The INQUIRER is too addictive

While I applaud your complete lack of understanding and your almost pathetic griping about Apple's products and prices I still think you should get at least the basic facts right...

During his keynote when Jobs was listing the revolutionary products Apple had introduced in the past 30 years the FIRST one he mentioned was the Mac, the second the iPod and the third was the iPhone.

Oh how badly you listen I guess (or did you not hear on purpose perhaps to make your "article" more juicy). Apple didn't forget the Mac they just clearly indicated their phenomenal growth and future potential with a new name and new products.

Ah, the sad lengths "reporters" will go to.

Good luck with your budding career in short fiction.

N

Subject: Microsoft to offer an Open Source

I'm totally there with you! I've been thinking this for quite a long time now, trying not to let my thoughts be confused by all the media hype. Anyway, if Linux is ever to compete with Microsoft, it will have to be like Microsoft. Meaning, standardized distribution, full user support (like you mentioned), better validation for drivers, etc.

I think Linux is a great niche and has helped the industry move forward some, but I doubt it will ever contend with Microsoft.

maleb

Subject: iphone... widescreen, really?

It's all very funny this widescreen business. It seems that nobody can decide on the actual definition other than 'its a bit thicker than 4:3'. We see the pc widescreen monitor manufacturers using 16:10 and now the iphone calls itself a widescreen phone but if you work out the ratio its actually more like 3:2. I'm really not trying to come off as a nit-picking geek but don't most movies come as 16:9? Will the iTunes versions of the newly signed paramount films be pan&scan'ed? I doubt it, so surely this kind of doesn't fit the purpose?

Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Greg Case

p.s. keep up the good work and ignore the language comments (as I'm sure you will!)... don't other countries journalists use local slang in their writing too?

Subject: Linux and Support Costs

Your point about linux needing to become like windows to threaten windows is well-supported and logical, but it demonstrates a lack of understanding of both the linux community and open-source development in general.

You say:
"The end user will need to either have everything done for them with completely automatic updates or by proper phone and Website support."

Linux is actually, unlike windows, quite close to the former condition there. My father, who is profoundly bad at computers, has been keeping ubuntu entirely up-to-date just by clicking on the little "you have updates" icon regularly. And because of the Open Source repositories, ALL the software on the system can be subject to these updates. Windows cannot match this level of system integation with updates to important software, simply because much of it is supplied by third-party vendors with their own patching systems.

While enterprise support will always be important for linux busisnesses, it is doubtful that end-user support will ever become a major part of the linux busisness model and thus jack up the price of boxed distros. It's just easier to continue to perfect already-excellent system-wide up-to-date tools.

You also say:
"...This means including features that aren't available on other people's versions of Linux. Programmers, designers and consultants will have to be hired to develop these features and drivers."

This ignores the primary mechanism of open source. Features that don't exist in other people's distros come out all the time, freely available to any distro that wants to spend the time integrating them. Not only that, it's likely that the Open Sauce faithful would be very displeased by sudden, large-scale inclusion of binary blobs to which the source code was un-available, to "differentiate" their linux distribution. There would be a huge backlash. Because of the community-based nature of linux development, no company would risk this. In intelligently not risking it, they do not incur the costs you speak of here.

If linux continues to improve in it's user-friendliness, it will indeed become a threat to Windows, albeit slowly. It is true that almost all new computers will have Windows Vista installed on them. And why not? Windows Vista is a basically competent upgrade to Windows XP. But Vista will be expensive, both in terms of money for hardware and Vista itself. Computers bought from small-time sources, like neighborhood white-box stores, second-hand shops, Wal-Mart in some cases, etc, etc, will be running linux. Like AMD a decade or so ago, Linux is currently the darling of both the budget and the entheusiast performance community. That's a powerful combination. When the middle-class computing sector notices that cheaper computers can put out all the 3d effects of Vista (using some variation of XGL) and seem to both run faster and be much more secure, they will sit up and take notice. Some of them will start buying. And Microsoft will have a problem on it's hands.

Unlike many Open Saucers, I think that this process will take a long time. Infiltration of the budget market, already started in earnest, will take at least another five years. Until the mass of consumers start noticing the faster, cheaper, just-as-pretty alternative? Another five after that. Linux is already an incredible threat to Windows, technologically speaking. It is easier to use, update, and secure, and is worlds faster on cheaper hardware. As far as mind-share is concerned, it might take another decade to evolve into a position where it can really threaten the Vole. But it will not have to become like the Vole to get there, because of the market dynamics and development style that I have outlined here.

Frankly, I hope that Microsoft also sees things this way. Maybe it will force them to make their next OS, after Vista, actually deliver on it's promises, on time. And competition is only good for the OS market, on both Windows and Linux sides.

mogunus

Subject: the Inquirer is a Pusher?

hi eva,

just wanted to mention i lived in Henderson around 1982, it was only a small dot of dust back then. i miss water skiing on lake mead and the $0.99 breakfasts!

i live now in flagstaff AZ for the last 10 or more years.

lastly and most importantly your site is the first one i open each morning to get my news fix (the Inquirer is a pusher?!). hardware reviews are my top stories.

good job on finding cool tech stuff! i bet it's a fun job too.

kind regards,

ron kennedy

Subject: What excites you then ?

You write for a technology site -> new technology should excite you -> why do you call the Iphone just a bloody phone -> What do you want a phone to have before it excites you ?

dennis

Subject: Linux is no match for Windows

Way to go, Andrew. Linux isn't meant to fight money-hungry capitalism, I mean, Vole. It may have already matched its features and such, but to achieve the same success rate, it has to become money-hungry too.

Besides, if you choose a non-widely-famous OS for yourself you'll always be a black sheep amongst your friends and partners. Common, most linuxers keep that little hidden partition in a dark corner of the HD with a shamefully pirated volish OS. Except those who never need to open a complex Word document, a IE-driven website or a DX9 game (throw a rock if that's your case).

Also, an 100% strictly open-source OS (including third-party drivers) will never make it anyway.

Good luck, M$ haters (including myself)

mycelo

Subject: Flash memory

How long until we put a nail in the coffin of Tape backup Drives.

Goodbye Zip, it was nice having you.

Puku Jones

Subject: Linux goes down the toilet

Hi Nick,

Down the toilet it goes. But before that, it will have electrocuted the poor sod in his well tempered bath because he violated the GPL when he forgot that his excrements were subject to it too and the COPYING file did not get flushed because the toiletpaperprinter went out of paper.

I'll do nicely without automatic bathrooms for a while yet, I guess.

Greetings,
Bertho

Subject: Apple RIP

Dear Andrew,

Any chance of some balanced reporting some time soon? You're not Nick Farrell, after all.

dan