Pundits like to point out that Apple has 5% of the PC market. Yet Apple is sitting on $20 billion in cash.
No, Apple isn't blowing billions on products that don't work, it's turning that capital over to earn more.
Now, name implementable ideas Microsoft has rolled out lately. There's certainly nothing at all in consumer electronics. It only barely started breaking even on Xbox sales after having blow billions to develop it, and the 360 is now reaching its end of life and sales are rapidly tapering off. That's Microsoft's BIG SUCCESS! Everything else is in flames: Windows Mobile, Windows Media DRM, Zune, and every other product it has trotted out at CES over the last decade.
Linux, Apple and Microsoft aren't companies selling competing widgets. Apple sells PCs that don't have Microsoft's OEM software on them, while Linux is used as an alternative to Microsoft's software. Rather than directly competing for "sales," Apple and Linux both serve to compete with Microsoft for attention (development) and air supply.
Comparing "market share," particularly when talking about Linux, which isn't even sold, is absurd. You might as well be describing a man in a sealed room with a fire burning in one corner as safe because the fire only consumes a very small portion of the the room's "cubic inch share." The real problem is that it is eating up the room's oxygen and putting out toxins.
Microsoft has worked well with a monopoly over the PC OS and software markets. But with competition from non-Windows PCs (both Macs and Acer/Dells running Linux) and from alternative server software (open source servers, which power more web servers than Windows Server), Microsoft is now finding its air supply getting cut off while its proprietary business model is poisoned by the insidiously opportunistic spread of open source. That's why Microsoft calls it a "cancer."
Microsoft is still making craploads of money, but Windows has hit a brick wall with Vista, its consumer products have all tanked and are losing crap loads of money, and competition is just barely getting started.
Apple is growing 10x faster than the PC market in general, and the top PC makers (HP, Dell, Acer) are all actively working to find new ways to use Linux or develop their own OS in imitation of Apple. Even if Windows 7 turned out to be a good product in 2010, it wouldn't matter, because nobody wants to pay for a PC OS anymore.
Microsoft is fundamentally screwed. The worst part is that it is not taking any effective stabs at building a new model or innovating itself out of crisis. Shifts happen all the time. If big companies can't adapt, they die, and Microsoft isn't proving it can adapt. It's merely reacting with stock buybacks and imitative advertising (including its $300 million ads that primarily draw attention to Apple's brand.)
No, spending your capital to buy back stock indicates that you have no ideas for using that capital to build your business, and are instead converting it into value for shareholders (the opposite of diluting your stock by creating new shares).
Essentially, Microsoft is doing what Dell thought Apple should have done ten years ago: shut things down and give the money back to shareholders.
If Microsoft had any implementable ideas, it would be using that $40 billion to make more money, just like Apple has used its capital to rapidly expand its business while earning more cash on hand. Apple isn't buying back its stock because it thinks it can make more for investors building new business than it can by simply giving the money back.
And yet Palin hasn't really stated anything about her real views or policy decisions on any of those issues.
She's obviously against abortion, and clearly wants to overturn RvW by installing additional conservative judges on the SCotUS. But when asked about her views, she gives mealy-mouthed replies about how she 'respects the opinion of others.' She is fundamentally a bullshitter.
With 'religion in schools,' the real issue is that she supports radical fundamentalist Dominionism, the far right goal of establishing the US as a Christian Theocracy (minus any real elements of Christianity) that will spread Jesus over the earth (minus the teaching of Jesus). This isn't about 'can we pray in school' or 'can we respect the 10 Commandments,' but a radical effort to install CBN-style televangelist religion as the primary purpose of government.
This is a BIG FUCKING ISSUE that has been ignored and Palin has done her best to keep quiet, but her tape in June praising her "witch hunter" pastor that she credited with bringing her to the goverership of Alaska, and her efforts to get people to pray for her "will of God" pipeline and "will of God" war while telling Charlie Gibson that she would "never presume to know the will of God" should shock the shit out of anyone with an IQ above 60. She would be one cancer/heart attack episode away from turning the US into something that even GW Bush didn't really support.
Firearm rights? That's a significant issue in the presidential election? There is no threat of guns being taken away. There is threat of the Federal government becoming something you might want to take up arms against. This might be an issue if Obama was crusading for gun control, but he isn't.
"Domestic issues" - Right, which of those were raised? Which have Palin talked about? She steered Alaska through vast oil wealth while demanding massive Federal dollars to build unnecessary projects while supporting secessionists. What qualifications does she have to talk about domestic issues like the size of government, fiscal conservatism, and state's rights when she has demonstrated no principles and nothing but self serving hypocrisy ever? She's a big government, big spending Republican who taxes others so she doesn't have to pay them. She has no rational stance on domestic issues.
"Foreign affairs" - All Palin knows is that she "can see Russia from her house." She lives on a dead lake killed by poor city planning (building big box retail that runs its road waste into the lake) and refused make any efforts to help rehabilitate it. She doesn't know anything about diplomacy. She suggested going to war with Russia despite not even having met the people involved. She wants to stay in Iraq until "Al Queda is defeated" according the the McCain website. How is that possibly going to happen, and how would we ever prove it was? And remember how Al Queda wasn't in Iraq before the war started?
Palin has no legitimate stance on any real issues. She revealed not even knowing what Freddie Mae does. We don't need a bullshitter figurehead, we need someone who can present a stance on issues they can back up with reason and effectively put in place as a workable solution, regardless of whether they are more conservative or more liberal.
Palin isn't that, she's just a bullshitter who want to force her religion on America and make wildly bad spending decisions with the nation's resources and people.
