If you disable it then it is not genuine prevention any longer? If you disable it then win8 no longer boots. Microsoft get governments to consider it as part of the bid process and gets the governments to put it in the contracts. Certification takes significantly longer for non Microsoft products thus giving Microsoft the competitive advantage. If a contractor seems to be close they can slow down certification till they get the bid.
Yes it it is anticompetitive behavior and a slight modification of embrace extend extinguish. Microsoft decides what security is. They determine if you are secure. They determine if they are secure. They deny you boot access with every turn in order to ensure vendors do not put competing OSes into consumers hands, and make it hard or seem insecure if you turn it off. For example the vendors turn it off to install other OSes, That puts their os at risk and probably denies win8 boot -- no secure boot then no win8 boot -- Microsoft cries foul.
Microsoft can then claim only win8 is a viable and secure os. Governments will look at this for certification. Their server software will get chosen. Their people will get the contracts. Microsoft servers will gain share when now they are loosing it at a fast pace.
This is clearly an anticompetitive process meant to shrink the base of competing products. If the small yet innovative distro like Mint can't afford this with every release. Thus they reduce their share -- they slow down the pace of their innovation by reducing the number of release cycles.
Microsoft should not be in control of any certificate issuing program, and they should not set the criteria. They should go through the same process as anyone else. This way they can't use their monopoly power to deny competition a chance.
And as far as I know, only Windows is currently at risk anyway from boot loader exploits. And Microsoft could more easily handle their boot exploit issues from within windows without endangering the viability of competing products. And this is clearly a major issue just because Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. Microsoft as a convicted monopolist should never be allowed to hold the keys to any program that can be used in improper ways and which they can use to kill or limit their competition.
Agreed, except in that "iOS needs to be controlled". It doesn't. That's a choice made by Apple with their justifications as recognized by the world as being unfounded. That is the precise reason people think that it might work its way into OSX.
Few if any users have ever predicted that, instead most choose to remain realistic. Those that did make those predictions were pundits, journalist, and the like. The regular Linux user knows that it is the year of the Linux desktop, for them. They know they need go no further. Can't you see how silly that is? Every user choosing Linux on their desktop has it, so why would they proselytize it to everyone else in that way?
Except for the early days, Linux has always looked good. Yeah, it took years to build up the OS and to present a solid friendly UI, but if you look back at Windows (and DOS) -- to those early days -- one can only say how pathetic it looked and operated. Today no one can demean Linux for a lack of apps, except maybe for games (and that changes daily also). Games though are far and few between as far as use goes for the average person. Java is fully integrated, so is flash, and many other technologies necessary for gaming on platforms such as g+ or facebook. Android is Linux. WebOS is Linux. Meego is Linux. Linux is every where and in everything you do today. If you choose Windows you choose it not because of how technically excellent it is, because, frankly, I work on these boxes every day and underneath that translucent veneer there's much of the old mess that existed from the beginning, and that can be tremendous trouble for the average person. Linux is moving up and is moving in even if most don't see it. As far as those go that say they have tested Linux for a couple weeks (or even a month or two), well those people are fools, plain and simple. You gave Windows years of your life even after knowing about all the insecurity, the viruses, the crashing programs, the failure to update to more modern technologies (where Microsoft just chooses a prettier face instead of really changing things that make this much easier to maintain by the average person). I know they have their technologies for servers and big business, but that's not for the average person. And it never should be.
Ballmer is an idiot. This attempt is going to foil them for one simple reason. Win8 is unnecessary as far as what's on the desktop or available in technology. Meaning, that Win7 for most is more than enough. Most people don't need to upgrade and never will until they buy a new computer (at which time they won't really have a choice of what they get). Touch screens for the desktop are a non-starter. Screens are big, people want to relax when using a computer. Gaming on the larger screens is different than gaming on a tablet or phone, so the touch screen does little. On top of that, all the technology in the world won't give Microsoft back what they had.
