At least I'm not an anonymous coward when I'm "obnoxious, pedantic, unhinged and needlessly and personally insulting."
What an outrageous hypocrite you are. Your quote, by Ian Betteridge, was part of his tirade in sad blog posting that didn't say anything of substance, but was just stringing together insults as you did. You sure sound a lot like Ian.
Greenpeace also used that quote, all they could find on me after googling for hate mail, in its desperate attempts to suggest my expose of its grandstanding pseudo-environmental attacks on Apple were best ignored by potential contributors.
The Xbox failed in Japan and Asia largely because of cultural differences in gaming preferences.
Considering how much of the worldwide market for gaming is based in Asia, yes market share and installed base does matter in console gaming as it has a major impact on how much attention Microsoft can get behind its console from developers.
Also, given that console sales are initially sold at a loss, failing to sell large volumes in Asia means that the console price can't come down as quickly as if it were selling globally in high volume.
There is less cultural resistance to the iPhone because Japanese developers can build games suited to the Asian audience with relatively little overhead (it's much cheaper to develop $1 mobile games than $70 game console titles).
Apple has pretty decent market share going into Japan, as many users get an iPhone in addition to their existing phone, much like BlackBerry users often carry two phones. The meme about the iPhone not being well regarded in Japan because there are fancier hardware handsets available was a key flaw in the original story; that's simply not the case. UI matters.
And third, Apple's ability to sell the iPhone in large volumes, along with the iPod touch, means that the company has enormous economies of scale working to its advantage in bringing down iPhone costs and advancing its hardware in 3.0.
The software distributor takes a cut. In this case, Handango takes 50% to 70% (really!) of developers' revenues.
Obviously Microsoft can't take a cut if it's not even involved in the transaction. Which is why the company is now getting ready to launch SkyMarket to destroy the ineffectual WiMo stores and replace them with a place WiMo developers can pay Microsoft to distribute their software, just like Apple.
And Adobe Flash on mobile devices is a liability, not a feature. Try browsing the web without Flash on your desktop browser and you'll realize how fast and less shitty the web is without Adobe's crapware layer of ad distribution and anti-HTML web sites.
Actually that listing of software was taken from the top most popular software titles from the Windows Mobile site Microsoft was recommending to its developers at the time (before it decided to cut its "ecosystem" down to launch its own store, sort of like it killed PlaysforSure with the Zune, before failing there too).
And "bias" is something you can evaluate. Anyone with a fair intellect can learn from biased sources. Nobody needs a tard warning them of "bias," so do us a favor and return to playing games in your mom's basement on your tricked out Windows PC.
Entire premise of the article is wrong. The fact that there was no DRM mechanism on audio CDs is what killed the music industry. It allowed everyone to rip music and trade it around without paying for it.
The labels first tried to get "interoperable" DRM from Microsoft because they thought Apple's FairPlay was not restrictive enough. Sony tried to roll out its own. But in the end, it was only Apple's DRM that enabled the labels to actually sell music in competition with widespread piracy. Once iTunes was established, Apple could argue for the removal of DRM and continue to sell DRM-free music to people who were already accustomed to using iTunes.
Apple didn't win the online music wars because it had the tightest DRM, it won because it had the least objectionable DRM. Once Apple gained the upper hand, the labels tried to cut their losses selling MP3s with no protection, because at that point, stronger DRM (Microsoft's PlaysForSure and Sony's ATRAC) had failed, attempts to add DRM to CDs (SACD and DVD-A) had failed, and Apple was putting the labels on notice that keeping FairPlay secured was not feasible, in large part because they labels were already selling DRM-free CDs and MP3s.
So dear Slashdot anti-DRM community: it was Apple's DRM that salvaged any hope of the labels actually collecting any money from their product. It was a lack of DRM on CDs that allowed widespread piracy to destroy music sales. The fact that instituting DRM protection was a forgone option in the music industry by the early 2000's does not mean that DRM does not work to create functional markets.
"Freeing" new types of content from DRM (whether books, movies, or software) isn't a solution and does not logically follow as some successful alternative to selling protected content, just because the music business imploded *due to the lack of any mechanism for securing its product.* No product can be sold in any sort of quantity to the public if they have the option of stealing it without much trouble.
DVD movies have suffered much less widespread piracy because, while not invincible by any means, DVD's DRM prevented widespread piracy by the majority of consumers. People still buy DVDs, while very few buy CDs (witness the closing of most music stores). A lock does not have to be completely bullet proof in order to help prevent theft. The relative ease of shoplifting does not mean stores should not try to stop it with theft protection systems.
Books have long been protected by a form of "physical copy protection" in that its hard enough to photocopy or digitize an entire book and then mass produce copies of it that can compete with paper versions (too expensive to print, and not satisfying enough to read digitally) that it is not practical for consumers to widely pirate written works.
If eBook readers ever take off, the availability of non-DRM ebook versions of popular content will follow the course of CD/MP3 piracy and the publishing market will self destruct just as the music business has. If Amazon's Kindle takes off and establishes a DRM-secured marketplace for reading, it has the potential for duplicating the successful DVD market, or the very successful, DRM-secured market Apple set up for iPhone mobile software.
