Jobs will soon be gone? I nominate Lo for the CEO Humanity Award. This is not about political correctness, it's just human decency. If I am ever in a situation where I have a choice between a Netgear product and another, Netgear will not get my money. His employees deserve better than this.
I am a system administrator for a large design agency that uses about 80% Macs for design and general productivity and 20% Windows machines for CAD and 3D.
All our routers are Netgear. Of all the network makers that are not Cisco or HP, Netgear's devices are by far the best. Extremely robust and reliable. Never had a failure in 8 years. That's Netgear's professional line up, and home devices may be different, I don't know.
Your comment is ignorant, nothing more, nothing less.
Your comment is ignorant. Comparing the consumer crap they make with a professional line is a broken comparison. If your experience is real than it also illustrates a basic disrespect by Netgear for the non-professional Netgear user. Personally, I'm not a fan of their office targeted gear either, it falls apart way too easily and every switch needs duct tape to keep the power brick plug connected. The damn things fall out on their own from everyday building vibration -- that's shoddy design.
Maybe you engage your brain before rattling off when you already advertise you don't know what you are speaking of. You would have been far better off just leaving it with the last sentence of your second paragraph.
You wouldn't be able to, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't hire you either as mindless zealotry does not go down well at job interviews.
Glad you identify how the applicants can judge the hirer. It is always good to remember you are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you. Some companies reflect the personality of their CEO, and Netgear is one I would be leery of given this last set of CEO comments.
Almost all CEOs are ego-mainiacs. Jobs makes their performances look like dog crap at a salary of $1/yr. so it hurts their feelings. I can see them at board of directors meetings getting reamed about their salary vs. performance. The response?
"Apple is a fad that won't last. Wait and see. Meanwhile, continue to pay me a gajillion $ because I am so darn smart."
Pathetic, really. You'd think they'd be smart enough not to draw additional attention to their own performance.
I dont think you understood a word i said. The apps I am talking about track their own users, and do their own fulfilment. In fact using Apple's model stops them from doing that since Apple does not release the user information. Besides all that the in-app purchasing forces pricing models which are not what people want.
However all that is moot because if you buy something on the Android app, or online, it cant appear on the iPad app because that is in contravention of 11.2 anyway. There is no business model there. Apps which seem to violate this rule ( i.e. Kindle) have gotten a bye. There are rumours that Apple have demanded compliance by June.
Unless something better comes up, most content providers will move to Android. Blood is already bad.
Are you sure Kindle doesn't use the Apple framework for in-app purchases? If it does you would be completely without any point whatsoever. If Kindle rewrites a section of the purchase code because it is not using the framework today, but will in the future you would still be all wet and without a moral high ground. And apps that are on the Android store can be on the iOS App Store if they are written for iOS and follow the developer guidelines. Just because an app can show up on Android doesn't mean there is some automagical means of preventing the developer from coding for iOS and following the dev guidelines. If a dev doesn't want to follow the guidelines that's fine too, but then it's the devs choice to forgo a market opportunity.
Are you kidding? Okay, I will grant you that the original iMac design is very toy-like now, but please let's not forget that this was released over 13 years ago. By today's standards it is pretty whimsical looking, but at the time was a revolutionary design. You can;t judge a 13+ year old design against a unibody MacBook Pro...it's a totally different tech world now (thanks to Apple).
As for OS X, I take issue with your comments. It in no way looks like Playskool. OS X has always been several steps ahead of windows in both form and function, and Windows 7 is the only thing MS has done that narrowed the gap to any real degree. And what are they basing Windows 7 on? Obviously an OS X-like experience is what they are trying to achieve. They have been chasing Apple for years for good reason, and finally have found some conceptual success.
You can argue that linux is the best for tasks x,y, and z, and I give it alot of credit for being free and open source, etc. But as for a commercially available OSes, Mac OS X is still the leader in the industry. I was going to end by saying that someday MS may come up with an OS that bests OS X, and theoretically they could...but it would really take a paradigm shift in their product philosophy. I just don't see it happening. Maybe if they canned Ballmer and got a real CEO in there.
Don't get baited. That was screamingfist, our resident troll who has found a very liberal set of mods and admins so he's well dug in.