There are hundreds of millions of PCs sold every year. There are many alternatives to Microsoft today. Every day, literally, Linux gets better, is easier. I can remember not long ago in these very forums that every Linux hater/Microsoft zealot screamed that Linux is failing because it doesn't even have good wireless support. Today it has better wireless support than any OS, and that's a fact, and it's all built and and it just works. Win7 brings me daily wireless issues that shouldn't exist in Windows if Microsoft had done what was right for their customers. Every day I have to deal with some bullshit screwball method of having to overcome this or that problem using tools that were designed to work in Win98 and Win2k (take msconfig as an example--the interface for that is bullshit and the main window can't even be resized--they could have done thousands of things to that program alone to help the administrator or end-user solve problems with their machines). The BSOD while able to display, most of the time, an error code, has problem suggestions that are totally wrong most of the time as far as problem resolution goes. Users following that are nearly never successful. When you have an issue and it offers help, the help screens are almost a total waste of time and they lead to Microsoft's customer's wasting tremendous amounts of time on wild goose chases.
I use Linux every day. I use Windows every day. I repair Windows boxes every day. I see this stuff in spades. One person stating they never have problems doesn't change the fact that millions do.
Windows 7 is just fine for the time being. I can't see anyone that uses it that would need to upgrade it within the next 3-5 years. Win8 isn't being released because of real world needs, it's because of Microsoft's wants for more cash.
I am not interested in the Joojoo, in any incarnation.
I have said from the beginning. EVERYONE wants a tablet, but NOONE can afford it.
HP's fire-sale should have been an obvious eye-opener to everyone. I find any attempt to double your price per item like what HP had tried to do as a rip-off of the consumer. Yeah, the $99 and $149 tablet fire-sale did catch my eye, but their original pricing was gouging.
The Comodo and Diginotar break-ins and theft were traced to Iran. To me, when I read the pastebin post, I felt it was a cover up bit meant to mislead the general public. Any additional hack thereafter, such as GlobalSign, would simply be to cover up their actions.
I'm not talking about hiding the activity, but to make it seem like Iran wasn't a participant. And, they were. The purpose of those thefts is to act as a man-in-the-middle to fool the Iranian citizens into thinking that they were speaking with these social and search sites as if they were the original. SSL is the foundation of secure communication over the internet. Browsers use those to verify a site is the actual site. Acting as a man in the middle with a seemingly valid certificate can fool your population into believing you are Google, and hence they can read your mail, watch your searches, check out what you say, and even find out where you are. Iran could easily put up a fake Firefox/Google/Microsoft site and then substitute their own browser that still accepts the certificates.
If GlobalSign is ceasing certificate issuance because of pastebin maybe it is appropriate for now.
My opinion still stands. That pastebin reference was either some fool confessing to every murder and crime on the planet, or it was Iran spoofing the general world public trying to build doubt, thus making it less likely that there'll be major backlash by the governments of the world.
Certificate forgery (by stealing them from legit sources) is really bad for the internet. Seriously bad.
Unity is just a desktop desktop manager. You can substitute it, luckily. Yes, I agree, Unity sucks hard. The blogs that follow Ubuntu though don't seem to care what anyone thinks, they blithely go on touting Unity when they should be thoroughly rejecting it.
Modifications to pieces of the OS such as the file browser are too tiny as far as modifications go to even remotely consider it a reason to upgrade. Even if they added some nice features it still wouldn't be enough, as Windows 7 has more features, and is easy enough to use that it should last us another 10 years. Unless you have an older version of Windows and it is necessary to upgrade to Windows 8 there's no reason for it.
Microsoft will use this 'pre-installed" (on new hardware) OS tactic to leverage it into a required OS, but in reality it isn't necessary.
Vista was the pig with lipstick. Windows 7 was pretty decent though not necessary. Windows 8 just isn't necessary no matter how you paint it.
I'm sure as time goes by the idea that Windows 8 is an unnecessary upgrade will hit further and further home with everyone.
Give it up Microsoft, we want free and open systems unlocked and untied to stores like Apple. I think this finally could purport the success of alternative OSes. For Ubuntu, unfortunately, it fails the user with that Unity desktop. Gnome 3 is little better. Maybe KDE will get some long due respect.
Man, I swear, while being super nice all I have gotten lately from offshore call center employees is bad attitude, as if they lack the basic understanding that I work for my money and want to retain as much as I can, especially during this recession.