People who think that they can steal content and widely duplicate it over the Internet without impacting the profit motive that created that original content are self delusional. People who think that open markets can exist without DRM as similarly delusional. DRM is not a tool of oppression, it is a facet of the rule of law and regulation on commerce that *CAN* result in fair markets where and only where users pay reasonable amounts and artists/developers get paid fairly for their work.
The problem is, as with any market, that if the DRM system is operated solely for the benefit of publishers, it will end up too restrictive and demanding of too much profit. That's what killed PlaysForSure and every other system thought up by the music industry itself.
Not only is the iPhone completely Adobe Flash-free, but iPhones also make up around 50% of mobile web traffic worldwide. That means in the mobile realm, Adobe's platform is approaching irrelevance. What Flash does exist on smartphones is usually Flash Lite, which is not a desktop Flash at all. And many devices that supposedly support Flash actually use some old version. Flash is only ubiquitously functional on the Windows PC, where it's largely unnecessary.
Actually Atari failed in early video games because it exercised no control over games, resulting in a huge glut of unplayable junk that finally collapsed in 1982. It was Nintendo that brought back gaming, and only through a licensing program that verified that the third parties had paid Nintendo fees and met some quality assurance program (which was probably mostly fees).
No "open gaming" effort, and there have been many, has ever established a better market than that offered by the winning DRM/licensed, closed platform since: NES, SuperNES, Genesis, N64, PlayStation, PS2, Xbox, PS2, Wii - and handheld games are the same.
To suggest that Apple should give up its blockbuster App Store and adopt a loser mobile software market like "open" Palm OS or Windows Mobile is just as absurd as expecting Nintendo/MS/Sony to open up gaming to anyone, royalty free.
Xerox invested a million dollars in Apple as part of a deal to develop its rough ideas into a consumer product. Apple's Mac had very little in common usability-wise with the Xerox technology. The Star was fantastically expensive idea for selling an entire office of networked systems and in no way competed against the Mac.
Microsoft was a third party developer with Apple, ripped off its software wholesale to create a direct competitor, violated its contracts with Apple, and later stole portions of QuickTime while leaving the scene.
Apple did "develop this on their own," it's called MobileMe. There will also be Push Notifications in Snow Leopard. Apple only licensed Exchange ActiveSync to be able to develop its own implementation of Microsoft's proprietary push for Exchange compatibility, which is a feature that runs in addition to Apple's own push software.
Microsoft did not hand Apple magical software beans that turned the iPhone into a PC running its Win32 Outlook code.
EAS is not an "embedded Exchange Client," its just a way to send push notifications to mobile devices from an Exchange Server, Microsoft efforts to clone and kill RIM's BES.
There was never any significant market for Pocket PC / WinCE PDAs. Gartner once talked about the entire market for PDAs as being close to 10 million per year, but that counted BlackBerry phones as PDAs (but not Palm Treos; guess who Gartner was working for).
Take out Windows Mobile devices and the WinCE pool dries up into a light dusting of ridiculousness.
No, HTC wants to use Android because its free and unrestricted, not "because they can." The problem with Android is that it doesn't "just work" yet. One thing Microsoft has done in the last ten years of WinCE work is get its phone stack working across a wide variety of hardware. That's why HTC doesn't just poop out its existing phones in Android versions.
There is a huge amount of work involved in getting any smartphone finished. It's basically a computer running whatever "mobile OS" runs the interface, tied to a self contained cellular unit with all sorts of its own oddities that require lots of time to get working properly.
The problem for Microsoft is that the world doesn't need that sort of integration. Users want a nice phone that works, not a huge array of slightly different phones that all look like crap.
Actually, HTC has made 80% of all Windows Mobile devices ever sold. Which makes it very curious why Microsoft's greatest partner by far has chosen to advocate and pioneer development of Android, making the first (T-Mobile G1) and announcing the second (the Vodaphone).
The only reason HTC isn't more vocal is that Microsoft paid it to shut up about Android at MWC, just as it did with LG, the other founding member of the Google OHA with Android phones planned , but only chatting up Windows Mobile 6.5 at the event.
Why did Microsoft need to pay these companies for their headlines? And why are they both still making Android phones if they're happy with Microsoft?
Windows Mobile doesn't really have touch support 'similar to the iPhone,' but instead supports stylus-oriented resistive screens rather than finger-savvy capacitance sensing technology used on the iPhone. That results in users needing to press methodically and deliberately on the screen, an entirely different experience compared to the iPhone. Resistance-stylus screens are required to keep alive the fantasy of Bill Gates' future of Tablet PCs, where everyone walks around writing on electronic pads with big screens.
Never mind that that approach has failed to take off for twenty years now, pioneered by GRiD, developed graphically by Apple in the Newton, briefly sold successfully by Palm before it moved into smartphones with mini keys, and replicated by a series of Windows CE devices that never went anywhere. Stylus touch screens are another videophone, something everyone anticipates for the future despite a long history of deliberate rejection in the market.
Yes that's why Apple licensed Exchange ActiveSync. It works with Exchange using the same conduits used by other EAS mobile clients, just like other Windows Mobile phones, PalmOS Treos, BlackBerrys, etc.
Did you miss that? It was kind of big news a year ago at the launch of iPhone 2.0. The iPhone fully supports all the same remote wipe and management features too.
