K6 technology was acquired and modified by AMD. The K7 and K8 were designed by AMD. True, many of the engineers on the K7 and K8 teams were probably ex-NexGen since AMD acquired that company, but so what? They are truly AMD innovations. At least they didn't sink all of their research into the Itanic!
Of course, the prerequisite to them all is "Teach Yourself Time in 24 Hours".. 24 hours are useless if you're unacquainted with time.;-)
Seriously, though, I think the worst one I'd ever seen was something along the lines of a "teach yourself to read" book. I didn't quite understand how that was supposed to work. But maybe it's like those ads in the newspaper saying "Learn to Read".. or the sign at the entrance to McDonald's telling you "Braille and Picture menus available upon request" (I'm sure all the blind and illiterate can read that sign just fine!).. or that Drive-thru ATM's have braille on the keys..
oh. So these aren't true hybrids, then. They're just very energy-efficient gasoline vehicles. Sounds like the difference is in the battery and the alternator.
I think a true hybrid would be a car that runs primarily on electrical power, but switches to gas when the battery gets low or it needs to generate more power due to high speeds. I've heard of cars like this, and I thought that this was how the hybrids in question worked.
Really, about the only thing going for Dell these days is that they're cheap. The quality is atrocious, they will sell you absolute crap at the low-end, the mobos and form factors are proprietary enough to keep you from upgrading, and their tech support is ludicrous. I had bought an Inspiron 1100 for my wife a couple years back. We actually had to replace the power supply three times within a year because it kept catching fire! (literally catching fire!) This is not exactly quality stuff they're selling, but where else can you get a $699 laptop (2 years ago)? Dell's only attraction is their price point.
But Lindows was not a hardware mfr. They only licensed the software to hardware vendors like Evergreen for resale at Walmart, TigerDirect, etc. It wasn't truly a hardware OEM integrating a Linux-based OS with their product.
Microsoft is a monopoly because they can price their personal computer operating system without regard for the price of competitors' offerings. For example, one can purchase a linux distro for just a few dollars including shipping. One cannot purchase Windows for 3.95 even if one is an OEM. This proves that Microsoft can price their offering without regard for the price of competitors' offerings, and thus that Microsoft has a monopoly in PC OSes. This is now a matter of law in the US, the case having been advanced to the SCOTUS and the finding of fact that Microsoft is a monopoly in this market has been upheld.
By your reasoning, because you can get Debian for PPC for free, Apple should be giving out Mac OS X for free. But they don't! They charge $129, which is actually more than what the upgrade version of Windows XP costs! Apple doesn't even give a price break to upgraders because they have you locked in! You have to run their OS on their hardware. They've even done nasty things with OpenFirmware to prevent other operating systems (like BeOS) from being run on their hardware in the past. Now tell me that's not predatory!
Operating systems are not generic like soda. Pepsi and Coke have virtually the same mass, the same nutritional value. They might differ a little in taste, but that's about it. It's not like Pepsi can force you to drink out of a certain glass, but that's exactly what Apple is trying to do by tying Mac OS X to Apple hardware! It theoretically should work fine on any other computer, just like Pepsi would taste just as good in a colored glass as in a clear glass. But Apple is able to lock end-users who may have a need to run Mac OS X for whatever reason (say they work in an office that's standardized on Pages or Keynote; I know it's unlikely, but it's possible!). Their choices are limited to the overpriced, flimsy, you-get-support-if-you-fork-over-even-more-cash-fo r-AppleCare computers that Apple manufactures and sells. Why should anyone have to pay $1300 for an iMac just because they iPhoto, when a $400 PC + $200 monitor will do just as well? Don't even mention the Mac mini. That $400 PC gives about 20 times the performance of the mini. The PC hard drive alone is likely twice the rotational speed of the cheap laptop drive in the mini.
I, for one, would like to see the powers-that-be go after Apple with as much zeal and force as they did after Microsoft. I think Apple is even more anti-competitive than Microsoft. What makes Apple more insidious, though, is that they can make hurting consumers look cool, whereas Microsoft doesn't have the RDF around itself to get away with the kind of anti-consumer behavior that Apple regularly exhibits.
And as for your other argument:
Finally the argument that Apple prices it's OS without regard for competitors offerings is based on the notion that there exist open source OSes that are comparable in functionality to Mac OS X. A few days' use of the applications that are bundled with Mac OS X will quickly disprove this notion. As others in this thread have written, one would have to pay up to $1000.00 for commercial software to get applications of the quality and integration that come bundled with Mac OS X.
