Maybe they don't intend to sell it to hardware vendors, but sell the JS framework to enterprises who want to develop their internal apps in a platform-independent way. That would fit in with what Apotheker seems to envision for the company, as a software services vendor, and explain why he kept it. Enterprises love these cross-platform frameworks, but imho for the consumer space the native platform tends to work out better.
That seems to be a better fit with Apotheker's direction.
This is a common source of confusion for people who are unfamiliar with larger businesses. I'm not talking about software that is developed as a product and sold to consumers or businesses. I'm talking about software that is developed as a tool for either internal use by a business or for limited use outside of the business (with clients or suppliers). These projects are usually resource constrained, plus it just isn't necessary to provide a really polished native UI on every device that might use the program, even if the resources existed to do that. For these types of projects, write once and run (almost) everywhere is very appealing.
And this is exactly the kind of customer that HP seems to be interested in targeting now.
The interesting thing here is enterprise could use most any hardware for such implementation except a Microsoft based one.
The market has seen WebOS. Twice. THEY DIDN"T CARE.
They cared, but both times the execution of the releases was fatally flawed. Just look at Palm's stock the 5 months right after they announced WebOS. It went up about 20x. It was only on their foolish decision to release an incomplete OS with no native SDK on the heels of the iPhone 3G and iOS 2.0 that killed Palm. If they would have buttoned up the OS and HW for another several months they would been ale to release with a solid product that wasn't overshadowed by the iPhone frenzy in the media.
Same goes for the HP and their TouchPad. Success in business is more than understanding of one aspect. You have to get multiple things right if you want to succeed yet these companies have tried to go head on with the company with the most mindshare. It's like trying to combat a hurricane by holding up a pedestal fan.
If HP is looking to build on its enterprise integration then WebOS makes sense to retain. It gives them another tool/service to compete against Dell with. And the announcement made abundantly clear that HP is, in key product areas, cutting away the less profitable product lines and withdrawing some aspects of engagement in the consumer market. Printers for the near-term make sense as I'm sure their profit margins on those is fairly good, the rest is building out their products and services to the enterprise.
Look for the WebOS team to be challenged to produce an enterprise version that can be leveraged into the larger enterprises for embedded enterprise apps. It makes sense there as many larger corps(like my current venue) are looking for lightweight deliverability as they build out reliance on things like VDI.
That might be possible. The other possibility is the other extreme. If HP can't find a buyer, they open source it - so the market can get a TRUE open sourced OS.
The question is if that were to occur, would two fails make a win in this very difficult market place?
That was said many times about Apple buying NeXT. Apple only $5B left in market cap and wasn't too many quarters away from going under yet their solution was to buy a company that had never amounted to much in the enterprise market*. Look where that got them.
RiM has some core competencies that haven't been used lately. They also have some major shortcomings, like a modern mobile OS. They appear to want this for a phone and tablet. WebOS has been designed for both and now has a worthy SDK for creating native apps.
I think it's a great fit for RiM and their only chance for coming back. Some might say that Android is a choice, but that's not in RiM's DNA. They want to control the stack, not be just another Android-based vendor, regardless of how much they could fork the OS. They need something to call their own. To be their own OS, their own HW, their own victory. They aren't likely to settle for anything less.
* They lost a lawsuit against Apple that disallowed them from competing in the consumer market.
That was said many times about Apple buying NeXT. Apple only $5B left in market cap and wasn't too many quarters away from going under yet their solution was to buy a company that had never amounted to much in the enterprise market*. Look where that got them.
Well, if RIM were to acquire a CEO like Steve Jobs (as Apple did buying NeXT) that might get them somewhere. But if Balsillie and Lazardis get Rubinstein, I don't predict the same outcome for RIM.
The great thing about the webOS approach was that you could do SDK (JavaScript/HTML/CSS), PDK (C++), or hybrid (JavaScript makes calls to C++) apps. I don't get all of the criticism directed towards Palm's approach. Developing for webOS was very nice (I suspect that most, but not all, of the criticism comes from people who've never developed for webOS).
Quote:
Originally Posted by timgriff84
The problem with web apps is simple: some management and the press keep going on about how HTML5 is amazing and how products should be based on it, as it will a̶l̶s̶o̶ make it possible for thousands of HTML developers around the world to instantly build apps for our platform rather than having to learn a new language.