Speaking of the Mojave Experiment, what really happened was that Microsoft took people and showed them a controlled experiment on computers that were well equipped for the time, better than people were using at home. There was no exposure of Vista to those user's existing hardware or software.
That's a great way to dispel the problems of Vista as fictional, when the real complaints were actually 1) performance 2) compatibility with existing software and 3) missing drivers for lots of hardware.
Windows 7 is just Vista SE.
Also, businesses aren't embarked upon to break even, but that does seem to be the best Microsoft's proponents can hope for every time the company tries to enter a new market. Seems that the company doesn't do too well unless it's in a monopoly position where customers have no other choice. Which brings us back to the very low bar set for Microsoft.
Not that I want you to stop admiring your naked, fundamentally retarded god. Go right ahead, please. It's very entertaining to watch you reverentially grovel before incompetence.
I see your barrier for failure is set very low when it relates to Microsoft.
If you were a Microsoft investor, you might not be so excited about the prospects of the company spending millions to sign leases and train people for stores that end up closing long before they can break even.
The problem is that, unlike Apple, Microsoft has no need for retail stores. It also has very little it can add by opening its own stores, and a lot to lose. Not just the initial investment, but another failure to check off after the Zune, Vista, PlaysForSure, Windows Mobile, WebTV, SPOT, Mira, ad naseum.
It is interesting to see how everything Apple does is critically scrutinized and expected to fail, while everything Microsoft does is just patted on the head, as if the company was brain damaged by an unfortunate accident and nothing much can be expected of it.
You seriously think that launching a retail operation is necessary to put Windows 7 in front of people, when every freaking PC in the world will ship with it anyway? Is there really any threat to Microsoft's monopoly, or is it just a little penis size thing going on here?
There were no customers though, that's the tricky bit.
I remember going there. It was a bizarre empty space of rows of software boxes. They tried to make it hands on, but there wasn't really anything interesting going on, and nothing really anyone would want to buy in a retail store. That's why it closed two years later. It wasn't really a store so much as a show of thing.
Apple planned cybercafes in 1997 that similarly fizzled, but when the company got serious about retail, they brought on a retailer CEO to the board, and hired a team of big name merchandizing and retail real estate experts.
Microsoft has put the thing in charge of a marketing droid from Dreamworks who had been a manager at Walmart, and who answers to the COO, who sees the plan as a way to, in his words:
"transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience at retail by improving the articulation and demonstration of the Microsoft innovation and value proposition so that itâ(TM)s clear, simple and straightforward for consumers everywhere"
You use a lot a slashdot buzzwords (although you forgot to use "sockpuppet"), but your post is completely retarded. First off, what FUD is there to spread about the history of BeOS? There is no fear in death. What "lies" are involved in factually recounting the failure in Palm's past, or describing its future plans (which have nothing to do with BeOS)?
Next time you want to take a shot at leveling an argument, have a point and the argue it with facts and rational thoughts, don't just fling baseless accusations linked together with emotionalist rhetoric. The world already has one to many Bill O'Reileys.
And for the record, I've never been on Apple's payroll or served as a consultant of any kind for the company. That's what a shill is.
Stick to using words where you understand their definition.
No, WebOS hasn't "been in the works for years." Palm has been fooling around with Linux for a long time, but to suggest that WebOS has been in development for any period of time, and particularly longer than Android, is ridiculous.
WebOS is not really a "Linux platform" any more than Android is (that is, nothing in common with desktop Linux or LiMo as far as app development goes), both are just new things on top of a Linux kernel.
Android was announced shortly after the iPhone, and had been in development for some time at that point. Google bought a company called Android and developed its Java-like dev platform over several years. Android's SDK became public at the same time as the iPhone's SDK plans in late 2007, and both emerged in 2008.
Remember that early last year, Palm was readying its Linux-based Foleo, which was a more conventional Linux platform using a custom-built widget framework called HxUI, based on the LiTE toolbox. It was not running WebOS or anything really like it.
Palm completely pulled WebOS out of its ass within 2008 to have something to demo, and the new "operating system," which is really just a WebKit-based Dashboard, won't be ready until lat this year. This thing hasn't been "gestating for years" any more than Microsoft's ridiculous Surface bathtub. It's a hail mary pass.
As to why Palm wouldn't use Android: the company desperately wants to maintain proprietary ownership of an OS that can differentiate its hardware, because its hardware isn't special enough to stand out on its own. With HTC building the Treo, how would an Android Palm ever be more attractive than an Android HTC unit, or any other Android phone from any number of handset makers that can build better hardware than Palm? The company figured that out that lesson the hard way when it licensed Windows Mobile.
The only two smartphone companies doing really well right now (in terms of growth) are RIM and Apple, and both have proprietary software platforms that integrate well with their hardware (outside of the Storm that is). WiMo, Android, and Symbian are all fighting to offer OS software (trying to play the Microsoft) in a hardware market where the OS is now free. When the software is free, the hardware has to stand out. Palm's doesn't.
The hardware specs on the iPhone are fair, not incredible. It has a crappy 2006 camera for example. People buy it for the software, which adds value because it does unique things and can't be obtained elsewhere. If the iPhone ran Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, or the Palm OS, Apple would have had a hard time competing against more experienced hardware makers with bigger numbers in their stats.
