FYI, the platform is currently restricted to a maximum of a 10.1" display as per Microsoft and vendors tied in any way to Microsoft must abide by that. Did you not read about the ASUS executive apologizing for showing a non Windows netbook last year with Microsoft on stage?
If Microsoft can't continue to threaten the manufacturers of these devices and they finally start hitting the market, you will start seeing 12", 15" and larger devices running multi-core ARM processors. That is a big _if_ because Microsoft will do everything they can to stop this. As someone mentioned, even if Microsoft ported Windows XP or 7 to ARM, they will not have the application base GNU/Linux already has and the more productive attack for them is limiting the market. They did that with the original netbook market by signing them up with amazing marketing kickback deals which cost Microsoft millions but kicked GNU/Linux off most products if not off the retail shelves. They don't have a technology answer and their first answer has always been blocking so that will continue.
If you've seen GNU/Linux running on a 256MB Cortex-a8 system you would be thinking, 'wow, there's potential here'. If you see GNU/Linux running on an a9 system, you'd be saying 'OMG that is amazing - I want one'. Microsoft will be fighting this one with all guns firing. I saw a video recently of an a9 platform doing 1080p video and they said it was only using 5 watts. That's less than 500mA at 12V and for battery based products, that's a big deal.
so the coupons are only for putting SUSE inside a Microsoft hosted virtual machine? If that is the case, it's quite obvious that they spent the money to keep Windows installed. IMO.
there is ample evidence that flaws existed in MS IE for months, and sometimes years, and Microsoft knew about them and did not fix. That in itself throws out the idea that anyone outside of Microsoft has any clue as to how many flaws there have been or are. Hiding flaws does not mean they do not exist.
On another note, there should be plenty of evidence of flaws and exploits which were in IE but not in Firefox, Opera, or even Safari. Things where IE has intimate knowledge with stuff like ActiveX, COM, their JavaScript engine, and all the other tentacles going from IE into the Windows OS.
Therefore the comment that there is "no evidence" sounds too much like it came from Microsoft because it is really a question asking for technical proof and you are not going to get that in a parliamentary discussion. And notice he didn't say he's asking for proof, he stated there is "no evidence" so he seems to think he's some kind of expert in this area.
Proof of even one flaw due directly to unique ties between IE and the Windows OS is proof that it is less secure because the others do not have those ties. Counting security updates is invalidated by the facts that Microsoft withholds flaws and public information on flaws. So either Microsoft must open source IE to prove the flaw count issue or it must be declared less secure. IMO
I've not seen or heard of a single instance of this being enforced and have seen a few situations where law enforcement should have done something but didn't. I saw only one copy radio on the loud speaker to put the phone down.
there is little to no compliance so who could the ban be effective?
He failed at providing a virus immune system in the computer industry so maybe he thinks if he does it in the medical field people will forget about the other failure? In the medical field, it has been proven to work so another failure is unlikely unless people start cutting of the arms where the shots were administered, That'll come later when the Windows logo starts showing up on peoples foreheads.
I'm just looking for a connection to computers and technology here since I didn't see he was helping fund new research, just passing out what's already been done. Nice but why post that in/.?
tablets build muscles by requiring you to hold the tablet out in front of you and to hold your arms up to the screen when doing any interacting with the device. So it burns calories and is good for you. Something a laptop or netbook won't do because they sit on your lap, desk, or coffee table and you rest your hands on them when using them.
funny, in 2006 they also said that they like this because it gets more people familiar and therefore addicted to Windows. Being two faced for the sake of business and profits don't you think? Anything goes.
Microsoft's business tactics and China's public policies have some overlap. Microsoft probably sees little wrong with how the Chinese government runs the country as shown by the Gates and Ballmer statements. They resemble each other.
if the first Google Voice iPhone app was a VOIP app, then this is probably something much different. I doubt this is a VOIP implementation of Google Voice and is probably just a small interface to their call forwarding service built into Google Voice. In this setup, you tell Google Voice what number you want to call but also them them what local phone you want to use( one on your desk or iPhone ) and Google voice will first call that local phone and then call the other person. In this case, they would be just calling the iPhone over the AT&T network but the calls would all be going through Google Voices exchange and the remote phone would see your Google Voice phone number, not your iPhone number.
