No, Apple re-brands a bunch of existing technology and sells it.
The making of the computers is reserved for the many vendors Apple utilizes.
Apple is akin to Virgin but for computing/technology. I believe if Virgin decided to start selling computers it would quite easily eat in to the Apple market-share.
Apple tries it on but they simply don't carry the industry clout that say MS had/has, but the same tactics are shown on a more micro perspective. Granted all IT vendors pull the same crap. Its only when MS does it the ground shakes.
Not to me. Apple hasn't actually actively tried to destroy other companies yet.
Adobe? Amazon? Google (indirectly)?
And they haven't held back the industry for years (ie6, windows, office).
Because they haven't been a position too, but if they were with the product range they have/had, they would of held it back more. Limiting technologies to simplify them to be easy-to-use is primarily what Apple does. This simplicity has a weltering weakness, simple means less flexible.
They don't have such an important tie in (music is movable now, iphone apps aren't so important).
No, but they'd like to, iPad's marks an attempt at print media world. Using connections to Murdoch to help sell it.
They are still not dominant where it counts (desktop/laptops).
They are one brand among many, this wont change any time soon.
Apple haven't used dirty tactics to get what they want (threatening PC manufactures who included more than one OS).
Apple haven't done any of the abuses that Microsoft was convicted and let off for.
Microsoft got ass raped by the EU, but if you think about the SUSE incident or the Netscape battles, Apple does just as bad or is doing just as bad to Adobe at present.
Apple are big on the consumer side, not on the business side (mores the shame).
Because they simplify and limit things too much, their attempts at introducing things into the business world have been a failure because of the lack of versatility. Not to say Microsoft is the most flexible (I'm a Linux person) but it's considerably better.
Since a lot of hosting automation software (cPanel) sets up an a name for @ giving the power singularly to apache also lends it self to have the ability to mask it as being secure.
It isnt a nameserver its moreover a webserver one.
Its true that Apple isn't the only culprit. I guess that's why i threw Microsoft and Google into my argument.
When it comes to cloud computing you can see Apple and Microsoft already baring down on several cloud concepts trying to patient therefore limiting the market from innovation without a M$ or Mac tax.
The video format patients and the client side database concepts to name just 2.
WebDav is hardly the solution I'm looking for though, I'm talking about the concept of being able to plug into a local VPN update all the iPhones and iPads in that VPN with a new software update. At present its all through the appstore, a public repository which means live code transit over the web.
Funny story, i needed to access SSH on one of my linux servers the other day to solve a code issue on one of our UAT environments. Being on-site at a clients network, I called the admin on my company's end told him to punch a temporary hole in the firewall so I could SSH in, later finding out the corporate network (which still forces everyone to use ie6 still) wouldn't allow it.
This sort of thing is typical for government, as it is for public companies, as it is for any decent sized network. If you try and sell the AppStore concept to an IT manager of a firm like that, explaining to them that in order to update 100 iPads which they might use as front desk solution as automated "check in" tools at a bus station that the code updates would come from the AppStore, you'd be told, piss off, who's the next supplier?
This is only of one of many where I've seen Mac based solutions simply not cut the mustard, shall we go down the thin client road?... In fact if Apple was smart they'd emphasize the X11 remote desktop tools and revolutionize the thin client world, yet alas, we cant expect them to really form a "revolution" because lets face it, its Mac they only want to re-brand existing technology, make it shiny, limit its use, then call it a revolution, shock horror that they'd actually do it properly.
I call bullshit here, because I'm a developer and I write software for a living, a closed solution implies that eventually Apple will be able to do everything and one day my job will be redundant.
Writing proper business solutions, concepts and ideas is something that Apple will never touch because its niche and industry focused.
Apple, will never make industry specific "sophisticated" applications only simple ones. Nor will Google, Nor will Microsoft. They'll sell programs that the masses will use, but tools for businesses with specific needs, It's never going to happen.
This is and has always been the biggest (most money) market in the entire of computing world.