Palm is trying to be Apple, quite obviously. The problem is that Palm has no blockbuster revenue stream from Macs and iPods, nor retail/marketing acumen, nor any position in digital downloads with iTunes. So Palm is really like RIM, except that its position in the enterprise has faded off into the sunset.
No they bought the BeOS company. The engineers largely fled, with many of them going to Apple, including Newton guy Steve Sakoman and DominicGiampaolo, the engineer behind BeOS' metadata file system who ended up designing Apple's Spotlight metadata search architecture for example.
Interestingly, Palm followed all of the armchair advice that pundits offered for Apple, with completely disastrous results:
â License its OS to other hardware makers â Copy Microsoft's Windows strategies â Compete directly against Microsoft in IT markets â Split into hardware and software companies â Buy Be, Inc. for its BeOS â Adopt the Linux kernel â License Windows from Microsoft
What Palm is doing with WebOS is taking WebKit and making essentially a Dashboard-oriented PDA, where apps are just HTML+ JavaScript widgets. That allows Palm to claim that it is "multitasking" while not actually running any real significant applications. That's a pretty decent strategy for Palm, but sure isn't the iPhone Killer that the media has made it out to be.
They should merge the soul of BeOS in with AmigaOS and maybe the Palm OS to release ReligiOS, keeper of of the faith.
They could sell it to those gullible televangelist audiences as JesOS, market it to fundamentalist Jews as the Messiah OS, and to fervent Muslims as MuhammaDOS.
Imagine all the faithful putting aside their wars and terrorism and instead taking their angst to alt.systems.advocacy.religios to flame each other in a more figurative sense. I'm sure all the gods in heaven would approve.
Saying Vista "got bad press" in a weakly passive voice is like saying Bush "got beat up by the Liberal Media" during his 8 years of destruction.
What really happened was that both arrived like turds on the surface, were hailed as wonderful by PR-driven flacks, celebrated and defended for far too long by a timid media, only to ultimately be frowned upon after the people rejected them, resulting in a mild castigation by the media as an exercise in populist appeasement.
Vista was an Edsel, stop making excuses for Microsoft's fuckup. You don't have to find golden corns in the turd for us.
Windows 7 is to Vista what McCain/Palin is to Bush: another attempt to pull off the same shit, wrapped with a banner of newness to suggest a whole new game was afoot.
Oh Jesus have you even seen a Prada phone? It's a complete POS with the same unusable crap interface on every other phone.
If LG was so far ahead (pics leaked, but the LG phone didn't ship until well after the iPhone unveiling, and the iPhone shipped 6 months after Macworld, so where is this 8 months idea coming from?) , then why hasn't the company been able to do anything since the iPhone's launch apart from pooping out a bunch of pathetic iPhone-wannabes: the Vu, Viewty, Dare, Voyager, etc.
The only similarity between the iPhone and the Prada was the FREAKING NUMBER KEYPAD, and there isn't much room for basic innovation there. Clunky buttons and sliders, square edges, thick in hardware, and the software was based on atrocious Flash Lite garbage.
Your concept of "innovation" is seriously spastic when you confuse "the shape of a box" with being able to deliver a functional, sustainable software platform with a consistent, well thought out user interface.
And the next question: how many people are still using the Prada, compared to the original iPhone model? And are they happy with it? There's certainly no reason to think they should be. It was garbage.
When you say shit like the iPhone was "not revolutionary or innovating" because you've seen a handset before, it just makes you look like an ignorant dipshit. If it weren't revolutionary, it wouldn't have upset the market and changed what everyone was doing. It if wasn't innovating, everyone would have passed it up with their superior models.
Your comments are so strained as to be absurd. The iPhone was chock a block full of innovation but is not an invention? What strawman are you arguing this point against, anyway?
And really, while the smartphone existed before the iPhone, Apple did invent the first viable smartphone platform. I tried to like the Treo for years, but it was such an unworkable pile of crap that never progressed. Apple popped out the iPhone, turned it into a successful software platform, and has regularly updated it every couple of months.
Why does this company need to be convicted of evil? It isn't holding back real innovation in the smartphone industry to push forward a copycat piece of second rate junk as Microsoft did in the PC world during the 90s.
There's plenty of valid criticisms to make against Apple, and against the rest of the phone industry. Why pick such a stupid argument and run with it ?
The Storm is an unusable joke, and HTC is no more innovative than Dell. It is embarrassing to see so little effective competition to Apple, but that isn't Apple's fault, nor are the problems in the patent system nor the economy overall.
Slashdot Mirror
You're looking for Paul Thurrott's SUPERSITE for WINDOWS.
He's the AM Radio of the tech industry and the intellectual force behind the Microsoft Party.
At least I'm not an anonymous coward when I'm "obnoxious, pedantic, unhinged and needlessly and personally insulting."
What an outrageous hypocrite you are. Your quote, by Ian Betteridge, was part of his tirade in sad blog posting that didn't say anything of substance, but was just stringing together insults as you did. You sure sound a lot like Ian.
Greenpeace also used that quote, all they could find on me after googling for hate mail, in its desperate attempts to suggest my expose of its grandstanding pseudo-environmental attacks on Apple were best ignored by potential contributors.
Join Don Quixote's barking dogs far behind me.
The Xbox failed in Japan and Asia largely because of cultural differences in gaming preferences.