The only problem Apple might have with this is probably via AT&T who may not like how Google is starting to move into the phone network business. Apple shouldn't care much because it's basically a simple web app to a server which then results in the wireless phone service being used. BFD IMO
or it uses the web interface to Google Voice, lets you search your phonebook or select a person to call and is prepositioned so that your iPhone number is the forwarding number. With just these parts, Google Voice will call your iPhone and once you pick it up, they'll then make the call out to that person you wanted to call. The phone number the other person will see is your Google Voice number, not your iPhone number.
ie, not a VOIP app. I could be completely wrong too.
it's always looked like we're going to be stuck in the 90s based mentality of the computer interface for decades to come. NextStep and OpenDoc had chances to change things but failed market choices and anti-competitive attacks from Microsoft doomed those to history. Games changers like the Bento filesystem and component based applications are now only starting to show up in vague ways as web pages in browsers using AJAX and advanced HTML features. The URL and rich widget enabled desktops have replace Bento but for the most part, we're unable to build this ourselves or exchange this information with others except for pointing them to places where this stuff has been integrated.
But seeing how completely nonexistent computer education is, most people are taxed beyond their abilities to use an addressbook to create a new email to send to a friend. Reply-to is what they know and clicking a certain sequence is how they do things. But a dumb userbase is great for maintaining the status quo.
I wonder how much of SOM technology had to be replicated on top of Windows to get there products on Windows. I also remember how Microsoft built a multi-threaded Windows Explorer version in the Chicago betas but the Windows OS did threading so poorly that they ended up ripping out most of the threading. The OS/2 kernel and the OO SOM system enabled amazing stuff on little resources. I remember seeing someone say that the kernel and PM took 8MB and the WPS took another 8MB on an OS/2 Warp system. I don't recall what Object Desktop took above that but I do remember people talking about caching issues and therefore some memory problems. But these were the days of 16MB and 32MB of memory in the early to mid 90s. I never saw what Stardocks stuff did on Windows after I tried developing some NT apps and kept having issues with memory and poor threading. I stuck with OS/2 for longer than most and Linux provided enough power and control that the immature desktops were worth dealing with. And all the reboots in Windows still drives me to laughter at the ridiculousness of that.
Enlightenment did and still does have an appealing look to it. It was the consistency and features of the WPS which made it so much of a pleasure to use and work with and Stardock added extra pizzaz which took it well above anything on the market even today.
In the 90s, with the OO( Object Oriented ) Workplace Shell on OS/2, a company called Stardock Systems came up with a great desktop enhancing package( Object Desktop ) which I'd heard was also being used to build screens for the film industry. It really made an OS/2 desktop pop and back then, only the NextStep UI can close to the default WPS. I don't think anything came close to what Stardock did with the WPS using their desktop extension Object Desktop.
The article could have went into what they use and what they've used. It was pretty shallow without that info IMO.
he is the one who apologized for showing an ARM Linux based device at a big computer show last year and he did so with some likely help and probably poking from Microsoft:
And what is with that $399 price the article talks about regarding the original netbooks? The price was $249 and it is Microsoft who has been pushing for higher prices and requiring it because of the excess hardware required just to run Windows.
In other words, it is just a PR pitch from another puppet of Microsoft's. And they pretty much want the netbook dead or declared dead because ARM based devices are about to eat their lunch. Microsoft still has nothing to combat Linux on ARM and Intel is hoping they can hold off the market til they start making x86 based CPUs on single digit processes so the power usage competes with last years ARM chips.
A whole bunch of big players want netbooks dead and declaring it is helps them because the uninformed will believe it. IMO.
a number of years ago, Microsoft paid AT&T $5 billion to use Microsoft's embedded OS in their STBs/DVRs. And the partnership was born. Of late, AT&T once again went with the least likely to succeed company, Microsoft, for their front to back solution for IPTV and Microsoft took them to the cleaners. Even Sun, with a server capable of handling thousands of video streams couldn't sell it to AT&T because the contract said it had to run Windows.
