which this is a hint of, is just finally recognising that in this environment, premium pricing and restriction to own brand stuff, whether or not it is technically feasible, is commercially untenable.
Its only a viable strategy when the customer cannot make direct comparisons. You can do it with, say, amplifiers. But you cannot do it when all the small number of components are visible brands in their own right.
Here is a prediction. In under one year OSX will be sold for use on generic hardware. At that point,/. will be filled with a chorus of Apple enthusiasts explaining to the rest of us idiots why (a) this is wonderful (b) they had advocated it all along.
PPC? Say again? But that was so nineties. Everyone always knew Intel had the better processors...
OK as far as it goes, but you forgot the time value of money. Need to put the cash in and cash out for each year into a spreadsheet and run npv, assuming some reasonable interest rate. Important - If you use money of the day, ie adjusted for inflation, use nominal interest rates. If you use today's money, not allowing for inflation, use real interest rates, ie with inflation taken out.
Mass hysteria and its origins is one of the most interesting and disturbing questions about human nature. I don't know if we have a bird flu hysteria, since it seems to be fairly factually based, and based in experience - there is bird flu, it is lethal, we have had flu epidemics in the past from the same source, and when the varieties were highly lethal and readily transmissible, the consequences were dire. Its hard to call worry about it hysteria.
But if you look back over history in 'modern' times, we have had waves of real hysteria, mostly ending in blood letting or financial bubbles and panics, perhaps starting with the French Revolution's Terror. Ironically, just after the Enlightenment. If you think about the 20th century, the great turn of the century masturbation hysteria, the mass butchery of the Western Front 1914-18, the Russian Revolution and massacres of the thirties, the '29 bubble, Nazism and the holocaust, the US anti communist witch hunts, the global cooling hysteria, Pol Pot in Cambodia, The Great Leap Forward and consequent famines in China, the dot com frenzy... And that is just a selection!
The essential characteristic is that the action enthusiastically undertaken by masses of people is out of all proportion to the dangers/opportunities which are the alleged justification, and usually brings about something far worse, though different, than what was feared. Makes one despair of human rationality.
Americans, by the way, are no worse than anyone else.
Its a good article. The question one would like an answer to is about lethality. When the virus mutates to be transmissible between people, how likely is it to retain its present killing rate? And how likely is it to be highly transmissible as well as highly lethal? There have been a couple of waves of flu in the last 30 years which were quite transmissible, but they were not particularly lethal. Presumably the combination of both to an extreme is far less likely than one alone at an extreme?
I don't know who 'people like me' are. I don't personally have a problem with action to reduce emissions. It would probably make the world a much nicer place to live in. And it is probably going to happen anyway, just because of rising oil prices and shrinking supply, without any political action. A world with fewer cars, less air pollution and less strip developements would be fine.
This is not the problem. The problem is an intellectual and scientific one, whether human activity really has caused the rise, what is the nature of the rise, whether we can actually reverse it, how much effort we should put into it. This is why the Medieval Warm period is important. If the record is that there was a high then, which exceeds the high of the present, then you have to explain it. If it happened, it shows that human activity is not, cannot be, the only explanation. One of the other posts in the thread suggests that lots of other studies support Mann's curves. Have to look hard at that. However, I think (is this wrong?) that Mann has not published his original algorithms and data to enable verification of the very first hockey stick study, and that is a reason to be sceptical about the enterprise.
So, when I personally would like to see action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? When persuaded that it the proposed action will be both effective and necessary. Kyoto was idiotic because it was completely ineffective, whether or not action was necessary. The historical record is imporant since it has the potential to establish whether it is necessary. I thought, maybe I'm wrong? that Moberg's latest pieces had cast a lot of doubt on the hockey stick.
Say someone claims an asteroid is about to hit the earth, and we should all get together and establish world government to deal with it. Well, you might feel that world government and getting together would be fine, but still look askance at the trajectory calculations. That's where I am coming from.
"Global warming *is* happening, but factually only in the sense that our planet has been getting warmer"
I wouldn't dispute that, since about 1800 it has. But there is a problem, which I've never seen adequately addressed, with the IPCC Hockey Stick curves. This the controversy with Mann et al. We do know from historical evidence that there actually was a Medieval Warm period, and the evidence is that it was hotter than now. There was also a cool period in around 1700. Both of these vanish from the record with the IPCC hockey stick curves. Then, if you get into how these curves were derived, lets say just that the derivation is very remote from any observational evidence.
