Microsoft Said To Limit Device Makers' Partners 200
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has asked chipmakers that want to use the next version of Windows for tablets to work with no more than one computer manufacturer."
The article also said, "Seeking to limit variations may help Microsoft speed the delivery of new Windows tablets by keeping tighter control over partners and accelerating development and testing. Though the program isn't mandatory, the restrictions may impede chip- and computer makers from building a variety of Windows-based models to vie with Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s iPad... In past versions of Windows software, chipmakers could work with multiple computer manufacturers. "
How is this not anti-trust? (Score:5, Insightful)
This reminds me of standard oil making deals with railroads, to not carry oil for companies that competed with standard oil, or to charge those other companies much more.
As I understand it, these actions by the old robber barons brought about the Clayton Act, and the Sherman Act.
So why are the new robber barons allowed to get away with such abusive, anti-competitive actions?
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except the oil was mostly the same. in this case manufacturers building cheapo products will damage microsoft's brand perception which is what they want to avoid
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basically, this is a lack of an answer. It's not any different, it's just that it has to get to the courts to get settled.
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except the oil was mostly the same. in this case manufacturers building cheapo products will damage microsoft's brand perception which is what they want to avoid
How could it get any worse? Microsoft has never had very good branch perception beyond the board room.
Re:How is this not anti-trust? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Except this time it is a pretty minor player in that particular marketplace. It can't push manufacturers too hard on this one or they'll just say "fuck you Redmond" and throw Android on their tablets.
Re:How is this not anti-trust? (Score:5, Insightful)
I must have missed the time when Microsoft stopped using their old tricks.
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It looks like you may have missed the news that the ruling was overturned by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Afterwards the DOJ announced they were going to seek a lesser antitrust penalty. On November 2, 2001 the DOJ settled with Microsoft which required that Microsoft publish its API. This weak settlement was probably due to the DOJ was under a new administration (Clinton was no longer in office)
Re:How is this not anti-trust? (Score:4, Informative)
Because our government is at least as corrupt today as it was in the late 19th century.
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This reminds me of standard oil making deals with railroads, to not carry oil for companies that competed with standard oil, or to charge those other companies much more.
As I understand it, these actions by the old robber barons brought about the Clayton Act, and the Sherman Act.
So why are the new robber barons allowed to get away with such abusive, anti-competitive actions?
Because Asking is not the same as Demanding.
And because Microsoft does not have a monopoly on phone Operating Systems.
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If Microsoft was the only company providing a tablet OS, then I might agree with you. If manufacturer's don't like the stipulations of using the Windows tablet OS, they can make an Android tablet. There's nothing anti-trust about it. If Microsoft decided they wouldn't sell their OS to X company (that does not have a competing OS) even though they agreed to all the hardware stipulations, then THAT would be anti-trust because they're only allowing certain companies to make a tablet.
Re:How is this not anti-trust? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? It reminds me of Microsoft making deals with OEMs, to not install operating systems from companies that competed with Microsoft. They've already been caught doing this with Hitachi and Compaq to kill BeOS.
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Microsoft is the small fish here.
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Because the Clinton-era DoJ wardogs who brought the antitrust action against MS were removed when the Bush Administration took office and the new DoJ settled the case for peanuts. Today's DoJ under Obama seem to be focused on protecting Hollywood's copyrights and are turning a blind eye to antitrust.
Antitrust enforcement actions depend largely on the administration in the White House. When Teddy Roosevelt w
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Railroads are a natural monopoly. If railroads refuse to carry your product, you had no other option. Despite people's fantasies, Microsoft doesn't have this kind of power and never did. You could always use competitive products. This is not to say they didn't make compatibility difficult, but it is incomparable to striking deals with network industries like railroads.
It would be like MS striking a deal with ATT to only connect to MS computers. That my good man would be a comparable analogy. And yes M
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How does Microsoft limiting the number of chip manufacturers that will be officially supported on their next version of Tablet OS violate antitrust? All I see is Microsoft limiting their next Tablet OS to a select combination of chip manufacturer + OEM. There is no law that requires an OS to support all available hardware.
It would be antitrust if the deal also forbid the chip manufacturer or OEM from making products for another OS like Android. I didn't see any such language in the article.
Isn't this bett
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Even though Apple is even MORE restrictive with the manufacturing of their devices?
