rocketdork wrote:Apple failed in their mission to put a computer on every desk. They stuck with the "only our hardware" for way too long. Yeah, M$ stole their GUI concept, but THEY MADE IT WORK. Apple doesn't lock up like a Windows machine, but then they don't have the hardware and software support that M$ has.
They didn't make it work especially well. IMHO. In the early days I liked OpenLook (SunOS) much better, especially with the virtual-desktop variant (circa 1992). Even back then Sun could do windows that were non-rectangular, transparent, etc.
rocketdork wrote:Its kind of the same as a car that will work with Biodiesel, E85, Coal dust, diesel, kerosene, hydrogen, wind power, Gasoline, methane and Solar. Is it going to do everything well? pby not. That's the task that M$ has. ALL the hardware has to work, ALL the software has to work, and when it doesn't we blame M$.
Every major version of Windows completely revamped the device driver model, forcing hardware vendors to rewrite drivers for any hardware they still wanted to support. Most vendors did this due to the ubiquity of the OS, but none of them enjoyed it. (A former boss was one of the people who started NeoMagic, he had a few stories...)
Right now the limiting factor in Linux support of hardware is getting the device information needed to write the drivers. Many devices were reverse-engineered. Some vendors support Linux directly, some provide information for 3rd parties to write drivers, some don't release information at all.
Having said that, the vast majority of commodity hardware works straight out of the box. Try it - download a LiveCD or Live DVD distribution. Throw it into your drive, turn on power, and sit back.
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
The "Desktop Edition" is a liveCD.
http://www.knoppix.net/get.php is also an excellent one.
Two or three hours to install an OS? How about just the time it takes to load from DVD?
Oh, and if you look around you can find variants for PowerPC, ARM, s390, Microblaxe, Alpha, Sparc, AVR32, Itanium, MIPS, and others.
Anything from your PDA to your 10,000-node supercomputer.
And Microsoft is complaining about supporting a wide range of hardware?
Also, recall that when Vista came out MS changed the driver model so much that most peripherals more than a few years old were simply not supported. And since MS got stickier about driver signing (see the content protection sub-rant below) vendors had a much harder time justifying the expense of certifying older hardware. (Of course many hardware vendors were perfectly happy to have someone else take the blame for forcing customers to buy new stuff).
rocketdork wrote:Linux in the early days(...) didn't even have FLOPPY drive support in the early versions.
Incorrect. Linux was written to run from floppy. Hard drive came later (Linus originally didn't think he'd ever be able to afford a hard drive).
rocketdork wrote:Unix? Please.
Guess what Mac OS-X is underneath the pretty GUI...
rocketdork wrote:M$ is bad too, they have deceptive and illegal business practices. Punitive licensing that blocks competition and aggressive "marketing" that discredits those that would come against them. Not so different than most big business in the US right now.
Agreed.
rocketdork wrote:All that being said. M$ is very interested in the USER experience.
I will agree that most Microsoft developers are sincerely interested in improving the user experience. However their "innovations" are pretty much incremental. The big leaps have come from elsewhere.
Microsoft management is interested in Microsoft. Period.
rocketdork wrote:I believe that if they get into the OSA hardware game that we'll see improvements to our *user* experience. Maybe they'll even listen to us about what we'd like to see in a machine. Get rid of those damn blue lights. Make the data easy to interpret and get to, etc
Microsoft would hold extensive focus groups, prototype some innovative widgets, and (after 5 years or so) come out with the same ol' stuff they sell to everybody else.
As far as improved access to data - HAH! Ever wonder why Vista required such a large step in computing hardware to get reasonable performance? Aero? Nope, my 3-5 year old machines run Compiz (the Linux variant of GUI eye candy) just fine. Microsoft puts a great deal of effort into copy-protection of the multimedia pipeline. The machine is constantly encrypting, decrypting, checksumming, and inspecting everything that passes between your disk and display.
Recently my wife had to ask me for help opening a spreadsheet. Someone emailed her a file in Excel 2007 format (.xlsx). She only has Office 2003. No dice. I had to run it through OpenOffice to get it to a format she could read. Note this file was a simple table of names and addresses - nothing fancy. Yet the file format was made very very incompatible with earlier versions. Forced obsolescence anyone?
rocketdork wrote:So, can we stop bashing the giant we all hate and get back to the topic?
Nope, this is way too much fun!