Considering how much of the worldwide market for gaming is based in Asia, yes market share and installed base does matter in console gaming as it has a major impact on how much attention Microsoft can get behind its console from developers.
Also, given that console sales are initially sold at a loss, failing to sell large volumes in Asia means that the console price can't come down as quickly as if it were selling globally in high volume.
There is less cultural resistance to the iPhone because Japanese developers can build games suited to the Asian audience with relatively little overhead (it's much cheaper to develop $1 mobile games than $70 game console titles).
Apple has pretty decent market share going into Japan, as many users get an iPhone in addition to their existing phone, much like BlackBerry users often carry two phones. The meme about the iPhone not being well regarded in Japan because there are fancier hardware handsets available was a key flaw in the original story; that's simply not the case. UI matters.
And third, Apple's ability to sell the iPhone in large volumes, along with the iPod touch, means that the company has enormous economies of scale working to its advantage in bringing down iPhone costs and advancing its hardware in 3.0.
How Apple Is Changing the PC Software World... Back
The software distributor takes a cut. In this case, Handango takes 50% to 70% (really!) of developers' revenues.
Obviously Microsoft can't take a cut if it's not even involved in the transaction. Which is why the company is now getting ready to launch SkyMarket to destroy the ineffectual WiMo stores and replace them with a place WiMo developers can pay Microsoft to distribute their software, just like Apple.
And Adobe Flash on mobile devices is a liability, not a feature. Try browsing the web without Flash on your desktop browser and you'll realize how fast and less shitty the web is without Adobe's crapware layer of ad distribution and anti-HTML web sites.
Microsoft plans 'Skymarket' apps store for Windows Mobile 7 in 2009
Actually that listing of software was taken from the top most popular software titles from the Windows Mobile site Microsoft was recommending to its developers at the time (before it decided to cut its "ecosystem" down to launch its own store, sort of like it killed PlaysforSure with the Zune, before failing there too).
And "bias" is something you can evaluate. Anyone with a fair intellect can learn from biased sources. Nobody needs a tard warning them of "bias," so do us a favor and return to playing games in your mom's basement on your tricked out Windows PC.
More Absurd iPhone Myths: Third Party Software Panic
Entire premise of the article is wrong. The fact that there was no DRM mechanism on audio CDs is what killed the music industry. It allowed everyone to rip music and trade it around without paying for it.
The labels first tried to get "interoperable" DRM from Microsoft because they thought Apple's FairPlay was not restrictive enough. Sony tried to roll out its own. But in the end, it was only Apple's DRM that enabled the labels to actually sell music in competition with widespread piracy. Once iTunes was established, Apple could argue for the removal of DRM and continue to sell DRM-free music to people who were already accustomed to using iTunes.
Apple didn't win the online music wars because it had the tightest DRM, it won because it had the least objectionable DRM. Once Apple gained the upper hand, the labels tried to cut their losses selling MP3s with no protection, because at that point, stronger DRM (Microsoft's PlaysForSure and Sony's ATRAC) had failed, attempts to add DRM to CDs (SACD and DVD-A) had failed, and Apple was putting the labels on notice that keeping FairPlay secured was not feasible, in large part because they labels were already selling DRM-free CDs and MP3s.
So dear Slashdot anti-DRM community: it was Apple's DRM that salvaged any hope of the labels actually collecting any money from their product. It was a lack of DRM on CDs that allowed widespread piracy to destroy music sales. The fact that instituting DRM protection was a forgone option in the music industry by the early 2000's does not mean that DRM does not work to create functional markets.
"Freeing" new types of content from DRM (whether books, movies, or software) isn't a solution and does not logically follow as some successful alternative to selling protected content, just because the music business imploded *due to the lack of any mechanism for securing its product.* No product can be sold in any sort of quantity to the public if they have the option of stealing it without much trouble.
DVD movies have suffered much less widespread piracy because, while not invincible by any means, DVD's DRM prevented widespread piracy by the majority of consumers. People still buy DVDs, while very few buy CDs (witness the closing of most music stores). A lock does not have to be completely bullet proof in order to help prevent theft. The relative ease of shoplifting does not mean stores should not try to stop it with theft protection systems.
Books have long been protected by a form of "physical copy protection" in that its hard enough to photocopy or digitize an entire book and then mass produce copies of it that can compete with paper versions (too expensive to print, and not satisfying enough to read digitally) that it is not practical for consumers to widely pirate written works.
If eBook readers ever take off, the availability of non-DRM ebook versions of popular content will follow the course of CD/MP3 piracy and the publishing market will self destruct just as the music business has. If Amazon's Kindle takes off and establishes a DRM-secured marketplace for reading, it has the potential for duplicating the successful DVD market, or the very successful, DRM-secured market Apple set up for iPhone mobile software.
People who think that they can steal content and widely duplicate it over the Internet without impacting the profit motive that created that original content are self delusional. People who think that open markets can exist without DRM as similarly delusional. DRM is not a tool of oppression, it is a facet of the rule of law and regulation on commerce that *CAN* result in fair markets where and only where users pay reasonable amounts and artists/developers get paid fairly for their work.
The problem is, as with any market, that if the DRM system is operated solely for the benefit of publishers, it will end up too restrictive and demanding of too much profit. That's what killed PlaysForSure and every other system thought up by the music industry itself.