As it is today, the Mac platform is much more vulnerable to malware than Android. OS X simply doesn't provide the user the same information about what an app can do before it's installed.
The only way to make Mac safer than Android is to close it down to the level of iOS.
Apple customers say they want curation, so you can expect Apple to respond by making OS X truly closed within the next three years.
It's either that, or "Hello malware". You choose.
Is this why OS X seems to only fall victim to the Security Professionals for big prize contests, but real world Android phone users have downloaded privacy information harvesting apps? Or downloaded remote controlled bot malware?
Yes there are some security issues in OS X, I'm not saying it's completely immune, but Android has already shown itself in less than two years on the market to be real world exploited with some regularity. Hardly a wonderful track record of security virtue, and the polar opposite of your point.
I laughed when I picked up their wireless routers vs the AirPort Extreme Base Station. Junk versus quality is no wonder he's whining.
He's complaining his company can't be a key player in helping route all that content.
Exactly - cheap plastic looks and 2 antennas won't "make the cake" when the software that runs his boxes is crap. I had one and had to reset the thing on a regular bases: all devices connected to the box but couldn't get to the outside - the browsers were stuck! 2 to 3 days after the reset the same thing! Replaced it with an Airport Extreme 2 years ago and never had problems. Though my coffee shop and a router at my company show the same symptoms - today. Both are Netgear. Yes - I paid twice the money but it was worth it lots more.
Time and again we see rival hardware manufacturers knocking Apple. Why? Because they are all in Apple's shadow when it comes to design quality and current success. I wish they'd all stop bemoaning Apple's success and start looking at why Apple is currently storming ahead. Stop making plastic laptops and ugly black PC towers, stop releasing poorly-conceived, clunky smartphones (also plastic), start investing the money Apple invests in R&D and actually bring something to the game rather than outsourcing every part of your product. Apple is hated because it doesn't need to kowtow to anyone else, and that drives its competitors crazy.
Quote:
That said, my impression is that Apple has hired some serious talent over the last few years and just as importantly, it's developed a company ethos that I think will help when the time does come for Apple to stand on its own two feet without its talisman.
These two quotes I think are key as to why Apple has climbed back to the top and why they don't have to lower themselves to the level of almost everyone else in the industry to sell products: they actually spend the money and time (R&D) required to design products that people love and want to buy. As opposed to having to undercut and/or partner with other companies to force your product to be bundled with theirs (and then hoping that people just don't care enough to look for something better).
Until these companies stop trying to outsource and cut production corners at every level, they will be forced to use these tactics, and to envy companies like Apple who have won the hearts of customers (not just forced them to settle for mediocre products). I dream of a day where top notch hardware and software designers are valued as much as executives in tech companies (and hopefully more than executives like this guy).
LT can 'reject' the label since all he is interested in is the kernel. But unless you are talking about the linux kernel source code alone you are talking 'gnu/linux'. in fact it is Linus who is short changing all the work put into the gnu projects etc and those programmers whose work enable the linux kernel to actually be useful.
and if you doubt that then go and compile the linux source code without gcc. and good luck. i use the word 'linux' cuz most associate that with the entire package and its shorter to type...
Without the Linux kernel GNU would be dead in the water with no viable operating system. All they would have is re-appropriated BSD unix code. The BSD guys would shrug and go on their way and everyone else would use their stuff, rather than the GNU stuff, due to the viral licensing restrictions. But because Linux is far better staffed with regular contributors that actively push and extend the platform it rightly has ascended past the traditional unixes and users are quite comfortable with the GPL2 that Linus has posted his code under.
Without that active Linux community, there isn't anything compelling to build on compared to the rest of what's out there. GNU would be just another license, with far harsher terms for consumers of code, and that would lead to irrelevance.
You guys are a bunch of fanbois. Lo said a bunch of sensible reasons why Apple won't have its profit base forever. Would I buy an Android based iPad? Sure. Will a quality Android piece come out? Yes it will.
Apple has about 3 years of gravy for each new invention. Steve Jobs is medically ill. When he dies... which is medically likely, if you examine the facts... Apple's innovation magic and marketing self censorship also die.
