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To: antiRepublicrat
The marketplace has room for both business approaches. It’s worked well for Microsoft, it’s working well for Apple. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

That I can agree with. I just don't agree that Apple is doing everything right, and MS is doing everything wrong. There is room for both approaches, and while it's just my opinion, I believe that Apple and the linux community have benefitted from Microsoft's approach.

Nearly all of the linux installations out there, and development work that's been done (and I think Apple has benefitted from a lot of that) is on machines that were originally shipped with Windows. If MS had taken Apples approach 15 years ago, finding a machine to install a linux distro on would be virtually impossible for the average person today - they would simply refuse to install and work with anything but Windows.

50 posted on 06/18/2008 3:52:11 PM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: tacticalogic
There is room for both approaches, and while it's just my opinion, I believe that Apple and the linux community have benefitted from Microsoft's approach.

Microsoft's approach really helped computers become ubiquitous and everyone benefitted, but IMHO that was at a slower level of advancement. Such a mass market creates inertia that is hard to change to advance the technology. Do you think 90%+ of computers would still be using BIOS if Microsoft had supported EFI or another advanced firmware years ago? They had a real chicken and egg problem.

Vertical companies like Sun, SGI, Apple and others pushed the envelope with advanced technology. It's easier for them to advance, as seen in Apple's complete phased abandonment of their old OS. That is something necessary for Microsoft, but they are wisely afraid to do it given their market.

51 posted on 06/18/2008 4:01:30 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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