Some mistake integration with expensive, or polish with power. It's not true--look at the press coverage about the aluminum polished back of the iPad--that has nothing to do with with power, yet people still focus on it. Though that isn't to say that some of these Android phones aren't amazing, they are, they are fantastic powerful integrated quality devices. My buddy has a very nice Android phone with a dual core Tegra 2. My phone is a single core 1 GHz and is capable of most everything his does. His is faster. I have a Xoom tablet, a B&N ColorNook, and a HP Touchpad as well. He also has an ASUS Transformer. His wife has one also and he's planning another Android tablet purchase for his Grandmother.
Those that have the iPhone/iPad, and those that have Android and those that have gone from the iPhone/iPad to Android, know that most of the braggadocio about Apple is just that. Experience trumps fanboism. Any day.
Android tablets are nice. I've never seen a cheap tablet. I've never seen a tablet without capacitive touch. I've seen phones without it.
Apple is not fighting a war with any company for any other reason than to extend the duration of the high price they charge. What I said is this: Apple is suing and fighting not to keep competition from taking hold. They are fighting to extend the duration of which allows them to charge a high price. Why do I say this? It isn't odd, it is basic economics. Supply and demand. It is inevitable that Apple will be pulled into a price war. They WILL be dragged into commodity pricing. Phones and otherwise. Cell phones are different in one way: they hold you to a contract for 2 years--tablets are not that way--and that's major when it comes to why a consumer doesn't switch. Apple will soon not be able to compete feature for feature, for every suit they bring they make enemies. Those enemies are not going to give Apple a hand on features when the Android tablets begin to feature rage over Apple's offering. In other words, after some time, the suits will end and Apple will be standing there with enemies while still trying to compete.
I'll say it again more clearly. Apple doesn't want commodity pricing, they fear it. They know it is inevitable. They are fighting not to get rid of the competition (because they can't), they are fighting to extend the period that they can charge their higher prices.
NO ANDROID device manufacturer should be competing against Apple. They should be competing against one another. They should ignore Apple, except insofar as much as it introduces features. Samsung is making a grave mistake trying to match or beat Apple feature and price wise. All high priced tablet makers are. They need to get with suppliers with the premise that they can and will buy more than Apple ever could (over the long haul) in order to obtain parts at lower price margins.
Supply and demand indicates that (since there is a demand) Apple can't supply everyone with what they want, primarily due to their very conceited and dangerous position regarding their walled gardens.
Introduce competition. Android comes in and fills the demand. Consumers see that these devices are more powerful and more open devices. These guys either begin to fight for share over price or they try to compete with Apple for the high end. Give Apple the high end and focus on supplying to the masses. If that means crappy devices initially then so be it. It always happens that way. What ultimately happens is that the device quality and capabilities meet somewhere in the middle between poor and quality. Then the march goes up on features and down on cost driving the high end out (except for those that are influenced by the brainwashing).
I see real networks software installed on most computers that come into my shop. That means they are all over the place and the best way to deal with this is to remove Real from every computer you encounter. That'll teach them a lesson. It would be nice if we could block real on every machine like we block websites.
Right now you feel that way because the maturity of the market lacks. We had the same thing when Microsoft first introduced DOS competing with the Apple II. We had that when Windows 3.x became the pre-install choice. Apps were still unrefined. We had that when compared to the original Mac OS.
Each individual app seemed to lack something, given time though, they matured. As is the case with Android. I have an iPhone and several Android device, and several Mac computers. As far as the iPhone goes, contrary to your view, I don't see what you are talking about, at least not enough to even give it a second thought. I tend to look at numerous products in a category that I'm after. Generally I can sift sufficiently to get the best most mature one, which ofttimes seems better than the equivalent I have on the iOS.
So, really, I just can't see what you are claiming bears out. I'm not seeing it. Wait a big longer for maturity or be more selective. No need to give credit to Apple. They were first in the past and in tablets. So, you will see that. Apple also tends to sell to the wealthy upper class and can continue to do so because they generally have money to spare. Acer and the likes make their fortunes in volume selling to the less than wealthy those hoping to just feed their families and watch their grandchildren grow. Big difference. Probably shouldn't give Apple any more credit than that, considering we are in a recession.
