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#166
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Windows Live Mail - now OS preferences
| Usually it was started by saying Apples were
| "overpriced" or similar comment. Yet, when someone actually sat down, | and specced out a Windows computer using comparable internal components, | the price difference dropped dramatically. Yes, Apples were still more | expensive, but there are things you get from Apple you don't get from | Microsoft and probably Linux. When was the last time you walked into a | Dell store for help? Or an HP store? How many malware issues are there | with Windows compared to OS X? | | There's more to making a purchasing decision than just money. My iMac | display is still superior to any Windows display I've seen,..... I don't think you really have to look far to see that Apple charges "through the nose". They have no direct competition. I remember when iMacs first came out. A friend bought one. He spent a total of $2,700, with the printer and whatever else he needed to set it up -- for a 1-piece box with no upgradeability other than the RAM. That was around the time that Apple stopped installing floppy drives. I asked AppleSeed friends if that didn't bother them. I always got the same party line in response: "Floppies are outdated. Nobody uses them anymore. Steve Jobs is a genius. He understood that." If Steve Jobs stole their wallet they'd call him a genius. Meanwhile, I read an article saying that including a floppy drive would have cost Apple about $7.50 per box. Then Microcenter started featuring blue, USB external floppy drives for Macs. $100. They sold like hotcakes. Every Mac owner had to have one. Their new connector design has forced people to buy new, wildly overpriced cables. I'm actually using a PC now partly because of Apple pricing. When I first used a computer it was a Mac. I shared a friend's AOL account. It was fun. When I decided to buy a computer myself I went to Microcenter. "Mac or PC?", asked the clerk. I thought they were just 2 brands. "What are the prices?", I asked. The cheapest Mac was $2,200. The cheapest PC was an eMachines for $500. What about software? The area for Windows software was like a gymnasium. Then there was a small room for Mac software, all of which cost more than the Windows version. My decision was made for me. Many apple fans are not even capable of comparing comparable components. Remember the snail ads? Apple was claiming their IBM CPUs could run circles around Intel CPUs because of their extra cache, even when it got to where PCs were running 1 GHz CPUs while Mac CPUs were still down around the 300 MHz range. Finally even Apple admitted their CPUs were nothing special, and changed to Intel. Do a search on the cost of manufacturing iPhones. The results I find are that the total cost is $200+ while the retail price is $600+. That's done with virtual slave labor in China while the income is kept offshore to avoid taxes. Apple is a sleazeball company, no matter how you look at it. But I don't mean to single them out. Microsoft has become one of the biggest companies in the world by ruthlessly maintaining a monopoly on the grossly overpriced software of Windows and Office. Pretty much everything else they do loses money. (I think XBox broke even recently, but I'm not sure the total cost of XBox since the beginning has been recouped.) Even without all the facts and figures, there's a glaring, basic inconsistency that calls the operations of many tech companies into question: They're among the top earners of all companies worldwide. Yet Microsoft just nurses their software monopoly and Apple makes gadgets. That doesn't add up. And why is Bill Gates the richest man in the world? What did he do to deserve such wealth? Last I heard Microsoft had an $8 billion yearly "research" budget. That's $100K per year for, say, 60,000 people, if you figure they somehow spend $2B on materials. |
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#167
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On 4/6/14 7:43 AM, Mayayana wrote:
I think there's a lot to that. Apple is for people who don't want to think about it. (Or who don't mind paying a premium price to increase their chances of getting laid by hanging around at Starbucks pretending to write term papers.) I wouldn't have a ghost of a chance at Starbucks! G I think you're correct about some Apple owners not wanting to think about it. But I think John's observation in news://nntp.aioe.org:119/H9WdnQOOkZE...westnet.com.au is even more accurate, they just want it to work easily! No fuss, no muss. And from what I see in most of the members in my Mac group, they would never really understand a Windows computer. There would be lots of frustration, as it appears to be for John's daughter. But there are the exceptions, notably the programmers who use the Terminal for much of their customization of OS X. We have one member who still codes in machine language! I think most of us posting in this newsgroup have to face a simple fact... We are a dieing breed. When we bought our first computers, or got into the industry, we wanted to know how they worked, how to