On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM, lakestevensdental <lakestevensden...@verizon.net> wrote: > Mark wrote: >> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 12:29 PM, lakestevensdental >> <lakestevensden...@verizon.net> wrote: >> \> Good luck carrying that non-Apple albatross around your neck... It's >> >>> not like there's nothing to learn from the successful. >>> >>> Always, Fred C >>> >> >> ...or non-Micro$oft, or non-Linux, or... it all depends on whose >> fan-boy you're talking to. The sad fact is that they're *all* >> albatrosses in one way or another. >> > M$ is no albatross. It's the world's largest computer virus. >
...and Apple isn't? You're being very hypocritical. > Apple, hmmm.... IMHO, they've found a growing niche for folks who want > to get over the M$ virus, who feel the need to buy something that works. Give me a break. Whether you want to admit it or not, Windows *does* work well enough for it to be overwhelmingly dominant, and the only reason it breaks so often is because it's so much more open than MacOS or OS X - which is nothing but a crippled rip-off of Linux... For everything you can do on an Apple, you can do fifty things on a Windows box, and you have a multitude of choices of software to do each thing, most of which are far cheaper, just as stable and more featureful than the Apple alternative. Having used many flavors of DOS, all versions of Windows since 3.11, many Macs, and many different distros of Linux (not to mention UNIX and other mainframe OSes from the '70s and '80s) over the years, I can tell you that they're *all* full of crap. Linux crashes, Macs crash, and Windows doesn't crash as much as the Mac and Linux fanboys want to believe. And the only reason that Linux and Macs are so relatively safe from viruses and worms is because they aren't targeted, not because they are fundamentally more secure. (Don't get me wrong, I'm in the last stages of escaping the "Micro$oft virus" myself - my daily use is with kubuntu and my N800. However, I'm still forced to boot into WinXP occasionally to do things that just aren't yet possible in Linux.) >> If it weren't for the iPod, Apple would have died an ugly >> death a long time ago. They were in a very serious crisis when the >> iPod came out. They're still far from dominant in the computer market, >> and probably never will be. > The Ipod phenon has been an interesting ride to watch. Say what you > want about Apple's marketing style -- it's worked to dominate a rapidly > growing market niche and will likely continue that way into the near > future because of sheer marketing momentum of it and it's vertical > markets. That momentum can't last forever. Sooner or later, Apple is going to be right back where they were just before the iPod came out. Maybe they'll come out with another "Hail Mary" device then, maybe they won't... Actually, what seems to be coming out of the Apple camp these days is the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy. Hence the Intel Macs, giving up on DRM, etc. That's pretty smart, because in the long run they won't be able to survive with the same tactics they've been using for the last 20 years. The world has changed. > > As for the PC world, Apple could probably dominate, or at least > quickly become very big player, in the PC market if they decided to make > and sell their OS for installation in Intel boxes for a modest price. > Not likely. They would still need to be able to support the sheer numbers and variety of apps and hardware that Windows does. In other words, they would have to join 'em rather than beat 'em... > Linux could probably make everyone pay serious attention if a common > Direct X like app were available to grab the gamers out of the PC (and > Game box) world. Without gamers, there's little need for all the > additional speed and power in the PC market. Who knows, Linux may pick > up a lot of attention if more governments would adopt the policy of open > source OS and software were possible as someone has talked about in > Europe recently (make Great Britian?). > No, the one thing that keeps Linux from dominating is the mind-boggling fragmentation of effort. If Linux developers would work together instead of splintering off and starting a new app or distro every time they have the most miniscule difference of opinion, Linux would have take over the world long ago. As it is, new distros crop up every day, along with competing and equally unfinished apps. That isn't "competition", it's stupidity. Ubuntu is by far the biggest threat to Apple and Microsoft, but even Canonical is making some mistakes. They've come light-years in even the last five years with making Linux installable and usable by the average consumer, but a set of updates a couple of weeks ago broke my box to the point where the average consumer would have thought it was completely dead and given up on it. (Fortunately I was able to resuscitate it, but some plasmoids still aren't working.) I can't get Wine to do anything but crash the whole system. (And no, virtualization is not and never will be a reasonable alternative for the average person.) "Restricted" codecs etc. need to be *much* easier to find and install. Managing repositories is far beyond the understanding of the average consumer. Installing apps from source code is even less user-friendly. Far too many important apps must be installed with apt-get from the command line and don't show up at all in Adept. That's barely scratching the surface. > I suppose if someone could get Intuit to provide a Linux Quickbooks and > TurboTax, movement to Linux could be a done deal for a fair number of > small businesses that just need some accounting, inventory and Open > Office Suite to do most of their business computing needs. Who needs to > spend $150 on a bloated M$ O$, plus new devices and install hassles. > Intuit could offer QB, TT, OO, and Ubuntu or PCBSD on a disk for the > same price as M$ W7 alone, plus it would install and run. You can already do your taxes online with Linux (I have for several years), and the rest of it is already there in native apps. The one notable exception is that OpenOffice.org's Base application is still pretty much pre-alpha, release status notwithstanding. There *are* financial apps for Linux, but I don't have any need for them so haven't investigated any or know how they stack up against Quickbooks. 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