So two things trouble one. First, the rewriting of history without apparent reason. Second, the lack of any explanation of what caused the Medieval Warm period. Not human activity, that's for sure - or at least, not the industrial revolution. And what caused the decline after it?
Hello again! Yes, your point really is that the OS IS the brand, and so you have to control what is branded, and the argument is, this excludes selling it to run on less compatible hardware. (I'm a Mac user from way back, so I don't quite buy all this stuff about the hardware being superior!).
Its a serious objection, one of the few, to people like me who want to see licensing. I agree that if they do it, they have to find some way to safeguard the brand. Your point about car branding is valid too - you can have other people make BMWs, but only if the quality is there.
"That would mean the end of the line for Apple's well designed and award winning hardware."
We keep hearing this utterly bizarre argument. Its all wonderful, integrated, quality, great value for money, but if people are allowed to buy anything else, they will never buy the real thing they are now buying, they will immediately run to what other posters describe as
"Dell's shitty boxes that might be returned 5 times before a useable one ships.....[or]....someone's homebuilt fuckjob with a crappy ECS mobo and cheap ass video card...".
They are going to forsake
"the comforting rumble of a BMW motor, the perfection with which the seats and mirrors can be adjusted or the way the breaks [sic] feel as compared to Nissan or a Saturn",
and so they must be stopped.
We are talking, by the way, according to the hypothesis, about Apple customers who will be so stupid as to do this. What on earth are you guys arguing? Are you really arguing that the very people who are now so much appreciating "the whole experience as a product, not just hardware or software" are all going to suddenly forsake it just to save a few bucks? Why would they do that?
Or is it that maybe the experience is not so great, and the price a bit too high? Could that be it?
Yes, this is spot on, and you're right, the bit about the margins is the key.
Putting standard components into a pretty case at a 50% markup is making yourself into the Louis Vuitton of computing. No future in it. They do not have higher margins because of lower costs. OSNews has a thread on the same subject, the conclusion is the same. There is a huge premium, and it is unsustainable. The quicker they recognise it and license the OS, change the business model, the better chance they have, because that's where it is headed.
First, I'm describing a mentality and approach, not endorsing it.
Second, you're right. It is very paradoxical, what has happened. You would indeed think that a colour blind, religion blind state, which treats all its citiizens as citizens and no more or less, would in many ways conform to the ideals of the civil rights movement. The problem comes when this state is deliberately secular, and the immigrant population is not.
So, the state works out a slightly uneasy compromise with Catholicism, but it really does impose secular education. I do not think you will find crucifixes in French state education, and I don't think you'll find the religious orders teaching there in habits.
However, Islam extends much more into the political sphere in the wider sense than Catholicism. Further even than fundamentalist protestants in the US. This causes one set of difficulties. A second set occurs when part of the population is disadvantaged on account of its religion or national origins. Then, a society which is founded on the 18th century principle of not recognising any groups other than the national one, will find itself unable to recognise or address group membership as an ingredient in the problem. And that has happened in France. If you cannot even count how many Muslims you have, how are you ever going to address discrimination? Or know when you have succeeded? Or even, know if they are having problems?
If you have the additional problem that the radical leadership in the group regards your society as wicked and degenerate, and doesn't really regard themselves as French, well, you have a recipe for a disaster. The point I was making though, its a disaster of a kind Americans may find hard to recognise. Its not like the civil rights issue in the US. Its a complicated mess caused and aggravated by the interactions of very strange ideologies on both sides of the divide.
"How did did it come to this? Tell me why enforced secular humanism seems to be targeted primarily at the muslim community? Tell me about job prospects> and what the french have to do fix this problem. Tell me why the majority of people in french jails are muslim."
OK, here is what you have to imagine. Suppose that you do not have, in Watts, a population of black Americans, but a population of recent immigrants from (say) Mexico. You do not have a civic and religious leader like Martin Luther King, speaking with the accents of the Authorised Version, recognisable to all his fellow citizens, and grounded in the US Constitution. You have instead preachers brought up in, hypothetically, Mexico, who barely speak English.
The rioting population also is not looking for jobs and equal opportunity. Their ideologues are nostalgic for the days of Charles V of Spain, and they would like to see that regime re-established in all its former glory, including compulsory Catholicism, the public burning of heretics, and the reinstatement of the Office of the Holy Inquisition.
You think this is all mad and far-fetched. What do you think the talk about the Caliphate means, then?
