> Howdy, > > On Thu, 2008-08-28 at 17:19 -0400, Dan wrote: >> At 8:26 AM -0700 8/28/2008, Bruce Johnson wrote: >> >WOW. Pystar must have hired SCO's legal team. That's 'epic fail' >> territory. >> >> I donno. I think it has a shot. >> > I have read enough of Psystar's filing that I don't think they will > succeed. It is not all up yet, so I'll finish reading it when it is > posted. I suspect epic fail os off the mark, though. What made SCO > epic was that they were a successful company who destroyed themselves > through their suit. Psystar was never much and will likely fade away.
Which originally lead the more conspiracy minded among us that Pystar is merely bait for a larger entity. The sheer inanity of their legal filing and public statements, however, lead me to think they're just plain dumb. >> There is a legal question here as to the separation of hardware and >> software. If the courts rule that they're separate products,,, the >> whole industry will change -- for the better, IMO. >> > Maybe there is a better way. The case of Timothy Vernor vs Autodesk > should be instructive. It holds the first sale doctrine to apply to > "licensed" software. I have read several lawyers refer to it as well > reasoned and more influential that pure precedent would suggest. If > first sale doctrine applies to OSX "purchases", then restrictions over > where it can be installed fall to the wayside. Not really. The first sale doctrine merely means that you can re-sell software you purchased for yourself. It does not invalidate any other part of the EULA, merely the part that disallows transfer to another person. Moreover, the first sale doctrine applies, like the EULA, to end users only. Pystar, by virtue of incorporating as a business, advertising and providing systems as a commercial seller of Mac-compatible systems can NOT be considered an end-user. > Maybe this is all a brilliant strategy by Apple. They are allowing > pent up demand to grow among part of the market that won't buy their > current hardware for whatever reason. They are keeping their product > positioned as leading edge. And if they release the product to the > general market at the right time and way, they might just take the > market from the guys in Redmond. The key phrase here is 'take the market from the guys in Redmond.' WHY does everyone assume that that is Apple's goal as a company, or is even a desirable goal? In his interview in Time, iirc, some years back Steve Jobs was asked explicitly about Apple's business goals. His answer (paraphrased) was "To continue making really cool stuff we can play with...and sell enough of it to continue making really cool stuff on into the future." Apple competing with Microsoft MAKES NO SENSE, and I presume a successful a business person as Steve Jobs knows this. Microsoft succeeded against the previous giant, IBM, mainly because IBM ignored the personal computer market (DESPITE bringing the first one to the market with the IBM imprimatur on it. Talk about a boneheaded Xerox move!) Microsoft took advantage of IBM's move making PC's business-respectable, bought an OS, and convinced Lotus to bring out a competitor to VisiCalc, which was THE killer app bringing personal computers into business; mainly, as it happened, Apple IIs. Microsoft succeeded by doing an end-run around IBM's core competency, which was their mainframe business (you'll note, that's STILL their core competency!). Apple cannot do an end-run around Microsoft's core competency, which is the personal computer OS. Apple is succeeding because it's competing where MS is weakest...in the consumer and the handheld market. Windows in the corporate workplace succeeds, in many ways, because it's become more of the old IBM mainframe model. There's strict centralized control of the desktop, you can do a lot of really cool stuff, if you have a bunch of MSCE's and a lot of servers. Where MS is vulnerable is right where Apple's moved OS X: as a consumer, small business, and mobile device OS...where an army of MSCEs and a phalanx of servers doesn't exist. OS X on the iPhone is the end-run, not replacing Windows with OS X on 90% of the worlds desktops. What I fear is that the arrogance of > Apple's early days would return and deprive them of that victory. I > think Jobs is just too controlling. Arrogance of the early days???? Too controlling??? WTF??? Apple has only ever been really successful when Steve was firmly in control. The first fall of Apple was when some idiots convinced Steve Jobs that computers were the same as sugar water, and forced him to put someone who knew nothing whatsoever about technology in charge. They got an illusory increase in sales, but squandered their lead, by focusing on sales not product. Post Scully, I didn't think Apple would survive. In the end, this was better for both Steve Jobs and Apple. In the interregnum years, Steve Jobs matured considerably as a business leader. Mainly it taught him that second acts were not only possible, they were doable, with equal success (no one can doubt that Pixar was, and continues to be a smashing success), and that the product is the ONLY guarantor of success. Pixar didn't succeed because it did good animation technologically, it succeeded because it subordinated the technology to the product (the story). Likewise, Apple 2.0 hasn't succeeded because of their technological innovations, it's succeeded by subordinated the technology to the product. Prior to Steve's return, Apple was a veritable roman candle of technological innovation...some of the most creative times for Apple R&D were between Jobs 1.0 and 2.0. But it was more often than not innovation just for the sake of innovation. They were making the really cool stuff, but they weren't getting it into their product. They, in Job's famous words, 'Real Artists' because they weren't shipping. NeXT was a technological success, but much less of a business one, mainly because there were some seriously misguided steps at the very beginning. Marketing a $10k system exclusively to the academic market was a boneheaded move. NeXT greatest success was in the business world...it became a potent 'secret weapon' in a lot of IT shops on Wall Street, but the time and momentum lost in the beginning allowed other competitors to catch up. In the end NeXT's greatest achievement was being brought back into the Apple fold, because it brought both the father of OS X and the father of Apple back to the company. Jobs' return brought the focus BACK to the product, not the sales. If you make a really cool product, the sales will come. If you master the art of surfing the bleeding edge, the sales will come. THAT is the reason for Apple's success. "Aiming for where the puck will be, not where it is." By definition, a market dominating company can NEVER "aim for where the puck will be". They have a 'long tail' they cannot afford to lose. Apple doesn't have that long tail, they lopped it off with the advent of OS X, and they've been careful to keep it short ever since...witness how many programs are 10.4 or 10.5 or better, versus Windows 'Win 98 or better'. This was the genius of Jobs announcing "OS 9 is dead" and aggressively doing just that, even when it seriously affected Apple's largest outside developers (MS and Adobe) Microsoft has not yet demonstrated that they can pull an OS X, even though they know they need to. They tried that with Vista, and between the time it was announced and the time it was released it was no longer a new OS, merely XP 2.0. Now it's the NEXT version of Windows that's going to be all new. They ALMOST succeeded with XP...that was a 'new OS', but but in the same mold as the old one. XP was Microsoft's Copeland, only instead of killing it in favor of a truly new vision of the OS like Apple did (and lacking Apple's ready replacement to hand in a mature, well-made, secure multiuser OS like BSD-based NeXT :-) they persevered and brought it to market. So many of the same mistakes that were made in Window 95-98 were made in XP. That's carried on to Vista. If anyone ever pines for "What Copeland could have become" they have to look no further than XP. Back to stretched analogy time. MS is a giant container ship. It takes a LONG time to turn around but it carries a buttload of cargo with it when it does. Apple is a cigarette boat. It can turn on a dime, but you can't carry out cross-oceanic trade in cigarette boats. They excel at getting with small, high-value cargoes to market quicker than the competition. -- Bruce Johnson U of A College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