I read what the acer ceo wrote as total lunacy. Maybe he should not be the acer ceo. The issue with tablets is more price than functionality. This has been borne out repeatedly with the mad rush to obtain the touchpad tablet from HP. People lined up the night before to get a discounted tablet from best buy stores.
People want a cheap device even if it does not have all the functionality of the high end.
Why on earth is this so hard for the likes of the Acer ceo to see this?
The HP Touchpad was designed to compete with the iPad 1, and not the Xoom or Galaxy Tab or even the iPad 2.
If he drops the price of his over-inflated under-equipped tablet maybe he'll see increased sales. Frankly the man has shown zero evidence and seems to be trying to kill it before it gets started.
The issues surrounding the HP TouchPad are much different than those of the Android market. The idea of Apps availability is only slightly relevant. The reason? Because there were nearly zero apps for HP's platform.
The guy doing this analysis must have just tech hack trying to come up with some new spin. When are we going to get responsible tech reporting?
HP's problem was that the second place tablet systems FAR FAR FAR exceeded HP's ability to produce any meaningful effort at catching up with either number two or number one in apps.
HP also didn't let the OS mature enough and they never really had their hearts into it. They announced shipment in what, mid July? And ceased the product in mid August? Their CEO must be nuts. He should have taken the tablet hardware and adapted Android to it and sold it like they would any other piece of hardware.
Their hardware is sound, their software isn't. Their product is proprietary competing with two much bigger platforms for developer attention. It wasn't going to work. WebOS as it was designed couldn't keep up (excellent UI but shitty boot performance, poor app management). Unless they came out with some super duper fancy fast fabulous development tools that turned your apps in to magic with only a few lines of code they were destined to fail.
Now, this is absolutely unrelated to Android or iOS. Android doesn't come anywhere near suffering the same symptoms that lead to WebOS and the TouchPad's fate. Android has nearly 1/2 billion apps, and if you can't come to grips with the fact that this number is significant then nothing will satisfy you.
WebOS and the TouchPad died because of a lack of internal commitment at the upper levels even for their introductory product. A lack of developer commitment hastened its demise. Apple's and Android's 1/2 billion apps each is easily more than enough to show distinct separation of cause and effect for the demise of the HP product.
The Android tablet market's problem is price. Hands down. Reduce that price and push Apple using price and you can defeat them forcing them into commodity pricing. Apple does not want this. They fear it. Their profits are so far bolstered due to iOS device sales, not their desktop/laptop computing platforms. As you'll note, they have NOT really gained any traction. Their desktop/laptop hardware is essentially the same stuff found on any PC (where custom builds are superior to Apple's offerings, and at a lower price). Apple has fought for 30 years to keep its prices high. They want the same thing with the iOS devices. Reduction in pricing will kill that and drag Apple screaming into the commodity pricing market.
Android tablets are very nice. Their fast dual CPUs, 1gig RAM, and 16-32gig on-board storage, with HDMI out, flash card slots, incredible graphics, cameras, GPS, gorgeous UI, fast OS, open nature makes one wonder why the prices aren't much higher. In reality those prices need to drop much faster to push Apple out of control of the market. $299 to $399 will make the market grow faster and allow enough profit to improve R&D to make better models where they can charge higher prices. Right now they need reduced prices for the win.
Personally I think there's more to the HP product demise. And, personally I think Microsoft has a hand in it (patent trolling would be one ingredient), and the fact that Microsoft apparently had an agreement with HP to build a Win7 tablet. Also, being HP announced their decision to stop commodity PC production, I think they have some other sleight of hand to play by shifting everything over the Compaq brand name whilst claiming they are no longer in the PC market. Hell, that's where their money comes from (well, that and printer ink).
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It would have been easier to just repeal the first law and let good enough alone.
If you disable it then it is not genuine prevention any longer? If you disable it then win8 no longer boots. Microsoft get governments to consider it as part of the bid process and gets the governments to put it in the contracts. Certification takes significantly longer for non Microsoft products thus giving Microsoft the competitive advantage. If a contractor seems to be close they can slow down certification till they get the bid.
This is rife with abuse potential.