This is pure hooey. Mac OS X doesn't come bundled with any applications other than development tools. What else? iChat? iCal? Gimme a break. Most of the other stuff is bundled with the hardware, not with the operating system. You have to buy iLife, etc. separately if you don't get it pre-installed with your hardware. Linux with gaim and evolution is at least as much value as what comes bundled with Mac OS X.
My wife's brand new 15.4" powerbook was ruined within 30 days of purchase because I picked it up. I kid you not. That flimsy aluminum is the only thing protecting the LCD screen. I picked it up under my arm like I would with any other laptop (I used to do laptop repairs for a living, so I've done this with literally hundreds of units and never broke any of them), and lo and behold, it cracked the screen! Of course, Apple would not replace it under warranty, even though it was not mishandled in any way. This was clearly a design flaw. They wanted $700 to repair it. I imagine that I might have gotten more sympathy if I would have paid the extra $300 for AppleCare (which is nothing more than a bribe.. I know of no other company that treats the customer like absolute crap just because they don't buy an extended warranty..)
Anyway, I ended up selling all of my Apple hardware and accessories (including a brand new iBook, eMac, and all of my AirPort equipment) on eBay. I even sold the broken PowerBook. And I took that money and bought an Athlon64 XPC and an eMachines desktop. I eventually replaced the PowerBook with a 15.4" Averatec. The new computers perform better than the ones they've replaced, and even though they may not be as pretty (with the exception of the Shuttle;-), they are definitely sturdier. Haven't had anything break in a year and a half. And I even got free tech support from eMachines for a driver issue outside of the warranty period. Try getting that from Apple!
Is this kind of like the same philosophy behind MS offering Office Student & Teacher Edition? For $100 you can get the same MS Office that ordinarily costs $300. You're supposed to give proof that you have a student or teacher in your household, but even if anyone asks, they take you at your word. The strategy is to get legitimate copies of MS Office out into the world for $100 a pop to people who ordinarily might pirate the $300 versions. Maybe Apple would look the other way on people installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware in the hope of selling them iLife later, this way they still recover some money on the sale of iLife, which comes bundled with Apple hardware and is one of the chief reasons why your average home user wants OS X in the first place.
If Apple did license OS X to the world, then I could imagine it very well being a major threat to Windows. Development in Mac OS X is much easier in general. You can make a polished application in OS X in literally half the time of Windows. Also, it is practically impossible to write a bad device driver for OS X. Apple really thought out their driver API ahead of time. Windows drivers are more than 50% total crap. That's why they need such frequent updates. Apple would clearly do better with arbitrary hardware just due to the device driver support classes provided with OS X.
(IANAL) I'd say that PC OEMs and mobo mfrs might have a legitimate antitrust case against Apple being that there is no technical reason why Apple's software would not run on any generic x86 board/PC. It is similar to the illegal tying that Microsoft tried with PC mfrs back in the 90's. They are locking you in to their own hardware at an exceedingly high margin compared to the rest of the industry in order to run their software. This is exactly what Microsoft did with HP, Compaq, etc. back in the days, but in reverse.
This is not like when part of Apple's OS resided in ROM and they were the single source of the ROM chips. Apple hasn't had ROM chips in their computers since the original iMac. If Microsoft is not allowed to require PC manufacturers to only offer their OS for sale with their hardware or else not be able to sell it at all, then Apple should not be allowed to require end users to buy only Apple hardware in order to run their operating system if the operating system otherwise runs well on generic hardware. They should have to compete, just like everyone else.
Back when they started the P-rating for the Athlon XP, the measure was the equivalent performance of an Athlon Thunderbird at that clock speed, but apparently they've changed their basis of comparison since then. Thanks for the heads-up.:)
AMD already came up with the antidote to the "Sexium" should Intel decide to use that name... Sempron!
(for the benefit of those that do not speak Portuguese... sem pr0n = without pr0n.. although, due to a peculiarity of the Portuguese language, words cannot end with the letter 'n'.. IIRC, the whole Inquisition was started because some heretics started using the letter "n" at the end of words.. it's true! really!)
The problem is that Intel is using an arbitrary numbering scheme which has absolutely nothing to do with any objective measure of performance. Their numbers simply refer to the relative number of features and relative speed of processors within the same family. This makes it impossible to compare processors across different brands. A Celeron-D 560 is not going to necessarily be as fast as a Pentium-D 320, but you'd never know by the numbers. On top of which, you'd never know that the -D in Celeron-D is for "desktop" whereas the -D in Pentium-D is for "dual-core." Of course, we techies know this, but this is Intel's way of deliberately misleading consumers.