AAPL today is priced like they own the telephone business, the music business and the mobile app business combined. None of this is true. Generics will catch up. A couple of years late, but they will catch up. Would I rather pay $199 for an iPad, sure. The Chinese will back Lenovo so hard, Apple will forget what street its bank is on.
I do not understand the anger directed at Patrick's rant.
From macs to iphones, i've been an Apple guy for a long, long time. But i will not buy an iPad until it allows me to control my own content without having to go through that unspeakable thing called iTunes.
It became obvious to me that the main reason why there is no card reader on the iPad afterall, is that, once the mass storage interface implemented (how else can a card reader work properly?), this would give the user a file system on a card and make the device usable outside the "iTunes ecosystem". Protecting Apple's mark-ups on device flash storage is only a secondary reason.
Anyway, why be so harsh on critics? Most of my (non-mac) friends absolutely hate that iTunes they have to use with their ipods, iphones, ipads. iTunes is the only Apple software for the pc that they have seen. I am convinced that the (justified) negative perception of iTunes damages Apple's mac prospects long term.
This guy has no clue what he is talking about, Apple won with a closed system with the ipod and the music wars with itunes, they can survive in a market dominated by crappy android products that are cheesy and plastic.
Although I agree Netgear guy has no clue, I would caution against using history as a predictor of the future. Thats RIM strategy and we all know how well that is working.
History is great at showing us what to avoid doing, but isn't very good at telling us what we should do. That is to say, what worked in the past won't always work in the future.
Oh jeez... FYI Linux have a similar desktop market share than Mac (total of retail sales Linux represented 8% of desktop operating systems in 2010 *)...
Now from servers to educational, gov and scientific institutions, linux is everywhere, and we are all glad that you still ignore it.
If Linux is so great and so superior, and free, as in free beer, why oh why isn't it in complete utter domination of the market???
No myths there, just cold hard facts baby. Free and equivalent should beat expensive and equivalent every time. But Linux isn't beating Windows at all, and OS X hasn't gone away either even hough it is supposedly so expensive and only available on "overpriced" hardware. That leads all logic to the conclusion that Linux is free, but it is most definitely not equivalent to the commercial desktop OSes.
As naked server hardware it's damn hard to beat Linux, it's very good, stable and fast in that arena. Exactly what's needed there and that arena is supported by dedicated professionals that require a lot of training and experience to get top performance and reliability from the server farms. And while that's all good on the professional server side of the house, it says nothing wonderful about the non-professional server side of the market.
You guys are a bunch of fanbois. Lo said a bunch of sensible reasons why Apple won't have its profit base forever. Would I buy an Android based iPad? Sure. Will a quality Android piece come out? Yes it will.
I think that is what he would like to happen. But that view really seems at odds with what is actually happening to Apple and the industry.
Apple are succeeding by creating hardware and software together. By controlling both, it is able to create unique products with a very refined user experience. It's expressed by the statement that if you are serious about software, you have to be serious about hardware.
The rest of the electronics industry is very reluctant to accept this. Instead they favour the model of outsourcing their software production to Microsoft and Google. So we have software companies limiting the rate of innovation for the entire industry. And hardware manufacturers who are unable to distinguish their products from the crowd.
The result of this model is an inevitable race to the bottom. Because in a market where all products are generic clones, the only way to win is in volume.
We often hear how the mobile space will follow the same story as the personal computer. But clearly people are not looking too closely at what is happening in PC land. Apple's PC sales are increasing. And Apple is (probably) the most profitable PC manufacturer. If you look at HP and Dell, they are struggling to make $15 of profit on each PC sold.
There certainly will be cheap generic tablets, phones and PCs.
There already are. But you can be certain that the makers will not be making any profit.
I am a system administrator for a large design agency that uses about 80% Macs for design and general productivity and 20% Windows machines for CAD and 3D.
All our routers are Netgear. Of all the network makers that are not Cisco or HP, Netgear's devices are by far the best. Extremely robust and reliable. Never had a failure in 8 years. That's Netgear's professional line up, and home devices may be different, I don't know.
Your comment is ignorant, nothing more, nothing less.
