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Mr. T wrote:

though I still think Apple's margins are higher.  But, my main point was that the iPhone poses no threat to the vast majority of phones on the market --Just as an Apple netbook would pose little threat to Acer or Asus.


No, I'm purposely ignoring your Temp Treo comment because:

#1, I agreed with you, that there were other high margin phones --so belaboring each of your sub-points seems redundant.
#2, it was completely irrelevant to the point I wanted to make. 

I'm going to ignore it again, for both these reasons.

So once again, I agree with pretty much everything you're written.  You're pretty much restating my argument against Kook Aid in different terms --the argument being that Apple isn't competing with 98% of the other phones on the market.  The statement "Apple created a new market" isn't that much different from the statement "they're just enjoying a huge amount of success compared to some that have been in the [smart phone] market for years."

The reason I said you were ignoring what I said was your statement,

Mr. T wrote:

though I still think Apple's margins are higher.

That statement is completely incorrect and yet you are basing a good part of your argument on it. And I'm not even talking about just the smartphone market. Look at the Motorola Razr. Those phones sold at a HUGE margin for a long time before finally coming down to their current price. This has always been true for whatever the hot handsets are at any given time. You can still walk into any wireless store and find regular phones that cost more than an iPhone. The fact is that Apple is trying to compete with the rest of the market and AT&T wants them to. First, the lowering of the price last year to $199/299, and now the $99 iPhone 3G are both meant to do just that. AT&T makes much more per month from smart phone users so they are constantly pushing people to upgrade to those and the iPhone is the hottest of that category.

frankly wrote:

Mr. T wrote:

You're suggesting that Apple is, somehow, destined to achieve both large volume and large margins --something which has never been achieved in the history of free market economics.  Keep drinking that Kool Aid

What market are you looking at? It seemed to work pretty damn well...SNIP...But I guess, other than those it has never happened in the history of free market economics???

Mr. T wrote:

That's not quite what I meant, but since you're feeling so cocky today, I'll let you get in on this too:  Kool Aid either thinks that the iPhone is going to dominate the cell market in the next 12 months, or that an Apple netbook will dominate the netbook market.  What say you?

I'm feeling cocky? I'm feeling cocky??? I'm sorry, perhaps you missed what you said so let me repeat it:

Mr. T wrote:

You're suggesting that Apple is, somehow, destined to achieve both large volume and large margins --something which has never been achieved in the history of free market economics.  Keep drinking that Kool Aid

Exactly how did I misinterpret that? Please enlighten us.

And if you don't think that Apple is already dominating the cell phone market than you haven't been paying attention. They may only be selling a small percentage of devices but they are steering the boat. Almost every company has released phones in the past couple of years that are attempts to ride the wave that Apple has created. They turned the cell phone industry on its head and continue to dominate. They may not have a huge market share yet but they have a HUGE mindshare and they are market leaders. As for the netbook market, there are already reports that other netbook manufacturers are holding off on any significant updates until they see what Apple releases to the market, which is expected next month.

The problem seems to be your definition of what dominating a market means. I think you have it in your head that it only means the company that sells the most units. I guarantee that a lot more hot dogs are sold annually than ribeye steaks. That doesn't mean that the hot dog manufacturers are dominating the meat marketplace. And from the perspective of those selling meat they would much rather sell 100 units of ribeye than 1000 units of hot dogs.

frankly wrote:

Mr. T wrote:

though I still think Apple's margins are higher.  But, my main point was that the iPhone poses no threat to the vast majority of phones on the market --Just as an Apple netbook would pose little threat to Acer or Asus.


No, I'm purposely ignoring your Temp Treo comment because:

#1, I agreed with you, that there were other high margin phones --so belaboring each of your sub-points seems redundant.
#2, it was completely irrelevant to the point I wanted to make. 

I'm going to ignore it again, for both these reasons.

So once again, I agree with pretty much everything you're written.  You're pretty much restating my argument against Kook Aid in different terms --the argument being that Apple isn't competing with 98% of the other phones on the market.  The statement "Apple created a new market" isn't that much different from the statement "they're just enjoying a huge amount of success compared to some that have been in the [smart phone] market for years."

The reason I said you were ignoring what I said was your statement,

Mr. T wrote:

though I still think Apple's margins are higher.