The real story is that Google is introducing a new consumer-oriented platform with no software distribution security in place, particularly a problem on a mobile platform. It had a great opportunity to develop something that was both secure and open, and blew it. By taking the easy route, it also blew any chance of competing with Apple.
The iPhone has a strict, secured Apps Store and a DIY-at your own risk jailbreak community. Google only has an official DIY-AYOR model for distribution based on YouTube. The problem is, YouTube doesn't distribute executable code, only media. You can't broadly infect a million users with a malicious YouTube clip, or automatically send out paid SMS or spy on them. Mobile apps need more than a freaking YouTube. What the hell was Google thinking?
And even worse, why is the media so complacently ignorant in not calling out Google on this criminally negligent cop out? It's Windows XP all over again, except that Google should have the benefit of hindsight working for it.
Tevanian and the rest of NeXT's engineers did fantastic technical work, but NeXT didn't go anywhere until it was grafted on top of Apple in 1997.
Apple desperately needed a technology infusion, but NeXT's technology wasn't ready for deployment at Apple in a way the market could embrace until 2002.
It was Jobs who turned Apple and the Mac around in the interim, from 1997 to 2002, by taking Apple's System 7 and turning it into a product people would buy: the iMac, new Powerbooks, flashy new Macs with a strong brand rather than a confusing array of white boxes with Sony-like model numbers.
It's a disappointing reality that technology, like art, can't sustain itself. It needs marketing and merchandizing. Without Jobs, Apple would have quickly become another dead technology portfolio just like Amiga, OS/2, Taligent, etc. If technology itself sold products, Linux on the desktop would be whipping Windows and the Newton would have taken off. Technology needs to be made accessible, and Jobs has has a spectacular career at doing just that, despite lacking, as Hertzfeld notes in the interview, the technical expertise of his engineers.
If Apple had instead bought Be or teamed up with Sun, it would have been as successful as Be was at Palm or as OpenStep had been in Sun. That is: zero. A phenomenal amount of technical work performed for nothing because nobody there knew how to productize it.
This is really non-news. Consumer watchdogs are doing their job to stop ads that two users (perhaps Nokia and Microsoft? : P ) complained about. So Apple will run its shit-ton of iPhone ads without that one in the UK. No lawsuits involved, absolutely no impact on anything.
What will happen however, and is already underway, is that the iPhone is cracking open the prospect for real mobile websites that don't require Flash or Java. Previously, everything on the web was moving toward WAP-type mobile junksites, where you could barely do anything on the site, or alternatively Flash-heavy rubbish sites designed for users on a 10-megabit cable Internet feed.
Apple has upgraded "mobile web" to mean modern web standards-compliant sites that load fast. It has shared its own advances with Nokia (in both directions, as Nokia contributed to WebKit before the iPhone was even released), and has pushed hardware that is having a real effect on the market. That in turn will help FOSS devices, including Google's WebKit-using Android platform. It has also allowed Firefox to get a foot in the door with a mobile version based on the same standards but a unique implementation.
Apple redefined mobile web and the consumer web itself. It has already forced Adobe to support H.264 rather than its proprietary Flash video codec, opening the market for, among others, Linux users who can write their own H.264 based on the standards but can't as easily implement the undocumented, moving target of the Flash specification. Of course, Apple is doing it for the Mac; Linux just benefits from it.
Mobile web now means "fast loading pages," and that fact that Apple has absorbed nearly instant dominance over the mobile web means Apple is choosing to lead in an open market where competition and interoperability work to create better products. Apple could have developed a proprietary "Cocoa Web" that forced all of the iPhone's market power into a monopolized model that only benefitted Apple (in the model of IE), but did not.
Incidentally, Engadget recently reported that 95% of its mobile traffic was from the iPhone. Engadget is frequently critical of the iPhone and its readers and comments are not predominantly Apple-lovers by any means. That's market power, and Apple is using it "righteously."
This also benefits desktop users, particularly those with less than a fat pipes. It also puts a bullet phone in the forehead of Flash, Silverlight and other attempts to convert the web from open HTML to some closed, proprietary binary that requires a license from Adobe/Microsoft to use. Apple is using its market power with the iPod/iPhone to open standards; Microsoft used its PC market power to shut down competition and take over markets that it then either threw away as not profitable enough or sat on without adding any further innovation (such as the web browser, which flatlined for years from IE 5 to IE 7 because there was no competition).
And yet if it makes sense to try to sell Leopard against the Windows monopoly, why should Apple sell iPods and iPhones?
Why not also license software to Samsung and LG and SanDisk and become Microsoft? Oh right, it didn't work for Microsoft with PlaysForSure, didn't work for Window Mobile either. In fact, the only reason Microsoft can sustainably tax the PC industry is because it has no competition in the PC OS arena.
So you are recommending that Apple stop doing something that clearly works, and try to do what Microsoft is failing to do...oh right, because you want a PC that doesn't have Windows on it, and are willing to pay $400 for it.
HP didn't make any money selling it to you. It's a loss leader. HP is fighting Dell to the bottom of the barrel to sell instant ewaste PCs.
HP hopes you'll buy from them again when you have some money to spend. That strategy isn't working well.
Cheap is not always good. Look at what WalMart is doing to America. Enjoy your 99 cent Pringles and clothes that cost $5. Some of us would rather enjoy life than save money.
iLife is five significant apps for $79 = ~ $15 each.
That's SHAREWARE prices. Who else makes a similar package? Oh right, nobody, because there is no way to make 5 good consumer apps, sell them for $79, and MAKE MONEY.