Is it because you are the SA for a large design firm, or that your are running a blended Mac/PC environment that your case is authoritative in regards to your Netgear driven network. I have only supported (briefly) one Netgear commercial network and it was a cluster in the worst sense of the term. Almost all of the rest of the networks I've supported have been Cisco-driven, both reliable and robust almost uniformly without significant issue.
But since you don't know anything about the consumer side, why would you address the previous comment as being ignorant when your own experience mirrors the flip side of that commenter's experience? In turn your comment for the consumer side equipment is, as you so pithily put it, "ignorant, nothing more, nothing less".
We often hear how the mobile space will follow the same story as the personal computer. But clearly people are not looking too closely at what is happening in PC land. Apple's PC sales are increasing. And Apple is (probably) the most profitable PC manufacturer. If you look at HP and Dell, they are struggling to make $15 of profit on each PC sold.
Well said, and especially this. Attempting to recreate Microsoft's model of dominance is effectively impossible. Believing that it is possible requires a case of amnesia about the set of circumstances which led to it in the first place. First, it required a set hardware standard, which IBM created, and then lost. Android does not have any hardware reference. Second, it required an OS with a sense of inevitability behind it. This Microsoft had but Google does not, and even if they can acquire the latter, they will never get the former.
In short, the tablet market is a wide open field -- inherently unlike the PC market of the '80s which was dominated and locked down from the start. The best products, not the inevitable ones, have the opportunity to win.
Oh jeez... FYI Linux have a similar desktop market share than Mac (total of retail sales Linux represented 8% of desktop operating systems in 2010 *)...
Now from servers to educational, gov and scientific institutions, linux is everywhere, and we are all glad that you still ignore it.
I never said the Mac has more market share than Linux; both are still pennies. I just said that the "open" strategy hasn't proven successful in the desktop/consumer space. Microsoft won, mind you.
In the mean time, we are all glad you will stay happily debugging your toolkits and kernels in the command line, content to be able to freely modify to your own needs each and every application you get. I personally don't miss computing of 30 years ago. We have come this far...
"What's the reason for him to trash Flash? There's no reason other than ego," Lo remarked.
If Lo devoted as much attention to history as to his vitriol, he would know that it was Adobe's staff who started the mud slinging, rabble rousing, and complaint filing in petulant reaction to the iPhone and iPad excluding the obsolescent, proprietary, inefficient and security-issued software that is Flash. Jobs was forced to respond to the uproar that Adobe chose to orchestrate in a public arena.
Comments
I am a system administrator for a large design agency that uses about 80% Macs for design and general productivity and 20% Windows machines for CAD and 3D.
All our routers are Netgear. Of all the network makers that are not Cisco or HP, Netgear's devices are by far the best. Extremely robust and reliable. Never had a failure in 8 years. That's Netgear's professional line up, and home devices may be different, I don't know.
Your comment is ignorant, nothing more, nothing less.
Your comment is ignorant. Comparing the consumer crap they make with a professional line is a broken comparison. If your experience is real than it also illustrates a basic disrespect by Netgear for the non-professional Netgear user. Personally, I'm not a fan of their office targeted gear either, it falls apart way too easily and every switch needs duct tape to keep the power brick plug connected. The damn things fall out on their own from everyday building vibration -- that's shoddy design.
Maybe you engage your brain before rattling off when you already advertise you don't know what you are speaking of. You would have been far better off just leaving it with the last sentence of your second paragraph.
You wouldn't be able to, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't hire you either as mindless zealotry does not go down well at job interviews.
Glad you identify how the applicants can judge the hirer. It is always good to remember you are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you. Some companies reflect the personality of their CEO, and Netgear is one I would be leery of given this last set of CEO comments.
"Apple is a fad that won't last. Wait and see. Meanwhile, continue to pay me a gajillion $ because I am so darn smart."
Pathetic, really. You'd think they'd be smart enough not to draw additional attention to their own performance.
I dont think you understood a word i said. The apps I am talking about track their own users, and do their own fulfilment. In fact using Apple's model stops them from doing that since Apple does not release the user information. Besides all that the in-app purchasing forces pricing models which are not what people want.
However all that is moot because if you buy something on the Android app, or online, it cant appear on the iPad app because that is in contravention of 11.2 anyway. There is no business model there. Apps which seem to violate this rule ( i.e. Kindle) have gotten a bye. There are rumours that Apple have demanded compliance by June.