That statement is completely incorrect and yet you are basing a good part of your argument on it. And I'm not even talking about just the smartphone market. Look at the Motorola Razr. Those phones sold at a HUGE margin for a long time before finally coming down to their current price. This has always been true for whatever the hot handsets are at any given time. You can still walk into any wireless store and find regular phones that cost more than an iPhone. The fact is that Apple is trying to compete with the rest of the market and AT&T wants them to. First, the lowering of the price last year to $199/299, and now the $99 iPhone 3G are both meant to do just that. AT&T makes much more per month from smart phone users so they are constantly pushing people to upgrade to those and the iPhone is the hottest of that category.

frankly wrote:

Mr. T wrote:

You're suggesting that Apple is, somehow, destined to achieve both large volume and large margins --something which has never been achieved in the history of free market economics.  Keep drinking that Kool Aid

What market are you looking at? It seemed to work pretty damn well...SNIP...But I guess, other than those it has never happened in the history of free market economics???

Mr. T wrote:

That's not quite what I meant, but since you're feeling so cocky today, I'll let you get in on this too:  Kool Aid either thinks that the iPhone is going to dominate the cell market in the next 12 months, or that an Apple netbook will dominate the netbook market.  What say you?

I'm feeling cocky? I'm feeling cocky??? I'm sorry, perhaps you missed what you said so let me repeat it:

Mr. T wrote:

You're suggesting that Apple is, somehow, destined to achieve both large volume and large margins --something which has never been achieved in the history of free market economics.  Keep drinking that Kool Aid

Exactly how did I misinterpret that? Please enlighten us.

And if you don't think that Apple is already dominating the cell phone market than you haven't been paying attention. They may only be selling a small percentage of devices but they are steering the boat. Almost every company has released phones in the past couple of years that are attempts to ride the wave that Apple has created. They turned the cell phone industry on its head and continue to dominate. They may not have a huge market share yet but they have a HUGE mindshare and they are market leaders. As for the netbook market, there are already reports that other netbook manufacturers are holding off on any significant updates until they see what Apple releases to the market, which is expected next month.

The problem seems to be your definition of what dominating a market means. I think you have it in your head that it only means the company that sells the most units. I guarantee that a lot more hot dogs are sold annually than ribeye steaks. That doesn't mean that the hot dog manufacturers are dominating the meat marketplace. And from the perspective of those selling meat they would much rather sell 100 units of ribeye than 1000 units of hot dogs.

I've sufficiently addressed everything you've just quoted either in the quote itself, or clearly elsewhere in the thread.

frankly wrote:

I'm feeling cocky? I'm feeling cocky??? I'm sorry

You're forgiven.

Last edited by Mr. T (2009-08-07 11:28 am)

I just took stock of this thread --noticed how quickly my main point was enveloped in an exponentially growing swarm of mini-tangents.  All the while, we've been in rough consensus over the point at hand for the past couple of pages --something I don't think you're capable of accepting at this time, in this thread.

Would you two like to move this thread to Mini-think?

It's already qualified in vitrolic, and the subject is no longer really tightly tied to the thread thesis.

avkills wrote:

Ahhh, the fundamental flaw in our thinking; Why can't a company sustain a certain volume of sales and still be considered a success?  Must we ALWAYS be growing bigger and bigger or is there a certain point at which one is satisfied and thrives to keep that volume of sales as opposed to growing and growing until the amount of sales is just too much to cope with.

I personally believe that one can be successful at maintaining a certain volume of sales and/or living off the fact that your customer base will always be upgrading.  Maybe if more people thought this way; the economy would not be in the dire straights it is.

-mark

That isn't the fundamental flaw in our thinking. I agree with you that a company shouldn't have to demonstrate growth as long as they remain profitable. However, publicly traded corporations have to answer to their shareholders.

Yeah, it's nothing personal.  The number of points being debated was increasing, with each one becoming further distant from, not only my original point, but the original topic of the thread --of course, I'm just as guilty as anyone, in this regard.  That said, if I had to pick the exact moment when I decided that this thread was over, i'd say it was the car analogy.  In my experience, the car analogy is a bad omen.

*bump*

Still waiting, Sci. Meanwhile, their website has bites of the October issue up already.

Alex St. John was one of the founding creators of Microsoft’s DirectX technology. He is the subject of the book “Renegades Of The Empire” about the creation of DirectX and Chromeffects, an early effort by Microsoft to create a multi-media browser. Today Alex is President and CEO of WildTangent Inc., a technology company devoted to delivering CD-ROM quality entertainment content over the Web.