I don't know the detailed legalities of the whole thing but I think this is a very, very smart move on Microsoft's part from a business standpoint. Take a look at the Android hardware market right now vs. iOS. If you're looking for an iphone you know EXACTLY what you're getting. With android there's a huge variety - but the differences are fairly minor in most cases so deciding between all the choices is nearly moot.
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Why? They make a product, and sell that product. Just like Nike makes products, and sells them. I don't think you understand the difference between a homogenous product chain and antitrust/anticompetitive practices, which I assume you're driving at with this fact-free statement.
It's not illegal to choose what you sell in your store (apart from for discriminatory reasons), and not illegal to have a monopoly. Apple is no different to any other single brand manufacturer with a retail and online presence - do y
Great business model (Score:3, Insightful)
Limiting hardware and exercising very stringent control has worked for Microsoft so well with Windows Phone 7 and was obviously the reason their OSes didn't sell.
The reason DOS and later Windows took off was exactly that every Tom, Dick and Harry from the shadiest backroom company could slap together something to sell. Many of those things didn't sell, many of them were and maybe still are atrocious piece of kit. But they simply swamped the market, drove prices to rock bottom and made MSFT's software have 90%+ marketshare, made the current and former CEOs of Microsoft multibillionaires, etc. Additionally they drove Apple nearly to extinction since they just couldn't compete with true mass production.
But this time around everything is different. Learning from Apple means more profit and success!
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Yep, this time it's Android enabling every Tom, Dick and Harry to build whatever the hell they want. Even the PSP's successor looks like it's going to be an Android device.
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The day of Microsoft's dominance is coming to a close. It will still probably dominate the business market for some time, but I can't see it ever being more than a fractional player in the tablet and smartphone markets. Apple and all the Android manufacturers have a massive lead.
Re:Great business model (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as Tom, Dick and Harry join the Open Handset Alliance and pay dues to same, sign nondisclosure agreements forbidding them from releasing new OSs before Google, and agree to not bundle their phones with apps and services that compete with Google's.
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There are a lot of AOSP devices, and Google constructs the terms of the AOSP in such a way that AOSP devices are hamstrung and can never offer realistic competition with OHA devices. That's the idea.
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Verizon isn't a phone manufacturer. Google's been quite clear that they don't want to compete with other location service providers [businessinsider.com], and will use access to the closed-source google mobile apps and services as a club to keep manufacturers in line.
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the market has changed. Back at the start of the Wintel PC era, PCs were either business tools one simply HAD to use, or hobbyist stuff one actually enjoyed tinkering/fighting with.
smartphones and tablets today are used by choice, by a much larger public, and not really tinkered with (hardware mods are pretty much impossible, and on the software side, I'm the only person I know to root my phone). plus, there's plenty spare power in these things to have nice interfaces.
I don't really like the term "dumbing d
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It's not as though Apple are limiting the hardware the iPad runs on ... oh sorry yes there is only 1 chipset and one manufacturer ...
It will soon be ....
iPad - is a device - Hardware and software bundled, which model do you want
Win8Pad - is a device - Hardware from a limited set of partners plus software, which model do you want
Android, run anywhere
It looks like MS have spotted that Apple are doing quite well, are copying them, not realising that the market has
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It took almost 2 years and major hardware evolution for Flash to run on Android. To put it another way, it took major evolution in display acceleration and a major compromise in battery life to get Flash on Android. I have a G1. I remember the promises that Flash would come in the Spring of 2009. Ha.
Apple still thumbs its nose at Adobe, ignoring Flash.
If Microsoft can port .NET to ARM, it will open more options for them, but why would ARM developers WANT .NET? I know why Windows devs want it, but WM7 i
Same shit, different decade... (Score:2)
They've been doing this sort of thing with hardware vendors for quite a while. Nothing new here. Move along...
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They probably had to cut back during their anti-trust overwatch. Which ended a couple of weeks ago.
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I'd been wondering why M$ seemed somewhat less evil in recent years. That explains it. Oddly it reaffirms my faith in the universe to learn that. Thank you.
Clamping down (Score:2)
It seems Microsoft is jealous of Apple's ability to get people to accept heavy restrictions on mobile devices, and is attempting to enforce the same thing by leveraging their monopoly on Windows.
Sadly, now is better than ever for vendors to give Microsoft the finger and go for other options yet we probably won't see it happen. Precisely because Microsoft is still, ten years later, a monopoly that can crush a vendor if they don't do what Microsoft says.