How many Mac lovers out there just suck it up and only use Macs at home and then fret about it in the workplace spouting "I wish we used Macs here"? ever knowing the real reason why their complaint is simply not realistic.
Mac is trying to kill cloud, self distributed computing and virtualization. Mac is trying to limit our device usage. We are embarking on the industry of using tablets and phones to run core business functions at a press of a button and in the midst of it all the biggest system vendor is limiting? Absurd.
Limit distribution and consolidation / overall control, its a determinant not an advantage.
There are plenty of products now that are out there for the same price (cheaper) that does the same job just as easy as the iPad/iPhone. If I make the recommendation to a customer they need to buy 100 Android phones for staff because Apple tries to control a distribution model, forcing us to post updates on a live internet environment, the company's IT department is simply going to comply (with a smile) both from a cost and security factor.
Well this solidifies my personal standpoint on Mac.
I am an iPhone user (starting to regret buying it tbh), Toshiba Laptop user (touchscreen), HP server purchaser and desktop user.
I think in the business world Toshiba makes the best laptops and HP offers the best hardware support for long term solutions.
As for one day replacing my desktop as a Mac, there isn't a great desire to move over because the advantages are so minimal its almost trivial too see them. I've been using my HP for over 3 1/2 years and it still moves as quick as it did the first day i switched it on.
I see Macs as an out-of-the-box solution, something I'd use in front of the TV wanting to look at websites. If it was going to be something I'd buy, it would be the iPad, and it would be only used while I'm sitting on the lounge and watching TV, see an ad or website on the program i'm watching, look it up with the iPad.
I couldn't see it posing more advantage for me other than that.
Moving on to my regrets with the iPhone, aside from the OS dieing on it and needing to restore recently, the continual battery problems has made me replace it in the last 3 months. I have atleast 2 friends whereby the touchscreens have failed completely on them, and I have always hear about the common issues with the iPhone on my day-to-day, poor battery, tethering useless, even some people claim its difficult to use!
To say Microsoft releases shit products but not recognize the amounts of problems I've heard with Apple, to be fair, Mac is defiantly the same as every other manufacturer I've seen regarding quality of hardware, nothing really separates them. Face it, they build things practically in the same factory as everyone else.
The upsides your saying a good. I.E longer shelf life on the original system is always good, the fact they put a lot of peripherals in the system to start with is also very useful. But... and here goes
The limitations Software wise for Mac are as follows:
- System virtualization is limited, no real product support for things like Virituzzo, Xen, etc. VMWare allows for Macs and so does Parallel Desktop solutions but nothing really that noteworthy.
- No real automation software for Cloud or hosting solutions cPanel/Plesk/H-Sphere. If there are they are small unknown brands in the industry not worth mentioning
- Not all that much in ways of thin client (Citrix doesn't really house anything for Mac there are some small OSS projects for it but nothing major)
- Gaming was a terrible shambles, i think the newest games they have for mac are at least 2 years behind PC and consoles
- Snow Leopard is too far behind in the industry to compare its systems against Exchange, Active Directory or SharePoint (just like its gaming). Its a good attempt but it's hardly the replaceable solution.
- The biggest use for a Mac is writing documents and storing photos and movies. They are in the midst of picking a fight with Adobe over flash, without Photoshop Mac loses their "graphical production" value. Microsoft office is still an integral part of using a Mac these days and they cant really do too much about that.
Mac servers "seemed" to be good idea at the time, that whole exercise was a tail between the legs scenario for them.
Now on to hardware.
- While its true that their *NIX base gives them the means to provide good driver support, but I wouldn't say their abilities are better then Windows/Linux. They are behind in this arena as not all vendors will bother releasing driver sets to work in Mac. Just like the Gaming/Server industries, its "Narrower" than what PC has in store.
- Upgrading a iMac is like upgrading your Notebook PC, since its all factory made slots for adding peripherals are limited. Its not really "upgrading" when it comes to Mac, its usually "replacing" which is the word I'd prefer to use.