Apple, as a neutral middl
Not only is the iPhone completely Adobe Flash-free, but iPhones also make up around 50% of mobile web traffic worldwide. That means in the mobile realm, Adobe's platform is approaching irrelevance. What Flash does exist on smartphones is usually Flash Lite, which is not a desktop Flash at all. And many devices that supposedly support Flash actually use some old version. Flash is only ubiquitously functional on the Windows PC, where it's largely unnecessary.
Flash Wars: Adobe in the History and Future of Flash
Actually Atari failed in early video games because it exercised no control over games, resulting in a huge glut of unplayable junk that finally collapsed in 1982. It was Nintendo that brought back gaming, and only through a licensing program that verified that the third parties had paid Nintendo fees and met some quality assurance program (which was probably mostly fees).
No "open gaming" effort, and there have been many, has ever established a better market than that offered by the winning DRM/licensed, closed platform since: NES, SuperNES, Genesis, N64, PlayStation, PS2, Xbox, PS2, Wii - and handheld games are the same.
To suggest that Apple should give up its blockbuster App Store and adopt a loser mobile software market like "open" Palm OS or Windows Mobile is just as absurd as expecting Nintendo/MS/Sony to open up gaming to anyone, royalty free.
iPhone 2.0 SDK: Video Games to Rival Nintendo DS, Sony PSP
Xerox invested a million dollars in Apple as part of a deal to develop its rough ideas into a consumer product. Apple's Mac had very little in common usability-wise with the Xerox technology. The Star was fantastically expensive idea for selling an entire office of networked systems and in no way competed against the Mac.
Microsoft was a third party developer with Apple, ripped off its software wholesale to create a direct competitor, violated its contracts with Apple, and later stole portions of QuickTime while leaving the scene.
Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly
Apple did "develop this on their own," it's called MobileMe. There will also be Push Notifications in Snow Leopard. Apple only licensed Exchange ActiveSync to be able to develop its own implementation of Microsoft's proprietary push for Exchange compatibility, which is a feature that runs in addition to Apple's own push software.
Microsoft did not hand Apple magical software beans that turned the iPhone into a PC running its Win32 Outlook code.
EAS is not an "embedded Exchange Client," its just a way to send push notifications to mobile devices from an Exchange Server, Microsoft efforts to clone and kill RIM's BES.
Inside MobileMe: Apple's Push vs Exchange, BlackBerry, Google
There was never any significant market for Pocket PC / WinCE PDAs. Gartner once talked about the entire market for PDAs as being close to 10 million per year, but that counted BlackBerry phones as PDAs (but not Palm Treos; guess who Gartner was working for).
Take out Windows Mobile devices and the WinCE pool dries up into a light dusting of ridiculousness.
No, HTC wants to use Android because its free and unrestricted, not "because they can." The problem with Android is that it doesn't "just work" yet. One thing Microsoft has done in the last ten years of WinCE work is get its phone stack working across a wide variety of hardware. That's why HTC doesn't just poop out its existing phones in Android versions.
There is a huge amount of work involved in getting any smartphone finished. It's basically a computer running whatever "mobile OS" runs the interface, tied to a self contained cellular unit with all sorts of its own oddities that require lots of time to get working properly.
The problem for Microsoft is that the world doesn't need that sort of integration. Users want a nice phone that works, not a huge array of slightly different phones that all look like crap.
The Case of the Top Secret, Missing Windows Mobile Phone
Actually, HTC has made 80% of all Windows Mobile devices ever sold. Which makes it very curious why Microsoft's greatest partner by far has chosen to advocate and pioneer development of Android, making the first (T-Mobile G1) and announcing the second (the Vodaphone).
The only reason HTC isn't more vocal is that Microsoft paid it to shut up about Android at MWC, just as it did with LG, the other founding member of the Google OHA with Android phones planned , but only chatting up Windows Mobile 6.5 at the event.
Why did Microsoft need to pay these companies for their headlines? And why are they both still making Android phones if they're happy with Microsoft?
Microsoft: HTC has made 80% of all Windows Mobile phones
Did Microsoft kill Android at Mobile World Congress 2009?
It will also feature an apparent "global opt out" program on its remote wipe capabilities.
The Case of the Top Secret, Missing Windows Mobile Phone
Windows Mobile doesn't really have touch support 'similar to the iPhone,' but instead supports stylus-oriented resistive screens rather than finger-savvy capacitance sensing technology used on the iPhone. That results in users needing to press methodically and deliberately on the screen, an entirely different experience compared to the iPhone. Resistance-stylus screens are required to keep alive the fantasy of Bill Gates' future of Tablet PCs, where everyone walks around writing on electronic pads with big screens.
Never mind that that approach has failed to take off for twenty years now, pioneered by GRiD, developed graphically by Apple in the Newton, briefly sold successfully by Palm before it moved into smartphones with mini keys, and replicated by a series of Windows CE devices that never went anywhere. Stylus touch screens are another videophone, something everyone anticipates for the future despite a long history of deliberate rejection in the market.
The Case of the Top Secret, Missing Windows Mobile Phone
Yes that's why Apple licensed Exchange ActiveSync. It works with Exchange using the same conduits used by other EAS mobile clients, just like other Windows Mobile phones, PalmOS Treos, BlackBerrys, etc.
