Linked by umad on Thu 25th Aug 2011 22:51 UTC
I thought OSNews would be a good forum to talk about a matter that has been weighing on my mind lately primarily because the site has been so focused on Apple's patents and litigation as of late. The news that HP, the largest PC manufacturer in the world is spinning off or getting out of this business is what really prompted me to write this article.
Thread beginning with comment 486890
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: Too much misinformation
by Thom_Holwerda on Thu 25th Aug 2011 23:40
in reply to "Too much misinformation"
Member since:2005-06-29
RE[2]: Too much misinformation
by galvanash on Fri 26th Aug 2011 05:51
in reply to "RE: Too much misinformation"
Member since:2006-01-25
True... But you did let it through right? 
I'm not in any way implying you shouldn't have - it is certainly an entertaining read. I just wish someone who didn't sound like a total loon had taken a crack at defending Apple instead of this kind of whiny "Microsoft stole our lunch money" revisionism that really does Apple no justice - that whole affair was eons ago and has nothing to do with the Apple of today. Why whine over the Apple that might have been when you have the Apple of today to be proud of? I don't get it at all...
Edited 2011-08-26 06:00 UTC
RE: Too much misinformation
by Tony Swash on Fri 26th Aug 2011 00:03
in reply to "Too much misinformation"
Member since:2009-08-22
This is the most arrogant lacking research editorial I have ever read from you. You are blaming Microsoft for something that was inevitable because of the openess of the IBM architecture and the work that took place in the industry to reverse engineers IBM's hardware to create an open architecture upon which the PC industry was built. Of course, Microsoft's early work with IBM and strategic licensing deal and clauses allowed the company to license PC-DOS to IBM and MS-DOS to anyone else. A recent article on PCMag even detailed why IBM chose not to use the Motorola CPU which was lacking certain 16 bit features that were already being delivered by the Intel 8086.
Also remember that Bill Gates was also exposed to the XEROX Alto and Xerox Star which both had early GUIs which both Microsoft and Apple copied ideas from. An employee who worked on Windows 1.0 said Bill even bought a Xerox Alto for employees to play with and get an idea of what he wanted to achieve. To say that Microsoft stole from Apple is very one sided and I guess you suffering from the high Steve Jobs resignation or trying in some way to suck up to get his attention through this 4 paragraph drivel of yours.
Also remember that Bill Gates was also exposed to the XEROX Alto and Xerox Star which both had early GUIs which both Microsoft and Apple copied ideas from. An employee who worked on Windows 1.0 said Bill even bought a Xerox Alto for employees to play with and get an idea of what he wanted to achieve. To say that Microsoft stole from Apple is very one sided and I guess you suffering from the high Steve Jobs resignation or trying in some way to suck up to get his attention through this 4 paragraph drivel of yours.
Too tired to write much.
Read 'Barbarians Led by Bill Gates' by Marlin Eller, a very senior developer at Microsoft and you will see just how much Bill Gates in particular was obsessed with replicating the Macintosh. No Macintosh would have meant no Windows.
Apple mostly lost because it was very badly managed from almost the moment the Mac project was started. Given the ineptitude of Apple's management (including Steve Jobs who was yet to learn several very painful lessons) its a miracle it survived and a testimony to just how adored the Mac OS was by millions of fans (including yours truly) who stuck with Apple through the ghastly chaotic period from 1984 to 1997.
We are leaving the epoch of the desktop PC behind now. There will be desktop PCs for a long time to come but there importance in the technology ecosystem is collapsing. In the future people will read the history of the PC period and laugh with disbelief at what people had to put up with: system crashes, rampant malware, the BSOD. We are finally leaving the medieval period of information technology behind and what a relief it is.
RE[2]: Too much misinformation
by Dr.Mabuse on Fri 26th Aug 2011 00:44
in reply to "RE: Too much misinformation"
Member since:2009-05-19
We are leaving the epoch of the desktop PC behind now. There will be desktop PCs for a long time to come but there importance in the technology ecosystem is collapsing. In the future people will read the history of the PC period and laugh with disbelief at what people had to put up with: system crashes, rampant malware, the BSOD. We are finally leaving the medieval period of information technology behind and what a relief it is.