Since this is all Microsofts stuff, a patent case against AT&T is really a patent case against Microsoft and hence we see Microsoft pulling out its guns in a classic Mexican Standoff. A large house of cards falls if Tivo is successful and because the AT&T/Microsoft IPTV stuff is just that, all Microsoft, it would be near impossible to get the Linux based Tivo into that rats nest. So I sure hope that the Tivo lawyers have an ounce of clue about that which they just entered.
mostly talking about the OS for the mobile phone market. Although I know way too many who still won't spend $300-$600 for phone even though they end up paying more over the 2 year contract, I'm hopeful that many see what Google is doing with the Nexus One is a way out of that lockin. Opening up that lockin, or should I say lock-out, might also open up the market to other providers since they won't require huge profits to get customers via new phone lockin deals.
thank goodness it is real competition and not the kind of competition Microsoft plays such as buying up another vendors customers and paying them to use Microsoft's technology. Apple came out with a great piece of hardware and software to back it up and they took over the mess which was also called "the smartphone market". That was three years ago and Microsoft has come up with pretty much nothing comparable on the software side. But what Microsoft had done was pay off every phone vendor at last years big mobile phone conference to _not_ talk about anything but Windows Mobile. So the public and press knew nothing about the Android wave which was about to overflow the market by the end of the year. On the hardware side, in the open platform segment, they have been getting there but still not close to what's been in the iPhone. It again took Apple to put the Cortex-A8 CPU in their phone to get the rest of the market to wake up to the performance levels obtainable using that technology. But like how quickly Apple sprung onto the wasteland which was called the smartphone segment, Google purchased a small company who put together a very nice phone software platform called Android and got it out there. They haven't been paying companies to not talk about other companies products and they know they need to make it as compelling, or better, than the Apple iPhone. Wow, real competition by making good product and competing on quality and value.
This kind of competition does not exist in the markets Microsofts dominates and they continue to use their wealth to limit competition. Just look at the Verizon-Microsoft deal where Microsoft's BING search engine, via an update, replaced all other choices of Blackberry phone user's phones. These exclusionary deals don't result in better product and market choice. So it's great to see Google and Apple competing by making better products and services. And I welcome Apple to the search or mobile ad markets too if it means a better products for consumers. I find it hard to believe that Apple would even consider a play with Microsoft thinking that it will help them compete with Android. Apple makes a good profit off their Mac franchise not by being the lowend player, they do it with quality hardware and software people are willing to pay a bit more for. Same for the iPhone and the iPod. it's good to have real competition in this market. IMO
from the article: "Bing just keeps on gaining market share, and is now growing faster than ever before. "
doesn't that just sound like an ad or something? It sure doesn't sound like an unbiased report to me and my guess is that because of the previous report of BING losing share in Dec, someone financed this nice little 'research' paper and report to tell the world+dog that BING is really doing just fine. Just like we heard for months and months how great Windows Vista was doing while at the same time Microsoft was scrambling to throw out a patch they called Windows 7 to replace it.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. IMO
Atom on 45nm is old news, it's how they got into the game while the ARM systems were still on 65nm. Now that many ARM processors are going to 45nm and getting multi-core and over 1GHz speeds, it forced Intel to bump their 32nm process plan forward. This is why I brought up the FTC comment. As long as Intel is really charging fair prices based on cost then all is good. But, they normally charge high prices for new chips on the new process tech and I questioned if they were going to charge a comparable price. Show the 32nm Atom sizes and some pricing and we should be able to tell if it really is $/mm^2 they are charging.
I doubt that is the case. Like I said, using the same silicon process they use for their new high end chips and selling them at prices to compete with much smaller and cheaper ARM chips sounds like it would have to be subsidized. BTW, the ARM chips are being sold in the millions too because they are in all these smartphones.
I'm surprised Intel isn't using some of their other CPU tech to compete instead of trying to go x86 since all that baggage is not needed or used in these smartphones. And I've already read that some ARM systems are going to be built on some of AMD's factories at sub45nm real soon. Intel is going to have to rely on PR more than tech or it'll be eating up way too much of their wafer space for very little return just to keep up.
It is good to see the game get interesting again and competition pushing things ahead.
