linuxplatform

Beats said:

Looks like a generic Apple ad.

Hoping the AirBuds look less like AirPods.

Groan. Oh for pete's sake. That 2010 "rounded corners" thing was legit but since then ...
Apple copied Samsung's phablet form factor (after mocking it).
Apple copied Samsung's OLED screens (after mocking it).
Apple copied Samsung's curved screens (after mocking them).
Apple copied Samsung's multi-tasking and went from 2 to 6 cores and increased RAM to support it (after calling it bad gimmicky design).
Apple copied Samsung's Galaxy Note Pro's huge (at the time) screen, multi-tasking and stylus/2-in-1 accessory support with the iPad Pro (after mocking all of it)
AirPods? Samsung was their first with the Gear IconX (renamed Galaxy Buds)
Apple Watch? Samsung was there first with a fitness-focused device with a "rounded square" OLED screen and LTE support (again all initially mocked, and Samsung's refreshes have all served to make their line look less like the Apple Watch).
Apple Pay? Google Wallet was on Samsung phones years prior, and Samsung Pay's solution is actually superior because thanks to MST support it can be used at the many checkouts with credit card readers but no NFC tap-and-pay
Apple Card? Before you call Samsung an Apple copycat here remember both Google and PayPal had their versions years prior
For the (soon) future: all the years of bashing TouchWiz/One UI now look ridiculous with iOS 14, doesn't it? And an in-screen fingerprint reader? That too just like wireless charging (remember AirPower, their abandoned attempt to improve on the tech used in Samsung phones, called "true wireless charging")? 

Meanwhile, lots of Apple's innovations since then have been met with a shrug by Samsung. Apple TV competitor? Nope. Homepod competitor? Nope. HomeKit competitor? Actually Samsung had their IoT platform in place years earler. So ... Force Touch? Nope. (Smart move ... Apple doesn't even talk about it much anymore.) FaceID? Nah ... they let Google humiliate themselves trying to emulate a feature that not a single Android consumer wanted anyway and tons of Apple consumers don't even use. So that leaves ... the headphone jack as Samsung's most significant imitation of Apple in years. Of course, Apple fans may feel a bit salty over Samsung's commercials mocking Apple for dropping the headphone jack for years only to (without fanfare or apology) silently adopt the feature (or lack thereof). But considering that Apple device owners have been benefiting so much from features first introduced and popularized by Samsung since 2013, they should call it even.

And even more so, they should stop accusing Samsung of copying. It isn't true. Instead, the contrary is true. Not just Apple merely getting their version of the same product to market a bit after Samsung, which was the case with the AirPods which launched a few years later with a significantly different form factor (less convincing with the Apple Watch, which launched nearly 2 years later and was very similar to the path that Samsung struck out on after it was clear that Android Wear would fail). But Apple copying a whole batch of features, form factors and design languages that they trashed previously but only for "their" products to far more closely resemble Samsung's than what Apple originally released.

The best part: Samsung is the only Android OEM that Apple does this with/to. Apple never lifted a single thing from Nexus/Pixel. Not a lick from (poor) HTC (who seems to be making phones again, though only availabile in a few countries). Not a bit from LG. Motorola? Sony? Huawei? Xiaomi? OnePlus? Nah. Even things that those companies actually do first, Apple only picks them up after they have been in a Samsung Galaxy phone for a couple of years first. Example: some Android phones have had in-screen ultrasonic fingerprint scanners as far back as 2015, but Samsung putting them in the Galaxy S/Note 10 devices last year made them good enough for pilfering. It is so blatantly obvious yet no one talks about it! Especially not Apple fans in the tech media. Oh wait, everyone in the tech media is an Apple fan! Including a bunch of writers on Android sites. (Pretty much all the alleged Pixel fans are. Not that Pixels are bad - then again considering several class action lawsuits on hardware and software issues involving Pixels maybe they actually are bad! -  but rather Nokia, OnePlus, Huawei and even Motorola are making devices that are far more compelling to people who like Android phones, which is why they all sell far more of them than Google does Pixels despite most of them spending a fraction of what Google wastes advertising Pixels. The only reason they like Pixel so much is because Google ridiculously and blatantly attempts to emulate Apple with them ... without realizing that anyone who wants an iPhone can and simply should just buy one and that people who buy any Android phone over $350 does so because they don't want an iPhone.)