After seeing Microsoft butcher Vista, I wrote a column claiming that I would not be surprised if Microsoft could never pull off a major OS release again. In my own defense, I would point out that history shows few examples of companies who lose their way that badly and ever recover, but then Microsoft has always been an exceptional company. After using Windows 7, I had to pinch myself and ask where I went wrong. It was like an entirely different corporate mentality and culture had taken over Microsoft OS design.

I contacted some old friends at the empire and asked what had happened. Apparently, after the Vista debacle, Microsoft had a major housecleaning. They purged the old guard, and a new generation of up-and-coming executives took over leadership of Windows and managed to reestablish a consumer-centric focus on usability, leanness, stability, compatibility, and security. Don’t get me wrong, although I have a list of things I’d love to see done better in Windows, it’s great to see an overall shift in focus from the egocentric “What’s best for us is what’s best for you!” approach to OS design demonstrated in Vista to the humbler, more service-centric “WeR....

To read more you need to subscribe. Wish I had bucks to spare; it's a good mag.

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editor … 008785F8E4

The article is way more about IE8 than Win7 or DX or anything else.

After seeing Microsoft butcher Vista, I wrote a column claiming that I would not be surprised if Microsoft could never pull off a major OS release again. In my own defense, I would point out that history shows few examples of companies who lose their way that badly and ever recover, but then Microsoft has always been an exceptional company. After using Windows 7, I had to pinch myself and ask where I went wrong. It was like an entirely different corporate mentality and culture had taken over Microsoft OS design.

I contacted some old friends at the empire and asked what had happened. Apparently, after the Vista debacle, Microsoft had a major housecleaning. They purged the old guard, and a new generation of up-and-coming executives took over leadership of Win-dows and managed to reestablish a consumer-centric focus on usability, leanness, stability, compatibility, and security. Don’t get me wrong, although I have a list of things I’d love to see done better in Windows, it’s great to see an overall shift in focus from the egocentric “What’s best for us is what’s best for you!” ap-proach to OS design demonstrated in Vista to the humbler, more service-centric “We’re going to just make everything work and try to stay out of your way” philosophy that seems to embody Windows 7.

Of course, if everything was right in the world, I’d have very little to write about, but fortunately for me the humility memo did not reach all of Microsoft’s product groups. Take IE 8, for example, which is the subject of an enormous Microsoft marketing push. (Note: If you have to spend a lot of money marketing a free, electronically distributed upgrade to the most widely used browser on the Internet to get people to try it, there must be something seriously wrong with it!) Microsoft claims the product is “safer, faster, and easier to use.” So what’s the very first thing Microsoft tells you about how great IE 8 is when you visit the download page for it?

“Install Windows Internet Explorer 8, MSN Toolbar, and Microsoft Silverlight in one click.”

Now there’s a compelling value proposition. For reasons I don’t understand, I can get IE8 together with a toolbar that will enable Microsoft to track my browsing behavior and sell advertising, bundled with a technology nobody uses that will help Microsoft kill Adobe Flash. What’s in this for me? Oh wait, way down in the lower-left corner of the page in small print, it says: “Search smarter, work faster, and browse more safely, all within a familiar environment.”

They just sort of threw that stuff in at the bottom in case getting a free MSN toolbar and Silverlight was not a sufficiently compelling reason to upgrade. After some digging, I found a download page that didn’t bundle that other . . . what did Microsoft call it in when referring to other peoples’ Internet applications shipping with Vista? Oh yes, crapware.

This was the featured ad on the IE8 download page (right).

You can’t make this stuff up. I thought we were all getting fat? I’ll check . . . .

America is home to the most obese people in the world. Ac-cording to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), obesity in adults has increased by 60% within the past 20 years, and obesity in children has tripled in the past 30 years. A staggering 33% of American adults are obese, and obesity-related deaths have climbed to more than 300,000 a year, second only to tobacco-related deaths.

In other words, IE8 is so useless to me that Microsoft’s best idea for a guilt trip to get me to download it anyway is to threaten to starve obese children if we persist in using IE7? By “struggle” do they mean it’s hard to drag our fat butts away from World of Warcraft long enough to reach the refrigerator?

Okay, I’m digressing. So, I finally managed to download IE 8 without all the other crapware and got it installed and thought, “So let’s see what Microsoft means by faster, safer, and more user-friendly.”

