Linked by Howard Fosdick on Mon 13th Dec 2010 23:11 UTC
It's hard to predict the future because we humans prefer to think in terms of familiar paradigms. Even the most brilliant of our species are subject to this flaw. Now, Microsoft faces its turn. The owner of the operating system that likely runs your personal computer, the company that achieved monopoly with Windows and ducked the Department of Justice's scythe to keep it, faces a midlife crisis as the world goes gaga over portable consumer devices. This is the story of what's happening to Microsoft in the handheld operating system markets -- and how it parallels the earlier, similar journeys of IBM Corporation and Digital Equipment Corporation. Can Microsoft achieve dominance on mobile devices?
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RE[2]: The issue is Foothold.
by shotsman on Tue 14th Dec 2010 08:05
in reply to "RE: The issue is Foothold."
Member since:2005-07-22
RE[3]: The issue is Foothold.
by REM2000 on Tue 14th Dec 2010 09:26
in reply to "RE[2]: The issue is Foothold."
Member since:2006-07-25
I think i would have to agree with the sentiment of Microsoft being the main player in the Server market, i think the number of organisations without a windows server in their organisation somewhere is pretty slim. With many org's using Windows Server as their primary server OS.
RE[2]: The issue is Foothold.
by jmtx86 on Tue 14th Dec 2010 15:31
in reply to "RE: The issue is Foothold."
Member since:2008-02-08
You don't know the server market. Your information is false. Microsoft is the dominate Server operating system. Linux dominates web services and that is even being threaten by MS.
Apple does have a server presence; though its niche. Walk into any media production datacenter and you will find a good portion of Mac OSX servers. To be fair you will find a good portion of Linux used for Rendering farms.
I agree that Linux strengths is the micro OS market; PLC controllers, setup, and any ROM based computer. Believe it or not WinCE also has a good strength in this market as well.
Regarding the stats Android is "linux", so this should be mention when doing a honest statistic. Linux is becoming the dominate mobile platform for smart phones.
RE[3]: The issue is Foothold. "Android is Linux"
by jabbotts on Tue 14th Dec 2010 16:18
in reply to "RE[2]: The issue is Foothold."
Member since:2007-09-06
RE[3]: The issue is Foothold.
by Lennie on Tue 14th Dec 2010 18:20
in reply to "RE[2]: The issue is Foothold."
Member since:2007-09-22
Microsoft is loosing market share in the webserver business:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/
They tricked a few parked-domain sites to switch in the past (with a financial incentive) but they are loosing share.
RE[2]: The issue is Foothold.
by shmerl on Tue 14th Dec 2010 16:07
in reply to "RE: The issue is Foothold."
Member since:2010-06-08
RE[2]: The issue is Foothold.
by tyrione on Tue 14th Dec 2010 21:15
in reply to "RE: The issue is Foothold."
Member since:2005-11-21
"Basically Linux is appearing that it will get a strong foothold in mobile devices equal or stronger than MS foothold in desktop. A foothold it can use to slowly chip away at the desktop.
This kind-of assumes that the whole objective of every player should be to dominate the desktop.
Look at it perhaps another way:
Linux dominates in embedded devices, internet infrastructure and supercomputers, it has a significant slice (maybe even the main player) in servers, and it has a decent share in mobiles, handhelds and netbooks.
OSX has a modest share in desktops, no presence to speak of in servers, embedded devices or supercomputers, and the lions share in mobiles, handhelds and tablets.
Windows dominates the desktop, has a decent share of servers (maybe even the main player), and is not significant anywhere else. "
What do you think mobiles, handhelds and tablets are? Embedded devices.
RE[3]: The issue is Foothold.
by lemur2 on Tue 14th Dec 2010 21:43
in reply to "RE[2]: The issue is Foothold."
Member since:2007-02-17
What do you think mobiles, handhelds and tablets are? Embedded devices.
What I meant to indicate when I said "embedded devices" is products like digital TVs, PVRs, GPS devices and things like digital photo frames. Typically, anything with a screen and a menu that is not a computer.
Meego in particular is targetted at this type of product:
http://meego.com/devices
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
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Member since:
2007-02-17
This kind-of assumes that the whole objective of every player should be to dominate the desktop.
Look at it perhaps another way:
Linux dominates in embedded devices, internet infrastructure and supercomputers, it has a significant slice (maybe even the main player) in servers, and it has a decent share in mobiles, handhelds and netbooks.
OSX has a modest share in desktops, no presence to speak of in servers, embedded devices or supercomputers, and the lions share in mobiles, handhelds and tablets.
Windows dominates the desktop, has a decent share of servers (maybe even the main player), and is not significant anywhere else.
Edited 2010-12-14 01:45 UTC