AMD, on the other hand, uses a P-number which is directly comparable across processor lines and uses an established standard of a 1GHz Athlon Thunderbird = P1000. Everything else is relative to that. So you know right off the bat that an Athlon64 3000+ is only marginally faster than a Sempron 2800+, you don't have to play games like with Intel.
I couldn't see DRM being as big a deal to IBM wrt the PowerPC arch because it is mostly used in embedded applications. Any desktop sales they make from it are gravy (read: additional unforeseen profits). If Apple were sticking with PPC, I could see IBM considering adding DRM to PPC, but given that it would likely increase the mfg costs for their embedded clientele and they no longer have a desktop market for it other than hobbyists and niche buyers, I don't think it's in their own interests.
what if Intel and AMD both DRM there chips? Surely, I can't boycott computers in general can I?
That's an easy one.. I can already see the hobbyist market adopting PowerPC if that ever happens. We'll see the motherboard mfrs. joining Pegasos in making generic PPC mobos. Either that, or the industry in Taiwan, or possibly even mainland China, will engineer away to defeat the protections built into the chips and sell DRM-free mobos. Similar to what they've done with overclocking-friendly mobos.
I mean, seriously, if you're that anti-DRM, you're probably not going to be running Windows. You're probably going to want to run Linux or *BSD anyway, either of which is readily available on PPC arch.
The California suit is really nothing when you look at the big picture. The reality is that we have surrendered our freedom, in fact, surrendered our supposedly democratic government, to rich people with capital interests in restricting our liberty. A lot of this has to do with the invention of incorporation, the idea that a company can be viewed as a "person" under the law. But just take a look at who makes up our government and what kind of laws they enact. You almost have to be a millionaire political party contributor or fundraiser to be nominated for office, and once in office, the politicians are not representing the will of the people, but the will of the lobbyist and big money contributors. If laws like DMCA or any other copyright or patent legislation were put to public referendum, they'd be defeated _easily_. However, because RIAA and MPAA and their associates put billions of dollars into the Republicans' and Democrats' pockets, they enact legislation that absolutely no one outside of those industries wants!
Apple is tiny and controls the desktop in about the same way that say Greenland controls world politics. Not at all.
You fool! Don't you realize that Greenland is just the symptom! Denmark is the problem! Greenland is just the first step in Denmark's plan to take over the world!
Only Pinky and the Brain can help us now!
Re:Your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen
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Ma Bell is Back
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You don't have a choice what phone carrier to use if you're in SBC's region, same with Verizon, SWBell, whatever.
That's not entirely true. I mean, I live in Verizon's service area, yet I was able to choose IDT as my local phone carrier (at substantial savings). My sister used to live downstairs and had AT&T local phone service.
The problem is all the fees and surcharges that go on the bill. With Verizon, I averaged about $95 a month. My monthly bill with IDT was about $65. Mind you that this is because of all the stupid surcharges and fees that New York State, the federal government, etc. tack onto the bill. My IDT service was actually $39.99 before all the extra charges added on courtesy of the government.
Now I pay $22 a month for VoIP, which includes a whopping $2 surcharge to my $20/month rate. What a difference! I can afford to buy food again! Now if I didn't have to shell out $50 a month to Cablevision (a truly evil monopoly that makes Microsoft look like Habitat for Humanity) for internet access...;-)
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K6 technology was acquired and modified by AMD. The K7 and K8 were designed by AMD. True, many of the engineers on the K7 and K8 teams were probably ex-NexGen since AMD acquired that company, but so what? They are truly AMD innovations. At least they didn't sink all of their research into the Itanic!
Seriously, though, I think the worst one I'd ever seen was something along the lines of a "teach yourself to read" book. I didn't quite understand how that was supposed to work. But maybe it's like those ads in the newspaper saying "Learn to Read".. or the sign at the entrance to McDonald's telling you "Braille and Picture menus available upon request" (I'm sure all the blind and illiterate can read that sign just fine!).. or that Drive-thru ATM's have braille on the keys..
What a world! What a world!
I think a true hybrid would be a car that runs primarily on electrical power, but switches to gas when the battery gets low or it needs to generate more power due to high speeds. I've heard of cars like this, and I thought that this was how the hybrids in question worked.
some how or another, you still have to generate that electricity to keep the battery charged, whether by gas, oil, coal, or some other method.
so does this mean we should stop hugging trees and start hugging Scott McNealy?