Now, take it further. Imagine that in the US, about 60 years ago, you went mad. In your madness you rounded up and industrially slaughtered most of your native American population. The resulting inferno and civil war has left you economically weakened since then. This has left its mark phychologically. You no longer really know who you are. Why did this happen? Could it happen again? You are hypersensitive to any discussion of racial or religious issues, because it evokes the horrors. You cannot tolerate any significant disagreements between states, because you remember the civil war. Your sense of your own culture has lost legitimacy. Somehow, over the years, you allow a huge influx of people from Mexico, and gradually over time they become largely imbued with the sepatist ideology. They do not want to live in America, which they think is a wicked and heretical place, and they do not think they are Americans.
Now, in one of your major cities, the Latin population is burning schools and churches. The mayor makes a speech. He says, come on guys, this is no way to build a decent and equal society. The rioters stand there laughing. The minister comes on and says he will increase money for apprenticeships. The preachers, who you finally regard as your Latin population's representatives, also are smiling. This is not about jobs or welfare or even civil rights. This is not about being American. This is about establishing once more the historic empire of the New World. This is about getting LA and South out of the US, and into this revived empire.
Is it mad? Yes, its mad. Yes, it is a different continent, and a different problem. Hard to get your head around. Where, you keep asking, is Martin Luther King? Got news for you: nowhere in sight.
It is very different from what you may all be used to. For most readers I think it is taken for granted that people's ethnic origin or religion is an important part of their political identity. This is not officially true in France. There are no figures on how many people of which nationality or religion there are - because the French do not think this is of any official importance. It is actually unlawful for the census to collect them. All that matters is that everyone is a citizen of the Republic. This is what de Villepin is talking about when he is quoted in Le Monde as speaking of "a model founded on the recognition of the unique individual and not communitiies". This is also what the code words "republican values" means. This is what Chirac is alluding to when he said today that we are all "children of the republic", and said that we all have the same rights, and obviously, the same duties.
They really do mean that everyone is equal, and everyone is the same, and everyone will learn the same curriculum in every school in France at the same time of day. And there will be no special treatment for anyone in respect of membership of any group. And no mark of religious observance will be allowed in any school. This is why headscarves are banned. That's why there can be no equal opportunities programs, and no quotas based on ethnicity. There can of course be massive social programs directed at the poor and at deprived areas, and there are. It is not usually realised what an enormous proportion of the French budget goes on social spending. This is what is keeping the suburbs and their housing projects going. But no-one is being forced to live anywhere, except by individual choices of lots of people.
And, incidentally, if you live in a colonial possession, you are French. You are represented in the legislature just as if you were a departement of geographical France, you have the same government, the same schools. You are a citizen, that's all anyone needs to know. The rest is personal
Of course, the problem is, that neither the immigrants nor the native population actually feels this way, and the 18th century is a long time ago. Hence there is indeed widespread discrimination, widespread isolationism and separatism, radical Islam is a real factor. Participation in politics is minimal - though the French electoral system would make it quite easy for immigrant groups to elect representatives, there are almost none.
Its a mess all right. But it is not quite the mess it looks from the US. Its a kind of unfamiliar mess, and Lord knows how you straighten it out, now.
"If they unbundle the software and hardware, they become Microsoft, only about 1/20th the size and they get crushed"
Well no. This only happens if they stop supplying bundles. No-one who wants to see software unbundling as a strategy is arguing for that. They would still be Apple. They would still sell bundles Macs with OSX. The integrated experience would still be available. Its just that the X + Dell experience would also be available.
Now, before people start throwing things, its not about whether we want this, and its not about whether we like the idea that it is happening. Its about why you should not take customers' money and sell them what they seem to want, and whether this would destroy the Apple hardware business.
You can only argue that this would destroy the hardware business, if you admit what few seem to: a massive degree of overpricing in current Apple hardware, and a severe lack of value in the integrated experience. If there is minimal hardware premium, and lots of value in integration, Apple bundles will still sell much as now, the OS will sell incrementally, and people will buy lots of the elegant hardware to run Windows on. It will be a great business.
So, tell me again, what's wrong with the argument? Or does it work in reverse? Does it show that the integrated experience is not valued in the market, and that the hardware is greatly overpriced, and that Apple knows it? And that is why they cannot unbundle? Because if everything Cupertino marketing tells us is true, it points in only one direction: unbundling cannot hurt, and would be a great opportunity. Why then do they seem driven to go to such lengths not to take it?