To top it off, Intel has to use their highend processing factories to get the chips in the ball park as ARM. They just announce the 32nm Atoms along with their new i3, i5 and i7 all on the same process. But as you mentioned, they have to sell the Atom far far far cheaper than the iX CPUs to be competitive. IMO, the FTC should look into this to make sure their not dumping. Atleast with main PC CPUs, they charged high prices at first and then ramped the price down as the newer processes started to come online. With these Atoms, they can't charge what they cost and still be competitive.
And these new phones will probably have a fan and require 2GB of memory so it can run Windows. lol. If they only talk about Gnu/Linux then we'll know they are serious but if they pull Microsoft in, you know it's a PR game and like the netbook segment, it'll run the prices up so high few will want them.
maybe the image used on this topics OP? Seriously, Intel has to make their Atom chips on the top-of-the-line 32nm or better process equipment just to be in the ball game with the ARM or PPC chips with regards to performance per watt. They now want to put x86 chips in smartphones? I guess they can try to spin up the press about this failure and hope they can drag it out for another few years. Maybe at 24nm it'll work but by then, ARM will be on 32nm and probably running quad cores and still beating them.
My guess is that LG is getting paid by Intel to play along and nothing more.
and things like ActiveX don't apply to the "been tacked on as a shitty after thought" comment? From what I've seen, Microsoft is the king of tacking things on as a shitty after thought otherwise they'd not still be known for security and reliability problems. Rebooting a Windows computer is still the number one recommendation for 'fixing' a broken Windows system across many IT orgs and reinstalling Windows is probably still in the top 10 things done to 'fix' the computer.
Besides, it's been Microsoft's attacking of software application vendors on their platform which has lead to so much being attempted in the browser since it isolates them so much from Microsoft. You don't hear so much of what software vendors software broke at every release of a new version of Microsoft Windows. That's because more and more business applications are fed from app servers to browsers and a minimum standard feature set must be met in the browser for it to be useful across the web and therefore IntraNet.
This has little to do with the browser being the problem, it is about the design of the Windows OS not doing it's own memory protection and letting applications run many things as admin when they should be run as the user and they should not be accessing OS or other application space memory. This is another crutch for a bad design but it'll help sell more hardware if that's what you want.
really? sandboxing desktop apps? Look at what one of the design goals of any real OS is and providing security, memory protection( from other apps and OS space ), indirect access to hardware, and smooth multitasking between apps and OS are right up there near the top. Memory protection is WAY up there near the top unless you're looking at special purpose realtime applications or micro-controller apps. Now what we are seeing on Windows is yet another layer in an attempt to fix a bad design and one which will continue to slow down the system while pushing the hardware. It's great if you are out to sell more expensive hardware and you don't want lower end( cheaper priced ) hardware to run your software. You know, like how Vista ran so good on netbooks and how Windows 7 is better than Vista at that but still worst than Windows XP.
Sandboxing is basically what virtual machines like VMWare, VirtualBox, KVM, VirtualPC all do. Off of Windows, it gives users a way to run Windows without rebooting their main OS. On Windows, it gives businesses a way to keep one crashing Windows server from taking down the other servers and in the desktop it lets users boot Linux without rebooting Windows. But for app protection? That's what the OS is supposed to be doing.
I know that people are not talking about Windows Mobile anymore and many are talking about Android as opposed to iPhone. And you would be surprised at how many people who've used Microsoft for a long time are talking about getting an Apple computer instead of a Windows based box. The price hits them the most and the financially stable ones are getting Apples while the others fall back on the WinTel bandwagon because of price. The iPod opened up peoples minds to something other than Microsoft, the iPhone blew the doors open along with a compelling OSX operating system and nice looking hardware.
Microsoft can't afford to look like they are losing anything because when that switch is thrown, the house of cards falls and falls fast. People are funny that way.
Microsoft wishes they could create something which makes a profit but they don't really have to, they've been running on the Windows OS and MS Office gravy trains for over 2 decades. Zune+Xbox+WindowsCE=billions in losses but that's ok, it keeps the perception Microsoft and Windows are important and valuable so Windows keeps racking in the dough. IMO
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FYI, the platform is currently restricted to a maximum of a 10.1" display as per Microsoft and vendors tied in any way to Microsoft must abide by that. Did you not read about the ASUS executive apologizing for showing a non Windows netbook last year with Microsoft on stage?