Microsoft Office for Mac cost $150 or $399 if you want to use it with Exchange. Or $500 if you want the top end edition.
Yes, but Apple will grow when it stops being Mac only and stops with the absurd pricing of hardware
You are aware that Apple is outpacing the PC industry growth by roughly a factor of ten, 40% to 4%, right? Do you think Apple wants your business if you only want a $400 PC? Because they don't.
- it could spell the end of Apple. Without Apple, no more OS X development. Parasites are never beneficial to anything but themselves.
Riiiight, like you know how MS managed to go bankrupt after IBM PC compatible clones came on the market.
Microsoft was the parasite. It licensed DOS, cloned from CP/M and largely updated by IBM, not Microsoft, to other vendors, killing its host IBM before eating through a series of PC makers that all went out of business or merged together while Microsoft grew fatter.
As for the viability of Apple selling Mac OS X at retail: who supports it? Microsoft sells its software on roughly 95% of the world's PC, yet Apple makes nearly half the revenue of Microsoft ($24 vs 60 billion) and a 1/6 the profits.
Are you recommending that Apple give up its revenues and stellar 40% year over year growth to attempt to sell retail software boxes to PC users? How much of Microsoft's software pie could Apple take at $100 a box? Now, how many of those sales would buy a Mac (hardware profit), AppleCare (service profit) MobileMe (subscription software profit) and return to the Apple retail store to buy accessories (retail profit)? You'd trade that for a $100 retail box that would likely incur lots of phone support? Also, 50% of the retail box goes to retailers.
Even Microsoft makes very little from retail box sales of Windows. With the PC market shut out by Microsoft's OEM deals, there is simply no market for a competition (hence the term "monopoly"). Have you noticed how well retail boxes of Linux are selling? How about OEM Linux deals?
Why would you recommend Apple sell its OS and wipe away the main attraction for selling its hardware so it could become a support-taxed software vendor trying to support all the hardware in the PC world, something this has proven difficult for even Microsoft?
It's infantile to say "Apple would still make money." Every heard of opportunity cost? How about diminishing return? Support costs? Brand marketing? Selling OS X at retail would only benefit Dell and HP, who could both wipe Apple out were they given Apple's assets to battle it.
Jobs rectified the problems, but he also explained that the licensing deals were "killing Apple" and that cloners refused to renegotiate reasonable rates (whatever those might be). Jobs killed cloning because it wasn't working.
All cloners did for Apple was eat up the valuable end of the market and dump an extraordinary support load on the company. They didn't innovate anything apart from the use of cheaper boxes and additional component variety for Apple to test and support.
And yet you lack the right to authorize Pystar to violate the terms of the licensing agreement on retail boxes of Mac OS X, to crack Leopard to run on the PC they're selling, so Pystar has no legal authorization to a) duplicate b) crack or c) sell the software as a value add for their hardware.
And of course, Pystar isn't manually installing your copy for you, its duplicating a drive image of Leopard and throwing in a retail box.
Wikipedia is only as useful as its authoritative, cited sources. It is not intended to be original research, and where it is, it has no authority because anyone can scribble up authoritative-sounding crap that streams from their anus and make it part of Wikipedia.
Your citation above is a meaningless 35 word paraphrase of the two words "personal" and "computer." It's complete bullshit.
Shame on you for thinking it worthy to copy and paste in.
When has anyone every said that buying OS X is cheaper than Windows because $129 gets you a "full version", rather than an "upgrade"? Oh, right, Artie McStrawman.
Mac OS X is not limited as Windows "upgrade" versions are, in that you can install it on a clean PC without searching for a preexisting edition. But you know that OS X is sold only for Macs, and that all Macs come with it. You're a troll drsmithy.
Leopard is not equivalent to "Vista Home Premium."
Start with Vista Ultimate ($183 on Amazon), and then look up the Enterprise or 64-bit edition so you can address more than 4GB of RAM.
Apple has released over 70 free updates to Mac OS X during which Microsoft has released 7. Windows Mobile gets an update a year if you're lucky, while the iPhone has received eleven.
Apple has a right to sue anyone, even "bloggers" who it thinks it should reveal its industrial spies. Apple lost its case, bringing a legitimate legal case to the courts is a right, not an affront to society.
And "silencing criticism" - shit, Apple is not a country jackass. It's a free market, you can leave if you don't like their products. Your attempts to turn being a customer in being a political prisoner suffering human rights abuses is ridiculous.
Also, I can post whatever the "fuck" I want. Why are you "silencing my criticism"? Waa.
Grow up and learn how to handle facts rather than throw tantrums.
Pystar delivers two copies: a resellable retail box and an installed copy that is a derivative work. So yes, they are making illegal copies and distributing them, and they have no license to do this.
However, even if they were not shipping duplicate copies, it's still a matter of copy infringement to distribute a modified version illegally installed in a way that violates the license.
You can argue about whether you like the idea of licensing terms, but that is irrelevant. One can also argue about the merits of any law. It doesn't change the law.
You can forward an opinion that the law should be changed, but give some thought to that. If you insist that Apple can't chose its licensing terms, then that also strips the GPL of any ability to insist that users abide by its license as well. It also unravels the business model behind most artists.
It's easy to pick at the strings of society here and there, but try to give some thought to what would happen -- including the unintended consequences -- if our world were run by 16 year olds who thought they knew what was best because of some emotional attachment to doing whatever made them happy over the next fifteen minutes. Because that's what you are describing: a fucking childish fantasy where everyone delivers value for you while you are passively entertained. "Waa, nobody can give me licensing terms." Grow up.