So the FIRST user experience in IE8 is a dialog box that obstructs me from quickly getting online to tell me how IE8 “helps” me to use the Internet faster. The dialog doesn’t actually ask me a question (which makes it just a pop-up ad) but offers Next and Ask Me Later buttons as options to escape the dialog. As it turns out, neither option is an appealing one. If you click Next, thinking there is some essential installation step you’ve missed thus far, you are mistaken. Microsoft just wants to take you on a little tour of IE8 and try to trick you into replacing your default search provider with Microsoft’s. If you click Ask Me Later, you can go straight to browsing the Web with your default search provider and favorites in place and unmolested; however, IE8 will continue to display this obnoxious dialog every time you launch it until you get fed up, click Next, and accidentally switch your search provider away from Google.

That dialog alone spoils all pretentions IE8 had at being faster or user-friendly; if they couldn’t figure out that doing something that obnoxious immediately on first launch was unacceptable, what hope can there be for the rest of the product? Just out of curiosity, what feature could they have put in IE8 that everybody wants and loves about Firefox, actually makes surfing faster, and could have provided a great opportunity to offer better security? How about adding a download manager? I guess those engineers were too busy working on the MSN toolbar or Silverlight to get that feature done in time for IE 4, 5, 6, 7, or even 8!

I know, I’m being a little silly. I’m sure there is some great stuff in IE8; let’s go back to the download page and read about it from Microsoft. We’ll just click the “Speed and ease in the real world: Learn how Internet Explorer 8 delivers the best web experience” link (tinyurl.com/chwfke).

Bear with me now, I’m using IE8 on the IE8 download page . . . are you ready for this? Pop!

Apparently, delivering the best Web experience didn’t include shipping Adobe Acrobat or Macromedia Flash with IE8! If I had the space, I’d walk everyone through the process I went through to download and install Adobe Acrobat just so I could read Microsoft’s treatise on why IE8 delivers the best Web experience. It’s a damn funny read in that context. Follow that laugh by clicking the “Find out which browser protects against more socially engineered malware” link (nsslabs.com/anti-malware/browser-security).

Not surprisingly, the report concludes that IE8 is superior at preventing malware downloads, which it claims are responsible for 54% of malware infections. IE8 ap-pears to accomplish this brilliant security feat by consistently obstructing all downloads, including Adobe Acrobat, which they require for reading their own reports! Maybe people would be less inclined to download random Internet plug-ins if the ones they used commonly were already included with the browser?

The NSS Labs study Microsoft directs you to is a great read for the critical thinkers out there. It raises many more questions about IE 8 security than it answers. For example, the study doesn’t mention who funded it, and NSS Labs is a commercial enterprise. The study points out that IE7 was the worst-performing browser at blocking malware attacks, suggesting that people would be well-advised to upgrade their browser to almost anything else immediately. Given the fact that Microsoft claimed security leadership with IE7 (technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc512583.aspx), these folks should also ask themselves why they should trust Microsoft an eighth time.

Also note that the report is selectively titled: “Socially engineered Malware Protection Comparative Test Results.” What is socially engineered malware? Well, you have to read between the lines a little bit, but the study does expressly explain that “Exploits that install malware without the user being aware are not included in this study.” Now let me get this straight . . . this study is not a survey of actual browser security vulnerabilities, it’s a study of which browsers are most effective at discouraging stupid people from deliberately installing malware on their own machines after IE8 has just finished confusing them about whether they can trust a download from, say, Adobe?

For one last great piece of irony, the big feature in IE8 is a porn browsing mode that prevents your spouse or parents from seeing where you’ve been surfing—and accidentally downloading malware instead of porn. I shouldn’t even have to point out that most malware is distributed via porn sites and downloads targeting children, or that IE8 doesn’t work well with Vista’s broken parental control system (www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId … egoryId=90).

I think I just guessed which product group all the Microsoft folks who screwed up Vista wound up in after the company’s big housecleaning.

~Coxy wrote:

The article is way more about IE8 than Win7 or DX or anything else.

Thanks for the column repro, Coxy. The column I originally referenced, tho, was last month's. I haven't seen it on stands since, didn't have $ at the time and have a hunch it's gone by now. That one had more to say about 7.

His workstation needed rebuilding, the original disc was long gone, so he tried a Vista upgrade. It wasn't pretty.

Before he got a replacement XP, 7 RC1 became available, so he thought 'what the heck' and tried it. He was quite surprised for reasons evident in the followup.

