Posted on 10/25/2010 6:29:11 PM PDT by Wooly
The difference is that I think the fragmentation is permanent this time. Binary compatibility is far less important than it was in the floppy disc era -- the Internet is where the action is, and HTML, Facebook, Flash, others that are fading and more that will come along are the platforms that matter. As Sun used to advertise, "the network is the computer."
We share something in common. We have been using Microsoft OSes for the same amount of time. But this we do not share in common. This year I bought my first Mac. It's the best computer I have owned in 27 years. I will never go back to a PC. Period.
It was a liver. More importantly, Jobs was not the CEO before his departure in 1986; Mike Scott was Sculley's predecessor.
Why is that important? Because in 1983, Jobs' team was the engineers working on the Macintosh. This time around, his team is in the executive suites and the boardroom. He probably had a succession plan in mind before the health scare, and he certainly does after.
Phil Schiller and Tim Cook are definitely his guys, and Jony Ive shares his design philosophy. I would hope that a post-Jobs Apple wouldn't be too slavishly tied to "What would Steve do" -- trying to appease a ghost was what almost killed Disney until Eisner and Katzenberg came in.
Just as with MS, companies get so big they cannot be innovative and react quickly to trends.
The problem with big organizations is that they can't have a shared vision. A small group of people can, but an aggregate of shareholders cannot. As long as there's a strong management team with carte blanche from the Board, Apple should be able to continue to innovate; but if Jobs' successors suffer one major flop and lose the board's confidence, they'll probably bring in some boring suits, as has happened to so many other companies. That, however, could take decades to happen.
I think you have really nailed it. In the PC era, hardware became a commodity, but operating systems were not. Operating systems were closed and proprietary. Microsoft's closed OS dominated on commodity hardware.
But today operating systems are a dime a dozen like hardware. Fragmentation is not an obstacle as long as your platform connects to the network and just works without annoying problems. Portability is the important factor today. Your Internet device just has to work without a lot of hassles. I don't want to be a systems administrator. I just want the computer, phone, laptop, netbook, tablet to work and connect to a lot of other devices with ease of use.
You people are getting this article wrong, if you read it closely you will see that Linux and OSx are declining since the introduction of Windows 7 with linux taking the biggest drop, but Apple is beating the competition in the mobile market over Android. As a matter of fact, given all the Android hype is the following line from the article, “The very close runner-up, at 37%, is a big surprise: Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME), presumably running mostly on Nokia feature phones. Symbian is a distant third at 11%, with Android in fourth at 8%.”
Microsoft’s profit margin and net profit have increased under Ballmer, rather nicely. And a dividend has started as well... Microsoft has a profit margin that is the envy of pretty much every tech company.
A CEO is to make sure a company is profitable and increases those profits, and do so in a way that it is the company - and not a singular personality - that’s seen as the source of success. If Ballmer dies tomorrow, there will be very little net effect on the image or success of Microsoft. Can the same be said of Jobs?
Apple IS Jobs; Microsoft is NOT Ballmer. That makes Apple much more prone to a “cult of personality” type success...
You’ve told me it’s not an issue, and didn’t provide me with any solution, much less an enterprise-level key management system.
It’s the Apple mindset; there is the Apple way, or no way. Doesn’t matter that YOU want to do it, if it’s not something that Apple thinks you need, then you don’t get it.
" Doesn’t matter that YOU want to do it, if it’s not something that the Government Apple thinks you need, then you don’t get it.
Doesn’t matter that YOU want to do it, if it’s not something that Obama Apple thinks you need, then you don’t get it.
Weird, ain't it...
HP sucks....that’s your problem, right there.
The reality is both have their pros and cons...so we have both in this family....
(I am a bit jealous of my son's Macbook....)
Ditto. There is simply no comparison between an Apple and Windows PC—even Win 7, while stable, is not productive. All eye candy, not intuitive in the least.
Really? Apple is the government? And I can only do what they want me to do? Or is that maybe, just maybe, a tad over the top?
Reaching a bit, aren’t we? Apparently the comparison in mindset (there’s the way we do want you to do it, or no way) was missed...
All well and good when your network is the internet, and the only networked application you use is a web browser.
I can appreciate that you don't want to be a system administrator, but in the enterprise somebody has to be. Machines built by and for people who don't want to be system administators predictably don't have the administation capability built in and then they become a PITA for the people who are system administrators.
I've heard more than one person talk about how much they love the Mac they use at home, and how much they hate the PC they have to use at work. They blame Microsoft for having some kind of evil supernatural power to make their company use that OS instead of buying Macs. There are reasons why there's a PC on their desk at work, but they don't care or want to know what they are, they just complain that it's not how they want it to be.
I certainly thought so.
Depends. I replaced the hard drive in my iMac a while back. Apparently you're not supposed to be able to do that, but it was pretty easy. Reloading Mac OS was also MUCH easier than reinstalling Windows, and it was far easier to restore my data too.
Can you just build one up from off-the-shelf parts?
Depends. You can pretty much build a Mac Pro equivalent from parts using a server mobo, although it'll probably cost you more than just buying a Mac Pro. The others are harder since their construction falls more in line with how even PC laptops are made, in a very specialized manner that can make some things hard to duplicate.
And, for the record, if the President, any President, asked to visit me, I'd make time for him.
If 0 asked me to visit him, I'd actually do that too.
Absolutely! The techies like their jobs :-)
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