tweak them to our liking, etc. But we are not the majority anymore when it comes to computer purchases. I think the vast majority want something simple and easy to use. If not, then why did the iPad start the tablet craze? And you have to face it, some things are easier on one OS than it its in others. Screenshots and creating PDF files are far easier in OS X than Windows. One thing I think they all could improve on, though, is the presentation. Microsoft makes control more available, but discourages people with abstruse tech talk and warnings. Apple just plain hides things. But there's the downside to the user control, much easier for the user to really screw things up. And for many of those "tweaks", you can do many of them in OS X, but you have to use the Terminal (Command Prompt). That does a better of protecting the system from the ignorant user. Linux distributions are beginning to look a lot like Windows. ("Root? No, root isn't root anymore. You want sudo. How do you become sudo? Well, if you're qualified to know you'll figure it out.... What, you want a UI for that?... What's wrong with command line?... Why do we have to put up with idiots like you in Linuxville?") A computer *is* an extremely complex and powerful machine. It's not easy to make it simple and intuitive. But I think the major OSs and a lot of software do express two major flaws that don't help matters: One is that they're designed to minimize tech support calls. The other is that they equate lack of tech aptitude with stupidity. (An expression of geek arrogance. These things are designed by people with little socialization, who've spent *way* too much time playing computer games for children, and who think lunch is a Pepsi and a candy bar -- adult adolescents.) There are millions of doctors, lawyers, professors and scientists using Macs. Intelligent, accomplished people. Being intelligent and educated does not correlate with being able to understand and operate a computer with competency. There's a lot of very talented musicians, artists, doctors, etc. out there, but does that mean they would be a competent auto mechanic? No one has universal skills to do everything. And what do they get? Animated cartoon characters that come out of the bottom bar and then get "vacuumed" back in, Looney-Tunes-style, with a general design that prevents people from accessing most of the system. By cartoon characters, are you talking about the program icons in the dock? If so, and you don't like the bouncing, turn it off. It's in the dock's preferences. Blame the software vendors for the look of the icons, Apple doesn't make them. What's the practical difference between the dock and the taskbar with a bunch of pinned programs? You can add pretty much anything you want to the dock. The default dock let's you access all your software via that Application Folder, Utilities (basically the control panel) via the Utilities folder in the Applications folder or separately if you prefer, downloads via the download icon, and of course the documents folder (recent documents anyone?). If you want a document in the dock, create an alias (shortcut) and put it in the dock. The whole UI looks like it was designed by a 12 year old girl who uses little hearts to dot her i's. Just because people have difficulty learning how to use their computer, that's no reason to think they're stupid and talk down to them. You can say that about tablets too, IMO. * If you want to change a setting in Windows you have to get through 2 warnings and a button marked "Advanced". It's probably not covered in the help. If it is, the explanation uses several unexplained terms, making it useless to the average reader. True. * In Linux you have to look up some arcane command line and get sidetracked into long discussions about how to pick a "favorite" shell. So... wait... You like Windows over OS X because of control, but because Linux makes you use command lines to have even more control and options such a different desktop GUIs, that's not good? * On a Mac, Lord Jobs has ruled that you don't need to change the settings. (He told the architect of his ludicrous spaceship building that the windows shouldn't open because people just get into trouble when they can open things.) I'll admit, you have me totally lost here. LOL If they just took a respectful approach and tried to write clear directions then a lot more people could get more out of their computers. You can apply this to all things computer these days. It's too bad so many people are ignorant of computers and OSes. :-( If they knew more, they would be able to make a better decision as to what fits them. snip -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 25.0 Thunderbird 24.3.0 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
#168
