Now Windows has ~90% of the market place and Apple has ~6%.
Wrong. That reflects the overall computer market, not the graphic design market. Mac sales contribute a very significant percentage of total sales for Adobe.
We do not accept cash payments; you may use cash to obtain money orders from the United States Postal Service, Western Union, and many other vendors in the United States. Internationally, we recommend the use of American Express worldwide money orders denominated in US Dollars.
If you wish to pay us anonymously, contact us in advance to request special arrangements. As we have a very protective privacy policy, such requests will be granted only if there are extenuating circumstances.
Does this mean they've given up on CardSpace, which is built into Vista right now? I thought it was a much better solution to the need for single sign-on. Check out thechannel9 video.
Dude, I'm a militant capitalist, and even I think you're off your rocker. Looking at a single government's tyranny and generalizing that such is "the nature of government" is thoroughly anarchist and certainly not something Ayn Rand would ever say. Your government isn't perfect, but I'll be damned if there was a better one on this earth today.
I didn't ask for its first legal implementation, but for its first conception. That, I submit, was an evolutionary process, not a single insight of one man.
Could you expand on that? I'm interested in thinking about business models, and windowpain's idea about emulating the hardware competition in the PC world (but being stricter) seems the best idea to me.
Thank you for that rant (minus the ad hominem), but I already heard the whole IP-was-originally-meant-for-the-public-good shtick at college. You're welcome to continue dreaming about collective ownership of property, that's not my problem.
Because OSX is, say it with me, the property of Apple Computers, Inc. I'm sorry if you reject the notion of intellectual property, but please refrain from accusing the government of conspiracy. They defined rights back in 1776, when software was a kind of clothing.
You forgot the part where windowpain said they could "enforce stringent standards to keep the Mac's much vaunted integration of hardware and software." I actually think it's a good idea because it gets the best of both models. The strictness probably wouldn't allow the same cheapness you find with Windows PCs, but it would allow cheaper macs than present day.
With the advantage of being better-working, OSX could finally be competitive with Windows.
So the standard here is: If you make an offer to a company that they cannot refuse else they go out of business, the offer is coercive. Can you imagine how many business deals today are coercive by this definition?
Equality under the law (as applied to companies, at least) is a means to an end. That end is a healthy marketplace - in the majority of cases, discrimination does no-one any good in the long term.
This is a very awkward view. Are you saying the fight for civil rights wasn't about moral principle, but economic expediency? The idea that equality under the law is a "means to an end" is the exact opposite of the view of our Founding Fathers that rights are inalienable (i.e., they're not convenient ways to ensure a healthy marketplace, they are held by all peaceful people under all circumstances as a matter of principle).
That's what government does all day, every day. That's the point of government.
The point of government is to run businesses? Not to kill terrorists or jail murderers and pedophiles? Times are a changin'.
It doesn't allow them to go to the $100 million per license mark because the market won't bear that (and it's frankly a rather silly suggestion), but it does allow them to go many times above the "natural price" of the product, and to invest less in the quality of the product, with minimal repercussions.
Of course it's silly, but it was suggested that monopolies can "dictate" prices. Not very good word usage.
* For example, IE 7 is finally coming out, and has cool new (to Microsoft anyway) features, now that they have Firefox to compete with.
You need to look at more than just a high-level summary of the history, including the actions Standard Oil took long before being broken up.
You missed my point: "there's no telling what they may have raised prices to" is complete speculation. No responsible historical summary can provide evidence for this.
Who needs insider knowledge? Microsoft is a public company; you can read the SEC reports.
I meant that I don't pretend to have the expertise to know fully how MS gets from making a product to putting a price tag on it.
In case you've never studied economics, a rough definition of elasticity is the maximum price that consumers will pay for a given good.
Which consumers? I'm sure MS could find a few (very few) rich consumers who would pay $1000 for a license. The point is that they are not maximizing their sales. As you mentioned, the ideal price point is at the equilibrium point when the supply curve crosses the demand curve. Putting the price anywhere else either hurts your sales because you're not making enough per sale, or hurts your sales because you're not getting enough customers.
...and if it becomes obvious that MS monopoly power is the only thing keeping Windows on 95% of the desktops,
Well, there's also that pesky fact that no other operating system company provides anything close to the developer support of Microsoft. Show me anything comparable to MSDN, please. I would actually agree that Windows is ugly, poor performing, and not fun to work with, but that's not what matters in the market - courting developers is what matters. Apple doesn't do it, Linux certainly doesn't do it.