No, 7 doesn't have WinFS and more- I think that's dead anyway- but really, given the time factor, the new guys have done quite a job. The RTM is better still if hardly perfect, but... in under 3 years the new Winders guys have finished SP3 for XP, SPs 1 & 2 for Vista and done 7. That's a lot to get done and do mostly right.

The Saint left MS under less than amicable terms (the NT/9x groups' fight, IIRC). He's not afraid to criticize his old employer. He was there from the early to the late '90s- not his first job, not his last.

I'd love to see a book of his collected columns, but they're under two different publishers.

frankly wrote:

Bat wrote:

No, 7 doesn't have WinFS and more- I think that's dead anyway- but really, given the time factor, the new guys have done quite a job. The RTM is better still if hardly perfect, but... in under 3 years the new Winders guys have finished SP3 for XP, SPs 1 & 2 for Vista and done 7. That's a lot to get done and do mostly right.

Here's the thing though, it really doesn't matter how good a job they are doing. They aren't operating in a vacuum. Microsoft Windows is the most used OS and it doesn't matter how fast these guys fix the debacle that was Longhorn/Vista. The fact remains that they still don't have the OS that was promised over 5 years ago. They would have to do something completely revolutionary in order to catch up to where Microsoft should be at this point in time. It's not as though everyone else has been sitting on the sidelines waiting for Microsoft before they released new and compelling products. Microsoft doesn't have the luxury of releasing Windows 7 as what they wish Vista would have been, especially if it doesn't even have all the features (i.e. underlying technologies) they wished that Vista had AND Vista itself was release YEARS later than Microsoft wanted.

So, by releasing something that is much better than Vista, but still not where they would have liked Vista to be, 4+ years later than they originally wanted to release it, they are still years behind. If this new management team within Microsoft were really lean and mean with a good plan then why would they be releasing Windows 7 under the same ridiculous product matrix that they used for Vista. If they were serious not just about fixing Vista but about moving forward at the rapid pace they need to in order to really catch up then they would release this in a much more simple format, similar to OS X releases, and keep releasing new versions each year, the same way Apple did when they were really cranking up OS X. They can not afford to make this a major, complicated upgrade, when they need to be focusing like a laser on the next version of Windows and the version after that.

Frank

QFT

MS certainly isn't toast. Their size guarantees they'll continue moving forward for some time due to sheer momentum. But Windows is in a bit of a rough patch and MS needs to come up with a plan for moving forward. We're seeing computers matter less and less as smaller devices become more common - this is an area where MS is very weak. The Zune hasn't taken off and WinMo smartphones are terrible. The market is also moving toward laptops and battery life under Windows is awful. Security remains a joke. Win 7 is what Vista should have been, but wasn't. It's got a neat new taskbar, but several of the annoyances remain.

Office is treading water - it's pretty mature and difficult to find ways to improve it. MS's online efforts are lukewarm. Google is eating their lunch when it comes to online and cloud computing services. They're still failing to unseat *nix in the server market - most services don't run on Windows Server (and for very good reason).

MS has a lot of money, IP and engineering talent, but they seem to be flailing about a bit without any clear direction. I suppose this is partially due to Gates leaving, but it was a problem beforehand. Sadly, I think Apple has a good chance of the same thing happening when Jobs finally leaves. MS is also afraid to break backward compatibility when they really should in some instances. MS spoke a lot about innovation, but they've done very little. The Xbox and XBL are nice and seem to be doing well, but that's been more of a ground rule double than a hit out of the park. MS just isn't very exciting, they have no spark. Windows is mostly usable and OK - damned with faint praise. People use Windows because it's inexpensive or plays games or their software only runs on it - you rarely hear about how much people enjoy Windows. You hear it from Mac users all the time...

Bat wrote:

You two aren't exactly famed for your platform agnosticism.

And I'm sorry but I have to say one more thing. Look up. No, near the top of your screen. Do you see where you are??? You are in the Mac|Life forums. Would you like to buy a clue???

Bat in a bar wrote:

You guys aren't exactly known for your sober people here.

True which Is why I don't get offended but as Frank said If MS would just be more consistent with being there when I need them and getting out of the way when I don't, I would view them as a viable option instead of as a forced addendum to maintain compatibility. Lawsuits over them making open standards in proprietary ones don't help their case with me. Neither do ads that their smurf stink when they be better of spending their money on maintenance than spin. That said I will be replacing Vista with Win7 ASAP. Even I admit that's what they should've had at least 5 years ago when Vista/Longhorn was supposed to come out.