So yeah. Samsung copying Apple was like the early Obama era news. Which in a few weeks - about 100 days to the election right? - may well be two whole presidents ago.

1. The people who back Apple's position refuse to acknowledge the ability to install third party apps and app stores on macOS.
2. The people who back Apple's position refuse to acknowledge that Apple has a monopoly over the ability to install apps on iPhone and iPad hardware that they would never countenance were the shoe on the other foot.

Example: suppose Microsoft had blocked iTunes back in the day because they didn't want competition for its Zune Player. You folks would have screamed bloody murder.
Example 2: suppose Google had blocked Apple Music and the "switch your Android to iPhone" app for obvious reasons (the way that Apple bans every single app that has Android in the name forcing Google to rename several of their apps from Android to Google). Again, you folks would scream bloody murder.

Also, for the person who claims that Apple is so successful because of its security/privacy/quality control that comes from its monopoly on apps on its mobile hardware: please note that Google Play, the Amazon AppStore, the Samsung AppStore, Tencent, Xiaomi, 360 Mobile, Baidu and Huawei (the latter 5 being the top app stores in China) are very successful to the tune of billions of revenue a year. Claiming otherwise requires the bizarre "it is only successful if it is #1" standard that no Apple fan applies to any other product as Apple is most certainly not #1 - or even close - in PCs, speakers, headphones, TV boxes, streaming networks or cloud services. The whole "Apple dominates the premium smartphone market because of its security" ... looks at it backwards. Instead, Android is able to support no less than 10 profitable app stores precisely because you can get a $200 (or less) Android phone and install most of the apps that are available on the far more expensive iPhone. That is why the antitrust actions against Google over Android look totally different than the ones against Apple over iOS. With Android, there is a thriving competitive marketplace over Android apps. (Granted most of the action is in Europe and Asia, but even in America there is competition between Google and Amazon.) The EU lawsuits over Google's only willing to provide certain apps to Google Android devices was because lots of entities wanted to be able to install competing app stores but still have access to YouTube. So this is one situation where Apple fanboy rhetoric is absolutely in opposition to objective market reality. Developers do make money off third party app stores on Android, especially overseas. Those folks want that same opportunity on iOS.    

The truth: Apple maintains their monopoly on software on iPhones, iPads, Apple TV and Apple Watch because they can get away with it. There are plenty of security and privacy issues that result from enabling third party applications on macOS. Apple allows them anyway because they have to. If they didn't allow third party apps on Macs then Macs would be as big a commercial failure as was Windows 10S (which only allowed Microsoft Store applications to be installed). There were rumours that Apple was going to lock down Macs to their App Store down the line once Apple Silicon matured, but Apple knows that were they to do so, developers and other professionals who need third party software - especially Linux tools installed using brew - would abandon the platform like the plague. Those users never needed Final Cut Pro X and other first party Apple software to begin with, find Office 365/Google Docs/LibreOffice "good enough" and would switch to Linux full time. 

So in an actual monopoly trial or proceeding, Apple would be asked why iPhones are so locked down but Macs aren't and they would have no suitable explanation because everyone knows that the only difference is market conditions. 

That being said I hope Apple somehow wins this trial and is able to retain their monopoly. I was a longtime Windows guy who migrated to Android, ChromeOS and Linux because those platforms better fit my needs. (I use macOS, true, but in the same way that I would were I running Ubuntu. Prior to switching to macOS, I was replacing Windows with Ubuntu on my machines anyway.) For this reason, I support users - and companies especially startups and small ones - having as much choice as possible that allows them to have quality options to meet their needs and wants as cheaply as possible. So I want Apple to be able to continue to make and sell devices that they lock down and monopolize for the benefit of consumers and businesses who need it and want it for whatever purpose they need and want it. People who don't want Apple's locked down mobile ecosystem have other choices (which despite what lots of Apple fans think is a very good thing). It should stay that way. 