None of them ever stop to question what the average HTML guy can actually do. 99.9% of websites are really basic, and when there is something completed like this forum, it is run off a bit of code that someone originally made and a web developer has then bought. Most of the time, the guys producing websites can't actually write the complex bit themselves and are just re-using other people's code.
Your average proper application developer, though, can generally pick up another language in under a week, making what language you're using a bit irrelevant.
You are making a big mistake when you lump the "average HTML guy" in with web developers; the SDK is targeted towards the latter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by saarek
I wonder if Apple has had a little chat to HP about buying WebOS, at a far smaller price than HP paid for palm of course. There is some nice functionality there that would benefit their platform tremendously.
I would love it if Apple picked up the interface (iOS multitasking really blows). There are many other nice features (Synergy, Just Type, etc), but the UI is by far the best.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
RiM needs Palm/WebOS and can afford the $1.2B HP paid for it.
I think that it would be good for RIM, if only its management wasn't so terrible. The QNX integration has been a disaster so far. However, RIM copied the webOS interface; it might as well own it outright.
They cared, but both times the execution of the releases was fatally flawed. Just look at Palm's stock the 5 months right after they announced WebOS. It went up about 20x. It was only on their foolish decision to release an incomplete OS with no native SDK on the heels of the iPhone 3G and iOS 2.0 that killed Palm. If they would have buttoned up the OS and HW for another several months they would been ale to release with a solid product that wasn't overshadowed by the iPhone frenzy in the media.
Same goes for the HP and their TouchPad. Success in business is more than understanding of one aspect. You have to get multiple things right if you want to succeed yet these companies have tried to go head on with the company with the most mindshare. It's like trying to combat a hurricane by holding up a pedestal fan.
Web OS was a success. Rubenstein had the job of making Elevation partners money on their initial 200 million dollar investment and he did exactly that. HP were the suckers who bought the whole 'smoke and mirrors' operation and were left to ship an ailing OS.
Palm tried to 'button up' the OS and only succeeded in releasing update after update which eventually slowed the Pre to a crawl. HP the better part of a year to ship a woefully bugged OS and never looked like actually getting it to work. Their whole strategy was scattershot and they even tried to fix it within the first few weeks with a promised boosted hardware spec for new devices.
Overall its highly embarrassing for HP.
If they HAD shipped a fully working hardware and OS to glowing reviews then it would potentially have been a different story but thats something they could never have ever achieved with Web OS.
You are making a big mistake when you lump the "average HTML guy" in with web developers; the SDK is targeted towards the latter.
I'm not lumping them all together. There are a lot of very skilled web developers (I know because I manage a team of them), but there isn't more skilled web developers than application developers, yet I constantly read how by having something based in web technologies it opens the market up to x developers as there skilled in HTML. But in reality it just opens the development up to the small percentage who can develop rather than just write HTML. Not only that but your average skilled Web Developer doesn't write any HTML as it's such a waste of resource and instead gets provided it by another very cheap resource for them to then add functionality to.
That was said many times about Apple buying NeXT. Apple only $5B left in market cap and wasn't too many quarters away from going under yet their solution was to buy a company that had never amounted to much in the enterprise market*. Look where that got them.
RiM has some core competencies that haven't been used lately. They also have some major shortcomings, like a modern mobile OS. They appear to want this for a phone and tablet. WebOS has been designed for both and now has a worthy SDK for creating native apps.
I think it's a great fit for RiM and their only chance for coming back. Some might say that Android is a choice, but that's not in RiM's DNA. They want to control the stack, not be just another Android-based vendor, regardless of how much they could fork the OS. They need something to call their own. To be their own OS, their own HW, their own victory. They aren't likely to settle for anything less.
* They lost a lawsuit against Apple that disallowed them from competing in the consumer market.
Being a NeXT and Apple alumni you work on several flawed bits of history. Firstly, Apple had 30 days of capital left after Steve became iCEO, with the current list of bleeding projects. That's right, 30 days before the doors would be closed.
Those numbers included useless sabbatical costs that Steve immediately cancelled. 1/3rd of all Engineering was up for Sabbaticals were some where 12 weeks of paid vacation.