Unless something better comes up, most content providers will move to Android. Blood is already bad.
Are you sure Kindle doesn't use the Apple framework for in-app purchases? If it does you would be completely without any point whatsoever. If Kindle rewrites a section of the purchase code because it is not using the framework today, but will in the future you would still be all wet and without a moral high ground. And apps that are on the Android store can be on the iOS App Store if they are written for iOS and follow the developer guidelines. Just because an app can show up on Android doesn't mean there is some automagical means of preventing the developer from coding for iOS and following the dev guidelines. If a dev doesn't want to follow the guidelines that's fine too, but then it's the devs choice to forgo a market opportunity.
Are you kidding? Okay, I will grant you that the original iMac design is very toy-like now, but please let's not forget that this was released over 13 years ago. By today's standards it is pretty whimsical looking, but at the time was a revolutionary design. You can;t judge a 13+ year old design against a unibody MacBook Pro...it's a totally different tech world now (thanks to Apple).
As for OS X, I take issue with your comments. It in no way looks like Playskool. OS X has always been several steps ahead of windows in both form and function, and Windows 7 is the only thing MS has done that narrowed the gap to any real degree. And what are they basing Windows 7 on? Obviously an OS X-like experience is what they are trying to achieve. They have been chasing Apple for years for good reason, and finally have found some conceptual success.
You can argue that linux is the best for tasks x,y, and z, and I give it alot of credit for being free and open source, etc. But as for a commercially available OSes, Mac OS X is still the leader in the industry. I was going to end by saying that someday MS may come up with an OS that bests OS X, and theoretically they could...but it would really take a paradigm shift in their product philosophy. I just don't see it happening. Maybe if they canned Ballmer and got a real CEO in there.
Don't get baited. That was screamingfist, our resident troll who has found a very liberal set of mods and admins so he's well dug in.
As it is today, the Mac platform is much more vulnerable to malware than Android. OS X simply doesn't provide the user the same information about what an app can do before it's installed.
The only way to make Mac safer than Android is to close it down to the level of iOS.
Apple customers say they want curation, so you can expect Apple to respond by making OS X truly closed within the next three years.
It's either that, or "Hello malware". You choose.
Is this why OS X seems to only fall victim to the Security Professionals for big prize contests, but real world Android phone users have downloaded privacy information harvesting apps? Or downloaded remote controlled bot malware?
Yes there are some security issues in OS X, I'm not saying it's completely immune, but Android has already shown itself in less than two years on the market to be real world exploited with some regularity. Hardly a wonderful track record of security virtue, and the polar opposite of your point.
Netgear makes junk and is pissed at Apple?
I laughed when I picked up their wireless routers vs the AirPort Extreme Base Station. Junk versus quality is no wonder he's whining.
He's complaining his company can't be a key player in helping route all that content.
Exactly - cheap plastic looks and 2 antennas won't "make the cake" when the software that runs his boxes is crap. I had one and had to reset the thing on a regular bases: all devices connected to the box but couldn't get to the outside - the browsers were stuck! 2 to 3 days after the reset the same thing! Replaced it with an Airport Extreme 2 years ago and never had problems. Though my coffee shop and a router at my company show the same symptoms - today. Both are Netgear. Yes - I paid twice the money but it was worth it lots more.
Time and again we see rival hardware manufacturers knocking Apple. Why? Because they are all in Apple's shadow when it comes to design quality and current success. I wish they'd all stop bemoaning Apple's success and start looking at why Apple is currently storming ahead. Stop making plastic laptops and ugly black PC towers, stop releasing poorly-conceived, clunky smartphones (also plastic), start investing the money Apple invests in R&D and actually bring something to the game rather than outsourcing every part of your product. Apple is hated because it doesn't need to kowtow to anyone else, and that drives its competitors crazy.
That said, my impression is that Apple has hired some serious talent over the last few years and just as importantly, it's developed a company ethos that I think will help when the time does come for Apple to stand on its own two feet without its talisman.