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Sadly, now is better than ever for vendors to give Microsoft the finger and go for other options yet we probably won't see it happen. Precisely because Microsoft is still, ten years later, a monopoly that can crush a vendor if they don't do what Microsoft says.
I think more likely that a vendor with laugh at Microsoft, spit in their face, and go with Android. Microsoft is a complete joke in the mobile segment.
I liked Windows Mobile for a while, I think they were the only non-Nokia smartphones even available for years (have never liked Nokias for some reason) - but when Android started gathering momentum, I switched and have not looked back.
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I think more likely that a vendor with laugh at Microsoft, spit in their face, and go with Android. Microsoft is a complete joke in the mobile segment.
Microsoft will simply pay anyone they can't strongarm. You think Netflix thought Silverlight was technically superior?
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Possibly; I don't know anything about Silverlight. Flash is awful for rendering video, it's really designed for vector based stuff.. HTML5 and native YouTube apps perform better on my netbook and tablets. I expect Silverlight would have been planned from the outset to handle video, as well as the typical flashy Flash stuff.
I get your point though ;)
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I think more likely that a vendor with laugh at Microsoft, spit in their face, and go with Android.
Maybe that's their plan [infoworld.com].
Microsoft doing the right thing? (Score:2)
I dunno, but I think they are trying to do the right thing anyway.
One of WinTel's biggest problems is its diversity. Developers do not follow the rules and worse, they make up their own rules. And with the diversity of hardware out there, the problem becomes even more complex. (No such thing as an IBM compatible any longer is there?)
As this new market is being entered, controlling the target playing field is to Microsoft's advantage enabling them to increase the quality of the user experience. (And actu
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If that's really the problem, then Microsoft should just pull an xbox and release a console-ized version of the OS on locked down laptop hardware and call it the "xbook" or someshit.
The distrustful part of me suspects that there will be requirements that bar the ability to load other OSes on these devices,
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harking back to the good old DOS, plenty of apps were accessing the BIOS, OS, or the hardware (video, I/O ...) directly. There were no real UI norms: I remember thinking CUA (IBM's Common User Access) was quite cool: yeah for standardizing menus and menu access (Alt-F...), with Ctrl for shortcuts, F1 for help.
Apart from those internals, interfaces were totally different company from company, even app from app. There were no "Microsoft Design Guidelines" the way Apple had theirs. And hardware support was wid
MS should have Segmentation plan for x86/ARM (Score:2)
With MS releasing WinArm into the wilds in may just be that they are creating some rules about where to use ARM (tablets) and where to use x86 (everything else) so it doesn't just confuse and alienate the consumer.
Bad for the manufacturers (Score:2)
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Fortunately manufacturers have Android, so they don't have to accept any of Microsoft's limitations. If there were ever a clearer canary in the mine for Microsoft, it will be the universal shrug from manufacturers over their "request".
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Manufacturers of Android phones are single-sourcing their OS, all of the Google mobile apps and services (which aren't OSS and must be licensed btw), the phone's location service, the phone's internet search -- Google forbids hardware vendors from using non-Google internet and location services [gigaom.com]. Why do you think Motorola has begun developing their own mobile OS [slashgear.com] as a backup?
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Anybody else confused by this? (Score:3)
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Chase the failure... (Score:2)
I don't get it. What is Windows 8? (Score:2)
Every time Windows 8 is mentioned, it's about running it on ARM-powered tablets. Is Windows 8 a tablet-only operating system? Or is it also for use on desktop PC's? I don't get it.
If Windows 8 is also for desktop PC's, then Windows 7's lifetime was awfully short, as Windows 8 is due for release in 2012 as far as I know. It's very possible that by that time, Windows XP's market share is still larger than that of Windows 7 (as it is currently about 2:1 for XP vs W7, with XP's market share just above 50% and W
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A desperate attempt to get some upgrade income by forcing people to buy yet another version of Windows if they want the next DirectX which no game other than those developed by Microsoft will use for five years?
Re:I don't get it. What is Windows 8? (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll also bite them to call the tablet OS "Windows 8" if there is also a PC OS called "Windows 8".
What Apple did which was smart marketing, was not to use the "OS X" brand for the tablet/phone, even though iOS is indeed based on OS X. They called it something completely different, so customers will never think "Oh, my iPad runs OS X, therefore I can run $RANDOM_MAC_APP on my iPad!"
