UrbanBard's Profile

That web designer displayed the height of technological arrogance; he wanted technology to be "hard-ro-use" so he could feel superior to other people. People have various temperaments or personalities. Each temperament displays their own competence and skills. This is not about intelligence as he would surmise; the point is that only a small percentage of people are technologically capable and enjoy decoding complex puzzles which that web designer would erect. It is about 12% of humanity. If the computer had remained as hard-to-use as they were back in the 1970s then computers would be a niche of only a few million. Fortunately, Apple pursued the easy-to-use path and Microsoft stole most of their ideas to mass market them. Just imagine if we still had a priesthood of computing like they had back in the IBM 360 era. We would be forced to put up with many more arrogant snobs like that web designer. We would never have enjoyable devices like the iPad. And people who rightly fear and hate computers, because they are unsuited to their temperaments, would never have their needs met.

Greg, you have it slightly wrong. We customers have the power to buy or not to buy. If companies don't serve us well, then we shouldn't buy. The problem comes in when there is a lack of competition; That is when companies get arrogant and stop serving us. The computer industry's problems are a result of Microsoft's monopoly. All the competition was in the hardware markets for a decade and a half. Apple made many mistakes and came close to going out of business. Adobe chose to be fickle and suck up to Microsoft; It is paying a price for that. These spats are not personal; it's just business. It's just a result of Microsoft's unraveling dominance. Monopolies don't last forever. Microsoft is under serious attack from many quarters; it has shown enormous arrogance and incompetence. The chickens are coming home to roost. Microsoft is under threat from Apple. Apple moved out of its traditional niches of education, graphics and design and has made huge inroads in the upper end consumer market. It is now appealing to the Small to Medium sized Business market. But, Apple's market share is unlikely to exceed 25%. Few people realize that Microsoft's market share is mostly inactive. Sixty per sent of the world's computers are using Windows XP and will likely remain there for the next couple of years. These are old computers running old software in Enterprise. Companies have no reason to upgrade, because the hardware is working adequately, if slowly. Businesses don't have the money to buy new computers. That will be necessary for these business functions to upgrade to Windows Seven. Hey! Even the Vista computers aren't moving very fast to upgrade. Sure, at 2% growth a month, that is twice as fast as Vista was, but it is less than half as fast as Snow Leopard's adoption. At this rate, it will take another year for Windows Seven to get 35%. The real threat to Microsoft is that Google's Chrome OS is coming out this year. Google is going after the low end consumer market, initially, but this will expand into Microsoft's business and government niches. The Chrome OS will be much safer and more secure than Windows Seven -- cheaper, too. Chrome, in combination with WINE to run the old XP software, could take over much of the Windows XP market share. That is a WIN-WIN situation for the Enterprise companies and Google. It is a losing proposition for Microsoft and its allies. This is good because there is competition again. Markets are supposed to be combative. Why? Because it is not about the companies; it is about how well they serve their customers. Adobe's Flash got its dominance because HTML was so crappy and Adobe climbed on Microsoft's coat tails. It didn't matter for a decade that Adobe got arrogant and did not serve its Macintosh customers well. As Microsoft loses its dominance, many of its old business arrangements and alliances will break up. Apple and Google are competing fiercely and they are unlikely to steal much from each other. Apple's target is hardware sales; Google's target is web views of advertising. Both will be going after Microsoft's established base. This will gore Adobe's ox as well. This trouncing comes from aligning, too closely, with the Industry leader. Adobe will, thus, suffer Microsoft's fate. The handwriting is on the wall for both. Adobe's FUD campaign against Apple is not working. Next year, most web sites will offer both Flash and H.264 access to video. Many web sites will do this easily by parking its video on YouTube.