If it is really true that Apple machines are better value, it will not be a problem. Pretty soon everyone will realise it and will buy them. It is like anything else, people do not buy cars solely on sticker prices. People are not stupid. They do fundamentally know how to assess value. They comparison shop, for computers like for everything else.
IF there really is value there, IF, then it will be rewarded in the market.
However, notice how the ground has shifted in the course of this argument. It starts out by arguing that Apple hardware is better and cheaper. Then it moves to arguing that people are such idiots that this value will be invisible to the market. If everything said is true, if Apple is really a hardware company, if the hardware really is better and cheaper, and the integrated experience better and good value, the market will recognise it and there will be enough buyers no matter what their alternative choices are. Buyers are no more idiots here than elsewhere. The idiots we are talking about are Apple customers after all. Are they really going to leave their superior hardware and integrated experience just to save a few bucks on a Dell? Of course not!
Here are some of the confused arguments one comes across.
Apple should not sell the OS seperately because I don't want to buy it. I want the integrated experience. Its a non-sequitur, if that's what you want, buy it. Why should it not sell to others who don't want it?
Apple is a hardware manufacturer and if it allows people to run the OS on other hardware, it will go out of business. People who argue this, then turn around and claim that Apple hardware is better cheaper and faster than anyone else's. So why will unbundling not lead to a boom in hardware sales?
Apple shouldn't lock its OS at all. Why not? Of course, its entitled to protect its investment by product activation or DRM or whatever. Everyone else does.
Finally, we have the argument, if its unbundled, people will try to run it on hardware which will not run it, and this will put off buyers and damage the reputation of the company. This is crazy. It will be shipped with a list of what is supported. And manufacturers of cards, mainboards etc will tell you what the OS requirements are. They do it now, after all. Why would they stop?
Finally we have the argument, people who buy X and run it on their Toshibas (as ZD-net seems to have done) will not be having the Apple Experience. Well, maybe not. Why do you care? If you want to have the Apple Experience, which seems to consist in looking at a particular case while using X, go ahead. But this is not a reason for selling other people the unbundled X experience, if this is what they want.
The more I hear people arguing about this, the less sense it makes. Surely the point is, sell the customer what he wants to buy. He probably really does know what he wants. Let the customer worry about value for money and the sort of experience he is having. Don't try to dictate what he is supposed to want or how he is supposed to feel.
Two points need making. One is that there is no particular problem with hardware compatibility on Windows. On the contrary, since almost all hardware ismade to be Windows compatible, it really does 'just work'.
the second point is, you say "It makes me happy that I 'm not going to have go back to fighting with my OS to get it to work with hardware." But, if they sell the OS independently, nothing is going to make you do that. You have these fears, you will just buy Apple hardware. That is not a reason for the company not selling to other people who don't have such fears.
Its a bit like, I go into a store, Aquascutum, and I dress myself with the A- experience, matching shoes, tie, coat suit. I say, I am so happy no-one else can just come in here and buy a pair of shoes, it means I don't have to worry matching my shoes with my suit. Its a total non-sequitur.
The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You can buy all your stuff in the same place, and not worry. They can buy it in different places, and maybe they do have to worry, but its their problem. It doesn't affect you at all.
But you see, your argument basically accepts something that Mac people have spent years denying: it accepts that in the eyes of customers, Apple hardware is overpriced for its quality and functionality. Otherwise, you would not find that "it would be easier and cheaper normally to buy the lowest end Dell and stick OS X in there."
I would really like the Apple people to explain this consistently. If the hardware is so great and such great value for money, why is it that it will lead to disaster for the hardware business if you can run X on Dells?
"the prime objective is to prevent en-masse adoption of Mac OS X on generic Intel hardware, greatly eroding Apple's own hardware sales"
The thing I would like to know is, why is anyone afraid of this? Surely the argument is that Apple hardware is cheaper and better than any other, and the experience, due to it all coming from one supplier, hardware and software, is also far better than the comparable Windows experience.
So why will Apple's hardware sales suffer at all? It will make no difference.
You can't have it all ways at once. Its only if the hardware now doesn't deliver value for money to the customer, that this is anything of a risk.