Yes it it is anticompetitive behavior and a slight modification of embrace extend extinguish. Microsoft decides what security is. They determine if you are secure. They determine if they are secure. They deny you boot access with every turn in order to ensure vendors do not put competing OSes into consumers hands, and make it hard or seem insecure if you turn it off. For example the vendors turn it off to install other OSes, That puts their os at risk and probably denies win8 boot -- no secure boot then no win8 boot -- Microsoft cries foul.
Microsoft can then claim only win8 is a viable and secure os. Governments will look at this for certification. Their server software will get chosen. Their people will get the contracts. Microsoft servers will gain share when now they are loosing it at a fast pace.
This is clearly an anticompetitive process meant to shrink the base of competing products. If the small yet innovative distro like Mint can't afford this with every release. Thus they reduce their share -- they slow down the pace of their innovation by reducing the number of release cycles.
Microsoft should not be in control of any certificate issuing program, and they should not set the criteria. They should go through the same process as anyone else. This way they can't use their monopoly power to deny competition a chance.
And as far as I know, only Windows is currently at risk anyway from boot loader exploits. And Microsoft could more easily handle their boot exploit issues from within windows without endangering the viability of competing products. And this is clearly a major issue just because Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. Microsoft as a convicted monopolist should never be allowed to hold the keys to any program that can be used in improper ways and which they can use to kill or limit their competition.
Yeah, I have 3 of them that I put Linux on to give me the full computing experience.
Agreed, except in that "iOS needs to be controlled". It doesn't. That's a choice made by Apple with their justifications as recognized by the world as being unfounded. That is the precise reason people think that it might work its way into OSX.
Few if any users have ever predicted that, instead most choose to remain realistic. Those that did make those predictions were pundits, journalist, and the like. The regular Linux user knows that it is the year of the Linux desktop, for them. They know they need go no further. Can't you see how silly that is? Every user choosing Linux on their desktop has it, so why would they proselytize it to everyone else in that way?
I think there's little hardware that doesn't work with Linux. Most just works.
Except for the early days, Linux has always looked good. Yeah, it took years to build up the OS and to present a solid friendly UI, but if you look back at Windows (and DOS) -- to those early days -- one can only say how pathetic it looked and operated. Today no one can demean Linux for a lack of apps, except maybe for games (and that changes daily also). Games though are far and few between as far as use goes for the average person. Java is fully integrated, so is flash, and many other technologies necessary for gaming on platforms such as g+ or facebook. Android is Linux. WebOS is Linux. Meego is Linux. Linux is every where and in everything you do today. If you choose Windows you choose it not because of how technically excellent it is, because, frankly, I work on these boxes every day and underneath that translucent veneer there's much of the old mess that existed from the beginning, and that can be tremendous trouble for the average person. Linux is moving up and is moving in even if most don't see it. As far as those go that say they have tested Linux for a couple weeks (or even a month or two), well those people are fools, plain and simple. You gave Windows years of your life even after knowing about all the insecurity, the viruses, the crashing programs, the failure to update to more modern technologies (where Microsoft just chooses a prettier face instead of really changing things that make this much easier to maintain by the average person). I know they have their technologies for servers and big business, but that's not for the average person. And it never should be.
Ballmer is an idiot. This attempt is going to foil them for one simple reason. Win8 is unnecessary as far as what's on the desktop or available in technology. Meaning, that Win7 for most is more than enough. Most people don't need to upgrade and never will until they buy a new computer (at which time they won't really have a choice of what they get). Touch screens for the desktop are a non-starter. Screens are big, people want to relax when using a computer. Gaming on the larger screens is different than gaming on a tablet or phone, so the touch screen does little. On top of that, all the technology in the world won't give Microsoft back what they had.