Paul, the App Store is a work in process. No doubt, it will change over time in order to satisfy the consumers needs. Apple has an embarrassment of riches in its App store. It probably never knew the store would grow this fast, therefore it never made plans for expansion. "I’ve read your defense, but I really can’t agree. Software quality on the Mac seems to have not suffered with the free market and " Apple never controlled a market before; computers grew like topsy in often unfriendly ways for customers and developers. Apple had a niche market, so it could concentrate on pleasing reasonable professionals. But even then, Apple had many problems with developers. "Apple has not felt a need to dictate to Mac owners what they can and can’t run on their computers or that software can only be bought from them. " That is silly. Apple often has had to dictate to Mac owners in order to improve its OS. Apple told the developers for three years, in Mac OS 8, to stop making direct calls to hardware. Eventually, Apple had to cut the practice even though that broke programs. Who got blamed? The Developers? Dream on. Apple had a devil of a time converting its users and developers to Mac OSX even though its users knew the benefits of a modern, object oriented, operating system. Apple had to create the Carbon API's as the only means to move the developers and users to Cocoa API's. We are still four years away from Carbon API's becoming obsolete. Most recently, Apple had been telling developers, several years before the move to Intel hardware, to use Xcode and Cocoa API's. Adobe refused. It tried to coerce Apple into creating Carbon 64 bit API's, so it could cross compile programs, until Apple cut them off. Adobe has blamed Apple for being a year and a half late in converting CS to 64 bit. "I can’t see why the iPad should be any different. " What make the iPad platform different is the multi-touch technologies. You cannot simply transfer a Wintel app to the iPad and expect it to work well. Apple had to extensively reprogram iWorks to get the programs to be effortless. Also, Apple may be nipping problems in the bud by being strict now. Apple can afford to be strict, because it has more developers than it needs. The Wintel software marketplace is atrocious; it is not efficient. 80% of all apps are stolen. This means that developers must price their apps five times as high to gain a decent profit. It was never that bad in Macintosh software, but Macintosh users are very demanding and are less likely to be thieves. The word spread when an application wasn't good or very Mac-like. The App store Is an efficient marketplace, because Apple polices it. It isn't perfect, but the small developers can make a living on it. Apple didn't have such a marketplace before. I'm expecting Apple to extend the store to regular apps when it gets its infrastructure worked out. "The best thing Apple can do to ensure quality software is to continue to develop rich application frameworks and powerful development tools. " What if you can't get lazy developers to use your wonderful tools? What if they want to sell crappy knockoffs of programs they designed for Windows? Adobe, for instance, designed Flash to work very well and fast on Windows, but extremely poorly and problematically on the Mac. Who gets blamed for that situation? Not Adobe. "If they get that right, they won’t need to police their market place as developers will want to use their tools because they’re the best, not because they’re the only option." You have a naive view of the world. You must have police because there are malefactors. Apple could have the best tools in the world, but some people, out of self interest or blindness, will choose something else. What Apple is demanding on the iPad is native applications using open technologies. This is mostly aimed at Adobe, but Apple needs to elaborate on how it intends to respond to runtime programs.

Apple does not have a monopoly, Beeblebrox. There is plenty of competition in music players, mobile phones and internet appliances. Apple entered each of these markets as a novice -- an underdog. Apple earned its market share by pleasing customers better then the existing vendors did. If Apple screws up or become unnecessarily dictatorial, it will lose out very rapidly. There is no lack of competition. It seems like we have en iPhone killer every month. The point is that Apple owns and controls the iPod / iPhone / iPad software platform; therefore, it controls the path which that platform will take. Nor is this anti-competitive. If Flash is considered essential by iPod / iPhone /iPad users, then Apple will take a hit from that. If Apple is right and Flash is nonessential to its buyers then it will lose nothing. The problem is that Apple has very poor competition in these markets. Therefore, it is the developers who must attack Apple. This is a very weak hand. What the developers want to do is share in Apple's success, while simultaneously sabotaging Apple's plans for the future. The problem with Microsoft Windows is not that it controls 89% of the market, but that it is such a crappy, insecure OS. There are institutional reasons which maintain Microsoft's Market share, but that won't last forever. The cracks are starting to widen. I can see three ways in which Microsoft's market share will fall over the next ten years, but there are too many forces in play to know how it will happen.

Not quite, SterlingNorth. The issue is more complex than that. Diminishing returns are setting in on Microsoft Windows, but events are occurring in ways previously unforeseen. The handwriting is on the wall. Window's doom is certain, but apparently, it is deferred. Where James erred was in not recognizing that Microsoft is a marketing company, not a technology company. As long as the suckers are buying the Windows OS, then Microsoft will be issuing new crappy versions of it, full of glitter and hype, but no substance. Microsoft acts as a Confidence Man relying on other people's ignorance and gullibility. The Longhorn OS failed after five years of development and almost six billion dollars spent, so MS pulled a fast one to cover their embarrassment. They took an updated version of Windows NT with all its security flaws -- Windows Server 2003 -- and then hurried up to produce Vista in a year and a half. No wondered that Vista failed; it was still an Alpha version when released. MS needed over three years to revamp Vista into a half way decent OS in Windows Seven. But, the Windows operating system is not fixable. It is not a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system designed for the internet; it is a stand alone disk system which has been reworked into fooling you into believing it is. Apple did the same con job with multi-finder in System 5 in 1985. http://rixstep.com/2/20090601,00.shtml James is right in saying that Microsoft Windows is a disaster in the making. The Windows OS should be abandoned, but there are institutional reasons for why it will not die easily. As long as Windows is on the Internet, billions will be lost each year due to malware. A vulnerability in Windows is automatically an exploit, because it has no internal protection. Windows users have been conned into thinking that their malware woes are a necessary and an unavoidable part of computing. It is not. We have no idea when Windows will fail or how hard. As it seems right now, the Chrome OS is the greatest threat to Microsoft Windows, not Mac OSX. But, when this article was written, Google had not even started on the Chrome OS. http://rixstep.com/2/20090726,00.shtml Apple is in the hardware business. It will use Microsoft's incompetence to sell its hardware, but it is not at war with Microsoft. That is why Chrome is the only OS which stands a chance of replacing Windows. Over 60% of the computers in existence are on Windows XP. These computers are, mostly, in Enterprise companies, world wide, doing specialized tasks using old software. The systems work well enough for occasional use, so there is no reason to upgrade the hardware to run Windows Seven. Meanwhile, those computers remain a threat to the internet, because XP is so easily corrupted. What the Chrome OS can do is to allow the companies using XP to convert to Google apps. I expect than when Chrome is finally released, this year, someone in the FOSS community will revamp WINE to run on Chrome. This means that the companies who currently use Windows XP can install the Chrome OS and run their old Windows software in WINE. Hence, their workflows will be unhampered. How fast this will occur is anyone's guess.