Remember, Pystar didn't go after Apple until Apple went after them.
Duh, because Pystar was infringing Apple's copyright. Why would it use Apple first? Pystar is throwing up a frivolous nonsense lawsuit attempting to cloud the issue and see if any dirt can stick to the wall.
There was no need for doing that until it became obvious that Apple wasn't going to let them continue without legal action.
Pystar ends up being just another value add computer integrator
Except that "value added" refers to creating additional value to a commodity product. Leopard isn't a commodity product. PC hardware is a commodity. Pystar is using Apple's software to value add. The value is going to Pystar, from Apple. This is why Apple is suing, obviously.
Apple is only losing value, as the software it subsidizes to add value to its own hardware is being used by Pystar, without permission an in a way contrary to the license Apple is selling it under.
Violating the GPL to use Linux to add value to your device would result in similar legal action from the FSF, as Linksys and Tivo discovered. Except that Pystar supporters in this thread didn't cry about that action because they have emotional attachments to the GPL they lack for Apple.
I'm only stating facts.
As for your argument that copyright only applies to duplication: you're wrong. You can't remix and resell music you buy. Apple has no legal obligation to license its technology to competitors just because they want it. If Apple owned distribution of all PC OS technology, then Pystar might have a case, but Apple doesn't, so Pystar doesn't.
Your comments reveal you do not understand what's involved. "Fair use" is a concept that applies to artistic or educational uses of a work. It does not cover profiteering on copyright infringement.
You give me too much credit. I actually only never bothered to look at the correct spelling, and Paystar sounds both familiar and easier to spell. I'm not trying to impress anyone with my ability to spell things correctly.
When you say "my point" I think you mean "my irrelevant, semantic quibble." Copyright violation is theft.
When you say "selling as an upgrade is a dubious claim since it works on its own," I think you mean "I don't believe in intellectual property because it would result in me having to pay for shit I can otherwise just righteously assume ownership of as a right of being alive." When you come out and say it, I can dismiss your opinion right off much easier.
The copy of Mac OS X Paystar is distributing on their PC is not a retail box version, its a remix. Exactly the same thing, apart from that fact that Paystar also includes a (presumably resellable) untampered retail box, which makes it even worse.
When you "buy" a CD, you are only buying a plastic circle in a box. You are licensing the music on it. This is not a "meme," it is established in law.
When you say "Actually, yes you can, if you pay the fee" I think you mean "yes you can if you also pay to license it for rebroadcast," which should not be prefixed with "Yes you can if," but rather "oh right, I guess I am wrong because."
Also, statutory licensing relates to playing back music, not licensing technology for resale, just in case you were trying to imply that.
When you say "The fact that it's largely not licensing means that they can't dictate the terms as much as you seem to think," I have no idea what you think you mean. Licensing is a binary event, not something that involves a gradient of being. Licensing most certainly does "involve dictating terms," as that's the entire point of contract law.
When you say "Who the hell knows if that is OK" I think you mean "facts are controversial," and I have to disagree.
Since I already presented a pretty obvious example of why you can't "mangle and resell" a copyright work for profit (outside of parody or educational or artistic value, none of which Paystar is doing), my work is finished here.
If you think pointing out the potential for Apple being sued is "hyperbole," then, well, wow.
Microsoft is happy for vendors to install hardware drivers, yes, after they pay for certification and prove their drivers will not make Windows look like a faulty product. Additionally, OEMs bring in 80% of Microsoft's revenue. OEMs and Paystar in particular bring in near zero revenue for Apple, while tarnishing its brand, exposing it to liability, and violating its copyright.
Yes Apple's lawyers do represent the company. I'm saying personifying Apple as an entity and using every instance of behavior from every individual that has ever worked at Apple in order to carry out your interpreted dance of persecution is ridiculous. Hence, the ridicule.
And yes, I spelled the company's name wrong, because I don't really give a shit. So you win there, because you were able to spell it correctly. Good job, hope you didn't spend too much time on researching for that pat on the back.
The point is, however, that Paystar's (see, I really can't give a shit) lawsuit is frivolous bullshit because the company has no right to Apple's software, goodwill, etc. Apple is defending its brand, copyright, etc. That's why I think I'm right based on facts and you are being emotionally entangled with your own inner greed.
Our other difference in perspective is based on the fact that I see Apple, Paystar and the RIAA as entities all trying to cover their ass and/or seek legal advantages in their own interest. So I look at every lawsuit that occurs as a question of law. Sometimes Apple is correct, and sometimes the company is ridiculous. Sometimes the RIAA acts appropriately in defending its rights, but much of the time it appears to be out of touch with reality. The same goes for Microsoft and the OSDL and the FSF and the EFF and every other entity.
Based on your comment, it appears you have an emotional attachment to certain entities that prejudices your view, so that Apple and the RIAA are evil, and anyone violating copyright is presumably righteous. This makes it difficult to take your position seriously. Perhaps if I were 16 I'd agree with you for fear of not being cool otherwise, but I don't even give a shit about spelling Paystar right, remember?
Slashdot Mirror
Pundits like to point out that Apple has 5% of the PC market. Yet Apple is sitting on $20 billion in cash.
No, Apple isn't blowing billions on products that don't work, it's turning that capital over to earn more.
Now, name implementable ideas Microsoft has rolled out lately. There's certainly nothing at all in consumer electronics. It only barely started breaking even on Xbox sales after having blow billions to develop it, and the 360 is now reaching its end of life and sales are rapidly tapering off. That's Microsoft's BIG SUCCESS! Everything else is in flames: Windows Mobile, Windows Media DRM, Zune, and every other product it has trotted out at CES over the last decade.