There are hundreds of millions of PCs sold every year. There are many alternatives to Microsoft today. Every day, literally, Linux gets better, is easier. I can remember not long ago in these very forums that every Linux hater/Microsoft zealot screamed that Linux is failing because it doesn't even have good wireless support. Today it has better wireless support than any OS, and that's a fact, and it's all built and and it just works. Win7 brings me daily wireless issues that shouldn't exist in Windows if Microsoft had done what was right for their customers. Every day I have to deal with some bullshit screwball method of having to overcome this or that problem using tools that were designed to work in Win98 and Win2k (take msconfig as an example--the interface for that is bullshit and the main window can't even be resized--they could have done thousands of things to that program alone to help the administrator or end-user solve problems with their machines). The BSOD while able to display, most of the time, an error code, has problem suggestions that are totally wrong most of the time as far as problem resolution goes. Users following that are nearly never successful. When you have an issue and it offers help, the help screens are almost a total waste of time and they lead to Microsoft's customer's wasting tremendous amounts of time on wild goose chases.
I use Linux every day. I use Windows every day. I repair Windows boxes every day. I see this stuff in spades. One person stating they never have problems doesn't change the fact that millions do.
Windows 7 is just fine for the time being. I can't see anyone that uses it that would need to upgrade it within the next 3-5 years. Win8 isn't being released because of real world needs, it's because of Microsoft's wants for more cash.
I am not interested in the Joojoo, in any incarnation.
I have said from the beginning. EVERYONE wants a tablet, but NOONE can afford it.
HP's fire-sale should have been an obvious eye-opener to everyone. I find any attempt to double your price per item like what HP had tried to do as a rip-off of the consumer. Yeah, the $99 and $149 tablet fire-sale did catch my eye, but their original pricing was gouging.
Seems more like deflection. Some lone gunman shoots--so to speak.
The Comodo and Diginotar break-ins and theft were traced to Iran. To me, when I read the pastebin post, I felt it was a cover up bit meant to mislead the general public. Any additional hack thereafter, such as GlobalSign, would simply be to cover up their actions.
I'm not talking about hiding the activity, but to make it seem like Iran wasn't a participant. And, they were. The purpose of those thefts is to act as a man-in-the-middle to fool the Iranian citizens into thinking that they were speaking with these social and search sites as if they were the original. SSL is the foundation of secure communication over the internet. Browsers use those to verify a site is the actual site. Acting as a man in the middle with a seemingly valid certificate can fool your population into believing you are Google, and hence they can read your mail, watch your searches, check out what you say, and even find out where you are. Iran could easily put up a fake Firefox/Google/Microsoft site and then substitute their own browser that still accepts the certificates.
If GlobalSign is ceasing certificate issuance because of pastebin maybe it is appropriate for now.
My opinion still stands. That pastebin reference was either some fool confessing to every murder and crime on the planet, or it was Iran spoofing the general world public trying to build doubt, thus making it less likely that there'll be major backlash by the governments of the world.
Certificate forgery (by stealing them from legit sources) is really bad for the internet. Seriously bad.
Unity is just a desktop desktop manager. You can substitute it, luckily. Yes, I agree, Unity sucks hard. The blogs that follow Ubuntu though don't seem to care what anyone thinks, they blithely go on touting Unity when they should be thoroughly rejecting it.
There's no reason to go to Windows 8.
Modifications to pieces of the OS such as the file browser are too tiny as far as modifications go to even remotely consider it a reason to upgrade. Even if they added some nice features it still wouldn't be enough, as Windows 7 has more features, and is easy enough to use that it should last us another 10 years. Unless you have an older version of Windows and it is necessary to upgrade to Windows 8 there's no reason for it.
Microsoft will use this 'pre-installed" (on new hardware) OS tactic to leverage it into a required OS, but in reality it isn't necessary.
Vista was the pig with lipstick. Windows 7 was pretty decent though not necessary. Windows 8 just isn't necessary no matter how you paint it.
I'm sure as time goes by the idea that Windows 8 is an unnecessary upgrade will hit further and further home with everyone.
Give it up Microsoft, we want free and open systems unlocked and untied to stores like Apple. I think this finally could purport the success of alternative OSes. For Ubuntu, unfortunately, it fails the user with that Unity desktop. Gnome 3 is little better. Maybe KDE will get some long due respect.
Man, I swear, while being super nice all I have gotten lately from offshore call center employees is bad attitude, as if they lack the basic understanding that I work for my money and want to retain as much as I can, especially during this recession.
No, it is an excellent and powerful device.