Steve immediately blew up the Marketing from 26 separate departments down to one. He blew up the product sheet from 24 individual areas to 4.
The single biggest waste of money and largest department, per quarter was the IT Department. With over 500 custom in-house applications and staff where 90%+ was never used the department was costing Apple > $180 Million per quarter to operate with 500+ in staff--more staff than NeXT world-wide which was 300 at the time.
RIM became a big player in a time of dumb phones. NeXT had some of the top world class engineers in OS Design, UI-Design and Enterprise Software Development. The amount of IP on projects Gil Amelio saw was key to Apple's interest.
Java EJB is a rehash of EOF/ObjC. Java was drastically changed from it's Oak Research Project by several ObjC former NeXT employers who left NeXT to sell their expertise to SUN after the Openstep partnership broke down.
The true talent of OS Design left HP shortly after HP-UX got the axe and the big Apollo line of Servers was replaced by the disaster that became Itanium.
The true talent of OS Design from DEC left DEC before HP acquired the IP.
NeXT talent was legendary in computing. Apple aquired that IP, talent and leadership for $400 Million, a triple headed monster that dwarfed Be Inc's talent, IP and leadership.
There was at least a dozen projects at NeXT that never saw the light of day and those ideas and talent to implement portions of them into the past decade has been evident to us Alumni.
As Apple fans, we all know that Apple needs competition, otherwise Apple is even worse than Bill Gates when he was at his worst.
This is such a ridiculous statement on so many levels, it not only made me laugh so hard I almost choked on my coffee ..... but it made me think that you should just stick to your anti glossy screen rants .... or did you finally realize that everyone is now "tuning you out" on that one?
Web OS was a success. Rubenstein had the job of making Elevation partners money on their initial 200 million dollar investment and he did exactly that. HP were the suckers who bought the whole 'smoke and mirrors' operation and were left to ship an ailing OS.
Palm tried to 'button up' the OS and only succeeded in releasing update after update which eventually slowed the Pre to a crawl. HP the better part of a year to ship a woefully bugged OS and never looked like actually getting it to work. Their whole strategy was scattershot and they even tried to fix it within the first few weeks with a promised boosted hardware spec for new devices.
Overall its highly embarrassing for HP.
If they HAD shipped a fully working hardware and OS to glowing reviews then it would potentially have been a different story but thats something they could never have ever achieved with Web OS.
I think this pretty much sums up the situation. HP can spin this all they want, but without a hardware platform, either directly or via OEM's. WebOS is dead...
This article was clearly labeled a Feature rather than hard news, but aside from the above, it seemed to stick to the facts.
DED seems to know a lot, and he can pull disparate things together in interesting ways. The article was well-written, and as it was a feature rather than hard news, some leeway for opinion is perfectly OK.
Calling the story a feature seems to be the way to present his stuff fairly. Good move, AI. But even though it is labeled as a Feature, the article was one of the least biased ad most informative I've seen from DED.
He could be a great fire and brimstone Editorial writer. I'd love to see him go for it with scathing opinions and rampant speculation, clearly labeled as an opinion piece. His opinion pieces are his most entertaining, and so long as they are not presented as hard news, AI could have the best of both worlds.
Calling this one a Feature is a Good Thing, but having him write purely Opinion or Editorial pieces could be even better.
Just my 2 cents.
My 2 cents. Nothing on AI is hard news. Any expectation to the contrary is a failure of the reader of near epic proportions. That also severs the need for labeling things as editorials, the distinction is meaningless on a rumors site.
Hit the browse button with that expectation, see every DED piece as a well executed blog entry seasoned heavily with personal experience and opinion filters, but not doing intentional violence to fact. Be happy.
NeXT talent was legendary in computing. Apple aquired that IP, talent and leadership for $400 Million, a triple headed monster that dwarfed Be Inc's talent, IP and leadership.
There was at least a dozen projects at NeXT that never saw the light of day and those ideas and talent to implement portions of them into the past decade has been evident to us Alumni.
You deserve it dude, but be careful you don't break your own arm patting yourself on the back . I'll take a bit'o stress off it .