You've fallen for the market share myth.
Linux, Apple and Microsoft aren't companies selling competing widgets. Apple sells PCs that don't have Microsoft's OEM software on them, while Linux is used as an alternative to Microsoft's software. Rather than directly competing for "sales," Apple and Linux both serve to compete with Microsoft for attention (development) and air supply.
Comparing "market share," particularly when talking about Linux, which isn't even sold, is absurd. You might as well be describing a man in a sealed room with a fire burning in one corner as safe because the fire only consumes a very small portion of the the room's "cubic inch share." The real problem is that it is eating up the room's oxygen and putting out toxins.
Microsoft has worked well with a monopoly over the PC OS and software markets. But with competition from non-Windows PCs (both Macs and Acer/Dells running Linux) and from alternative server software (open source servers, which power more web servers than Windows Server), Microsoft is now finding its air supply getting cut off while its proprietary business model is poisoned by the insidiously opportunistic spread of open source. That's why Microsoft calls it a "cancer."
Microsoft is still making craploads of money, but Windows has hit a brick wall with Vista, its consumer products have all tanked and are losing crap loads of money, and competition is just barely getting started.
Apple is growing 10x faster than the PC market in general, and the top PC makers (HP, Dell, Acer) are all actively working to find new ways to use Linux or develop their own OS in imitation of Apple. Even if Windows 7 turned out to be a good product in 2010, it wouldn't matter, because nobody wants to pay for a PC OS anymore.
Microsoft is fundamentally screwed. The worst part is that it is not taking any effective stabs at building a new model or innovating itself out of crisis. Shifts happen all the time. If big companies can't adapt, they die, and Microsoft isn't proving it can adapt. It's merely reacting with stock buybacks and imitative advertising (including its $300 million ads that primarily draw attention to Apple's brand.)
Microsoft's "I'm a PC" Millions Actually Promoting the Mac
No, spending your capital to buy back stock indicates that you have no ideas for using that capital to build your business, and are instead converting it into value for shareholders (the opposite of diluting your stock by creating new shares).
Essentially, Microsoft is doing what Dell thought Apple should have done ten years ago: shut things down and give the money back to shareholders.
If Microsoft had any implementable ideas, it would be using that $40 billion to make more money, just like Apple has used its capital to rapidly expand its business while earning more cash on hand. Apple isn't buying back its stock because it thinks it can make more for investors building new business than it can by simply giving the money back.
Google's Android Platform Faces Five Tough Obstacles
And yet Palin hasn't really stated anything about her real views or policy decisions on any of those issues.
She's obviously against abortion, and clearly wants to overturn RvW by installing additional conservative judges on the SCotUS. But when asked about her views, she gives mealy-mouthed replies about how she 'respects the opinion of others.' She is fundamentally a bullshitter.
With 'religion in schools,' the real issue is that she supports radical fundamentalist Dominionism, the far right goal of establishing the US as a Christian Theocracy (minus any real elements of Christianity) that will spread Jesus over the earth (minus the teaching of Jesus). This isn't about 'can we pray in school' or 'can we respect the 10 Commandments,' but a radical effort to install CBN-style televangelist religion as the primary purpose of government.
This is a BIG FUCKING ISSUE that has been ignored and Palin has done her best to keep quiet, but her tape in June praising her "witch hunter" pastor that she credited with bringing her to the goverership of Alaska, and her efforts to get people to pray for her "will of God" pipeline and "will of God" war while telling Charlie Gibson that she would "never presume to know the will of God" should shock the shit out of anyone with an IQ above 60. She would be one cancer/heart attack episode away from turning the US into something that even GW Bush didn't really support.
Firearm rights? That's a significant issue in the presidential election? There is no threat of guns being taken away. There is threat of the Federal government becoming something you might want to take up arms against. This might be an issue if Obama was crusading for gun control, but he isn't.
"Domestic issues" - Right, which of those were raised? Which have Palin talked about? She steered Alaska through vast oil wealth while demanding massive Federal dollars to build unnecessary projects while supporting secessionists. What qualifications does she have to talk about domestic issues like the size of government, fiscal conservatism, and state's rights when she has demonstrated no principles and nothing but self serving hypocrisy ever? She's a big government, big spending Republican who taxes others so she doesn't have to pay them. She has no rational stance on domestic issues.
"Foreign affairs" - All Palin knows is that she "can see Russia from her house." She lives on a dead lake killed by poor city planning (building big box retail that runs its road waste into the lake) and refused make any efforts to help rehabilitate it. She doesn't know anything about diplomacy. She suggested going to war with Russia despite not even having met the people involved. She wants to stay in Iraq until "Al Queda is defeated" according the the McCain website. How is that possibly going to happen, and how would we ever prove it was? And remember how Al Queda wasn't in Iraq before the war started?
Palin has no legitimate stance on any real issues. She revealed not even knowing what Freddie Mae does. We don't need a bullshitter figurehead, we need someone who can present a stance on issues they can back up with reason and effectively put in place as a workable solution, regardless of whether they are more conservative or more liberal.
Palin isn't that, she's just a bullshitter who want to force her religion on America and make wildly bad spending decisions with the nation's resources and people.
The Big Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac Attack
Well it's hard to rebel against minority opinion... unless you're a fascist.