But if Apple wins, it won't be based on the totally bogus nonsense that they peddle that is only based on the U.S. market anyway, and that Apple fanboys regurgitate without any critical thinking or real knowledge of what the non-Apple tech landscape (again especially outside North America) looks like. Apple needs to abandon their current line of defense - which will fail - and come up with one that will work. I don't know, maybe they need to come out with two classes of device. One class that retains its current locked down state. Another class that allows third party app stores for those who want it. They could even charge more for the "Open iOS" devices and claim that the reason for the surcharge is because of the increased expense of providing privacy and security on an open platform (and they could point to Google and Microsoft as exhibits A. and B.). Then when absolutely positively no one buys the Open iOS devices, Apple can shut the program down (just as Google shut down their "Google Play Edition" program for third party devices with pure Google Android loaded with no third party or carrier skins or apps because no one wanted them) and let the lack of user and enterprise interest in the types of devices that Sweeney wants be their best defense against monopoly charges. But if the more expensive Open iOS devices actually sell? Even better. More money for Apple ... and one less reason to buy a Samsung Galaxy S instead of an iPhone. 

All right people. This is what is going on. Microsoft has an initiative going on that might finally work. Shocker ... it is based on what they have learned from what Google does with ChromeOS and is going to do with Fuschia.

ChromeOS: takes the stripped-down OS that was minimal Linux plus graphics libraries and the Chrome browser - able to run well on 2 GB of RAM and a 15 year old Intel dual core processor - and added Android and Debian(esque) Linux containers to significantly extend the functionality. Fuchsia: is going to be a completely modular micro-kernel based OS (all well known OSes today run monolithic kernels).

So, Microsoft created Windows CoreOS. To Windows CoreOS they can add modules to allow it to run what a device needs, or leave those modules out if the device doesn't need it. Windows 10, then is just a flavor of Windows CoreOS. Windows for XBox ... another flavor. Windows 10X ... another flavor.

Legacy Windows and the applications that their customers need that is written in it and will never be updated is Microsoft's biggest hurdle right now. CoreOS deals with that hurdle by leaving legacy Windows out of it. So you will only buy legacy Windows support if you need it. If you don't, you can buy another flavor of Windows and face the future instead of fighting it. 

So Windows 10X is Windows 10 without the legacy applications. Can it run on ARM? Yes. Can it run on Intel? Of course. Why not? So can Linux. So can ChromeOS. So can Android. A software company would be crazy to limit itself to a single architecture in this era. But here is the deal: Windows 10X on ARM would not need to run in emulation because there would be no x86 apps to emulate. It would just run UWP apps as well as Linux apps via WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Yes, utilizing Linux to make up for the "app gap" on your native OS is something that Microsoft learned from Google. So again, if you need your old apps, you can buy an Intel or AMD-based machine and run the version of Wndows that has legacy support. If you don't, you can buy the Intel or AMD-based machine ... or you can buy a Qualcomm ARM one. 

Also, Google is working on the legacy support on ARM too. WIndows CoreOS supports containers - or the Windows equivalent - so they are going to try to run x86 as a layer inside a container - similar to what Google does with Android and Linux - on ARM devices. If they can get it to work, that should give much better performance than emulation. At the very worst, only apps x86 apps will need to be emulated. Which isn't a problem since legacy apps - written back when 2 GB of RAM seemed like science fiction - won't use much resources anyway. So long as emulating the containerized/sandboxed/virtualized x86 apps doesn't slow down the UWP apps and everything else - which is the case with Windows on ARM currently - then they are fine.

Microsoft is delaying it because they haven't worked out all the issues yet. See, Microsoft isn't Google. Their products get used by serious enterprise customers. So they wouldn't be able to get away with having a major feature in beta for two years, as Google has done with Linux on ChromeOS (and for that matter they are still resolving issues with Android apps on ChromeOS and that's been out for 4 ... and with there are even some issues with tablet/touchscreen support which ChromeOS has allegedly ahd for 6). 