These two quotes I think are key as to why Apple has climbed back to the top and why they don't have to lower themselves to the level of almost everyone else in the industry to sell products: they actually spend the money and time (R&D) required to design products that people love and want to buy. As opposed to having to undercut and/or partner with other companies to force your product to be bundled with theirs (and then hoping that people just don't care enough to look for something better).
Until these companies stop trying to outsource and cut production corners at every level, they will be forced to use these tactics, and to envy companies like Apple who have won the hearts of customers (not just forced them to settle for mediocre products). I dream of a day where top notch hardware and software designers are valued as much as executives in tech companies (and hopefully more than executives like this guy).
LT can 'reject' the label since all he is interested in is the kernel. But unless you are talking about the linux kernel source code alone you are talking 'gnu/linux'. in fact it is Linus who is short changing all the work put into the gnu projects etc and those programmers whose work enable the linux kernel to actually be useful.
and if you doubt that then go and compile the linux source code without gcc. and good luck. i use the word 'linux' cuz most associate that with the entire package and its shorter to type...
Without the Linux kernel GNU would be dead in the water with no viable operating system. All they would have is re-appropriated BSD unix code. The BSD guys would shrug and go on their way and everyone else would use their stuff, rather than the GNU stuff, due to the viral licensing restrictions. But because Linux is far better staffed with regular contributors that actively push and extend the platform it rightly has ascended past the traditional unixes and users are quite comfortable with the GPL2 that Linus has posted his code under.
Without that active Linux community, there isn't anything compelling to build on compared to the rest of what's out there. GNU would be just another license, with far harsher terms for consumers of code, and that would lead to irrelevance.
Apple has about 3 years of gravy for each new invention. Steve Jobs is medically ill. When he dies... which is medically likely, if you examine the facts... Apple's innovation magic and marketing self censorship also die.
AAPL today is priced like they own the telephone business, the music business and the mobile app business combined. None of this is true. Generics will catch up. A couple of years late, but they will catch up. Would I rather pay $199 for an iPad, sure. The Chinese will back Lenovo so hard, Apple will forget what street its bank is on.
From macs to iphones, i've been an Apple guy for a long, long time. But i will not buy an iPad until it allows me to control my own content without having to go through that unspeakable thing called iTunes.
It became obvious to me that the main reason why there is no card reader on the iPad afterall, is that, once the mass storage interface implemented (how else can a card reader work properly?), this would give the user a file system on a card and make the device usable outside the "iTunes ecosystem". Protecting Apple's mark-ups on device flash storage is only a secondary reason.
Anyway, why be so harsh on critics? Most of my (non-mac) friends absolutely hate that iTunes they have to use with their ipods, iphones, ipads. iTunes is the only Apple software for the pc that they have seen. I am convinced that the (justified) negative perception of iTunes damages Apple's mac prospects long term.
This guy has no clue what he is talking about, Apple won with a closed system with the ipod and the music wars with itunes, they can survive in a market dominated by crappy android products that are cheesy and plastic.
Although I agree Netgear guy has no clue, I would caution against using history as a predictor of the future. Thats RIM strategy and we all know how well that is working.
History is great at showing us what to avoid doing, but isn't very good at telling us what we should do. That is to say, what worked in the past won't always work in the future.
Oh jeez... FYI Linux have a similar desktop market share than Mac (total of retail sales Linux represented 8% of desktop operating systems in 2010 *)...
Now from servers to educational, gov and scientific institutions, linux is everywhere, and we are all glad that you still ignore it.
* http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/09...he-1-myth.html
If Linux is so great and so superior, and free, as in free beer, why oh why isn't it in complete utter domination of the market???
No myths there, just cold hard facts baby. Free and equivalent should beat expensive and equivalent every time. But Linux isn't beating Windows at all, and OS X hasn't gone away either even hough it is supposedly so expensive and only available on "overpriced" hardware. That leads all logic to the conclusion that Linux is free, but it is most definitely not equivalent to the commercial desktop OSes.
As naked server hardware it's damn hard to beat Linux, it's very good, stable and fast in that arena. Exactly what's needed there and that arena is supported by dedicated professionals that require a lot of training and experience to get top performance and reliability from the server farms. And while that's all good on the professional server side of the house, it says nothing wonderful about the non-professional server side of the market.