"I rather like the fact that my computer is unique, and not made of components by the metric ass-load flowing out of China"
Unfortunately, it is already made out of such components, you just don't recognise it. Look inside and see who makes the memory, disk drives, opticals, psu, graphics and other cards. Indeed, the main board itself will turn out to have been made in the Far East. Very little of this will change after the switch to Intel. And yes, they will just use off the shelf main boards, and off the shelf processors. The probably won't even be particularly high end. I think they currently are using the nVidia 6600 in PowerMacs - perfectly good, but middle range, graphics, and probably the main boards will be quite serviceable middle range stuff. There is really no alternative, and no reason to develop your own, when your supplier, Asus, AOpen or whoever, is already making as good as you could develop.
But why worry? What counts is whether it works, not how many other people have something similar.
"Apple is in the business of selling the Apple Lifestyle which is centered around an Apple computer that just happens to be running OS X."
This is very true, but it doesn't answer the point. The writer was suggesting Apple continue to sell the Apple Lifestyle, whatever that is, to anyone who wants to buy it and also, also, not as an alternative , sell copies of OSX to people who want to buy them. It is a point that I have never seen answered. The inexplicable refusal to sell things to customers who want to buy them.
Did you all not read the news that Google has just bought a 767 as a corporate jet? This is the most infallible indicator of coming disaster that one could ever want. The news of the other things they are thinking of doing for the world, and to other businesses is also pretty funny.
It was nice while it lasted, but now its time to research those long term puts.
Slashdot Mirror
Could you all maybe explain again why it is so important to keep OSX off white box or non-Apple hardware in the West, and ALSO so important to have it running on generic non-Apple hardware in the third world?
This is about Eulas. Now, the question of whether the Eula is valid and binding depends on two issues. First, can Eulas be binding? The answer is yes, depending on what the conditions are. The second is, will this particualr Eula be binding? I suspect no, since it will probably fall foul of consumer protection legislation and competition law. It is not cut and dried, and a case would be interesting, but probably most of the kind of testing that is being forbidden falls under the category of fair use.
Consider for instance a Eula that forbad you to test parts to destruction to determine whether they were actually meeting your quality standards. It would not hold up. Isn't this fairly similar?
Its only a viable strategy when the customer cannot make direct comparisons. You can do it with, say, amplifiers. But you cannot do it when all the small number of components are visible brands in their own right.
Here is a prediction. In under one year OSX will be sold for use on generic hardware. At that point, /. will be filled with a chorus of Apple enthusiasts explaining to the rest of us idiots why (a) this is wonderful (b) they had advocated it all along.
PPC? Say again? But that was so nineties. Everyone always knew Intel had the better processors...
OK as far as it goes, but you forgot the time value of money. Need to put the cash in and cash out for each year into a spreadsheet and run npv, assuming some reasonable interest rate. Important - If you use money of the day, ie adjusted for inflation, use nominal interest rates. If you use today's money, not allowing for inflation, use real interest rates, ie with inflation taken out.
But if you look back over history in 'modern' times, we have had waves of real hysteria, mostly ending in blood letting or financial bubbles and panics, perhaps starting with the French Revolution's Terror. Ironically, just after the Enlightenment. If you think about the 20th century, the great turn of the century masturbation hysteria, the mass butchery of the Western Front 1914-18, the Russian Revolution and massacres of the thirties, the '29 bubble, Nazism and the holocaust, the US anti communist witch hunts, the global cooling hysteria, Pol Pot in Cambodia, The Great Leap Forward and consequent famines in China, the dot com frenzy... And that is just a selection!
The essential characteristic is that the action enthusiastically undertaken by masses of people is out of all proportion to the dangers/opportunities which are the alleged justification, and usually brings about something far worse, though different, than what was feared. Makes one despair of human rationality.
Americans, by the way, are no worse than anyone else.
Its a good article. The question one would like an answer to is about lethality. When the virus mutates to be transmissible between people, how likely is it to retain its present killing rate? And how likely is it to be highly transmissible as well as highly lethal? There have been a couple of waves of flu in the last 30 years which were quite transmissible, but they were not particularly lethal. Presumably the combination of both to an extreme is far less likely than one alone at an extreme?
is where you can find the critique of Mann and the hockey stick.
http://www.climateaudit.org/
is the blog of continuing critiques by McKintyre.
www.realclimate.org
is the place to go for Mann & his supporters.
Have fun!