The real story is that Google is introducing a new consumer-oriented platform with no software distribution security in place, particularly a problem on a mobile platform. It had a great opportunity to develop something that was both secure and open, and blew it. By taking the easy route, it also blew any chance of competing with Apple.
The iPhone has a strict, secured Apps Store and a DIY-at your own risk jailbreak community. Google only has an official DIY-AYOR model for distribution based on YouTube. The problem is, YouTube doesn't distribute executable code, only media. You can't broadly infect a million users with a malicious YouTube clip, or automatically send out paid SMS or spy on them. Mobile apps need more than a freaking YouTube. What the hell was Google thinking?
And even worse, why is the media so complacently ignorant in not calling out Google on this criminally negligent cop out? It's Windows XP all over again, except that Google should have the benefit of hindsight working for it.
Google's Android Market Guarantees Problems for Users
Tevanian and the rest of NeXT's engineers did fantastic technical work, but NeXT didn't go anywhere until it was grafted on top of Apple in 1997.
Apple desperately needed a technology infusion, but NeXT's technology wasn't ready for deployment at Apple in a way the market could embrace until 2002.
It was Jobs who turned Apple and the Mac around in the interim, from 1997 to 2002, by taking Apple's System 7 and turning it into a product people would buy: the iMac, new Powerbooks, flashy new Macs with a strong brand rather than a confusing array of white boxes with Sony-like model numbers.
It's a disappointing reality that technology, like art, can't sustain itself. It needs marketing and merchandizing. Without Jobs, Apple would have quickly become another dead technology portfolio just like Amiga, OS/2, Taligent, etc. If technology itself sold products, Linux on the desktop would be whipping Windows and the Newton would have taken off. Technology needs to be made accessible, and Jobs has has a spectacular career at doing just that, despite lacking, as Hertzfeld notes in the interview, the technical expertise of his engineers.
If Apple had instead bought Be or teamed up with Sun, it would have been as successful as Be was at Palm or as OpenStep had been in Sun. That is: zero. A phenomenal amount of technical work performed for nothing because nobody there knew how to productize it.
The Inside Deets on iPhone 2.0.2 and Dropped Calls
This is really non-news. Consumer watchdogs are doing their job to stop ads that two users (perhaps Nokia and Microsoft? : P ) complained about. So Apple will run its shit-ton of iPhone ads without that one in the UK. No lawsuits involved, absolutely no impact on anything.
What will happen however, and is already underway, is that the iPhone is cracking open the prospect for real mobile websites that don't require Flash or Java. Previously, everything on the web was moving toward WAP-type mobile junksites, where you could barely do anything on the site, or alternatively Flash-heavy rubbish sites designed for users on a 10-megabit cable Internet feed.
Apple has upgraded "mobile web" to mean modern web standards-compliant sites that load fast. It has shared its own advances with Nokia (in both directions, as Nokia contributed to WebKit before the iPhone was even released), and has pushed hardware that is having a real effect on the market. That in turn will help FOSS devices, including Google's WebKit-using Android platform. It has also allowed Firefox to get a foot in the door with a mobile version based on the same standards but a unique implementation.
Apple redefined mobile web and the consumer web itself. It has already forced Adobe to support H.264 rather than its proprietary Flash video codec, opening the market for, among others, Linux users who can write their own H.264 based on the standards but can't as easily implement the undocumented, moving target of the Flash specification. Of course, Apple is doing it for the Mac; Linux just benefits from it.
Mobile web now means "fast loading pages," and that fact that Apple has absorbed nearly instant dominance over the mobile web means Apple is choosing to lead in an open market where competition and interoperability work to create better products. Apple could have developed a proprietary "Cocoa Web" that forced all of the iPhone's market power into a monopolized model that only benefitted Apple (in the model of IE), but did not.
Incidentally, Engadget recently reported that 95% of its mobile traffic was from the iPhone. Engadget is frequently critical of the iPhone and its readers and comments are not predominantly Apple-lovers by any means. That's market power, and Apple is using it "righteously."
This also benefits desktop users, particularly those with less than a fat pipes. It also puts a bullet phone in the forehead of Flash, Silverlight and other attempts to convert the web from open HTML to some closed, proprietary binary that requires a license from Adobe/Microsoft to use. Apple is using its market power with the iPod/iPhone to open standards; Microsoft used its PC market power to shut down competition and take over markets that it then either threw away as not profitable enough or sat on without adding any further innovation (such as the web browser, which flatlined for years from IE 5 to IE 7 because there was no competition).
That's why I laugh in the face of morons who try to say Apple = Microsoft.
And yet if it makes sense to try to sell Leopard against the Windows monopoly, why should Apple sell iPods and iPhones?
Why not also license software to Samsung and LG and SanDisk and become Microsoft? Oh right, it didn't work for Microsoft with PlaysForSure, didn't work for Window Mobile either. In fact, the only reason Microsoft can sustainably tax the PC industry is because it has no competition in the PC OS arena.
So you are recommending that Apple stop doing something that clearly works, and try to do what Microsoft is failing to do...oh right, because you want a PC that doesn't have Windows on it, and are willing to pay $400 for it.
pfft
HP didn't make any money selling it to you. It's a loss leader. HP is fighting Dell to the bottom of the barrel to sell instant ewaste PCs.
HP hopes you'll buy from them again when you have some money to spend. That strategy isn't working well.
Cheap is not always good. Look at what WalMart is doing to America. Enjoy your 99 cent Pringles and clothes that cost $5. Some of us would rather enjoy life than save money.
iLife is five significant apps for $79 = ~ $15 each.