"I’m curious, what is it that you think you can do with 64-bits that you can’t already do with 32-bits - other than address more memory or use longer registers? One example of a revolutionary change would be interesting." Ah, Paul, this technology is much like a baby. It depends on how it grows up. If you focus too closely you can miss the end result. A revolution is an abrupt event which depends on many incremental events before it. The American revolution was a hundred years in the making, but fifteen years before Concord the Americans were loyal Brits. Apple has had a long tendency of putting the pieces of technology in place until it has all its ducks in a row. When it adds the final piece, a revolution occurs, because new capabilities are revealed which weren't there before. How Apple took over the music player market was a revolution, just as is how it revamped the mobile phone market. The iPad seems to be an evolution of the iPod Touch, but I believe it is a part of the next revolution. You could say that this is just evolutionary, but by doing so, you miss the fact that the effect is greater than the sum of its parts. 64 bit code for a commercial device, like a server, is very different from a consumer device. Apple has inherited a long series of compromises which were forced on it by primitive technology or user demands. Apple, in Snow Leopard, is leaving behind the compromises it made, back in 1998, to adapt NeXTstep to the Mac. The Carbon API's will be rendered legacy so they can disappear in five years. Many of the exciting technologies in NeXTstep can now be enabled. When Apple migrates to 64 bit code, it gains enhanced security and control which is impossible in 32 bit code. This is a whole new level. This is more than merely extra address space or the ability to hide essential system files in that wider space. Apple will take advantage of the new capabilities to make the Mac much more secure. Microsoft has ASLR, DEP and the sand boxing of XP applications, but it won't make Windows secure. Nothing will change fundamentally. The Mac, in the 64 bit kernel, will gain ASLR, DEP and sand boxing, but it will use them in brand new ways. It is very long and tiring to explore the ramifications of that. And some of this is guesswork, because Apple has hinted at the possibilities but not laid out the details. You could discount my opinions as an over active imagination, but we will see soon enough. Are you aware that Apple changed its install procedure in Snow Leopard? Why did Apple do that? The installer now loads a part of the DVD on the disk, before it starts asking questions. In the 64 bit kernel, the installer is likely to be sand boxed in a virtual machine where it will be difficult to spoof. This allows Apple to close a security loophole which has been available since the original Mac OS. If you had physical access to the computer and an installer disk, the computer was at your mercy. I believe this will now change; the installer will start demanding your authorization to load software. Apple needs to make this as effortless as possible for legitimate Apple users, but this security loophole will, eventually, be closed. One enhancement is that if Apple is to secure the Mac for businesses, then it needs to lock down, erase or encrypt files on a lost or stolen Macs. This is no trivial matter to businesses. Apple already has the capability on the iPhone. I believe it will be extended to its Notebook line. But, without the 64 bit kernel, that would be impossible. This is just one ramification.

Make your bet, tundraboy, and I'll make mine. I never said when these trends will bear out. I merely said that the iPad was part of the process. The computer will be composed of many parts, but the combination will be greater than the sum of the parts. All the peripherals we currently use will be specialized computers which wirelessly work with the whole. I think Apple has an advantage in such a change.

It's hard to say, yet, where things are headed, Greg. I see a lot of trends. But, I can also see various ways in which they could play out. The Mac is a serious computer system. It can do very heavy duty work. The Mac, very soon, will become even more impressive because of 64 bit computing, OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch. But all these technologies must be local, not in the cloud. They are application and hardware based. It is Google who is leading the way to cloud computing, not Apple. Its target is to steal users from Microsoft. Cloud computing has drawbacks which make it inapplicable for the heavy duty work which the Mac does, nor is the cloud as reliable as a serious user would need. Apple and Google will work seamlessly together. They are going after different market segments. The iPad will be bought by people who think a Google NetBook is too difficult to use. One trend that I see is that the computer is on the verge of fragmenting. The components are getting cheap enough so that we will have five or six computers, in our homes or office, to replace our single one. The iPad is part of that process; it is designed to work with our wireless LAN and other computers. Apple will be inserting the iPad into a unified whole, rather than as a stand alone devise. But, Apple is not rushing the process; it is putting one piece in place at a time. One of the biggest pieces is the 64 bit kernel. The show doesn't start until it is turned on.