Sony will pay! Just like Martha Stewart!
Please let it not be increased dependence... To be more dependent on Windows is probably the last thing we need!
Really, about the only thing going for Dell these days is that they're cheap. The quality is atrocious, they will sell you absolute crap at the low-end, the mobos and form factors are proprietary enough to keep you from upgrading, and their tech support is ludicrous. I had bought an Inspiron 1100 for my wife a couple years back. We actually had to replace the power supply three times within a year because it kept catching fire! (literally catching fire!) This is not exactly quality stuff they're selling, but where else can you get a $699 laptop (2 years ago)? Dell's only attraction is their price point.
But Lindows was not a hardware mfr. They only licensed the software to hardware vendors like Evergreen for resale at Walmart, TigerDirect, etc. It wasn't truly a hardware OEM integrating a Linux-based OS with their product.
By your reasoning, because you can get Debian for PPC for free, Apple should be giving out Mac OS X for free. But they don't! They charge $129, which is actually more than what the upgrade version of Windows XP costs! Apple doesn't even give a price break to upgraders because they have you locked in! You have to run their OS on their hardware. They've even done nasty things with OpenFirmware to prevent other operating systems (like BeOS) from being run on their hardware in the past. Now tell me that's not predatory!
Operating systems are not generic like soda. Pepsi and Coke have virtually the same mass, the same nutritional value. They might differ a little in taste, but that's about it. It's not like Pepsi can force you to drink out of a certain glass, but that's exactly what Apple is trying to do by tying Mac OS X to Apple hardware! It theoretically should work fine on any other computer, just like Pepsi would taste just as good in a colored glass as in a clear glass. But Apple is able to lock end-users who may have a need to run Mac OS X for whatever reason (say they work in an office that's standardized on Pages or Keynote; I know it's unlikely, but it's possible!). Their choices are limited to the overpriced, flimsy, you-get-support-if-you-fork-over-even-more-cash-fo r-AppleCare computers that Apple manufactures and sells. Why should anyone have to pay $1300 for an iMac just because they iPhoto, when a $400 PC + $200 monitor will do just as well? Don't even mention the Mac mini. That $400 PC gives about 20 times the performance of the mini. The PC hard drive alone is likely twice the rotational speed of the cheap laptop drive in the mini.
I, for one, would like to see the powers-that-be go after Apple with as much zeal and force as they did after Microsoft. I think Apple is even more anti-competitive than Microsoft. What makes Apple more insidious, though, is that they can make hurting consumers look cool, whereas Microsoft doesn't have the RDF around itself to get away with the kind of anti-consumer behavior that Apple regularly exhibits.
And as for your other argument:
This is pure hooey. Mac OS X doesn't come bundled with any applications other than development tools. What else? iChat? iCal? Gimme a break. Most of the other stuff is bundled with the hardware, not with the operating system. You have to buy iLife, etc. separately if you don't get it pre-installed with your hardware. Linux with gaim and evolution is at least as much value as what comes bundled with Mac OS X.
Anyway, I ended up selling all of my Apple hardware and accessories (including a brand new iBook, eMac, and all of my AirPort equipment) on eBay. I even sold the broken PowerBook. And I took that money and bought an Athlon64 XPC and an eMachines desktop. I eventually replaced the PowerBook with a 15.4" Averatec. The new computers perform better than the ones they've replaced, and even though they may not be as pretty (with the exception of the Shuttle ;-), they are definitely sturdier. Haven't had anything break in a year and a half. And I even got free tech support from eMachines for a driver issue outside of the warranty period. Try getting that from Apple!
Seriously, the shareholders are going to demand this. Jobs may be faced with replacement if he doesn't appease them.
Lots of digital cameras come with dinky little 16MB cards that get formatted FAT16.
Is this kind of like the same philosophy behind MS offering Office Student & Teacher Edition? For $100 you can get the same MS Office that ordinarily costs $300. You're supposed to give proof that you have a student or teacher in your household, but even if anyone asks, they take you at your word. The strategy is to get legitimate copies of MS Office out into the world for $100 a pop to people who ordinarily might pirate the $300 versions. Maybe Apple would look the other way on people installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware in the hope of selling them iLife later, this way they still recover some money on the sale of iLife, which comes bundled with Apple hardware and is one of the chief reasons why your average home user wants OS X in the first place.