What will happen is people will buy ARM-based Windows 8 tablets and find most applications for Windows 8 won't actually run because they are Intel binaries (and most apps for Windows aren't .NET so .NET won't save them). So the early adopters will voice their disappointment that their Windows 8 tablet doesn't run most Windows apps. Now if Microsoft didn't insist on calling their tablet and phone OS "Windows", they could break this association and set different expectations.
Microsoft might require a Silverlight rewrite (Score:2)
What will happen is people will buy ARM-based Windows 8 tablets and find most applications for Windows 8 won't actually run because they are Intel binaries
And half the Xbox library doesn't run on Xbox 360. And Windows 3.1 apps don't run on Windows Vista 64-bit or Windows 7 Starter or Home Premium 64-bit. (I haven't had a chance to try them in Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 Professional.)
and most apps for Windows aren't .NET
Yet. If Windows 8 is really intended to unify Windows NT and Windows Phone, then perhaps Microsoft will require all apps carrying a "designed for Windows 8" logo to be rewritten for Silverlight or XNA, just like it already requires of all apps for Windows Phone 7 or Xbox Live In
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And half the Xbox library doesn't run on Xbox 360. And Windows 3.1 apps don't run on Windows Vista 64-bit or Windows 7 Starter or Home Premium 64-bit. (I haven't had a chance to try them in Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 Professional.)
So which store are you buying your Windows 3.1 apps from? We're not even talking about old Windows apps here, we're talking about ordinary everyday Windows apps that you buy and try to install on your tablet and it doesn't work.
And while I haven't tried it, I strongly suspect that 32-bit Windows 3.1 apps will run on 64-bit Windows 7; it's the 16-bit apps that can't run on a 64-bit x86.
Yet. If Windows 8 is really intended to unify Windows NT and Windows Phone, then perhaps Microsoft will require all apps carrying a "designed for Windows 8" logo to be rewritten for Silverlight or XNA, just like it already requires of all apps for Windows Phone 7 or Xbox Live Indie Games.
Yeah, that'll work. 'I bought this Windows game and it won't run on my tablet 'Look on the back of the box, does it say it's
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If Windows 8 is also for desktop PC's, then Windows 7's lifetime was awfully short
If Windows 7's lifetime (which began in October 2009) was awfully short, then Windows Vista's lifetime (which began in November 2006) was awfully short
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The delay like the one between XP and Vista is not typical of Windows relase schedule - think back to Win 95/98/XP. So, no, it's not too early.
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Microsoft is Confused (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple went it alone, and while they've had their share of heartache, they eventually built the shining behemoth they are today.
Microsoft never did that. *IBM* built their market, and Microsoft rode in on the coattails. (See the history of PC-DOS vs MS-DOS.) They certainly took advantage, but *THEY* did not build the market, IBM did.
As far as I can tell, they've NEVER built ANY market. They've always come in as a Johnny-Come-Lately. The 900 lb gorilla J-C-L, but never-the-less, not the innovator.
In the past few years it seems their entire business plan could be summed up simply as "Whatever Google is doing, plus Windows and Office".
Their stock has floundered under the leadership, or lack thereof, of Steve "Monkey Boy" Ballmer. They need a new direction, and since all they know how to do is emulate, they might as well emulate the most successful company they can find.
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In the past few years it seems their entire business plan could be summed up simply as "Whatever Google is doing, plus Windows and Office".
You're really not telling the whole story here. Microsoft also take into account what Amazon, Apple, Nintendo and Sony (XBOX!) are doing.
Interesting to watch (Score:2)
This could be one of the few times where MS have to compete on their own merits rather than their usual practice of havings Windows as the centre of everything.
And over Mordor (Score:2)
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So a cheap tablet PC running Windows is like eating at Yoshinoya on coupon day?
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Decaf.
Just sayin.
Re:In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
Oddly, this is also Microsoft deliberately giving up what was originally their biggest selling point against Apple -- the PC won because you could buy cheap clones from any number of manufacturers, and they'd all run DOS and Windows, whereas anything from Apple would have exactly one choice of hardware manufacturer and OS provider: Apple.
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Yeah, the market has completely flipped on that aspect. Style and marketing are what dominate now, and Microsoft will always be behind on fashion. They can never be 'cool', and this effort won't help them one bit. They should stick with cheap and encourage more bootlegging of their OS (piracy, I believe, is what the kids call it today), like the old days.