Without NeXT, there is no OS X, and no iOS; Apple almost assuredly either goes away or remains essentially irrelevant forever. Everyone who was forward thinking enough to play in that endeavor was easily two+ decades ahead of the rest of Computingdom in terms of vision and execution. The proof is in the market.
Nobody else has anything that looks or sounds like a NeXT out there today, and I knew of them from when they got started up. Vision was obvious from the outside then, but MS+Apple was an awful big pair to take on. The vision was resilient and survived the gorillas trying to squash it, now look where it ended up.
Today I don't hear anyone out in Computingdom with a compelling platform message. Just a bunch of traditional half-baked startups and balloon-like bidding to gobble them up as the next great thing, but under-executing badly in the process.
Either Microsoft or Google Android should just buy up the WebOS team and IP, more likely Google. It'd be exciting if Google bought up the WebOS hardware side as well and integrated it with its Motorola hardware capability. That would really give Google soms guns to tackle Apple. As Apple fans, we all know that Apple needs competition, otherwise Apple is even worse than Bill Gates when he was at his worst.
Comments like this crack me up. Apple is even worse than Bill Gates when they have no competition? How can you even say this? It makes absolutely no sense. Competition is good, sure. But enough of this free marketeer b.s. about how without competition, everything turns to garbage. Repeat the mantra all you want, but that doesn't make it true.
I don't think Jobs cares one bit about his competition. He's always led the pack, whether he was financially successful (Apple today) or not (NeXT back in the day). Competition from second-rate copycats like Microsoft and Google is not what drives Apple to build better products. Anyone with a casual understanding of Apple and Jobs should know that by now.
I recall a similar move by NeXT during the post-hardware years when NeXT tried to salvage their ObjC-based frameworks on other, competing platforms such as Windows NT, before Apple finally bought them. Perhaps this is not the end of Enyo (or whatever or is called).
NeXT talent was legendary in computing. Apple aquired that IP, talent and leadership for $400 Million, a triple headed monster that dwarfed Be Inc's talent, IP and leadership.
There was at least a dozen projects at NeXT that never saw the light of day and those ideas and talent to implement portions of them into the past decade has been evident to us Alumni.
I'm not sure I'd say that Apple acquired NeXT's IP and talent. More like Apple paid NeXT to take them over. Look at how many senior Apple employees were given the boot and replaced by their NeXT counterparts. Perhaps the most brilliant tech deal ever.
Comments
Maybe they don't intend to sell it to hardware vendors, but sell the JS framework to enterprises who want to develop their internal apps in a platform-independent way. That would fit in with what Apotheker seems to envision for the company, as a software services vendor, and explain why he kept it. Enterprises love these cross-platform frameworks, but imho for the consumer space the native platform tends to work out better.
That seems to be a better fit with Apotheker's direction.
RiM needs Palm/WebOS and can afford the $1.2B HP paid for it.
The question is if that were to occur, would two fails make a win in this very difficult market place?
This is a common source of confusion for people who are unfamiliar with larger businesses. I'm not talking about software that is developed as a product and sold to consumers or businesses. I'm talking about software that is developed as a tool for either internal use by a business or for limited use outside of the business (with clients or suppliers). These projects are usually resource constrained, plus it just isn't necessary to provide a really polished native UI on every device that might use the program, even if the resources existed to do that. For these types of projects, write once and run (almost) everywhere is very appealing.
And this is exactly the kind of customer that HP seems to be interested in targeting now.
The interesting thing here is enterprise could use most any hardware for such implementation except a Microsoft based one.
The market has seen WebOS. Twice. THEY DIDN"T CARE.
They cared, but both times the execution of the releases was fatally flawed. Just look at Palm's stock the 5 months right after they announced WebOS. It went up about 20x. It was only on their foolish decision to release an incomplete OS with no native SDK on the heels of the iPhone 3G and iOS 2.0 that killed Palm. If they would have buttoned up the OS and HW for another several months they would been ale to release with a solid product that wasn't overshadowed by the iPhone frenzy in the media.
Same goes for the HP and their TouchPad. Success in business is more than understanding of one aspect. You have to get multiple things right if you want to succeed yet these companies have tried to go head on with the company with the most mindshare. It's like trying to combat a hurricane by holding up a pedestal fan.