That's SHAREWARE prices. Who else makes a similar package? Oh right, nobody, because there is no way to make 5 good consumer apps, sell them for $79, and MAKE MONEY.
Microsoft Office for Mac cost $150 or $399 if you want to use it with Exchange. Or $500 if you want the top end edition.
Yes, but Apple will grow when it stops being Mac only and stops with the absurd pricing of hardware
You are aware that Apple is outpacing the PC industry growth by roughly a factor of ten, 40% to 4%, right? Do you think Apple wants your business if you only want a $400 PC? Because they don't.
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
- it could spell the end of Apple. Without Apple, no more OS X development. Parasites are never beneficial to anything but themselves.
Riiiight, like you know how MS managed to go bankrupt after IBM PC compatible clones came on the market.
Microsoft was the parasite. It licensed DOS, cloned from CP/M and largely updated by IBM, not Microsoft, to other vendors, killing its host IBM before eating through a series of PC makers that all went out of business or merged together while Microsoft grew fatter.
As for the viability of Apple selling Mac OS X at retail: who supports it? Microsoft sells its software on roughly 95% of the world's PC, yet Apple makes nearly half the revenue of Microsoft ($24 vs 60 billion) and a 1/6 the profits.
Are you recommending that Apple give up its revenues and stellar 40% year over year growth to attempt to sell retail software boxes to PC users? How much of Microsoft's software pie could Apple take at $100 a box? Now, how many of those sales would buy a Mac (hardware profit), AppleCare (service profit) MobileMe (subscription software profit) and return to the Apple retail store to buy accessories (retail profit)? You'd trade that for a $100 retail box that would likely incur lots of phone support? Also, 50% of the retail box goes to retailers.
Even Microsoft makes very little from retail box sales of Windows. With the PC market shut out by Microsoft's OEM deals, there is simply no market for a competition (hence the term "monopoly"). Have you noticed how well retail boxes of Linux are selling? How about OEM Linux deals?
Why would you recommend Apple sell its OS and wipe away the main attraction for selling its hardware so it could become a support-taxed software vendor trying to support all the hardware in the PC world, something this has proven difficult for even Microsoft?
It's infantile to say "Apple would still make money." Every heard of opportunity cost? How about diminishing return? Support costs? Brand marketing? Selling OS X at retail would only benefit Dell and HP, who could both wipe Apple out were they given Apple's assets to battle it.
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
Jobs rectified the problems, but he also explained that the licensing deals were "killing Apple" and that cloners refused to renegotiate reasonable rates (whatever those might be). Jobs killed cloning because it wasn't working.
All cloners did for Apple was eat up the valuable end of the market and dump an extraordinary support load on the company. They didn't innovate anything apart from the use of cheaper boxes and additional component variety for Apple to test and support.
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
And yet you lack the right to authorize Pystar to violate the terms of the licensing agreement on retail boxes of Mac OS X, to crack Leopard to run on the PC they're selling, so Pystar has no legal authorization to a) duplicate b) crack or c) sell the software as a value add for their hardware.
And of course, Pystar isn't manually installing your copy for you, its duplicating a drive image of Leopard and throwing in a retail box.
Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
I got a free copy of 10.1 from a random Mac dealer I visited.
That was a long time ago. What are you arguing? Sheesh.
Wikipedia is only as useful as its authoritative, cited sources. It is not intended to be original research, and where it is, it has no authority because anyone can scribble up authoritative-sounding crap that streams from their anus and make it part of Wikipedia.
Your citation above is a meaningless 35 word paraphrase of the two words "personal" and "computer." It's complete bullshit.
Shame on you for thinking it worthy to copy and paste in.
When has anyone every said that buying OS X is cheaper than Windows because $129 gets you a "full version", rather than an "upgrade"? Oh, right, Artie McStrawman.
Mac OS X is not limited as Windows "upgrade" versions are, in that you can install it on a clean PC without searching for a preexisting edition. But you know that OS X is sold only for Macs, and that all Macs come with it. You're a troll drsmithy.
Leopard is not equivalent to "Vista Home Premium."
Start with Vista Ultimate ($183 on Amazon), and then look up the Enterprise or 64-bit edition so you can address more than 4GB of RAM.
Apple has released over 70 free updates to Mac OS X during which Microsoft has released 7. Windows Mobile gets an update a year if you're lucky, while the iPhone has received eleven.
Apple has a right to sue anyone, even "bloggers" who it thinks it should reveal its industrial spies. Apple lost its case, bringing a legitimate legal case to the courts is a right, not an affront to society.
And "silencing criticism" - shit, Apple is not a country jackass. It's a free market, you can leave if you don't like their products. Your attempts to turn being a customer in being a political prisoner suffering human rights abuses is ridiculous.
Also, I can post whatever the "fuck" I want. Why are you "silencing my criticism"? Waa.
Grow up and learn how to handle facts rather than throw tantrums.
Microsoft's Mojave Attempts to Wet Vista's Desert
Microsoft's Mojave Experiment Exposes Serious Vista Problems
Pystar delivers two copies: a resellable retail box and an installed copy that is a derivative work. So yes, they are making illegal copies and distributing them, and they have no license to do this.
However, even if they were not shipping duplicate copies, it's still a matter of copy infringement to distribute a modified version illegally installed in a way that violates the license.
You can argue about whether you like the idea of licensing terms, but that is irrelevant. One can also argue about the merits of any law. It doesn't change the law.
You can forward an opinion that the law should be changed, but give some thought to that. If you insist that Apple can't chose its licensing terms, then that also strips the GPL of any ability to insist that users abide by its license as well. It also unravels the business model behind most artists.