Standard Oil lowered prices in the effort to build the monopoly, forcing competitors out of business. Even before they were officially broken up, public concern caused them to avoid raising prices (to avoid being broken up, which happened anyway), but if it weren't for that possibility, there's no telling what they may have raised prices to, particularly as demand was set to skyrocket in a few years when the internal combustion engine became popular.
Where's your evidence for this? The facts only suggest that they lowered prices. All this talk about motivations is compelete conjecture.
Microsoft's prices are already artificially high. Microsoft Office costs $400. Given that all R&D expenses on the product were recouped long ago, a healthy market would have pushed prices to a fraction of that. StarOffice pricing is more in line with where office suite prices should be.
Wouldn't you find it arrogant if other people told you how to run your business? How much money to charge? I don't have the insider knowledge about what total costs MS has, nor do I pretend to.
You really consider that a good situation?
The possibility of competition is what keeps them going. Otherwise, they would have done exactly what the slippery slope of your theory suggests they would do - they would charge $100 million per license. Why not? After all, monopolies can "dictate" whatever price they want.
One where competition exists and no single player can unilaterally dictate prices.
The idea that a company with large market share can "dictate" prices is a myth. As already noted, Standard Oil lowered prices, not raised. Even with 100% marketshare, companies still haven't escaped free market forces. If Microsoft raises its prices artificially - say, to $100 million per license - new competitors will rise to take advantage of the situation.
Microsoft, for the most part, isn't competing against existing competitors, but against the possibility of competition.
And that is amplified in a crowded store where there is in audience, and even the threat of some &**hole butting in like you are mistreating your child.
Has this really happened to you? I can understand someone intervening after seeing someone hit his own kid - I certainly would intervene - but I think I would blow a fuse if someone ordered me to buy something for my kid.
I just wanted to say that everyone has a breaking point.
I would sooner take the kid back to the car, drive him home, and go back to the store than cave in. It sets the precedent for future whining.
At any rate, my only point is that criticizing the corporations (such easy targets!) for this is simply wrong. Parents have to owe up to their responsibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Now Windows has ~90% of the market place and Apple has ~6%.
Wrong. That reflects the overall computer market, not the graphic design market. Mac sales contribute a very significant percentage of total sales for Adobe.
Their website disagrees with you.
We do not accept cash payments; you may use cash to obtain money orders from the United States Postal Service, Western Union, and many other vendors in the United States. Internationally, we recommend the use of American Express worldwide money orders denominated in US Dollars.If you wish to pay us anonymously, contact us in advance to request special arrangements. As we have a very protective privacy policy, such requests will be granted only if there are extenuating circumstances.
I think your childhood self confused a meter with a yard.
Does this mean they've given up on CardSpace, which is built into Vista right now? I thought it was a much better solution to the need for single sign-on. Check out thechannel9 video.
Please remove yourself from the internet.
And open source prevents those open formats from being embraced, extended, and extinguished...or at least that's what I'm told.
Now go pay your taxes young man.
Google? What are you talking about? He should have seen Microsoft as the enemy, you dolt.
I didn't ask for its first legal implementation, but for its first conception. That, I submit, was an evolutionary process, not a single insight of one man.
I didn't know someone "created" IP. Perhaps you could offer me the name of this brilliant man.
Could you expand on that? I'm interested in thinking about business models, and windowpain's idea about emulating the hardware competition in the PC world (but being stricter) seems the best idea to me.
Thank you for that rant (minus the ad hominem), but I already heard the whole IP-was-originally-meant-for-the-public-good shtick at college. You're welcome to continue dreaming about collective ownership of property, that's not my problem.
Because OSX is, say it with me, the property of Apple Computers, Inc. I'm sorry if you reject the notion of intellectual property, but please refrain from accusing the government of conspiracy. They defined rights back in 1776, when software was a kind of clothing.
You forgot the part where windowpain said they could "enforce stringent standards to keep the Mac's much vaunted integration of hardware and software." I actually think it's a good idea because it gets the best of both models. The strictness probably wouldn't allow the same cheapness you find with Windows PCs, but it would allow cheaper macs than present day.
With the advantage of being better-working, OSX could finally be competitive with Windows.
Tell me about it. Confusing government coercion with the decisions of private companies happens all the time here for some reason.
Except that Apple is a private company, not a government.
So the standard here is: If you make an offer to a company that they cannot refuse else they go out of business, the offer is coercive. Can you imagine how many business deals today are coercive by this definition?