And no, this isn't something that Microsoft has undertaken because of a fear of macOS. (If anything it would have been because of a fear of Google.) Instead, looking for ways to modularize operating systems has been the rage with operating systems ever since containers took off in 2013. Put it this way: Google's original plan for Android apps on ChromeOS? Install them in the browser the way you do extensions. (No, seriously. They called it ARC Welder with ARC standing for Android Runtime for Chrome. So people with Chrome browsers on their Windows and macOS desktops would have had full Android apps embedded in them. Which isn't as big a deal as you think ... most mobile apps are no bigger than browser plugins, plus the average person has like gigabytes of data in their browser cache files - more than the entire 16-32 GB storage space of a mobile device - anyway). But then Docker and their containers blew up and they were like "yeah we'll do that instead." Which led to them doing a bit more digging until they rediscovered microkernels - an idea that has been around since the late 60s but has never taken off in a commercial OS - for Fuschia.

Windows CoreOS isn't a microkernel OS, but it conceptually implements the same idea: start with a core small enough to power an IoT sensor and scale up to a massive server that provides SaaS to thousands of simultaneous customers through the cloud. Curiously Google created - and Microsoft quickly adopted - the microkernel concept for APPLICATIONS with node.js but are now drilling down to do the same with the operating systems itself.

So if you think that Microsoft - and for that matter Google - are scrambling to keep up with ARM-based Macs, you need to pay more to the distinction between software and hardware companies. Instead, Microsoft and Google - as well as Red Hat, Ubuntu etc. - are working on next generation operating systems (even if they are based on an old idea) where things like CPU architecture and instruction sets flat out aren't going to matter (much). 

dewme said:

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

I don’t feel that there is any connection whatsoever between Microsoft’s ARM strategy and Apple’s ARM strategy. 

Apple is in a far better position than Microsoft when it comes to figuring out how to exploit ARM to its strategic advantage, most notably in the mass deployment of several generations of high performance iOS and iPadOS computers that constantly demonstrate increasing performance and greater power efficiency year over year. 

Speaking of ARM, I’m very impressed by the performance and usability of 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu Mate 20.04 beta) on Raspberry Pi 4 single board computer (8GB). There’s a pretty wide swath of people whose entire set of computing needs could be met with a $50 computer main board, especially if they grab the monitor, keyboard, and mouse from their existing claptrap laden Windows setup. 

If a $50 ARM based main board can deliver solid basic computing needs and be so pleasant to use, just imagine what Apple will be able to do with its massive engineering staff, resources, and experience in designing world class ARM processors. 

The other advantage that I believe Apple has over Microsoft is that they’ve done a major architectural change before. I’d imagine they had to refactor and “genericize” a fair amount of code in the process. Microsoft has been camping on x86 for so long that I’d bet that the level of cruft in their code base is quite thick and gooey. 

The only "major advantage" that Apple has over Microsoft is that the former is a hardware company and the latter is a software company. Being a hardware company Apple can just say "here's our hardware - which we will support 100% for the next 7-10 years - and you run whatever you want on it." But being a software company Microsoft needs to provide backwards compatibility to a huge customer base that is still running old software. It isn't that Microsoft doesn't have the technical capability to ditch x86. They could do it yesterday. It is that they can't afford to lose the customers that it would cost them were they to ditch support for the legacy code. Because if Microsoft stops supporting their legacy code, what will they need Microsoft for anyway? Why bother with Windows? Linux does the exact same thing and is 100% free. Why bother with SQL Server? MariaDB and PostgreSQL ... again free. 

Xed said:

mpantone said:

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

Windows 10X competes more with Chromebook than it does Macs. Unfortunately for MS they’re having to fight on multiple fronts for both the massive low-end market and the profitable high-end market. Neither of these will be their undoing but it surely doesn’t help their bottom line.

Both the low end market and the high end market are profitable. Selling 10 items at a $1 margin is the same as selling 1 item at a $10 margin. Especially since you can also sell services to those 10. Also for Microsoft the "high end market" is servers and cloud where Apple doesn't compete at all. And please realize that Microsoft sells PLENTY of Office 365 licenses to Chromebook and MacBook owners. So either way they are fine. The Windows desktop market could completely dry up for them and they would still be a Fortune 25 company. In other words, this isn't the Gates/Ballmer Microsoft.