Did you miss that? It was kind of big news a year ago at the launch of iPhone 2.0. The iPhone fully supports all the same remote wipe and management features too.
Apple / Enterprise
Yes marketing is powerful.
Speaking of the Mojave Experiment, what really happened was that Microsoft took people and showed them a controlled experiment on computers that were well equipped for the time, better than people were using at home. There was no exposure of Vista to those user's existing hardware or software.
That's a great way to dispel the problems of Vista as fictional, when the real complaints were actually 1) performance 2) compatibility with existing software and 3) missing drivers for lots of hardware.
Windows 7 is just Vista SE.
Also, businesses aren't embarked upon to break even, but that does seem to be the best Microsoft's proponents can hope for every time the company tries to enter a new market. Seems that the company doesn't do too well unless it's in a monopoly position where customers have no other choice. Which brings us back to the very low bar set for Microsoft.
Not that I want you to stop admiring your naked, fundamentally retarded god. Go right ahead, please. It's very entertaining to watch you reverentially grovel before incompetence.
Microsoft's Mojave Attempts to Wet Vistaâ(TM)s Desert
I see your barrier for failure is set very low when it relates to Microsoft.
If you were a Microsoft investor, you might not be so excited about the prospects of the company spending millions to sign leases and train people for stores that end up closing long before they can break even.
The problem is that, unlike Apple, Microsoft has no need for retail stores. It also has very little it can add by opening its own stores, and a lot to lose. Not just the initial investment, but another failure to check off after the Zune, Vista, PlaysForSure, Windows Mobile, WebTV, SPOT, Mira, ad naseum.
It is interesting to see how everything Apple does is critically scrutinized and expected to fail, while everything Microsoft does is just patted on the head, as if the company was brain damaged by an unfortunate accident and nothing much can be expected of it.
You seriously think that launching a retail operation is necessary to put Windows 7 in front of people, when every freaking PC in the world will ship with it anyway? Is there really any threat to Microsoft's monopoly, or is it just a little penis size thing going on here?
There were no customers though, that's the tricky bit.
I remember going there. It was a bizarre empty space of rows of software boxes. They tried to make it hands on, but there wasn't really anything interesting going on, and nothing really anyone would want to buy in a retail store. That's why it closed two years later. It wasn't really a store so much as a show of thing.
Apple planned cybercafes in 1997 that similarly fizzled, but when the company got serious about retail, they brought on a retailer CEO to the board, and hired a team of big name merchandizing and retail real estate experts.
Microsoft has put the thing in charge of a marketing droid from Dreamworks who had been a manager at Walmart, and who answers to the COO, who sees the plan as a way to, in his words:
"transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience at retail by improving the articulation and demonstration of the Microsoft innovation and value proposition so that itâ(TM)s clear, simple and straightforward for consumers everywhere"
I am not making that up - good luck with that.
Microsoft to open new retail stores like Apple
You use a lot a slashdot buzzwords (although you forgot to use "sockpuppet"), but your post is completely retarded. First off, what FUD is there to spread about the history of BeOS? There is no fear in death. What "lies" are involved in factually recounting the failure in Palm's past, or describing its future plans (which have nothing to do with BeOS)?
Next time you want to take a shot at leveling an argument, have a point and the argue it with facts and rational thoughts, don't just fling baseless accusations linked together with emotionalist rhetoric. The world already has one to many Bill O'Reileys.
And for the record, I've never been on Apple's payroll or served as a consultant of any kind for the company. That's what a shill is.
Stick to using words where you understand their definition.
No, WebOS hasn't "been in the works for years." Palm has been fooling around with Linux for a long time, but to suggest that WebOS has been in development for any period of time, and particularly longer than Android, is ridiculous.
WebOS is not really a "Linux platform" any more than Android is (that is, nothing in common with desktop Linux or LiMo as far as app development goes), both are just new things on top of a Linux kernel.
Android was announced shortly after the iPhone, and had been in development for some time at that point. Google bought a company called Android and developed its Java-like dev platform over several years. Android's SDK became public at the same time as the iPhone's SDK plans in late 2007, and both emerged in 2008.
Remember that early last year, Palm was readying its Linux-based Foleo, which was a more conventional Linux platform using a custom-built widget framework called HxUI, based on the LiTE toolbox. It was not running WebOS or anything really like it.
Palm completely pulled WebOS out of its ass within 2008 to have something to demo, and the new "operating system," which is really just a WebKit-based Dashboard, won't be ready until lat this year. This thing hasn't been "gestating for years" any more than Microsoft's ridiculous Surface bathtub. It's a hail mary pass.
As to why Palm wouldn't use Android: the company desperately wants to maintain proprietary ownership of an OS that can differentiate its hardware, because its hardware isn't special enough to stand out on its own. With HTC building the Treo, how would an Android Palm ever be more attractive than an Android HTC unit, or any other Android phone from any number of handset makers that can build better hardware than Palm? The company figured that out that lesson the hard way when it licensed Windows Mobile.
The only two smartphone companies doing really well right now (in terms of growth) are RIM and Apple, and both have proprietary software platforms that integrate well with their hardware (outside of the Storm that is). WiMo, Android, and Symbian are all fighting to offer OS software (trying to play the Microsoft) in a hardware market where the OS is now free. When the software is free, the hardware has to stand out. Palm's doesn't.