If Microsoft can't continue to threaten the manufacturers of these devices and they finally start hitting the market, you will start seeing 12", 15" and larger devices running multi-core ARM processors. That is a big _if_ because Microsoft will do everything they can to stop this. As someone mentioned, even if Microsoft ported Windows XP or 7 to ARM, they will not have the application base GNU/Linux already has and the more productive attack for them is limiting the market. They did that with the original netbook market by signing them up with amazing marketing kickback deals which cost Microsoft millions but kicked GNU/Linux off most products if not off the retail shelves. They don't have a technology answer and their first answer has always been blocking so that will continue.
If you've seen GNU/Linux running on a 256MB Cortex-a8 system you would be thinking, 'wow, there's potential here'. If you see GNU/Linux running on an a9 system, you'd be saying 'OMG that is amazing - I want one'. Microsoft will be fighting this one with all guns firing. I saw a video recently of an a9 platform doing 1080p video and they said it was only using 5 watts. That's less than 500mA at 12V and for battery based products, that's a big deal.
LoB
so the coupons are only for putting SUSE inside a Microsoft hosted virtual machine? If that is the case, it's quite obvious that they spent the money to keep Windows installed. IMO.
LoB
there is ample evidence that flaws existed in MS IE for months, and sometimes years, and Microsoft knew about them and did not fix. That in itself throws out the idea that anyone outside of Microsoft has any clue as to how many flaws there have been or are. Hiding flaws does not mean they do not exist.
On another note, there should be plenty of evidence of flaws and exploits which were in IE but not in Firefox, Opera, or even Safari. Things where IE has intimate knowledge with stuff like ActiveX, COM, their JavaScript engine, and all the other tentacles going from IE into the Windows OS.
Therefore the comment that there is "no evidence" sounds too much like it came from Microsoft because it is really a question asking for technical proof and you are not going to get that in a parliamentary discussion. And notice he didn't say he's asking for proof, he stated there is "no evidence" so he seems to think he's some kind of expert in this area.
Proof of even one flaw due directly to unique ties between IE and the Windows OS is proof that it is less secure because the others do not have those ties. Counting security updates is invalidated by the facts that Microsoft withholds flaws and public information on flaws. So either Microsoft must open source IE to prove the flaw count issue or it must be declared less secure. IMO
LoB
I've not seen or heard of a single instance of this being enforced and have seen a few situations where law enforcement should have done something but didn't. I saw only one copy radio on the loud speaker to put the phone down.
there is little to no compliance so who could the ban be effective?
LoB
He failed at providing a virus immune system in the computer industry so maybe he thinks if he does it in the medical field people will forget about the other failure? In the medical field, it has been proven to work so another failure is unlikely unless people start cutting of the arms where the shots were administered, That'll come later when the Windows logo starts showing up on peoples foreheads.
/.?
I'm just looking for a connection to computers and technology here since I didn't see he was helping fund new research, just passing out what's already been done. Nice but why post that in
LoB
tablets build muscles by requiring you to hold the tablet out in front of you and to hold your arms up to the screen when doing any interacting with the device. So it burns calories and is good for you. Something a laptop or netbook won't do because they sit on your lap, desk, or coffee table and you rest your hands on them when using them.
LoB
funny, in 2006 they also said that they like this because it gets more people familiar and therefore addicted to Windows. Being two faced for the sake of business and profits don't you think? Anything goes.
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9
LoB
Microsoft's business tactics and China's public policies have some overlap. Microsoft probably sees little wrong with how the Chinese government runs the country as shown by the Gates and Ballmer statements. They resemble each other.
LoB
if the first Google Voice iPhone app was a VOIP app, then this is probably something much different. I doubt this is a VOIP implementation of Google Voice and is probably just a small interface to their call forwarding service built into Google Voice. In this setup, you tell Google Voice what number you want to call but also them them what local phone you want to use( one on your desk or iPhone ) and Google voice will first call that local phone and then call the other person. In this case, they would be just calling the iPhone over the AT&T network but the calls would all be going through Google Voices exchange and the remote phone would see your Google Voice phone number, not your iPhone number.