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On Sun, 6 Apr 2014 09:43:19 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote: A computer *is* an extremely complex and powerful machine. It's not easy to make it simple and intuitive. But I think the major OSs and a lot of software do express two major flaws that don't help matters: One is that they're designed to minimize tech support calls. The other is that they equate lack of tech aptitude with stupidity. (An expression of geek arrogance. These things are designed by people with little socialization, who've spent *way* too much time playing computer games for children, and who think lunch is a Pepsi and a candy bar -- adult adolescents.) I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with your characterization of lunch. You'd have been OK if you had said 'Pepsi product' because everyone knows that lunch includes Mountain Dew. While I'm at it, a salty snack makes a better companion than a candy bar. |
#169
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On 3/5/2014 11:15 AM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
Bob Henson wrote: BillW50 wrote: I a wondering how she is coping with Thunderbird constant freeze ups? I was playing with older backup copies from 2007. And I saw no freezing with Thunderbird v1.5.0.8. So I wonder what version TB started freezing? I know it is there in v12 too. Since 24.3.0 is the current version, the best bet would be to leave all ancient versions alone and use that. However, I don't know what you were doing wrong, but I have never had any freezing with any version of Thunderbird from its inception many years ago. Same here. I've been using Thunderbird for email since version 0.2 and have never experienced any "freeze ups." I have 15 email accounts, and three news accounts. It's most likely just another BillW50 self-inflicted individual problem. Others need not worry. Maybe, but I have using TB for a long time and I get 4-6 freezes per week. Always have regardless of the Windows version. |
#170
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On 2014-04-06 9:31 AM, Blue wrote:
Silver Slimer wrote: On 2014-04-05 11:40 PM, John wrote: One of the early "posters" I think hit the on the head. Many users are not interested in PC,s, Os,s, workarounds, obscure cures. They just want a PC as a tool that works as intuitively and reliably as possible. For that reason may people are happy to fork out up to 100% more for a machine that does the same task as a MS product. Come in Apple!!!!!!!. Sure, they are overpriced but they simply work "simply". My daughter with the original problem is case in point. She comes with an Apple history but her budget now made her go W8 on a HP "all in one" instead. A week or two later she is still trying to get the thing working instead of her old Apple that just worked out of the box. I,m just guessing there will never be another MS product in that household! John I bought a Mac Mini for my parents in November or so. It was a replacement for an earlier Mac Mini whose hard disk died and left them with an unusable machine. Since it was slow, I figured an upgrade made sense. Of course, being the technologically-gifted one, I had to set up the machine for them. I couldn't believe how a NEW machine could be so slow. A Core i5 with 4GB RAM which was actually felt much slower than the tablet I'm posting this message on right now with 2GB of RAM and an Intel Atom. Every few weeks or so, I also had to come home and fix something which went wrong as a result of stupid permission problems. The last time, fixing permissions took two hours and even GETTING to the Disk Utility was difficult because the machine behaved erratically. Say what you will about the Mac but no, it doesn't work. Windows works and it works well. If your daughter was too lazy to figure out the new interface of Windows, which honestly takes about five minutes, then that doesn't make a platform than another. Whether Windows 8 or 8.1, the system is not as bad as zealots claim and the reality is that under the hood, Windows 8 is a fantastic system. I actually prefer it over 7. Your parents should take the Mini Mac back to the shop and either get their money back or a new one. You're suggesting it's a hardware issue? That's funny. I have yet to own a single Mac product which wasn't slow. It's not an isolated thing. -- Silver Slimer Wikipedia & OpenMedia Supporter GNU/Linux's place is in the trash can |
#171
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|
| I think you're correct about some Apple owners not wanting to think | about it. But I think John's observation in | news://nntp.aioe.org:119/H9WdnQOOkZE...westnet.com.au | is even more accurate, they just want it to work easily! No fuss, no | muss. Yes. The people I've known who switched to Mac (mainly GenXers) stressed the idea of not needing to figure out security and AV. I think it wasn't so much that Windows didn't work for them, but that they were using Facebook, downloading music, doing all sorts of online interactive activities and just didn't want to have to think about security. | I think the vast majority want something simple and easy to use. If | not, then why did the iPad start the tablet craze? Figures I see say that tablets have come about in addition to PCs, and that many are abandoned after the honeymoon. They certainly have a place, but I think it's mainly for mobility rather than ease of use through limitation. That's the tradeoff, not the feature. | There are millions of doctors, lawyers, professors and | scientists using Macs. Intelligent, accomplished