This is not the problem. The problem is an intellectual and scientific one, whether human activity really has caused the rise, what is the nature of the rise, whether we can actually reverse it, how much effort we should put into it. This is why the Medieval Warm period is important. If the record is that there was a high then, which exceeds the high of the present, then you have to explain it. If it happened, it shows that human activity is not, cannot be, the only explanation. One of the other posts in the thread suggests that lots of other studies support Mann's curves. Have to look hard at that. However, I think (is this wrong?) that Mann has not published his original algorithms and data to enable verification of the very first hockey stick study, and that is a reason to be sceptical about the enterprise.
So, when I personally would like to see action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? When persuaded that it the proposed action will be both effective and necessary. Kyoto was idiotic because it was completely ineffective, whether or not action was necessary. The historical record is imporant since it has the potential to establish whether it is necessary. I thought, maybe I'm wrong? that Moberg's latest pieces had cast a lot of doubt on the hockey stick.
Say someone claims an asteroid is about to hit the earth, and we should all get together and establish world government to deal with it. Well, you might feel that world government and getting together would be fine, but still look askance at the trajectory calculations. That's where I am coming from.
I wouldn't dispute that, since about 1800 it has. But there is a problem, which I've never seen adequately addressed, with the IPCC Hockey Stick curves. This the controversy with Mann et al. We do know from historical evidence that there actually was a Medieval Warm period, and the evidence is that it was hotter than now. There was also a cool period in around 1700. Both of these vanish from the record with the IPCC hockey stick curves. Then, if you get into how these curves were derived, lets say just that the derivation is very remote from any observational evidence.
So two things trouble one. First, the rewriting of history without apparent reason. Second, the lack of any explanation of what caused the Medieval Warm period. Not human activity, that's for sure - or at least, not the industrial revolution. And what caused the decline after it?
Its a serious objection, one of the few, to people like me who want to see licensing. I agree that if they do it, they have to find some way to safeguard the brand. Your point about car branding is valid too - you can have other people make BMWs, but only if the quality is there.
We keep hearing this utterly bizarre argument. Its all wonderful, integrated, quality, great value for money, but if people are allowed to buy anything else, they will never buy the real thing they are now buying, they will immediately run to what other posters describe as
"Dell's shitty boxes that might be returned 5 times before a useable one ships. ....[or]....someone's homebuilt fuckjob with a crappy ECS mobo and cheap ass video card...".
They are going to forsake
"the comforting rumble of a BMW motor, the perfection with which the seats and mirrors can be adjusted or the way the breaks [sic] feel as compared to Nissan or a Saturn",
and so they must be stopped.
We are talking, by the way, according to the hypothesis, about Apple customers who will be so stupid as to do this. What on earth are you guys arguing? Are you really arguing that the very people who are now so much appreciating "the whole experience as a product, not just hardware or software" are all going to suddenly forsake it just to save a few bucks? Why would they do that?
Or is it that maybe the experience is not so great, and the price a bit too high? Could that be it?
Putting standard components into a pretty case at a 50% markup is making yourself into the Louis Vuitton of computing. No future in it. They do not have higher margins because of lower costs. OSNews has a thread on the same subject, the conclusion is the same. There is a huge premium, and it is unsustainable. The quicker they recognise it and license the OS, change the business model, the better chance they have, because that's where it is headed.
Second, you're right. It is very paradoxical, what has happened. You would indeed think that a colour blind, religion blind state, which treats all its citiizens as citizens and no more or less, would in many ways conform to the ideals of the civil rights movement. The problem comes when this state is deliberately secular, and the immigrant population is not.
So, the state works out a slightly uneasy compromise with Catholicism, but it really does impose secular education. I do not think you will find crucifixes in French state education, and I don't think you'll find the religious orders teaching there in habits.
However, Islam extends much more into the political sphere in the wider sense than Catholicism. Further even than fundamentalist protestants in the US. This causes one set of difficulties. A second set occurs when part of the population is disadvantaged on account of its religion or national origins. Then, a society which is founded on the 18th century principle of not recognising any groups other than the national one, will find itself unable to recognise or address group membership as an ingredient in the problem. And that has happened in France. If you cannot even count how many Muslims you have, how are you ever going to address discrimination? Or know when you have succeeded? Or even, know if they are having problems?
If you have the additional problem that the radical leadership in the group regards your society as wicked and degenerate, and doesn't really regard themselves as French, well, you have a recipe for a disaster. The point I was making though, its a disaster of a kind Americans may find hard to recognise. Its not like the civil rights issue in the US. Its a complicated mess caused and aggravated by the interactions of very strange ideologies on both sides of the divide.