The only problem Apple might have with this is probably via AT&T who may not like how Google is starting to move into the phone network business. Apple shouldn't care much because it's basically a simple web app to a server which then results in the wireless phone service being used. BFD IMO
LoB
or it uses the web interface to Google Voice, lets you search your phonebook or select a person to call and is prepositioned so that your iPhone number is the forwarding number. With just these parts, Google Voice will call your iPhone and once you pick it up, they'll then make the call out to that person you wanted to call. The phone number the other person will see is your Google Voice number, not your iPhone number.
ie, not a VOIP app. I could be completely wrong too.
LoB
it's always looked like we're going to be stuck in the 90s based mentality of the computer interface for decades to come. NextStep and OpenDoc had chances to change things but failed market choices and anti-competitive attacks from Microsoft doomed those to history. Games changers like the Bento filesystem and component based applications are now only starting to show up in vague ways as web pages in browsers using AJAX and advanced HTML features. The URL and rich widget enabled desktops have replace Bento but for the most part, we're unable to build this ourselves or exchange this information with others except for pointing them to places where this stuff has been integrated.
But seeing how completely nonexistent computer education is, most people are taxed beyond their abilities to use an addressbook to create a new email to send to a friend. Reply-to is what they know and clicking a certain sequence is how they do things. But a dumb userbase is great for maintaining the status quo.
LoB
I wonder how much of SOM technology had to be replicated on top of Windows to get there products on Windows. I also remember how Microsoft built a multi-threaded Windows Explorer version in the Chicago betas but the Windows OS did threading so poorly that they ended up ripping out most of the threading. The OS/2 kernel and the OO SOM system enabled amazing stuff on little resources. I remember seeing someone say that the kernel and PM took 8MB and the WPS took another 8MB on an OS/2 Warp system. I don't recall what Object Desktop took above that but I do remember people talking about caching issues and therefore some memory problems. But these were the days of 16MB and 32MB of memory in the early to mid 90s. I never saw what Stardocks stuff did on Windows after I tried developing some NT apps and kept having issues with memory and poor threading. I stuck with OS/2 for longer than most and Linux provided enough power and control that the immature desktops were worth dealing with. And all the reboots in Windows still drives me to laughter at the ridiculousness of that.
Enlightenment did and still does have an appealing look to it. It was the consistency and features of the WPS which made it so much of a pleasure to use and work with and Stardock added extra pizzaz which took it well above anything on the market even today.
LoB
In the 90s, with the OO( Object Oriented ) Workplace Shell on OS/2, a company called Stardock Systems came up with a great desktop enhancing package( Object Desktop ) which I'd heard was also being used to build screens for the film industry. It really made an OS/2 desktop pop and back then, only the NextStep UI can close to the default WPS. I don't think anything came close to what Stardock did with the WPS using their desktop extension Object Desktop.
The article could have went into what they use and what they've used. It was pretty shallow without that info IMO.
LoB
he is the one who apologized for showing an ARM Linux based device at a big computer show last year and he did so with some likely help and probably poking from Microsoft:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_strikes_back_at_linux_netbook_push
And what is with that $399 price the article talks about regarding the original netbooks? The price was $249 and it is Microsoft who has been pushing for higher prices and requiring it because of the excess hardware required just to run Windows.
In other words, it is just a PR pitch from another puppet of Microsoft's. And they pretty much want the netbook dead or declared dead because ARM based devices are about to eat their lunch. Microsoft still has nothing to combat Linux on ARM and Intel is hoping they can hold off the market til they start making x86 based CPUs on single digit processes so the power usage competes with last years ARM chips.
A whole bunch of big players want netbooks dead and declaring it is helps them because the uninformed will believe it. IMO.
LoB
a number of years ago, Microsoft paid AT&T $5 billion to use Microsoft's embedded OS in their STBs/DVRs. And the partnership was born. Of late, AT&T once again went with the least likely to succeed company, Microsoft, for their front to back solution for IPTV and Microsoft took them to the cleaners. Even Sun, with a server capable of handling thousands of video streams couldn't sell it to AT&T because the contract said it had to run Windows.
