Posted on 12/15/2007 7:41:19 PM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing
..........You missed my point..........
Apparently I did. *looks up* Look! There’s your point right next to that airplane!
...........The contention in the posts above is that Apple can’t produce a computing device with operating system etc to compete with the Wal-Mart Linux PCs..........
My contention is that they couldn’t do it profittably. I know they could do it. But they’d essentially have to linux-ize macos. That is, they’d have to make it free.
Apple has made one thing abundantly clear from beginning to end throughout it’s existance.(with the exception of a bungle from a previous CEO)
They do not want their OS commoditized. Even on the mini, I’m sure they are making a good sized profit. If they whorred everything out, there wouldn’t be any profit. And I honestly believe that apple believes that their stuff is a cut above the rest. And granted, in some ways it is. In other ways, the hype is greater. But I don’t want to go down that road at this time.
————The hardware and OS cost is the easy part.————
It is. Something larger has more ports, is upgradable, and that in/of itself incurrs(sp?) more tech support calls. That isn’t free. And there are other reasons too, I’m sure.
No problemo ;-)
I’ve seen linux crashes, but only with alpha and beta softwares.
Though granted, I never saw many crashes when I was running W2k. XP seemed slightly more crash prone than 2k was, but not by much. Though I never complained about crashes much after stepping into the world of NT based OS’s. I would’ve stuck with 2k if it weren’t for a greater need for more features within the OS.
I still have my valid 2k sticker. But it’s next to worthless to me. One of these days, I’ll probably sell it.
-—————I can’t imagine the technical support customers will get Wal-Mart could be much worse than I’ve gotten from Dell, but it still costs money.-—————
I’d imagine that in a lot of cases, support would be lower.
You don’t have many viruses, so naturally no antivirus to deal with.
No spyware.
And no software to install/uninstall. The computer already comes with most things you’ll need. a FOSS box is gonna have open office, while granted isn’t as good as MS office it’s a fantastic product. It’s gonna come with GIMP, which is also a fantastic product.
And linux is less crash prone than windows is. Tech support calls would be mainly due to hardware concerns; someone bought an external hard drive or something. Maybe an occassional printer error.
They don’t have cost on the OS itself unlike MS or Apple would have. All of this is why it’s more profitable for an FOSS box in such a low dollar amount. $200, maybe even $150 or lower.
———But will Aunt Min dig it as she tries out this whole newfangled computer thing?—————
I doubt Aunt Min will do anything different than my grandma does on her linux box. Hit the power and what’s there is there.
gnip...
I think Apple would win out for these two reasons:
1. The Linux community is too fractured. (Meaning you have your Ubuntuphiles and your PCLinuxOS-ites and the Xandrosians and the Linspire-whatevers and the SUSE-whatevers and the Fedoraphiles.)
2. No one Linux distribution company has the marketing power of Apple. I would dare say they don’t have even 1/10th Apple’s marketing power. Apple can afford huge multi-million dollar ad blitzes. The Linux distro companies cannot afford the same and must rely basically on “word of mouth” advertising, aka the “Jack Tramiel method”, and IIRC, the last Tramiel company that relied on the “Jack Tramiel method” went out of business and got sold to a disk drive manufacturer (yes, I’m talking about when Atari went out of business and merged with Jugi Tandon Storage).
Yeah, but giving away the OS for free means the company cannot afford huge media blitzes.
........There’s still the need to understand..........
Yes, but all three camps(MS, apple, linux) will have to do training and etc of their employees.
.............document...............
They could easily cut/paste already existing documentation. Most serious linux/OSS projects maintain documentation. Now, they may need to re-write some of it for better/easier readability, but a large portion of this work is already done too.
.........and (at least occasionally) support the product being sold...........
Yes, but as I said support in this instance would be minimal. You don’t need to buy any office products, it already comes with a full blown office app. Same with graphics, many games, and other productivity apps.
I agree, it wouldn’t be free. I just happen to think it would cost less because of....... in a word outsourcing.
........GIMP and Open Office could be put on a MacOS-based cheapie computer too, so the “free software” aspect is comparatively immaterial...........
They could, but from a business standpoint apple isn’t going to do that because they want to sell you their other products.(macoffice and etc)
........But many prestigious brands are loath to dilute their image with bargain offerings even it it could be profitable. ...........
Another fantastic point. Apple does like it’s brand being percieved as higher end. And granted, in some ways it is.
.........I like Apple and its products, but its people are a bunch of libs, remember!...........
LOL, yeah well we’re kind of stuck. Apple’s loaded with libs, MS is too, and so is F/OSS. So if you’re gonna put politics over having a computer product, then you shouldn’t have a computer in your house. That is the only choice.
........1. The Linux community is too fractured........
I’m not sure that’s really a major argument.
Consider Toyota, Lexus, Scion...... There are countless companies out there that differentiate their products.
Athlon, Opteron, Duron, Core, Pentium, Celeron, ViiV...........
Why wouldn’t commodity operating systems be any different? Granted, it’s different because “linux” isn’t a central office/controller the way “microsoft” or “toyota” is, but the end result is largely the same. Even Apple differentiate their product offerings.
.......No one Linux distribution company has the marketing power of Apple.........
Yeah, I happen to also believe that Apple is winning. Long term is another story, because of how fast F/OSS evolves.
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