OK, here is what you have to imagine. Suppose that you do not have, in Watts, a population of black Americans, but a population of recent immigrants from (say) Mexico. You do not have a civic and religious leader like Martin Luther King, speaking with the accents of the Authorised Version, recognisable to all his fellow citizens, and grounded in the US Constitution. You have instead preachers brought up in, hypothetically, Mexico, who barely speak English.
The rioting population also is not looking for jobs and equal opportunity. Their ideologues are nostalgic for the days of Charles V of Spain, and they would like to see that regime re-established in all its former glory, including compulsory Catholicism, the public burning of heretics, and the reinstatement of the Office of the Holy Inquisition.
You think this is all mad and far-fetched. What do you think the talk about the Caliphate means, then?
Now, take it further. Imagine that in the US, about 60 years ago, you went mad. In your madness you rounded up and industrially slaughtered most of your native American population. The resulting inferno and civil war has left you economically weakened since then. This has left its mark phychologically. You no longer really know who you are. Why did this happen? Could it happen again? You are hypersensitive to any discussion of racial or religious issues, because it evokes the horrors. You cannot tolerate any significant disagreements between states, because you remember the civil war. Your sense of your own culture has lost legitimacy. Somehow, over the years, you allow a huge influx of people from Mexico, and gradually over time they become largely imbued with the sepatist ideology. They do not want to live in America, which they think is a wicked and heretical place, and they do not think they are Americans.
Now, in one of your major cities, the Latin population is burning schools and churches. The mayor makes a speech. He says, come on guys, this is no way to build a decent and equal society. The rioters stand there laughing. The minister comes on and says he will increase money for apprenticeships. The preachers, who you finally regard as your Latin population's representatives, also are smiling. This is not about jobs or welfare or even civil rights. This is not about being American. This is about establishing once more the historic empire of the New World. This is about getting LA and South out of the US, and into this revived empire.
Is it mad? Yes, its mad. Yes, it is a different continent, and a different problem. Hard to get your head around. Where, you keep asking, is Martin Luther King? Got news for you: nowhere in sight.
They really do mean that everyone is equal, and everyone is the same, and everyone will learn the same curriculum in every school in France at the same time of day. And there will be no special treatment for anyone in respect of membership of any group. And no mark of religious observance will be allowed in any school. This is why headscarves are banned. That's why there can be no equal opportunities programs, and no quotas based on ethnicity. There can of course be massive social programs directed at the poor and at deprived areas, and there are. It is not usually realised what an enormous proportion of the French budget goes on social spending. This is what is keeping the suburbs and their housing projects going. But no-one is being forced to live anywhere, except by individual choices of lots of people.
And, incidentally, if you live in a colonial possession, you are French. You are represented in the legislature just as if you were a departement of geographical France, you have the same government, the same schools. You are a citizen, that's all anyone needs to know. The rest is personal
Of course, the problem is, that neither the immigrants nor the native population actually feels this way, and the 18th century is a long time ago. Hence there is indeed widespread discrimination, widespread isolationism and separatism, radical Islam is a real factor. Participation in politics is minimal - though the French electoral system would make it quite easy for immigrant groups to elect representatives, there are almost none.
Its a mess all right. But it is not quite the mess it looks from the US. Its a kind of unfamiliar mess, and Lord knows how you straighten it out, now.
Well no. This only happens if they stop supplying bundles. No-one who wants to see software unbundling as a strategy is arguing for that. They would still be Apple. They would still sell bundles Macs with OSX. The integrated experience would still be available. Its just that the X + Dell experience would also be available.
Now, before people start throwing things, its not about whether we want this, and its not about whether we like the idea that it is happening. Its about why you should not take customers' money and sell them what they seem to want, and whether this would destroy the Apple hardware business.
You can only argue that this would destroy the hardware business, if you admit what few seem to: a massive degree of overpricing in current Apple hardware, and a severe lack of value in the integrated experience. If there is minimal hardware premium, and lots of value in integration, Apple bundles will still sell much as now, the OS will sell incrementally, and people will buy lots of the elegant hardware to run Windows on. It will be a great business.
So, tell me again, what's wrong with the argument? Or does it work in reverse? Does it show that the integrated experience is not valued in the market, and that the hardware is greatly overpriced, and that Apple knows it? And that is why they cannot unbundle? Because if everything Cupertino marketing tells us is true, it points in only one direction: unbundling cannot hurt, and would be a great opportunity. Why then do they seem driven to go to such lengths not to take it?