Since this is all Microsofts stuff, a patent case against AT&T is really a patent case against Microsoft and hence we see Microsoft pulling out its guns in a classic Mexican Standoff. A large house of cards falls if Tivo is successful and because the AT&T/Microsoft IPTV stuff is just that, all Microsoft, it would be near impossible to get the Linux based Tivo into that rats nest. So I sure hope that the Tivo lawyers have an ounce of clue about that which they just entered.
LoB
mostly talking about the OS for the mobile phone market. Although I know way too many who still won't spend $300-$600 for phone even though they end up paying more over the 2 year contract, I'm hopeful that many see what Google is doing with the Nexus One is a way out of that lockin. Opening up that lockin, or should I say lock-out, might also open up the market to other providers since they won't require huge profits to get customers via new phone lockin deals.
One step at a time.
LoB
thank goodness it is real competition and not the kind of competition Microsoft plays such as buying up another vendors customers and paying them to use Microsoft's technology. Apple came out with a great piece of hardware and software to back it up and they took over the mess which was also called "the smartphone market". That was three years ago and Microsoft has come up with pretty much nothing comparable on the software side. But what Microsoft had done was pay off every phone vendor at last years big mobile phone conference to _not_ talk about anything but Windows Mobile. So the public and press knew nothing about the Android wave which was about to overflow the market by the end of the year. On the hardware side, in the open platform segment, they have been getting there but still not close to what's been in the iPhone. It again took Apple to put the Cortex-A8 CPU in their phone to get the rest of the market to wake up to the performance levels obtainable using that technology. But like how quickly Apple sprung onto the wasteland which was called the smartphone segment, Google purchased a small company who put together a very nice phone software platform called Android and got it out there. They haven't been paying companies to not talk about other companies products and they know they need to make it as compelling, or better, than the Apple iPhone. Wow, real competition by making good product and competing on quality and value.
This kind of competition does not exist in the markets Microsofts dominates and they continue to use their wealth to limit competition. Just look at the Verizon-Microsoft deal where Microsoft's BING search engine, via an update, replaced all other choices of Blackberry phone user's phones. These exclusionary deals don't result in better product and market choice. So it's great to see Google and Apple competing by making better products and services. And I welcome Apple to the search or mobile ad markets too if it means a better products for consumers. I find it hard to believe that Apple would even consider a play with Microsoft thinking that it will help them compete with Android. Apple makes a good profit off their Mac franchise not by being the lowend player, they do it with quality hardware and software people are willing to pay a bit more for. Same for the iPhone and the iPod. it's good to have real competition in this market. IMO
LoB
from the article: "Bing just keeps on gaining market share, and is now growing faster than ever before. "
doesn't that just sound like an ad or something? It sure doesn't sound like an unbiased report to me and my guess is that because of the previous report of BING losing share in Dec, someone financed this nice little 'research' paper and report to tell the world+dog that BING is really doing just fine. Just like we heard for months and months how great Windows Vista was doing while at the same time Microsoft was scrambling to throw out a patch they called Windows 7 to replace it.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. IMO
LoB
Atom on 45nm is old news, it's how they got into the game while the ARM systems were still on 65nm. Now that many ARM processors are going to 45nm and getting multi-core and over 1GHz speeds, it forced Intel to bump their 32nm process plan forward. This is why I brought up the FTC comment. As long as Intel is really charging fair prices based on cost then all is good. But, they normally charge high prices for new chips on the new process tech and I questioned if they were going to charge a comparable price. Show the 32nm Atom sizes and some pricing and we should be able to tell if it really is $/mm^2 they are charging.
I doubt that is the case. Like I said, using the same silicon process they use for their new high end chips and selling them at prices to compete with much smaller and cheaper ARM chips sounds like it would have to be subsidized. BTW, the ARM chips are being sold in the millions too because they are in all these smartphones.
I'm surprised Intel isn't using some of their other CPU tech to compete instead of trying to go x86 since all that baggage is not needed or used in these smartphones. And I've already read that some ARM systems are going to be built on some of AMD's factories at sub45nm real soon. Intel is going to have to rely on PR more than tech or it'll be eating up way too much of their wafer space for very little return just to keep up.
It is good to see the game get interesting again and competition pushing things ahead.