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No I would disagree. Android has a larger user base then Apple does because it is a "universal" OS for smart phones and mobile devices. Apple has a strong holding in part of the marking and stile but mostly due to the fact it has the most apps. Back in the Dos days When my family went to get their first computer they looked at Apple, Amiga, Commodore, and IBM/IBM Compatibles. They liked the Amiga, the Apple is what I used in school, the Commodore was OK too... But they went with an IBM Compatible... No
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No I would disagree. Android has a larger user base then Apple does because it is a "universal" OS for smart phones and mobile devices.
Wait, you are actually serious? Android is still largely a smart phone OS whereas iOS (previously know as iPhone OS) started out on the original iPhone but quickly came out on the iPod Touch and then the iPad last year. Apple has a huge head start over Android on tablet sales and whether you look at install base or marketshare of iOS devices versus all android devices Apple still has a huge lead. You seem to have forgotten about iPod Touches and the huge lead Apple has with the iPad and iPad 2 when you made
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Hmm, I always thought it was pricing that put the IBM compatibles on top... But then, what do I know? I went with a Mac IIx because that's what the art department used
I really don't know the specifics, but sometimes a smaller user base can produce a greater flow of revenue for a particular company. While Google's strategy might generate more cash flow overall, they get a smaller percentage, and their business model is built on advertising, which could prove to be more stable on the long run than Apple's fi
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The other side of the coin says that Google is getting a bad rep (whether or not deserved) by not exerting the same control that Apple does over its hardware AND software base.
Microsoft is WAY behind the market, and needs to catchup. Using that good old Jobs zen approach of cutting away the distractions might help them catch up. This of course, means that all of the other leaden madness that ties them down is somehow assuaged. But comparing them to SCO is a non-starter. Microsoft probably helped finance SCO
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Price isn't always the key element, it is value. If you are paying the difference between $1500 vs. $2000 for a computer. The question is what makes that $2000 worth $500 more, and is it worth it, for you. Lets say the IBM PC vs. Amiga. the Amiga at the time was an awesome product compared to the IBM if it had the larger software base the IBM and PC probably wouldn't have made it.
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Except that while android has a larger user base they are all hippie Communists who don't buy software.
Seriously though android has more users, but apple app store out sells android marketplace something like 3-1
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this effort won't help them one bit
Sure it will - One of the reasons Apple has done so well is it owns the entire environment on an iDevice - From OS to hardware. Hell, they even own the mechanism to get apps on the device. By limiting what they have to support, MS has an opportunity to follow Apple's model. If you, as a consumer, don't like these models, then buy an Android tablet.
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I would argue that Apple does not design by committee. Steve Job rules by fiat. It does not matter how many companies manufacture Apple products. All Apple products produced are exactly as Steve jobs has envisioned them to be. Thus far, Steve has done a very good job at either designing a product people want or creating a market for Apple products.
Microsoft deigns by committee. Even with one hardware vendor, what Microsoft has produced is 2 to 3 years behind Apple. Which hardly makes for compelling devices.
That's silly (Score:3)
Apple's monosystem helps Apple because it keeps their support options limited, rules out funky hardware and mysterious interactions between odd combinations of hardware and software. Their software can be exquisitely tailored to very specific hardware.
But the only way this could help Microsoft would be for Microsoft to design very specific hardware. The fact that they have multiple hardware vendors who are not under their control means this business model won't help them. You might extrapolate and say it
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Depending on how long you've been around, what you call "style and marketing", some people call "usability and good design".
I remember DOS from the mid 80s, and have used the earliest versions of Windows, Linux, old Macs, and a bunch of different flavors of UNIX.
My personal perception is that my iPad and my iPod are easy to use, do exactly what I want them to, and
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I agree with everything you said except about itunes. Itunes used to be a decent media player.
Now it is more a poor file manager than a decent media player.
I really wish Apple would divorce Itunes media player, Itunes store, and iDevice sync from each other.
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Again, it's all about perception and what you want out of it.
To me, iTunes is what I use to manage my media, and is a convenient way to manage my iPod and my iPad -- it all works the same, and it's all in one place. I've also been using it for around 10 years now.
When I bought my iPad, I'd owned iPods for a long time ... plug it in, select which movies and music to sync, ready to go in 20 minutes. Nothing
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That had more to do with IBM using an architecture they opened up than Microsoft in a lot of ways ... the way the arrangement was set up, Microsoft was selling a copy with every piece of hardware up until about 2000 or whenever it was, because it was required to be sold with the PC. (And,
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That had more to do with IBM using an architecture they opened up than Microsoft in a lot of ways ...
