Increasing component costs and pressure to cut its prices mean Apple's best bet for long-term success is to quit the hardware business and license the Mac to Dell, analyst firm Gartner claimed on Tuesday. In a surprisingly ambitious report, called Apple Should License the Mac to Dell, Gartner says Apple should concentrate on what it does best - create software - and make use of Dell's production and distribution infrastructure.
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Member since:2006-08-09
>> I'm in a similar position, and the reason for not choosing Linux (for a home machine) can easily be summed up:
1) Reduced functionality of initial installations because of missing drivers and/or distributions not including closed source drivers by default.
If you don't want to spend one hour configuring that, then pay a little money for a commercial distribution with lots of proprietary stuff.
>> 2) Lack of commercial software support. Sure, it would be great to run only free open source, but the reality is that some for some application types the availability / usability of open source alternatives is woeful. Besides, you need to be interoperable with people that are on other platforms using commercial software...
You were talking about a home machine, right? It's funny, I haven't had such issues for years, even though I had Linux only. If you really have to use MSOffice in stead of OOo, there's Crossover Office these days, or virtual machines, etc.
Why don't you give some example of the commercial software you need to use and we can work out an alternative option.
Well, nobody forces anybody to use Linux, needless to say. And I can understand people not looking forward to a little post-install configuring, I remember myself feeling the same, but really, it's not a big deal at all, especially if you find a nice forum for some initial support.
Member since:2006-01-18
Why don't you give some example of the commercial software you need to use and we can work out an alternative option.
A list of software that I own for which either a decent open source alternative does not exist, or is not interoperable, and doesn't really work under existing VM/emulation layers:
Vue d'Esprit
Logic
Cubase
Tassman
Reaktor
Reason
...need I go on?
Member since:
2006-01-18
As for usability, I frankly don't understand that problem either. Package management is so simple and advanced now, and the Gnome and KDE desktops have evolved to be so intuitive, I really don't see the gap in that field between OS X and Linux anymore.
I'm in a similar position, and the reason for not choosing Linux (for a home machine) can easily be summed up:
1) Reduced functionality of initial installations because of missing drivers and/or distributions not including closed source drivers by default.
2) Lack of commercial software support. Sure, it would be great to run only free open source, but the reality is that some for some application types the availability / usability of open source alternatives is woeful. Besides, you need to be interoperable with people that are on other platforms using commercial software...