- External devices are good for somethings and bad for others, If your looking at using the device as a backup tool then external is the way to go, pretty much for anything else you need internal and i refer back to my last point about their cases. You limit the case design you limit how much can be put into it.
I hear ya on that one AC, Apple users need to spend less time defending their favored product and more time on outlining its advantages. I'm happy to hear about whats good about Apple and in many cases agree with them. IMHO Apples products are tailored to a specific type of person, that's someone who wants something out-of-the-box and easy to use.
The critical issue for me is flexibility and no Mac person can give a good rebuttal against it. When you buy a Mac you're pretty much stuck with what you've got, they don't make good long term upgradable solutions like the other brands out there in the same marketplace.
The issue with Flash and how it is slow, its slow because of the API restrictions. This whole debacle came into the light about Flash after Apple made it an issue, before that nobody really cared and was happy to develop for it. Now Apple says Flash is crap so does everyone else. Well lets try not to use the power of FUD to always lean on the easy way out here, lets all be a bit more critical, even of your own loved product. Why not see the short coming and advantages from every POV not just one source.
iPad, is it going to replace Netbooks? no you simply can do too much with Netbooks, iPad works great for media and eBooks but lacks in its overall versatility, why? because the same problems the iPhone is presently trumped with. Apple wants to hammer down its App Store and stop flash from circumventing it. Does it mean the iPad is shit? for a lot of people its a very useful tool. What separates the market is geek/nerd/IT enthusiast vs the general computer user that has no intention of flipping the hood and is satisfied with what they have.
Apple people love to try and turn you, first they mod you down to buggery, then they try to say things like "Apple does more in-house development and hardware manufacturing then ever before" the flipside of that is, no they haven't they've outsourced a lot of it and turned themselves into more of an assembly line like dell rather then a vendor, they've become a much larger company so therefore what they do manufacture has expanded. Trying to tell to me that in the past they made a large portion of their own chipsets but now use Intel, ATI, nVidia, etc, however now they make their own cases and batteries, I'm like sheesh how can that compare. It's starting to brimming into a whole brainwashing exercise for me, i think its just sad.
Personally for me, Microsoft is a nasty business in some of its dealings but if we were to turn back the clock at those pivotal years and "powers to be" favored Mac at the time the IT industry we have today would be far less free, it would be suppressed by the control features Apple puts in their products and we would be years behind where we are today.
I would like to believe that, really i would, but history has shown us that better isnt always the best selling concept.
My attempts at using HTML5 on my iPhone have been clunky at best, I remember this game called PieMan, a rip from the PacMan we all love. The issue was the caching, i simply found it too slow, its navigation on the touch screen was temperamental and it would pick the worst times to hang on me and as a result i gave up on it all togeather in about 15 mins, granted it could of been bad programming HTML5 but for me it goes to show how experimental it is.
I think with maturity it could possibly fade flash out but then again there are far to many industry experienced developers out there making money of being a flash developer, it those you have to convince to use HTML5.
If someone was to build a good canvas app like Adobe Flash CS for HTML5, introduce it for free and have an easy to use API which can easily be implemented, then we would see the shake up we've all been waiting for.
I would imagine they would supply a fair amount of effort in the Open Source community, I really didn't think about that till you mentioned it though.
For me, what would allow me to place Mac as brand I'd buy in my own mind would not so much be the source of their technology because lets face it, you can buy American cars with German built engines as its typical for vendors to source components from different suppliers.
More so how much of the computer was actually created by Mac, it's interesting to see because where I've always looked at it as the chip was from Intel, the graphics cards were from nvidia/ati, the hdd is segate. So on an so fourth.
In reality, if I can bring a screwdriver too it and upgrade it myself and as long as it's competitively priced with interoperable components and brands, I'd buy it.
I'd also agree with 'dr chuck bunsen' about Xserve when i first saw it i thought this was the day things would change for Apple. Finally when I can walk into a dc and not be surrounded by wall-to-wall Dell servers is a day I'll be happy. Server wise I'm a G5 and G6 person:) and to be fair Apple does have to break a lot of ground and achieve stronger market acceptance before I'd include them into my next buying cycle for web servers.