If Apple did license OS X to the world, then I could imagine it very well being a major threat to Windows. Development in Mac OS X is much easier in general. You can make a polished application in OS X in literally half the time of Windows. Also, it is practically impossible to write a bad device driver for OS X. Apple really thought out their driver API ahead of time. Windows drivers are more than 50% total crap. That's why they need such frequent updates. Apple would clearly do better with arbitrary hardware just due to the device driver support classes provided with OS X.
This is not like when part of Apple's OS resided in ROM and they were the single source of the ROM chips. Apple hasn't had ROM chips in their computers since the original iMac. If Microsoft is not allowed to require PC manufacturers to only offer their OS for sale with their hardware or else not be able to sell it at all, then Apple should not be allowed to require end users to buy only Apple hardware in order to run their operating system if the operating system otherwise runs well on generic hardware. They should have to compete, just like everyone else.
This feature was present in Windows 95. That alone makes it vastly superior to Windows XP and Mac OS X!
Back when they started the P-rating for the Athlon XP, the measure was the equivalent performance of an Athlon Thunderbird at that clock speed, but apparently they've changed their basis of comparison since then. Thanks for the heads-up. :)
(for the benefit of those that do not speak Portuguese... sem pr0n = without pr0n.. although, due to a peculiarity of the Portuguese language, words cannot end with the letter 'n'.. IIRC, the whole Inquisition was started because some heretics started using the letter "n" at the end of words.. it's true! really!)
AMD, on the other hand, uses a P-number which is directly comparable across processor lines and uses an established standard of a 1GHz Athlon Thunderbird = P1000. Everything else is relative to that. So you know right off the bat that an Athlon64 3000+ is only marginally faster than a Sempron 2800+, you don't have to play games like with Intel.
I couldn't see DRM being as big a deal to IBM wrt the PowerPC arch because it is mostly used in embedded applications. Any desktop sales they make from it are gravy (read: additional unforeseen profits). If Apple were sticking with PPC, I could see IBM considering adding DRM to PPC, but given that it would likely increase the mfg costs for their embedded clientele and they no longer have a desktop market for it other than hobbyists and niche buyers, I don't think it's in their own interests.
That's an easy one.. I can already see the hobbyist market adopting PowerPC if that ever happens. We'll see the motherboard mfrs. joining Pegasos in making generic PPC mobos. Either that, or the industry in Taiwan, or possibly even mainland China, will engineer away to defeat the protections built into the chips and sell DRM-free mobos. Similar to what they've done with overclocking-friendly mobos.
I mean, seriously, if you're that anti-DRM, you're probably not going to be running Windows. You're probably going to want to run Linux or *BSD anyway, either of which is readily available on PPC arch.
The California suit is really nothing when you look at the big picture. The reality is that we have surrendered our freedom, in fact, surrendered our supposedly democratic government, to rich people with capital interests in restricting our liberty. A lot of this has to do with the invention of incorporation, the idea that a company can be viewed as a "person" under the law. But just take a look at who makes up our government and what kind of laws they enact. You almost have to be a millionaire political party contributor or fundraiser to be nominated for office, and once in office, the politicians are not representing the will of the people, but the will of the lobbyist and big money contributors. If laws like DMCA or any other copyright or patent legislation were put to public referendum, they'd be defeated _easily_. However, because RIAA and MPAA and their associates put billions of dollars into the Republicans' and Democrats' pockets, they enact legislation that absolutely no one outside of those industries wants!
You fool! Don't you realize that Greenland is just the symptom! Denmark is the problem! Greenland is just the first step in Denmark's plan to take over the world!
Only Pinky and the Brain can help us now!
You don't have a choice what phone carrier to use if you're in SBC's region, same with Verizon, SWBell, whatever.
That's not entirely true. I mean, I live in Verizon's service area, yet I was able to choose IDT as my local phone carrier (at substantial savings). My sister used to live downstairs and had AT&T local phone service.
The problem is all the fees and surcharges that go on the bill. With Verizon, I averaged about $95 a month. My monthly bill with IDT was about $65. Mind you that this is because of all the stupid surcharges and fees that New York State, the federal government, etc. tack onto the bill. My IDT service was actually $39.99 before all the extra charges added on courtesy of the government.
Now I pay $22 a month for VoIP, which includes a whopping $2 surcharge to my $20/month rate. What a difference! I can afford to buy food again! Now if I didn't have to shell out $50 a month to Cablevision (a truly evil monopoly that makes Microsoft look like Habitat for Humanity) for internet access... ;-)