If HP is looking to build on its enterprise integration then WebOS makes sense to retain. It gives them another tool/service to compete against Dell with. And the announcement made abundantly clear that HP is, in key product areas, cutting away the less profitable product lines and withdrawing some aspects of engagement in the consumer market. Printers for the near-term make sense as I'm sure their profit margins on those is fairly good, the rest is building out their products and services to the enterprise.
Look for the WebOS team to be challenged to produce an enterprise version that can be leveraged into the larger enterprises for embedded enterprise apps. It makes sense there as many larger corps(like my current venue) are looking for lightweight deliverability as they build out reliance on things like VDI.
That might be possible. The other possibility is the other extreme. If HP can't find a buyer, they open source it - so the market can get a TRUE open sourced OS.
The question is if that were to occur, would two fails make a win in this very difficult market place?
That was said many times about Apple buying NeXT. Apple only $5B left in market cap and wasn't too many quarters away from going under yet their solution was to buy a company that had never amounted to much in the enterprise market*. Look where that got them.
RiM has some core competencies that haven't been used lately. They also have some major shortcomings, like a modern mobile OS. They appear to want this for a phone and tablet. WebOS has been designed for both and now has a worthy SDK for creating native apps.
I think it's a great fit for RiM and their only chance for coming back. Some might say that Android is a choice, but that's not in RiM's DNA. They want to control the stack, not be just another Android-based vendor, regardless of how much they could fork the OS. They need something to call their own. To be their own OS, their own HW, their own victory. They aren't likely to settle for anything less.
* They lost a lawsuit against Apple that disallowed them from competing in the consumer market.
That was said many times about Apple buying NeXT. Apple only $5B left in market cap and wasn't too many quarters away from going under yet their solution was to buy a company that had never amounted to much in the enterprise market*. Look where that got them.
Well, if RIM were to acquire a CEO like Steve Jobs (as Apple did buying NeXT) that might get them somewhere. But if Balsillie and Lazardis get Rubinstein, I don't predict the same outcome for RIM.
The problem with web apps is simple: some management and the press keep going on about how HTML5 is amazing and how products should be based on it, as it will a̶l̶s̶o̶ make it possible for thousands of HTML developers around the world to instantly build apps for our platform rather than having to learn a new language.
None of them ever stop to question what the average HTML guy can actually do. 99.9% of websites are really basic, and when there is something completed like this forum, it is run off a bit of code that someone originally made and a web developer has then bought. Most of the time, the guys producing websites can't actually write the complex bit themselves and are just re-using other people's code.
Your average proper application developer, though, can generally pick up another language in under a week, making what language you're using a bit irrelevant.
You are making a big mistake when you lump the "average HTML guy" in with web developers; the SDK is targeted towards the latter.
I wonder if Apple has had a little chat to HP about buying WebOS, at a far smaller price than HP paid for palm of course. There is some nice functionality there that would benefit their platform tremendously.
I would love it if Apple picked up the interface (iOS multitasking really blows). There are many other nice features (Synergy, Just Type, etc), but the UI is by far the best.
RiM needs Palm/WebOS and can afford the $1.2B HP paid for it.
I think that it would be good for RIM, if only its management wasn't so terrible. The QNX integration has been a disaster so far. However, RIM copied the webOS interface; it might as well own it outright.
They cared, but both times the execution of the releases was fatally flawed. Just look at Palm's stock the 5 months right after they announced WebOS. It went up about 20x. It was only on their foolish decision to release an incomplete OS with no native SDK on the heels of the iPhone 3G and iOS 2.0 that killed Palm. If they would have buttoned up the OS and HW for another several months they would been ale to release with a solid product that wasn't overshadowed by the iPhone frenzy in the media.
Same goes for the HP and their TouchPad. Success in business is more than understanding of one aspect. You have to get multiple things right if you want to succeed yet these companies have tried to go head on with the company with the most mindshare. It's like trying to combat a hurricane by holding up a pedestal fan.
Web OS was a success. Rubenstein had the job of making Elevation partners money on their initial 200 million dollar investment and he did exactly that. HP were the suckers who bought the whole 'smoke and mirrors' operation and were left to ship an ailing OS.