Some mistake integration with expensive, or polish with power. It's not true--look at the press coverage about the aluminum polished back of the iPad--that has nothing to do with with power, yet people still focus on it. Though that isn't to say that some of these Android phones aren't amazing, they are, they are fantastic powerful integrated quality devices. My buddy has a very nice Android phone with a dual core Tegra 2. My phone is a single core 1 GHz and is capable of most everything his does. His is faster. I have a Xoom tablet, a B&N ColorNook, and a HP Touchpad as well. He also has an ASUS Transformer. His wife has one also and he's planning another Android tablet purchase for his Grandmother.
Those that have the iPhone/iPad, and those that have Android and those that have gone from the iPhone/iPad to Android, know that most of the braggadocio about Apple is just that. Experience trumps fanboism. Any day.
Android tablets are nice. I've never seen a cheap tablet. I've never seen a tablet without capacitive touch. I've seen phones without it.
Apple is not fighting a war with any company for any other reason than to extend the duration of the high price they charge. What I said is this: Apple is suing and fighting not to keep competition from taking hold. They are fighting to extend the duration of which allows them to charge a high price. Why do I say this? It isn't odd, it is basic economics. Supply and demand. It is inevitable that Apple will be pulled into a price war. They WILL be dragged into commodity pricing. Phones and otherwise. Cell phones are different in one way: they hold you to a contract for 2 years--tablets are not that way--and that's major when it comes to why a consumer doesn't switch. Apple will soon not be able to compete feature for feature, for every suit they bring they make enemies. Those enemies are not going to give Apple a hand on features when the Android tablets begin to feature rage over Apple's offering. In other words, after some time, the suits will end and Apple will be standing there with enemies while still trying to compete.
I'll say it again more clearly. Apple doesn't want commodity pricing, they fear it. They know it is inevitable. They are fighting not to get rid of the competition (because they can't), they are fighting to extend the period that they can charge their higher prices.
NO ANDROID device manufacturer should be competing against Apple. They should be competing against one another. They should ignore Apple, except insofar as much as it introduces features. Samsung is making a grave mistake trying to match or beat Apple feature and price wise. All high priced tablet makers are. They need to get with suppliers with the premise that they can and will buy more than Apple ever could (over the long haul) in order to obtain parts at lower price margins.
Supply and demand indicates that (since there is a demand) Apple can't supply everyone with what they want, primarily due to their very conceited and dangerous position regarding their walled gardens.
Introduce competition. Android comes in and fills the demand. Consumers see that these devices are more powerful and more open devices. These guys either begin to fight for share over price or they try to compete with Apple for the high end. Give Apple the high end and focus on supplying to the masses. If that means crappy devices initially then so be it. It always happens that way. What ultimately happens is that the device quality and capabilities meet somewhere in the middle between poor and quality. Then the march goes up on features and down on cost driving the high end out (except for those that are influenced by the brainwashing).
While the screen may be a concern for the techie, few if any that bought the tablet know the difference. I think you are projecting.
Hands down it was the price. The price of tablets is drastically high.
At least some in the industry are waking up to that fact even if you aren't.
I see real networks software installed on most computers that come into my shop. That means they are all over the place and the best way to deal with this is to remove Real from every computer you encounter. That'll teach them a lesson. It would be nice if we could block real on every machine like we block websites.
Right now you feel that way because the maturity of the market lacks. We had the same thing when Microsoft first introduced DOS competing with the Apple II. We had that when Windows 3.x became the pre-install choice. Apps were still unrefined. We had that when compared to the original Mac OS.
Each individual app seemed to lack something, given time though, they matured. As is the case with Android. I have an iPhone and several Android device, and several Mac computers. As far as the iPhone goes, contrary to your view, I don't see what you are talking about, at least not enough to even give it a second thought. I tend to look at numerous products in a category that I'm after. Generally I can sift sufficiently to get the best most mature one, which ofttimes seems better than the equivalent I have on the iOS.
So, really, I just can't see what you are claiming bears out. I'm not seeing it. Wait a big longer for maturity or be more selective. No need to give credit to Apple. They were first in the past and in tablets. So, you will see that. Apple also tends to sell to the wealthy upper class and can continue to do so because they generally have money to spare. Acer and the likes make their fortunes in volume selling to the less than wealthy those hoping to just feed their families and watch their grandchildren grow. Big difference. Probably shouldn't give Apple any more credit than that, considering we are in a recession.