We are getting off base here but i think it holds a shadow of relevancy to the article as far as following suit is concerned.
When can we label Apple as being a vendor vs reseller, similar to the likes of dell / hp? Aside from MacOS these days their "sexy" consolidation of their hardware, is becoming more and more stock standard, e.g. their move over to Intel, etc. As far as MacOS development goes the more *nix implementation takes place the more they seem to be chipping away their own development and implementing code from other sources, like a Linux distribution, aside from the fact Apple closes their source upon release.
I guess Apples diversity in the market will hinge on product diversity, simple sort of principle. Just like the old saying goes "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly" which is kind of the road Microsoft took, of course I'm not simply talking about OS's only, I'm more so talking about the product as a whole when it comes to Apple.
The more the road becomes traveled to make up the missing parts of the industry for them like Servers, Gaming etc, the more they lose their uniqueness and become more like everyone else.
Yeah well, I got modded troll for making a fairly harmless joke about Sarah Palin on a related post.
Fairly depressing to think Slashdot has become like this, its not really the poster being the troller any more, more like the person modding has become the troll.
Slashdot Mirror
What the? Troll?
I was really aiming for flaimbait, here ...
Apple makes computers.
No, Apple re-brands a bunch of existing technology and sells it.
The making of the computers is reserved for the many vendors Apple utilizes.
Apple is akin to Virgin but for computing/technology. I believe if Virgin decided to start selling computers it would quite easily eat in to the Apple market-share.
Don't you mean ...
Complain that Google has blocked them ... hmmm ... the Murdocks will ...
Yes, its in-conjunction with the iPad. Murdoch was spouting how much he loved the iPad and its pay-per-view concept with newspapers.
This is them trying to become the "App Store" of online News.
Stupid idea, perhaps, but you'll find its a bit more calculated than just "lets turn it off publicly and start charging for access"
Apple tries it on but they simply don't carry the industry clout that say MS had/has, but the same tactics are shown on a more micro perspective. Granted all IT vendors pull the same crap. Its only when MS does it the ground shakes.
Not to me. Apple hasn't actually actively tried to destroy other companies yet.
Adobe? Amazon? Google (indirectly)?
And they haven't held back the industry for years (ie6, windows, office).
Because they haven't been a position too, but if they were with the product range they have/had, they would of held it back more. Limiting technologies to simplify them to be easy-to-use is primarily what Apple does. This simplicity has a weltering weakness, simple means less flexible.
They don't have such an important tie in (music is movable now, iphone apps aren't so important).
No, but they'd like to, iPad's marks an attempt at print media world. Using connections to Murdoch to help sell it.
They are still not dominant where it counts (desktop/laptops).
They are one brand among many, this wont change any time soon.
Apple haven't used dirty tactics to get what they want (threatening PC manufactures who included more than one OS).
No, they create FUD instead. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/. Their price gouging stint on Amazon is another.
Apple haven't done any of the abuses that Microsoft was convicted and let off for.
Microsoft got ass raped by the EU, but if you think about the SUSE incident or the Netscape battles, Apple does just as bad or is doing just as bad to Adobe at present.
Apple are big on the consumer side, not on the business side (mores the shame).
Because they simplify and limit things too much, their attempts at introducing things into the business world have been a failure because of the lack of versatility. Not to say Microsoft is the most flexible (I'm a Linux person) but it's considerably better.
I see the best way is to notify admin upon a dns change, any external sites added get sent via email.
(sounds like a job for the guys at http://www.configserver.com/)
Since a lot of hosting automation software (cPanel) sets up an a name for @ giving the power singularly to apache also lends it self to have the ability to mask it as being secure.
It isnt a nameserver its moreover a webserver one.
Dr Claw: GADGET!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the Offtopic post Rupert.
Its true that Apple isn't the only culprit. I guess that's why i threw Microsoft and Google into my argument.