Palm tried to 'button up' the OS and only succeeded in releasing update after update which eventually slowed the Pre to a crawl. HP the better part of a year to ship a woefully bugged OS and never looked like actually getting it to work. Their whole strategy was scattershot and they even tried to fix it within the first few weeks with a promised boosted hardware spec for new devices.
Overall its highly embarrassing for HP.
If they HAD shipped a fully working hardware and OS to glowing reviews then it would potentially have been a different story but thats something they could never have ever achieved with Web OS.
You are making a big mistake when you lump the "average HTML guy" in with web developers; the SDK is targeted towards the latter.
I'm not lumping them all together. There are a lot of very skilled web developers (I know because I manage a team of them), but there isn't more skilled web developers than application developers, yet I constantly read how by having something based in web technologies it opens the market up to x developers as there skilled in HTML. But in reality it just opens the development up to the small percentage who can develop rather than just write HTML. Not only that but your average skilled Web Developer doesn't write any HTML as it's such a waste of resource and instead gets provided it by another very cheap resource for them to then add functionality to.
That was said many times about Apple buying NeXT. Apple only $5B left in market cap and wasn't too many quarters away from going under yet their solution was to buy a company that had never amounted to much in the enterprise market*. Look where that got them.
RiM has some core competencies that haven't been used lately. They also have some major shortcomings, like a modern mobile OS. They appear to want this for a phone and tablet. WebOS has been designed for both and now has a worthy SDK for creating native apps.
I think it's a great fit for RiM and their only chance for coming back. Some might say that Android is a choice, but that's not in RiM's DNA. They want to control the stack, not be just another Android-based vendor, regardless of how much they could fork the OS. They need something to call their own. To be their own OS, their own HW, their own victory. They aren't likely to settle for anything less.
* They lost a lawsuit against Apple that disallowed them from competing in the consumer market.
Being a NeXT and Apple alumni you work on several flawed bits of history. Firstly, Apple had 30 days of capital left after Steve became iCEO, with the current list of bleeding projects. That's right, 30 days before the doors would be closed.
Those numbers included useless sabbatical costs that Steve immediately cancelled. 1/3rd of all Engineering was up for Sabbaticals were some where 12 weeks of paid vacation.
Steve immediately blew up the Marketing from 26 separate departments down to one. He blew up the product sheet from 24 individual areas to 4.
The single biggest waste of money and largest department, per quarter was the IT Department. With over 500 custom in-house applications and staff where 90%+ was never used the department was costing Apple > $180 Million per quarter to operate with 500+ in staff--more staff than NeXT world-wide which was 300 at the time.
RIM became a big player in a time of dumb phones. NeXT had some of the top world class engineers in OS Design, UI-Design and Enterprise Software Development. The amount of IP on projects Gil Amelio saw was key to Apple's interest.
Java EJB is a rehash of EOF/ObjC. Java was drastically changed from it's Oak Research Project by several ObjC former NeXT employers who left NeXT to sell their expertise to SUN after the Openstep partnership broke down.
The true talent of OS Design left HP shortly after HP-UX got the axe and the big Apollo line of Servers was replaced by the disaster that became Itanium.
The true talent of OS Design from DEC left DEC before HP acquired the IP.
NeXT talent was legendary in computing. Apple aquired that IP, talent and leadership for $400 Million, a triple headed monster that dwarfed Be Inc's talent, IP and leadership.
There was at least a dozen projects at NeXT that never saw the light of day and those ideas and talent to implement portions of them into the past decade has been evident to us Alumni.
As Apple fans, we all know that Apple needs competition, otherwise Apple is even worse than Bill Gates when he was at his worst.
This is such a ridiculous statement on so many levels, it not only made me laugh so hard I almost choked on my coffee ..... but it made me think that you should just stick to your anti glossy screen rants .... or did you finally realize that everyone is now "tuning you out" on that one?
Web OS was a success. Rubenstein had the job of making Elevation partners money on their initial 200 million dollar investment and he did exactly that. HP were the suckers who bought the whole 'smoke and mirrors' operation and were left to ship an ailing OS.
