Re: Is Apple Testing The Watters?

In article <%UVdi.2230$vi5.1560@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"John Slade" <hhitman86@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"ZnU" <znu@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:znu-08DBD7.01351019062007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <f2Adi.20246$C96.11086@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"John Slade" <hhitman86@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"ZnU" <znu@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:znu-B3A3D5.11584815062007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You once again miss the entire point. If OS X is going to be
available to the masses, they will do what MS and Linux programers
did. They gave it functionality without drivers, they use generic
drivers until proper ones can be installed. Also they will include
a lot of drivers in OS X itself. This is how OSes for the masses
works.

Generic drivers work poorly (as with video cards -- this would be a big
deal with OS X) or not at all (often networking doesn't work on Wintel
boxes until you install the right drivers).

Tell me this, how many times these days does someone go in to a
store,
buy a NEW video card, pop it into their computer and find the drivers
already there? You see just about every piece of hardware tells you right
on
the box what it requires, what OS it will work with.

Yes. But with Windows, if there aren't already drivers, you can go
download them. Or they come on a CD with the product. It would take
years for OS X driver availability to reach that level.


There are lots of hardware devices that do not have Windows XP
drivers. However if there is profit in selling to Windows or OS X boxes, the
company will make drivers. This isn't rocket science. And since when is a
couple of years a long time?

So why don't all these companies make OS X drivers now?

[snip]

Why are you comparing boxed retail copies of OS X that people would
install on whatever hardware they've got (which is what we've been
talking about) with systems shipped with pre-installed software by
system integrators?

Because we're talking about Apple putting out an OS for the masses not
just it's own PCs. Microsoft can sell their OS to computer makers because it
works on generic PCs, Apple doesn't. Now you see why Microsoft Windows is
90% of the computing world and Apple OS X is less than 5%. Apple is closed,
Microsoft is open. That is it plain and simple.

As the music player market shows, regular consumers couldn't care less
about 'closed' vs. 'open'.

[snip]

What's Dell going to pay for an OEM copy of OS X? $50? Apple probably
makes upwards $300 off an average Mac sale. So, if they moved
exclusively to licensing OS X rather than selling Macs, they'd need to
probably have 20-30% market share to have the same profits, which is
just not going to happen in a short time period given the state of the
industry.

So what you're saying is that Apple is ripping people off. That's what
I've been trying to tell the idiots in here for years. Glad to see that
someoe caught on.

What are you talking about? Apple makes a lot more on a Mac sale than
they would on an operating system sale primarily mostly because a
computer simply costs a lot more than an operating system. Apple's
actual margins on Macs are significantly lower than margins often seen
in the software industry.

Secondly, you still haven't explained why an OS X box from Dell would be
so much more compelling than an OS X box from Apple. It's going to be
inferior in practically every way, from the hardware/software
integration to the industrial design to the packaging materials.

You guys have Dell on the brain. It's like a nervous tick with you
guys. Did you know that somone can go out and buy the components and build a
computer that will run OS X with full functionality? Yea it's true. The
experience would be the same. It would be OS X and will run like it does on
a Mac PC. Have you looked inside a Mac, it uses the same components as a PC
with very slight differences.

Once again, you demonstrate that you're completely out of touch with
regular consumers. People who build their own machines are a hobbyist
fringe. If you're talking about shipping OS X on generic hardware as a
way of bringing OS X "to the masses", you're necessarily talking about
pre-install deals with OEMs that are larger than Apple. This means,
essentially, Dell and HP.

So, you have to explain how Dell and HP could somehow offer something to
consumers that Apple itself could offer with a lot less effort than
would be involved in supporting OS X on generic hardware.

[snip]

Please name three web-based apps from five years ago or more,
implemented as Java applets, that were significant enough that I've
heard of them.

You maybe haven't heard of them but you've used them. They range from
web page counters to games. Many of the web bassed animations used Java back
then. I'm not going to bother and find each little application that was
popular just for you. However I will tell you that many online game sites
used Java before Adobe Flash became popular. Now even Adobe is implementing
some compatability with Java.

We were talking about the web as the next major applications platform.
When I said it had started emerging as such recently, I was thinking
about things like project management tools, document collaboration
tools, etc.

Little Java-based animations and page hit counters are hardly
significant.

And who ever implemented a web counter using client-side Java anyway?

Hell, name three high-profile Java applets that exist *now*.

Current ones include one of the popular Bittorrent client, Azureus.

Which is not browser-based, and has nothing to do with the web as an
applications platform.

Java is also used in various web based databases. I'm not going to jump
through any more hoops trying to prove that Java is popular. Most people who
use the web know how popular Java and other online applications are. That's
why Apple is jumping on board.

Java is pretty popular as a server-side technology. Apple has been on
board there for years, with WebObjects.

Java as a browser-based applications platform has been a failure, and
the market for browser-based apps is now developing largely without it.

--
"That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing
about him is that I read three--three or four books about him last year. Isn't
that interesting?"
- George W. Bush to reporter Kai Diekmann, May 5, 2006
.

Relevant Pages

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