LoB
To top it off, Intel has to use their highend processing factories to get the chips in the ball park as ARM. They just announce the 32nm Atoms along with their new i3, i5 and i7 all on the same process. But as you mentioned, they have to sell the Atom far far far cheaper than the iX CPUs to be competitive. IMO, the FTC should look into this to make sure their not dumping. Atleast with main PC CPUs, they charged high prices at first and then ramped the price down as the newer processes started to come online. With these Atoms, they can't charge what they cost and still be competitive.
And these new phones will probably have a fan and require 2GB of memory so it can run Windows. lol. If they only talk about Gnu/Linux then we'll know they are serious but if they pull Microsoft in, you know it's a PR game and like the netbook segment, it'll run the prices up so high few will want them.
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maybe the image used on this topics OP? Seriously, Intel has to make their Atom chips on the top-of-the-line 32nm or better process equipment just to be in the ball game with the ARM or PPC chips with regards to performance per watt. They now want to put x86 chips in smartphones? I guess they can try to spin up the press about this failure and hope they can drag it out for another few years. Maybe at 24nm it'll work but by then, ARM will be on 32nm and probably running quad cores and still beating them.
My guess is that LG is getting paid by Intel to play along and nothing more.
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and things like ActiveX don't apply to the "been tacked on as a shitty after thought" comment? From what I've seen, Microsoft is the king of tacking things on as a shitty after thought otherwise they'd not still be known for security and reliability problems. Rebooting a Windows computer is still the number one recommendation for 'fixing' a broken Windows system across many IT orgs and reinstalling Windows is probably still in the top 10 things done to 'fix' the computer.
Besides, it's been Microsoft's attacking of software application vendors on their platform which has lead to so much being attempted in the browser since it isolates them so much from Microsoft. You don't hear so much of what software vendors software broke at every release of a new version of Microsoft Windows. That's because more and more business applications are fed from app servers to browsers and a minimum standard feature set must be met in the browser for it to be useful across the web and therefore IntraNet.
This has little to do with the browser being the problem, it is about the design of the Windows OS not doing it's own memory protection and letting applications run many things as admin when they should be run as the user and they should not be accessing OS or other application space memory. This is another crutch for a bad design but it'll help sell more hardware if that's what you want.
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really? sandboxing desktop apps? Look at what one of the design goals of any real OS is and providing security, memory protection( from other apps and OS space ), indirect access to hardware, and smooth multitasking between apps and OS are right up there near the top. Memory protection is WAY up there near the top unless you're looking at special purpose realtime applications or micro-controller apps. Now what we are seeing on Windows is yet another layer in an attempt to fix a bad design and one which will continue to slow down the system while pushing the hardware. It's great if you are out to sell more expensive hardware and you don't want lower end( cheaper priced ) hardware to run your software. You know, like how Vista ran so good on netbooks and how Windows 7 is better than Vista at that but still worst than Windows XP.
Sandboxing is basically what virtual machines like VMWare, VirtualBox, KVM, VirtualPC all do. Off of Windows, it gives users a way to run Windows without rebooting their main OS. On Windows, it gives businesses a way to keep one crashing Windows server from taking down the other servers and in the desktop it lets users boot Linux without rebooting Windows. But for app protection? That's what the OS is supposed to be doing.
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I know that people are not talking about Windows Mobile anymore and many are talking about Android as opposed to iPhone. And you would be surprised at how many people who've used Microsoft for a long time are talking about getting an Apple computer instead of a Windows based box. The price hits them the most and the financially stable ones are getting Apples while the others fall back on the WinTel bandwagon because of price. The iPod opened up peoples minds to something other than Microsoft, the iPhone blew the doors open along with a compelling OSX operating system and nice looking hardware.
Microsoft can't afford to look like they are losing anything because when that switch is thrown, the house of cards falls and falls fast. People are funny that way.
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Microsoft wishes they could create something which makes a profit but they don't really have to, they've been running on the Windows OS and MS Office gravy trains for over 2 decades. Zune+Xbox+WindowsCE=billions in losses but that's ok, it keeps the perception Microsoft and Windows are important and valuable so Windows keeps racking in the dough. IMO
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