Equality under the law (as applied to companies, at least) is a means to an end. That end is a healthy marketplace - in the majority of cases, discrimination does no-one any good in the long term.
This is a very awkward view. Are you saying the fight for civil rights wasn't about moral principle, but economic expediency? The idea that equality under the law is a "means to an end" is the exact opposite of the view of our Founding Fathers that rights are inalienable (i.e., they're not convenient ways to ensure a healthy marketplace, they are held by all peaceful people under all circumstances as a matter of principle).
The point of government is to run businesses? Not to kill terrorists or jail murderers and pedophiles? Times are a changin'.
It doesn't allow them to go to the $100 million per license mark because the market won't bear that (and it's frankly a rather silly suggestion), but it does allow them to go many times above the "natural price" of the product, and to invest less in the quality of the product, with minimal repercussions.
Of course it's silly, but it was suggested that monopolies can "dictate" prices. Not very good word usage.
* For example, IE 7 is finally coming out, and has cool new (to Microsoft anyway) features, now that they have Firefox to compete with.
IE does suck. I'm using Firefox right now.
You missed my point: "there's no telling what they may have raised prices to" is complete speculation. No responsible historical summary can provide evidence for this.
Who needs insider knowledge? Microsoft is a public company; you can read the SEC reports.
I meant that I don't pretend to have the expertise to know fully how MS gets from making a product to putting a price tag on it.
In case you've never studied economics, a rough definition of elasticity is the maximum price that consumers will pay for a given good.
Which consumers? I'm sure MS could find a few (very few) rich consumers who would pay $1000 for a license. The point is that they are not maximizing their sales. As you mentioned, the ideal price point is at the equilibrium point when the supply curve crosses the demand curve. Putting the price anywhere else either hurts your sales because you're not making enough per sale, or hurts your sales because you're not getting enough customers.
Well, there's also that pesky fact that no other operating system company provides anything close to the developer support of Microsoft. Show me anything comparable to MSDN, please. I would actually agree that Windows is ugly, poor performing, and not fun to work with, but that's not what matters in the market - courting developers is what matters. Apple doesn't do it, Linux certainly doesn't do it.
Standard Oil lowered prices in the effort to build the monopoly, forcing competitors out of business. Even before they were officially broken up, public concern caused them to avoid raising prices (to avoid being broken up, which happened anyway), but if it weren't for that possibility, there's no telling what they may have raised prices to, particularly as demand was set to skyrocket in a few years when the internal combustion engine became popular.
Where's your evidence for this? The facts only suggest that they lowered prices. All this talk about motivations is compelete conjecture.
Microsoft's prices are already artificially high. Microsoft Office costs $400. Given that all R&D expenses on the product were recouped long ago, a healthy market would have pushed prices to a fraction of that. StarOffice pricing is more in line with where office suite prices should be.
Wouldn't you find it arrogant if other people told you how to run your business? How much money to charge? I don't have the insider knowledge about what total costs MS has, nor do I pretend to.
You really consider that a good situation?
The possibility of competition is what keeps them going. Otherwise, they would have done exactly what the slippery slope of your theory suggests they would do - they would charge $100 million per license. Why not? After all, monopolies can "dictate" whatever price they want.
One where competition exists and no single player can unilaterally dictate prices.
The idea that a company with large market share can "dictate" prices is a myth. As already noted, Standard Oil lowered prices, not raised. Even with 100% marketshare, companies still haven't escaped free market forces. If Microsoft raises its prices artificially - say, to $100 million per license - new competitors will rise to take advantage of the situation.
Microsoft, for the most part, isn't competing against existing competitors, but against the possibility of competition.
And that is amplified in a crowded store where there is in audience, and even the threat of some &**hole butting in like you are mistreating your child.
Has this really happened to you? I can understand someone intervening after seeing someone hit his own kid - I certainly would intervene - but I think I would blow a fuse if someone ordered me to buy something for my kid.
I just wanted to say that everyone has a breaking point.
I would sooner take the kid back to the car, drive him home, and go back to the store than cave in. It sets the precedent for future whining.
At any rate, my only point is that criticizing the corporations (such easy targets!) for this is simply wrong. Parents have to owe up to their responsibility.
I have no idea what you are talking about or what your point is.
You bet. To do otherwise undermines the competition that is essential to a healthy marketplace.
How do you define a healthy marketplace? One where success is punished? That seems quite the opposite of healthy.
Right. Standard Oil was great, wasn't it?
Yes, it was. Rockefeller lowered the price of oil dramatically - nobody disputes this.