Palm tried to 'button up' the OS and only succeeded in releasing update after update which eventually slowed the Pre to a crawl. HP the better part of a year to ship a woefully bugged OS and never looked like actually getting it to work. Their whole strategy was scattershot and they even tried to fix it within the first few weeks with a promised boosted hardware spec for new devices.
Overall its highly embarrassing for HP.
If they HAD shipped a fully working hardware and OS to glowing reviews then it would potentially have been a different story but thats something they could never have ever achieved with Web OS.
I think this pretty much sums up the situation. HP can spin this all they want, but without a hardware platform, either directly or via OEM's. WebOS is dead...
This article was clearly labeled a Feature rather than hard news, but aside from the above, it seemed to stick to the facts.
DED seems to know a lot, and he can pull disparate things together in interesting ways. The article was well-written, and as it was a feature rather than hard news, some leeway for opinion is perfectly OK.
Calling the story a feature seems to be the way to present his stuff fairly. Good move, AI. But even though it is labeled as a Feature, the article was one of the least biased ad most informative I've seen from DED.
He could be a great fire and brimstone Editorial writer. I'd love to see him go for it with scathing opinions and rampant speculation, clearly labeled as an opinion piece. His opinion pieces are his most entertaining, and so long as they are not presented as hard news, AI could have the best of both worlds.
Calling this one a Feature is a Good Thing, but having him write purely Opinion or Editorial pieces could be even better.
Just my 2 cents.
My 2 cents. Nothing on AI is hard news. Any expectation to the contrary is a failure of the reader of near epic proportions. That also severs the need for labeling things as editorials, the distinction is meaningless on a rumors site.
Hit the browse button with that expectation, see every DED piece as a well executed blog entry seasoned heavily with personal experience and opinion filters, but not doing intentional violence to fact. Be happy.
NeXT talent was legendary in computing. Apple aquired that IP, talent and leadership for $400 Million, a triple headed monster that dwarfed Be Inc's talent, IP and leadership.
There was at least a dozen projects at NeXT that never saw the light of day and those ideas and talent to implement portions of them into the past decade has been evident to us Alumni.
You deserve it dude, but be careful you don't break your own arm patting yourself on the back
Without NeXT, there is no OS X, and no iOS; Apple almost assuredly either goes away or remains essentially irrelevant forever. Everyone who was forward thinking enough to play in that endeavor was easily two+ decades ahead of the rest of Computingdom in terms of vision and execution. The proof is in the market.
Nobody else has anything that looks or sounds like a NeXT out there today, and I knew of them from when they got started up. Vision was obvious from the outside then, but MS+Apple was an awful big pair to take on. The vision was resilient and survived the gorillas trying to squash it, now look where it ended up.
Today I don't hear anyone out in Computingdom with a compelling platform message. Just a bunch of traditional half-baked startups and balloon-like bidding to gobble them up as the next great thing, but under-executing badly in the process.
Either Microsoft or Google Android should just buy up the WebOS team and IP, more likely Google. It'd be exciting if Google bought up the WebOS hardware side as well and integrated it with its Motorola hardware capability. That would really give Google soms guns to tackle Apple. As Apple fans, we all know that Apple needs competition, otherwise Apple is even worse than Bill Gates when he was at his worst.
Comments like this crack me up. Apple is even worse than Bill Gates when they have no competition? How can you even say this? It makes absolutely no sense. Competition is good, sure. But enough of this free marketeer b.s. about how without competition, everything turns to garbage. Repeat the mantra all you want, but that doesn't make it true.
I don't think Jobs cares one bit about his competition. He's always led the pack, whether he was financially successful (Apple today) or not (NeXT back in the day). Competition from second-rate copycats like Microsoft and Google is not what drives Apple to build better products. Anyone with a casual understanding of Apple and Jobs should know that by now.
NeXT talent was legendary in computing. Apple aquired that IP, talent and leadership for $400 Million, a triple headed monster that dwarfed Be Inc's talent, IP and leadership.
There was at least a dozen projects at NeXT that never saw the light of day and those ideas and talent to implement portions of them into the past decade has been evident to us Alumni.
I'm not sure I'd say that Apple acquired NeXT's IP and talent. More like Apple paid NeXT to take them over. Look at how many senior Apple employees were given the boot and replaced by their NeXT counterparts. Perhaps the most brilliant tech deal ever.