Comments on: Apple Helps Microsoft Attack Google’s Linux While Google Spreads GNU/Linux, ODF

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:08:58 +0000

China’s not all ready yet

Actually, China is quite ready based on what it is doing with MIPS.

Did you see the news about Foxconn entering the GNU/Linux market with its own distro?

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:02:29 +0000

The “Everything Must Suck” ideology characterises marketing sectors, not a scientific sector.

By: Needs Sunlight

Needs Sunlight — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:21:43 +0000

Well it’s no longer a high-end hardware company. It’s better than many competitors, but going down the Wintel road only has one destination.

It’s still good but no longer great pc hardware. To regain the great status, a move to better architectures is needed. If the Bush / Wintel legacy in the US has killed the possibility for technological development in the US then the very painful decision would be to move up to China.

China’s not all ready yet, but with the sad state of the War on Knowledge has put the US in, especially what Wintel has been doing to the top research universities, and with what security theater by TSA and DHS do to prevent talent import to the universities, there are very few new talents coming down the pipe. Worse you get posers, who having no skills, do no work and can spend 100% of their time getting in the way of the few remaining with skill or experience.

By: Needs Sunlight

Needs Sunlight — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:12:22 +0000

There are also other problems popping up with MS dependencies and the One Microsoft Way of thinking infecting the system. One more has been the VPN security weaknesses. Last I checked, OS X did not support SSL or IPSEC vpns but do support the complicated and insecure PPTP from Microsoft.

This is supposed to turn into a list of complaints against Apple. I’d much rather Jobs knock some heads while he’s still there and find assistants that can do it for him. These problems above are not helping Apple, rather hurting it, and quite unnecessary.

I’d hate to see the Everything Must Suck ideology take over any more companies, especially Apple. If nothing else, it would put them in potential legal trouble with Microsoft, which virtually has a trademark on Suck.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:51:02 +0000

The same process could be applied to developers, with Moonlight and Mono that immediately come to mind.

Assimilation to Microsoft (as opposed to Microsoft’s feet dragged towards open standards) is always a migration route to Microsoft, not away from it.

By: dyfet

dyfet — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:27:18 +0000

In regard to Need Sunlights comments, I have the impression being a PC “operating system” company (OS/X) is simply no longer part of the long-term vision of Apple. On the other hand, being a high-end PC “hardware company”, that is being a high-end “Dell” or “HP” with “fancier” hardware and a strong consumer brand identity that also offers much higher profit margins, might be.

By: Needs Sunlight

Needs Sunlight — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:02:13 +0000

Since the demise of Steve Jobs, Apple’s been balking on open standards more than usual.

However, where it really shows is how Apple acts at the same time as both bitch and pimp for Microsoft:

Step one: Use Entourage to gain acceptance of removal of e-mail and calendaring and a ‘trial’ of MS Exchange.

Step two: once the ‘test’ of MS Exchange starts, blame the user for Entourage not working or

Step three: use the failures of MS Exchange to encourage use of BootCamp or other virtualization to get Windows into a VM under the pretense of linking to MS Exchange

Step four: use the failures of MS Exchange to encourage dropping the VM and running MS Windows natively, either on the x86 conveniently delivered by Apple or on a parallel machine.

Step five: Once Windows is running either natively or in the VM, productivity drops 20% – 25%. Windows users and managers of Windows users are used to this. However, formerly productive Apple users will show like a flare and having two systems will get the blame, giving managers an excuse to migrate to 100% Windows

Steps six through infinity: Eventually the staff will burn out and give up and rationalize their impotence. Between step 5 and when that happens you get an arbitrary number of cycles about holding tight for The Next Version, The Next Service Pack, the Next Hardware Upgrade, the Next Server Upgrade.

Don’t laugh. I’ve been seeing this method used by people claiming to be helping OS X users.