IF there really is value there, IF, then it will be rewarded in the market.
However, notice how the ground has shifted in the course of this argument. It starts out by arguing that Apple hardware is better and cheaper. Then it moves to arguing that people are such idiots that this value will be invisible to the market. If everything said is true, if Apple is really a hardware company, if the hardware really is better and cheaper, and the integrated experience better and good value, the market will recognise it and there will be enough buyers no matter what their alternative choices are. Buyers are no more idiots here than elsewhere. The idiots we are talking about are Apple customers after all. Are they really going to leave their superior hardware and integrated experience just to save a few bucks on a Dell? Of course not!
Apple should not sell the OS seperately because I don't want to buy it. I want the integrated experience. Its a non-sequitur, if that's what you want, buy it. Why should it not sell to others who don't want it?
Apple is a hardware manufacturer and if it allows people to run the OS on other hardware, it will go out of business. People who argue this, then turn around and claim that Apple hardware is better cheaper and faster than anyone else's. So why will unbundling not lead to a boom in hardware sales?
Apple shouldn't lock its OS at all. Why not? Of course, its entitled to protect its investment by product activation or DRM or whatever. Everyone else does.
Finally, we have the argument, if its unbundled, people will try to run it on hardware which will not run it, and this will put off buyers and damage the reputation of the company. This is crazy. It will be shipped with a list of what is supported. And manufacturers of cards, mainboards etc will tell you what the OS requirements are. They do it now, after all. Why would they stop?
Finally we have the argument, people who buy X and run it on their Toshibas (as ZD-net seems to have done) will not be having the Apple Experience. Well, maybe not. Why do you care? If you want to have the Apple Experience, which seems to consist in looking at a particular case while using X, go ahead. But this is not a reason for selling other people the unbundled X experience, if this is what they want.
The more I hear people arguing about this, the less sense it makes. Surely the point is, sell the customer what he wants to buy. He probably really does know what he wants. Let the customer worry about value for money and the sort of experience he is having. Don't try to dictate what he is supposed to want or how he is supposed to feel.
the second point is, you say "It makes me happy that I 'm not going to have go back to fighting with my OS to get it to work with hardware." But, if they sell the OS independently, nothing is going to make you do that. You have these fears, you will just buy Apple hardware. That is not a reason for the company not selling to other people who don't have such fears.
Its a bit like, I go into a store, Aquascutum, and I dress myself with the A- experience, matching shoes, tie, coat suit. I say, I am so happy no-one else can just come in here and buy a pair of shoes, it means I don't have to worry matching my shoes with my suit. Its a total non-sequitur.
The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You can buy all your stuff in the same place, and not worry. They can buy it in different places, and maybe they do have to worry, but its their problem. It doesn't affect you at all.
I would really like the Apple people to explain this consistently. If the hardware is so great and such great value for money, why is it that it will lead to disaster for the hardware business if you can run X on Dells?
The thing I would like to know is, why is anyone afraid of this? Surely the argument is that Apple hardware is cheaper and better than any other, and the experience, due to it all coming from one supplier, hardware and software, is also far better than the comparable Windows experience.
So why will Apple's hardware sales suffer at all? It will make no difference.
You can't have it all ways at once. Its only if the hardware now doesn't deliver value for money to the customer, that this is anything of a risk.
Unfortunately, it is already made out of such components, you just don't recognise it. Look inside and see who makes the memory, disk drives, opticals, psu, graphics and other cards. Indeed, the main board itself will turn out to have been made in the Far East. Very little of this will change after the switch to Intel. And yes, they will just use off the shelf main boards, and off the shelf processors. The probably won't even be particularly high end. I think they currently are using the nVidia 6600 in PowerMacs - perfectly good, but middle range, graphics, and probably the main boards will be quite serviceable middle range stuff. There is really no alternative, and no reason to develop your own, when your supplier, Asus, AOpen or whoever, is already making as good as you could develop.
But why worry? What counts is whether it works, not how many other people have something similar.
"Apple is in the business of selling the Apple Lifestyle which is centered around an Apple computer that just happens to be running OS X." This is very true, but it doesn't answer the point. The writer was suggesting Apple continue to sell the Apple Lifestyle, whatever that is, to anyone who wants to buy it and also, also, not as an alternative , sell copies of OSX to people who want to buy them. It is a point that I have never seen answered. The inexplicable refusal to sell things to customers who want to buy them.
It was nice while it lasted, but now its time to research those long term puts.