When it comes to cloud computing you can see Apple and Microsoft already baring down on several cloud concepts trying to patient therefore limiting the market from innovation without a M$ or Mac tax.
The video format patients and the client side database concepts to name just 2.
WebDav is hardly the solution I'm looking for though, I'm talking about the concept of being able to plug into a local VPN update all the iPhones and iPads in that VPN with a new software update. At present its all through the appstore, a public repository which means live code transit over the web.
Funny story, i needed to access SSH on one of my linux servers the other day to solve a code issue on one of our UAT environments. Being on-site at a clients network, I called the admin on my company's end told him to punch a temporary hole in the firewall so I could SSH in, later finding out the corporate network (which still forces everyone to use ie6 still) wouldn't allow it.
This sort of thing is typical for government, as it is for public companies, as it is for any decent sized network. If you try and sell the AppStore concept to an IT manager of a firm like that, explaining to them that in order to update 100 iPads which they might use as front desk solution as automated "check in" tools at a bus station that the code updates would come from the AppStore, you'd be told, piss off, who's the next supplier?
This is only of one of many where I've seen Mac based solutions simply not cut the mustard, shall we go down the thin client road? ... In fact if Apple was smart they'd emphasize the X11 remote desktop tools and revolutionize the thin client world, yet alas, we cant expect them to really form a "revolution" because lets face it, its Mac they only want to re-brand existing technology, make it shiny, limit its use, then call it a revolution, shock horror that they'd actually do it properly.
I call bullshit here, because I'm a developer and I write software for a living, a closed solution implies that eventually Apple will be able to do everything and one day my job will be redundant.
Writing proper business solutions, concepts and ideas is something that Apple will never touch because its niche and industry focused.
Apple, will never make industry specific "sophisticated" applications only simple ones. Nor will Google, Nor will Microsoft. They'll sell programs that the masses will use, but tools for businesses with specific needs, It's never going to happen.
This is and has always been the biggest (most money) market in the entire of computing world.
How many Mac lovers out there just suck it up and only use Macs at home and then fret about it in the workplace spouting "I wish we used Macs here"? ever knowing the real reason why their complaint is simply not realistic.
Mac is trying to kill cloud, self distributed computing and virtualization. Mac is trying to limit our device usage. We are embarking on the industry of using tablets and phones to run core business functions at a press of a button and in the midst of it all the biggest system vendor is limiting? Absurd.
Limit distribution and consolidation / overall control, its a determinant not an advantage.
There are plenty of products now that are out there for the same price (cheaper) that does the same job just as easy as the iPad/iPhone. If I make the recommendation to a customer they need to buy 100 Android phones for staff because Apple tries to control a distribution model, forcing us to post updates on a live internet environment, the company's IT department is simply going to comply (with a smile) both from a cost and security factor.
Well this solidifies my personal standpoint on Mac.
I am an iPhone user (starting to regret buying it tbh), Toshiba Laptop user (touchscreen), HP server purchaser and desktop user.
I think in the business world Toshiba makes the best laptops and HP offers the best hardware support for long term solutions.
As for one day replacing my desktop as a Mac, there isn't a great desire to move over because the advantages are so minimal its almost trivial too see them. I've been using my HP for over 3 1/2 years and it still moves as quick as it did the first day i switched it on.
I see Macs as an out-of-the-box solution, something I'd use in front of the TV wanting to look at websites. If it was going to be something I'd buy, it would be the iPad, and it would be only used while I'm sitting on the lounge and watching TV, see an ad or website on the program i'm watching, look it up with the iPad.
I couldn't see it posing more advantage for me other than that.
Moving on to my regrets with the iPhone, aside from the OS dieing on it and needing to restore recently, the continual battery problems has made me replace it in the last 3 months. I have atleast 2 friends whereby the touchscreens have failed completely on them, and I have always hear about the common issues with the iPhone on my day-to-day, poor battery, tethering useless, even some people claim its difficult to use!