It's easy to pick at the strings of society here and there, but try to give some thought to what would happen -- including the unintended consequences -- if our world were run by 16 year olds who thought they knew what was best because of some emotional attachment to doing whatever made them happy over the next fifteen minutes. Because that's what you are describing: a fucking childish fantasy where everyone delivers value for you while you are passively entertained. "Waa, nobody can give me licensing terms." Grow up.
bollocks of steel
in your face
ha
Remember, Pystar didn't go after Apple until Apple went after them.
Duh, because Pystar was infringing Apple's copyright. Why would it use Apple first? Pystar is throwing up a frivolous nonsense lawsuit attempting to cloud the issue and see if any dirt can stick to the wall.
There was no need for doing that until it became obvious that Apple wasn't going to let them continue without legal action.
Pystar ends up being just another value add computer integrator
Except that "value added" refers to creating additional value to a commodity product. Leopard isn't a commodity product. PC hardware is a commodity. Pystar is using Apple's software to value add. The value is going to Pystar, from Apple. This is why Apple is suing, obviously.
Apple is only losing value, as the software it subsidizes to add value to its own hardware is being used by Pystar, without permission an in a way contrary to the license Apple is selling it under.
Violating the GPL to use Linux to add value to your device would result in similar legal action from the FSF, as Linksys and Tivo discovered. Except that Pystar supporters in this thread didn't cry about that action because they have emotional attachments to the GPL they lack for Apple.
I'm only stating facts.
As for your argument that copyright only applies to duplication: you're wrong. You can't remix and resell music you buy. Apple has no legal obligation to license its technology to competitors just because they want it. If Apple owned distribution of all PC OS technology, then Pystar might have a case, but Apple doesn't, so Pystar doesn't.
Your comments reveal you do not understand what's involved. "Fair use" is a concept that applies to artistic or educational uses of a work. It does not cover profiteering on copyright infringement.
You give me too much credit. I actually only never bothered to look at the correct spelling, and Paystar sounds both familiar and easier to spell. I'm not trying to impress anyone with my ability to spell things correctly.
Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6
When you say "my point" I think you mean "my irrelevant, semantic quibble." Copyright violation is theft.
When you say "selling as an upgrade is a dubious claim since it works on its own," I think you mean "I don't believe in intellectual property because it would result in me having to pay for shit I can otherwise just righteously assume ownership of as a right of being alive." When you come out and say it, I can dismiss your opinion right off much easier.
The copy of Mac OS X Paystar is distributing on their PC is not a retail box version, its a remix. Exactly the same thing, apart from that fact that Paystar also includes a (presumably resellable) untampered retail box, which makes it even worse.
When you "buy" a CD, you are only buying a plastic circle in a box. You are licensing the music on it. This is not a "meme," it is established in law.
When you say "Actually, yes you can, if you pay the fee" I think you mean "yes you can if you also pay to license it for rebroadcast," which should not be prefixed with "Yes you can if," but rather "oh right, I guess I am wrong because."
Also, statutory licensing relates to playing back music, not licensing technology for resale, just in case you were trying to imply that.
When you say "The fact that it's largely not licensing means that they can't dictate the terms as much as you seem to think," I have no idea what you think you mean. Licensing is a binary event, not something that involves a gradient of being. Licensing most certainly does "involve dictating terms," as that's the entire point of contract law.
When you say "Who the hell knows if that is OK" I think you mean "facts are controversial," and I have to disagree.
Since I already presented a pretty obvious example of why you can't "mangle and resell" a copyright work for profit (outside of parody or educational or artistic value, none of which Paystar is doing), my work is finished here.
Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6
If you think pointing out the potential for Apple being sued is "hyperbole," then, well, wow.
Microsoft is happy for vendors to install hardware drivers, yes, after they pay for certification and prove their drivers will not make Windows look like a faulty product. Additionally, OEMs bring in 80% of Microsoft's revenue. OEMs and Paystar in particular bring in near zero revenue for Apple, while tarnishing its brand, exposing it to liability, and violating its copyright.
Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6
Yes Apple's lawyers do represent the company. I'm saying personifying Apple as an entity and using every instance of behavior from every individual that has ever worked at Apple in order to carry out your interpreted dance of persecution is ridiculous. Hence, the ridicule.
And yes, I spelled the company's name wrong, because I don't really give a shit. So you win there, because you were able to spell it correctly. Good job, hope you didn't spend too much time on researching for that pat on the back.
The point is, however, that Paystar's (see, I really can't give a shit) lawsuit is frivolous bullshit because the company has no right to Apple's software, goodwill, etc. Apple is defending its brand, copyright, etc. That's why I think I'm right based on facts and you are being emotionally entangled with your own inner greed.
Our other difference in perspective is based on the fact that I see Apple, Paystar and the RIAA as entities all trying to cover their ass and/or seek legal advantages in their own interest. So I look at every lawsuit that occurs as a question of law. Sometimes Apple is correct, and sometimes the company is ridiculous. Sometimes the RIAA acts appropriately in defending its rights, but much of the time it appears to be out of touch with reality. The same goes for Microsoft and the OSDL and the FSF and the EFF and every other entity.
Based on your comment, it appears you have an emotional attachment to certain entities that prejudices your view, so that Apple and the RIAA are evil, and anyone violating copyright is presumably righteous. This makes it difficult to take your position seriously. Perhaps if I were 16 I'd agree with you for fear of not being cool otherwise, but I don't even give a shit about spelling Paystar right, remember?
Apple's secret "Back to My Mac" push behind IPv6