Without the Linux kernel GNU would be dead in the water with no viable operating system. ...
In other words, GNU's Not Linux, either.
You guys are a bunch of fanbois. Lo said a bunch of sensible reasons why Apple won't have its profit base forever. Would I buy an Android based iPad? Sure. Will a quality Android piece come out? Yes it will.
I think that is what he would like to happen. But that view really seems at odds with what is actually happening to Apple and the industry.
Apple are succeeding by creating hardware and software together. By controlling both, it is able to create unique products with a very refined user experience. It's expressed by the statement that if you are serious about software, you have to be serious about hardware.
The rest of the electronics industry is very reluctant to accept this. Instead they favour the model of outsourcing their software production to Microsoft and Google. So we have software companies limiting the rate of innovation for the entire industry. And hardware manufacturers who are unable to distinguish their products from the crowd.
The result of this model is an inevitable race to the bottom. Because in a market where all products are generic clones, the only way to win is in volume.
We often hear how the mobile space will follow the same story as the personal computer. But clearly people are not looking too closely at what is happening in PC land. Apple's PC sales are increasing. And Apple is (probably) the most profitable PC manufacturer. If you look at HP and Dell, they are struggling to make $15 of profit on each PC sold.
There certainly will be cheap generic tablets, phones and PCs.
There already are. But you can be certain that the makers will not be making any profit.
C.
I am a system administrator for a large design agency that uses about 80% Macs for design and general productivity and 20% Windows machines for CAD and 3D.
All our routers are Netgear. Of all the network makers that are not Cisco or HP, Netgear's devices are by far the best. Extremely robust and reliable. Never had a failure in 8 years. That's Netgear's professional line up, and home devices may be different, I don't know.
Your comment is ignorant, nothing more, nothing less.
Is it because you are the SA for a large design firm, or that your are running a blended Mac/PC environment that your case is authoritative in regards to your Netgear driven network. I have only supported (briefly) one Netgear commercial network and it was a cluster in the worst sense of the term. Almost all of the rest of the networks I've supported have been Cisco-driven, both reliable and robust almost uniformly without significant issue.
But since you don't know anything about the consumer side, why would you address the previous comment as being ignorant when your own experience mirrors the flip side of that commenter's experience? In turn your comment for the consumer side equipment is, as you so pithily put it, "ignorant, nothing more, nothing less".
We often hear how the mobile space will follow the same story as the personal computer. But clearly people are not looking too closely at what is happening in PC land. Apple's PC sales are increasing. And Apple is (probably) the most profitable PC manufacturer. If you look at HP and Dell, they are struggling to make $15 of profit on each PC sold.
Well said, and especially this. Attempting to recreate Microsoft's model of dominance is effectively impossible. Believing that it is possible requires a case of amnesia about the set of circumstances which led to it in the first place. First, it required a set hardware standard, which IBM created, and then lost. Android does not have any hardware reference. Second, it required an OS with a sense of inevitability behind it. This Microsoft had but Google does not, and even if they can acquire the latter, they will never get the former.
In short, the tablet market is a wide open field -- inherently unlike the PC market of the '80s which was dominated and locked down from the start. The best products, not the inevitable ones, have the opportunity to win.
Oh jeez... FYI Linux have a similar desktop market share than Mac (total of retail sales Linux represented 8% of desktop operating systems in 2010 *)...
Now from servers to educational, gov and scientific institutions, linux is everywhere, and we are all glad that you still ignore it.
* http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/09...he-1-myth.html
I never said the Mac has more market share than Linux; both are still pennies. I just said that the "open" strategy hasn't proven successful in the desktop/consumer space. Microsoft won, mind you.
In the mean time, we are all glad you will stay happily debugging your toolkits and kernels in the command line, content to be able to freely modify to your own needs each and every application you get. I personally don't miss computing of 30 years ago. We have come this far...
If Lo devoted as much attention to history as to his vitriol, he would know that it was Adobe's staff who started the mud slinging, rabble rousing, and complaint filing in petulant reaction to the iPhone and iPad excluding the obsolescent, proprietary, inefficient and security-issued software that is Flash. Jobs was forced to respond to the uproar that Adobe chose to orchestrate in a public arena.