The hardware specs on the iPhone are fair, not incredible. It has a crappy 2006 camera for example. People buy it for the software, which adds value because it does unique things and can't be obtained elsewhere. If the iPhone ran Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, or the Palm OS, Apple would have had a hard time competing against more experienced hardware makers with bigger numbers in their stats.
Palm is trying to be Apple, quite obviously. The problem is that Palm has no blockbuster revenue stream from Macs and iPods, nor retail/marketing acumen, nor any position in digital downloads with iTunes. So Palm is really like RIM, except that its position in the enterprise has faded off into the sunset.
Will Google's Android Play DOS to Appleâ(TM)s iPhone?
No they bought the BeOS company. The engineers largely fled, with many of them going to Apple, including Newton guy Steve Sakoman and DominicGiampaolo, the engineer behind BeOS' metadata file system who ended up designing Apple's Spotlight metadata search architecture for example.
The Egregious Incompetence of Palm
Interestingly, Palm followed all of the armchair advice that pundits offered for Apple, with completely disastrous results:
â License its OS to other hardware makers
â Copy Microsoft's Windows strategies
â Compete directly against Microsoft in IT markets
â Split into hardware and software companies
â Buy Be, Inc. for its BeOS
â Adopt the Linux kernel
â License Windows from Microsoft
What Palm is doing with WebOS is taking WebKit and making essentially a Dashboard-oriented PDA, where apps are just HTML+ JavaScript widgets. That allows Palm to claim that it is "multitasking" while not actually running any real significant applications. That's a pretty decent strategy for Palm, but sure isn't the iPhone Killer that the media has made it out to be.
Palm Pre: The Emperor's New Phone
Why Apple's Tim Cook Did Not Threaten Palm Pre
They should merge the soul of BeOS in with AmigaOS and maybe the Palm OS to release ReligiOS, keeper of of the faith.
They could sell it to those gullible televangelist audiences as JesOS, market it to fundamentalist Jews as the Messiah OS, and to fervent Muslims as MuhammaDOS.
Imagine all the faithful putting aside their wars and terrorism and instead taking their angst to alt.systems.advocacy.religios to flame each other in a more figurative sense. I'm sure all the gods in heaven would approve.
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Microsoft plays catch up to MobileMe with My Phone
Saying Vista "got bad press" in a weakly passive voice is like saying Bush "got beat up by the Liberal Media" during his 8 years of destruction.
What really happened was that both arrived like turds on the surface, were hailed as wonderful by PR-driven flacks, celebrated and defended for far too long by a timid media, only to ultimately be frowned upon after the people rejected them, resulting in a mild castigation by the media as an exercise in populist appeasement.
Vista was an Edsel, stop making excuses for Microsoft's fuckup. You don't have to find golden corns in the turd for us.
Windows 7 is to Vista what McCain/Palin is to Bush: another attempt to pull off the same shit, wrapped with a banner of newness to suggest a whole new game was afoot.
Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Oh Jesus have you even seen a Prada phone? It's a complete POS with the same unusable crap interface on every other phone.
If LG was so far ahead (pics leaked, but the LG phone didn't ship until well after the iPhone unveiling, and the iPhone shipped 6 months after Macworld, so where is this 8 months idea coming from?) , then why hasn't the company been able to do anything since the iPhone's launch apart from pooping out a bunch of pathetic iPhone-wannabes: the Vu, Viewty, Dare, Voyager, etc.
The only similarity between the iPhone and the Prada was the FREAKING NUMBER KEYPAD, and there isn't much room for basic innovation there. Clunky buttons and sliders, square edges, thick in hardware, and the software was based on atrocious Flash Lite garbage.
Your concept of "innovation" is seriously spastic when you confuse "the shape of a box" with being able to deliver a functional, sustainable software platform with a consistent, well thought out user interface.
And the next question: how many people are still using the Prada, compared to the original iPhone model? And are they happy with it? There's certainly no reason to think they should be. It was garbage.
When you say shit like the iPhone was "not revolutionary or innovating" because you've seen a handset before, it just makes you look like an ignorant dipshit. If it weren't revolutionary, it wouldn't have upset the market and changed what everyone was doing. It if wasn't innovating, everyone would have passed it up with their superior models.
Your comments are so strained as to be absurd. The iPhone was chock a block full of innovation but is not an invention? What strawman are you arguing this point against, anyway?
And really, while the smartphone existed before the iPhone, Apple did invent the first viable smartphone platform. I tried to like the Treo for years, but it was such an unworkable pile of crap that never progressed. Apple popped out the iPhone, turned it into a successful software platform, and has regularly updated it every couple of months.
Why does this company need to be convicted of evil? It isn't holding back real innovation in the smartphone industry to push forward a copycat piece of second rate junk as Microsoft did in the PC world during the 90s.
There's plenty of valid criticisms to make against Apple, and against the rest of the phone industry. Why pick such a stupid argument and run with it ?
The Storm is an unusable joke, and HTC is no more innovative than Dell. It is embarrassing to see so little effective competition to Apple, but that isn't Apple's fault, nor are the problems in the patent system nor the economy overall.