To say Microsoft releases shit products but not recognize the amounts of problems I've heard with Apple, to be fair, Mac is defiantly the same as every other manufacturer I've seen regarding quality of hardware, nothing really separates them. Face it, they build things practically in the same factory as everyone else.
Can't they use Googles Custom Search http://www.google.com/cse/ pay the stagger $100 year fee to not have ads and go back to normal?
And iPad wasn't insensitive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vurJB0uHcTY
I guess its just the rule of thumb when it comes to creating tablet pc's, give them really crappy names ...
The upsides your saying a good. I.E longer shelf life on the original system is always good, the fact they put a lot of peripherals in the system to start with is also very useful. But ... and here goes
The limitations Software wise for Mac are as follows:
- System virtualization is limited, no real product support for things like Virituzzo, Xen, etc. VMWare allows for Macs and so does Parallel Desktop solutions but nothing really that noteworthy.
- No real automation software for Cloud or hosting solutions cPanel/Plesk/H-Sphere. If there are they are small unknown brands in the industry not worth mentioning
- Not all that much in ways of thin client (Citrix doesn't really house anything for Mac there are some small OSS projects for it but nothing major)
- Gaming was a terrible shambles, i think the newest games they have for mac are at least 2 years behind PC and consoles
- Snow Leopard is too far behind in the industry to compare its systems against Exchange, Active Directory or SharePoint (just like its gaming). Its a good attempt but it's hardly the replaceable solution.
- The biggest use for a Mac is writing documents and storing photos and movies. They are in the midst of picking a fight with Adobe over flash, without Photoshop Mac loses their "graphical production" value. Microsoft office is still an integral part of using a Mac these days and they cant really do too much about that.
Mac servers "seemed" to be good idea at the time, that whole exercise was a tail between the legs scenario for them.
Now on to hardware.
- While its true that their *NIX base gives them the means to provide good driver support, but I wouldn't say their abilities are better then Windows/Linux. They are behind in this arena as not all vendors will bother releasing driver sets to work in Mac. Just like the Gaming/Server industries, its "Narrower" than what PC has in store.
- Upgrading a iMac is like upgrading your Notebook PC, since its all factory made slots for adding peripherals are limited. Its not really "upgrading" when it comes to Mac, its usually "replacing" which is the word I'd prefer to use.
- External devices are good for somethings and bad for others, If your looking at using the device as a backup tool then external is the way to go, pretty much for anything else you need internal and i refer back to my last point about their cases. You limit the case design you limit how much can be put into it.
I hear ya on that one AC, Apple users need to spend less time defending their favored product and more time on outlining its advantages. I'm happy to hear about whats good about Apple and in many cases agree with them. IMHO Apples products are tailored to a specific type of person, that's someone who wants something out-of-the-box and easy to use.
The critical issue for me is flexibility and no Mac person can give a good rebuttal against it. When you buy a Mac you're pretty much stuck with what you've got, they don't make good long term upgradable solutions like the other brands out there in the same marketplace.
The issue with Flash and how it is slow, its slow because of the API restrictions. This whole debacle came into the light about Flash after Apple made it an issue, before that nobody really cared and was happy to develop for it. Now Apple says Flash is crap so does everyone else. Well lets try not to use the power of FUD to always lean on the easy way out here, lets all be a bit more critical, even of your own loved product. Why not see the short coming and advantages from every POV not just one source.
iPad, is it going to replace Netbooks? no you simply can do too much with Netbooks, iPad works great for media and eBooks but lacks in its overall versatility, why? because the same problems the iPhone is presently trumped with. Apple wants to hammer down its App Store and stop flash from circumventing it. Does it mean the iPad is shit? for a lot of people its a very useful tool. What separates the market is geek/nerd/IT enthusiast vs the general computer user that has no intention of flipping the hood and is satisfied with what they have.
Apple people love to try and turn you, first they mod you down to buggery, then they try to say things like "Apple does more in-house development and hardware manufacturing then ever before" the flipside of that is, no they haven't they've outsourced a lot of it and turned themselves into more of an assembly line like dell rather then a vendor, they've become a much larger company so therefore what they do manufacture has expanded. Trying to tell to me that in the past they made a large portion of their own chipsets but now use Intel, ATI, nVidia, etc, however now they make their own cases and batteries, I'm like sheesh how can that compare. It's starting to brimming into a whole brainwashing exercise for me, i think its just sad.