I have 3 tablets and an android phone. I would never use an iPad, nor do I see a need for anyone else to ever need nor want to use one
I have use vice-grips to remove screws.
I run sipdroid on mine tied into my google voice account to make and receive calls. It rings like any other phone, though I would not use it in court.
I read what the acer ceo wrote as total lunacy. Maybe he should not be the acer ceo. The issue with tablets is more price than functionality. This has been borne out repeatedly with the mad rush to obtain the touchpad tablet from HP. People lined up the night before to get a discounted tablet from best buy stores.
People want a cheap device even if it does not have all the functionality of the high end.
Why on earth is this so hard for the likes of the Acer ceo to see this?
The HP Touchpad was designed to compete with the iPad 1, and not the Xoom or Galaxy Tab or even the iPad 2.
If he drops the price of his over-inflated under-equipped tablet maybe he'll see increased sales. Frankly the man has shown zero evidence and seems to be trying to kill it before it gets started.
The issues surrounding the HP TouchPad are much different than those of the Android market. The idea of Apps availability is only slightly relevant. The reason? Because there were nearly zero apps for HP's platform.
The guy doing this analysis must have just tech hack trying to come up with some new spin. When are we going to get responsible tech reporting?
HP's problem was that the second place tablet systems FAR FAR FAR exceeded HP's ability to produce any meaningful effort at catching up with either number two or number one in apps.
HP also didn't let the OS mature enough and they never really had their hearts into it. They announced shipment in what, mid July? And ceased the product in mid August? Their CEO must be nuts. He should have taken the tablet hardware and adapted Android to it and sold it like they would any other piece of hardware.
Their hardware is sound, their software isn't. Their product is proprietary competing with two much bigger platforms for developer attention. It wasn't going to work. WebOS as it was designed couldn't keep up (excellent UI but shitty boot performance, poor app management). Unless they came out with some super duper fancy fast fabulous development tools that turned your apps in to magic with only a few lines of code they were destined to fail.
Now, this is absolutely unrelated to Android or iOS. Android doesn't come anywhere near suffering the same symptoms that lead to WebOS and the TouchPad's fate. Android has nearly 1/2 billion apps, and if you can't come to grips with the fact that this number is significant then nothing will satisfy you.
WebOS and the TouchPad died because of a lack of internal commitment at the upper levels even for their introductory product. A lack of developer commitment hastened its demise. Apple's and Android's 1/2 billion apps each is easily more than enough to show distinct separation of cause and effect for the demise of the HP product.
The Android tablet market's problem is price. Hands down. Reduce that price and push Apple using price and you can defeat them forcing them into commodity pricing. Apple does not want this. They fear it. Their profits are so far bolstered due to iOS device sales, not their desktop/laptop computing platforms. As you'll note, they have NOT really gained any traction. Their desktop/laptop hardware is essentially the same stuff found on any PC (where custom builds are superior to Apple's offerings, and at a lower price). Apple has fought for 30 years to keep its prices high. They want the same thing with the iOS devices. Reduction in pricing will kill that and drag Apple screaming into the commodity pricing market.
Android tablets are very nice. Their fast dual CPUs, 1gig RAM, and 16-32gig on-board storage, with HDMI out, flash card slots, incredible graphics, cameras, GPS, gorgeous UI, fast OS, open nature makes one wonder why the prices aren't much higher. In reality those prices need to drop much faster to push Apple out of control of the market. $299 to $399 will make the market grow faster and allow enough profit to improve R&D to make better models where they can charge higher prices. Right now they need reduced prices for the win.
Personally I think there's more to the HP product demise. And, personally I think Microsoft has a hand in it (patent trolling would be one ingredient), and the fact that Microsoft apparently had an agreement with HP to build a Win7 tablet. Also, being HP announced their decision to stop commodity PC production, I think they have some other sleight of hand to play by shifting everything over the Compaq brand name whilst claiming they are no longer in the PC market. Hell, that's where their money comes from (well, that and printer ink).
Unrealistic. Your response is disingenuous.