Good grief, not this again.
The bold is my highlighting.
What in your opinion, will we use in the future for:
1/ The design of new Microprocessors
2/ Industrial Design applications (e.g. Toasters, Fridges, Furniture, etc.)
3/ Mechanical Design (Cars, Trains, etc.)
4/ Software Engineering (Not only for PCs, but tablets, smart phones, embedded devices, etc.)
5/ Graphics/Photo Editing
6/ 3D Rendering (Movies, Images, etc.)
7/ Sound Editing (Including composition of Music, etc.)
8/ The ability to administer, deploy and manage these applications on a network (in an office or at home)
...I could go on, but I guess I've made the point...
I can't wait to see the very fancy tablet to accomplish these tasks!
Or maybe we will just amuse ourselves with Angry Birds all day and forgo civilisation? :-)
IMHO - The "PC" in one form or another is the MOST important part of technology for the foreseeable future!
RE: Too much misinformation
by some1 on Fri 26th Aug 2011 01:03
in reply to "Too much misinformation"
Member since:2010-10-05
RE: Too much misinformation
by stargazer on Fri 26th Aug 2011 06:28
in reply to "Too much misinformation"
Member since:2011-08-26
RE[2]: Too much misinformation
by JAlexoid on Sun 28th Aug 2011 20:46
in reply to "RE: Too much misinformation"
Member since:2009-05-19
RE: Too much misinformation
by molnarcs on Fri 26th Aug 2011 14:21
in reply to "Too much misinformation"
Member since:2005-09-10
Hey, you're making too much sense! Don't forget, we are dealing with APPLE FAN BOYS!!! You know the type, right? Apple invented everything, the rest just copied - so apple has the right to do anything, no matter how ridiculous it is! I suggest you read about how religious fanaticism works - it's hopeless to convince these people with reason or facts. They are believers. There have been hundreds if not thousands of attempts to reason with them, but all failed. They are still around, and they are relentless. I wouldn't be surprised if the author was simply a clone of one of our regular Apple fan boys (just joined this month, right?).
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2005-11-13
This is the most arrogant lacking research editorial I have ever read from you. You are blaming Microsoft for something that was inevitable because of the openess of the IBM architecture and the work that took place in the industry to reverse engineers IBM's hardware to create an open architecture upon which the PC industry was built. Of course, Microsoft's early work with IBM and strategic licensing deal and clauses allowed the company to license PC-DOS to IBM and MS-DOS to anyone else. A recent article on PCMag even detailed why IBM chose not to use the Motorola CPU which was lacking certain 16 bit features that were already being delivered by the Intel 8086.
Also remember that Bill Gates was also exposed to the XEROX Alto and Xerox Star which both had early GUIs which both Microsoft and Apple copied ideas from. An employee who worked on Windows 1.0 said Bill even bought a Xerox Alto for employees to play with and get an idea of what he wanted to achieve. To say that Microsoft stole from Apple is very one sided and I guess you suffering from the high Steve Jobs resignation or trying in some way to suck up to get his attention through this 4 paragraph drivel of yours.
The PC would have been popular no matter what, period. Lets not forget that IBM would have been the bad guy in the 80's, there were other platforms that existed before and after the IBM PC such as the Altair, Commodore, Apple. Some even existed before the Apple 1. So, it is important to note, Apple was in this for a long time, they were only one out of many players in this business. Even some Steve Jobs decision gave the brand a bad rap such as the lack of a fan in the Apple II (but I am understanding the reason behind this is because of Steve Jobs hearing loss). The GUI was inevitable across all architectures and platforms. If Microsoft did not succeed, Linux probably would have instead, so Apple would have still been a 5% marketshare either way.
Also, remember that the Macintosh wasn't that popular either, it didn't have many applications during its debut, it wasn't until the Apple Writer, Postscript, Aldus PageMaker, QuarkXpress it gained some attention. Even when it did, it still did not get that mass appeal and adoption like the PC. Microsoft didn't get programs like Photoshop until version 3.0, PowerPoint not until 1990. So, Apple basically decided to make things be like this. John Sculley even admitted they were at fault and they should have followed the rest of the industry and migrated to Intel x86 and there were plans for the this, remember Star Trek