Personally for me, Microsoft is a nasty business in some of its dealings but if we were to turn back the clock at those pivotal years and "powers to be" favored Mac at the time the IT industry we have today would be far less free, it would be suppressed by the control features Apple puts in their products and we would be years behind where we are today.
I would like to believe that, really i would, but history has shown us that better isnt always the best selling concept.
My attempts at using HTML5 on my iPhone have been clunky at best, I remember this game called PieMan, a rip from the PacMan we all love. The issue was the caching, i simply found it too slow, its navigation on the touch screen was temperamental and it would pick the worst times to hang on me and as a result i gave up on it all togeather in about 15 mins, granted it could of been bad programming HTML5 but for me it goes to show how experimental it is.
I think with maturity it could possibly fade flash out but then again there are far to many industry experienced developers out there making money of being a flash developer, it those you have to convince to use HTML5.
If someone was to build a good canvas app like Adobe Flash CS for HTML5, introduce it for free and have an easy to use API which can easily be implemented, then we would see the shake up we've all been waiting for.
Dont worry, the concept that this is a book for "beginners" yet cites you need to have knowledge in basic CSS/HTML lost me.
Isn't the point of a CMS a means to do away with these concepts?
The ultimate tool in allowing customers screw up their websites at a press of a button ...
Please mod parent up. Makes a compelling statement.
I've been saying this for ages, and i always get modded as troll. Get told HTML5 is out there and I'm a douche ..
So fuck you very much!
I would imagine they would supply a fair amount of effort in the Open Source community, I really didn't think about that till you mentioned it though.
For me, what would allow me to place Mac as brand I'd buy in my own mind would not so much be the source of their technology because lets face it, you can buy American cars with German built engines as its typical for vendors to source components from different suppliers.
More so how much of the computer was actually created by Mac, it's interesting to see because where I've always looked at it as the chip was from Intel, the graphics cards were from nvidia/ati, the hdd is segate. So on an so fourth.
In reality, if I can bring a screwdriver too it and upgrade it myself and as long as it's competitively priced with interoperable components and brands, I'd buy it.
I'd also agree with 'dr chuck bunsen' about Xserve when i first saw it i thought this was the day things would change for Apple. Finally when I can walk into a dc and not be surrounded by wall-to-wall Dell servers is a day I'll be happy. Server wise I'm a G5 and G6 person :) and to be fair Apple does have to break a lot of ground and achieve stronger market acceptance before I'd include them into my next buying cycle for web servers.
But you never know, it could happen :)
We are getting off base here but i think it holds a shadow of relevancy to the article as far as following suit is concerned.
When can we label Apple as being a vendor vs reseller, similar to the likes of dell / hp? Aside from MacOS these days their "sexy" consolidation of their hardware, is becoming more and more stock standard, e.g. their move over to Intel, etc. As far as MacOS development goes the more *nix implementation takes place the more they seem to be chipping away their own development and implementing code from other sources, like a Linux distribution, aside from the fact Apple closes their source upon release.
I guess Apples diversity in the market will hinge on product diversity, simple sort of principle. Just like the old saying goes "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly" which is kind of the road Microsoft took, of course I'm not simply talking about OS's only, I'm more so talking about the product as a whole when it comes to Apple.
The more the road becomes traveled to make up the missing parts of the industry for them like Servers, Gaming etc, the more they lose their uniqueness and become more like everyone else.
Yeah well, I got modded troll for making a fairly harmless joke about Sarah Palin on a related post.
Fairly depressing to think Slashdot has become like this, its not really the poster being the troller any more, more like the person modding has become the troll.
I'm more concerned about facefooks process usage and its repetitive over use of the Poke feature ...
The Church could be responsible for a denial of service attack!