Indeed this is very true.
In the mid-80s there were a number of machines on the market which ran MSDOS but were not strictly PC compatible, for example the ACT Apricot F1 [old-computers.com], but these all fell by the wayside as not all software played by the rules and expected either a specific memory layout or specific type of graphics card (e.g. MDA, Hercules or CGA) to work. This was true of Lotus 1-2-3 and early versions of MS Word, where you needed specially modified versions to run on the Apricot.
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Didn't good old IBM also let OS/2 die because their shares in Microsoft were worth more? Maybe monkeyboy has gotten himself some Apple stock.
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Nah, OS/2 died because of its stellar Windows compatibility.
Once it could run almost every Windows app, It had two main advantages over Windows itself - it was more stable, and it could also run OS/2 apps. The thing is, at that point there was also zero incentive for an app developer to build a separate OS/2 version of their software and voluntarily limit their market.
This meant that the supply of good OS/2 software dwindled. Soon, most software was written for Windows. This meant that the practical diff
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Well, the biggest problem Windows has EVER had is the unmanageable driver base. Every device manufacturer has their own take on chipsets and BIOS details, they mix in different firmware versions of disk, network, and various comm I/O, and it results in a system that has multiple drivers of varying quality with the potential for interaction and bad behavior. Apple sidesteps this with a controlled hardware environment, but Microsoft is stuck with a multiplicity of vendors, and some really suck. Even Intel
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Popular, profitable, and with an ever growing market capitalization? What company wouldn't?
For years Apple was playing catch-up to Microsoft. Nowadays, Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to envision and bring to market new products people want. It seems like the last bunch of years, Microsoft has really lost whatever advantages they had, and have been trying to get "me too" products to market after everyone else already has had them for quite some time.
Getting a
Re:In other words (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is popular now in one segment of the market. Meanwhile, they are still a relative failure in their legacy products. Microsoft might want to consider that Apple might not be a darling for forever or not even a terrribly long time. Apple is already starting to see an erosion of their market share where brands aren't terribly important and turnover is quick.
Frankly, Microsoft isn't very good at being an Apple and probably never will. It's just not how the company operates.
Pretending to be another Apple will probably end badly for Microsoft.
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No, they just don't want manufacturer's putting out crap products like with what is happening with Android. Microsoft needs to be able to establish their tablet OS as a premium product in order to compete against iOS, WebOS, Honeycomb, and Blackberry. Google doesn't care if their product is premium or not, just as long as people use it. They make their money on advertisement, not off of the OS directly. Microsoft is in a different position entirely. If they can ensure all the Windows tablet products ar
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Microsoft has never been a "premium" brand and now is no time to try and start.
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They make their money on advertisement, not off of the OS directly. Microsoft is in a different position entirely
Who told you that?
They make money by charging for the google apps, Market, etc. They also take a cut from the android market. They make money for the OS as most OEMs use it.
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LoB
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Google also imposes limits [thisismynext.com] on the kinds of partners hardware manufacturers can have. This is completely normal.
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While I do prefer to buy Android devices from well known companies so that I can be more sure of quality and software updates (so far Dell and Motorola), if Android weren't open then the same thing would happen with Android as with Apple devices: over-priced, over-controlled, under featured. I'm not going to buy a device where the software I can install is censored (even in cases where Android pulls apps from the official market, you can still get them direct from the author's websites). I'm also not going
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There are plenty of good laptop manufacturers. I prefer Asus - a $1100 laptop has lasted me two years. I had one hard disk failure - I was able to back up all my data, send it in under warranty, and get it fixed, no questions asked. It looks pretty good, doesn't wei
*shrug* (Score:2)
In most free markets cheap and good enough eventually overtakes state of the art. Apple fanboys need to realize
not everyone shares their priorities and not everyone has $1000 for a laptop.
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Yeah, the difference with Microsoft is that instead of simply making a verticaly integrated product line, they are imposing vertical integration on third parties, with each vertical path composed of several different parties. In short, they are trying to get the worst of vertical integration (that is NIH syndrome, and lack of flexibility) combined with the worst of independent producers (that is lack of economic and planning ingtegration, differing objectives at different levels) with added market failures
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BINGO!