people. | | Being intelligent and educated does not correlate with being able to | understand and operate a computer with competency. There's a lot of | very talented musicians, artists, doctors, etc. out there, but does that | mean they would be a competent auto mechanic? That's not what I meant. I just mean that people have different aptitudes and shouldn't be judged by their experience. The musician may only be able to handle calling AAA. But they might also be able to check their oil and change their air filter if someone explains it to them clearly. If I were asking them to help me with music I would hope they'd be intelligent and generous enough to guage what I can understand rather than just assuming that I won't get it at all. | * In Linux you have to look up some arcane command line | and get sidetracked into long discussions about how to | pick a "favorite" shell. | | So... wait... You like Windows over OS X because of control, but | because Linux makes you use command lines to have even more control and | options such a different desktop GUIs, that's not good? | What I've always liked about Windows is that one could get involved to any level. It's not as true as it used to be, but it's still true to a great extent. After learning how to use Windows I discovered VBScript. I started writing simple MsgBox scripts. It was a revelation: I could also affect what happens on the *other* side of the screen. It was no longer a locked appliance but instead became an increasingly flexible tool. Linux sets a high bar. (I heard a story once that someone at a talk told Richard Stallman he was having trouble with Stallman's compiler and Stallman said, "Then write your own." I can't confirm that story is true, but it doesn't surprise me.) Many Linux people want it to be difficult to learn. They like to feel like magicians with arcane knowledge. Choice of Desktops is just on the surface. That's fine. But there's no excuse for having to open a console window to get something done, post 1995. And there's no excuse for having to dig in /etc for config files. Those are exactly the designs that Microsoft uses to prevent anyone but sysadmins and tweakers from being able to manage the system. The console window really serves both roles. It allows Linux fans to feel like they're performing incantations, "pedal to the metal", and it also intimidates most people. I saw a discussion on Slashdot yeasterday that was *so* typical. Someone was asking about a good firewall for a Linux newcomer that could block outgoing, block processes, and block IP addresses. A long discussion ensued about which half-finished IPTables config tools were still being worked on. Another discussion flared up about whether someone using Linux has any reason (or even a right) to block outgoing. There were the typical Windows digs. As far as I know there isn't a basic firewall on Linux that vaguely compares to the functionality and usability of numerous Windows firewalls. | * On a Mac, Lord Jobs has ruled that you don't need to | change the settings. (He told the architect of his | ludicrous spaceship building that the windows shouldn't | open because people just get into trouble when they can | open things.) | | I'll admit, you have me totally lost here. LOL | http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/1...-and-openness/ |
#172
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| with stupidity. (An expression of geek arrogance. These
| things are designed by people with little socialization, | who've spent *way* too much time playing computer | games for children, and who think lunch is a Pepsi and | a candy bar -- adult adolescents.) | | I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with your characterization of | lunch. You'd have been OK if you had said 'Pepsi product' because everyone | knows that lunch includes Mountain Dew. While I'm at it, a salty snack makes | a better companion than a candy bar. | Okey doke. We'll have to make sure we've got chips for you at the next "team" meeting. Just don't forget to bring your Foosball bat. |
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On 4/6/14 12:51 PM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-04-06 11:59 AM, Ken Springer wrote: [...] I think most of us posting in this newsgroup have to face a simple fact... We are a dieing breed. When we bought our first computers, or got into the industry, we wanted to know how they worked, how to tweak them to our liking, etc. But we are not the majority anymore when it comes to computer purchases. [...] I think you're right. Which makes our discussions and occasional mutual head-banging a rather funny spectator sport. ;-) LOL Have a good day, You too, Wolf. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 25.0 Thunderbird 24.3.0 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
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Blue wrote, On 4/6/2014 9:31 AM:
Silver Slimer wrote: On 2014-04-05 11:40 PM, John wrote: One of the early "posters" I think hit the on the head. Many users are not interested in PC,s, Os,s, workarounds, obscure cures. They just want a PC as a tool that works as intuitively and reliably as possible. For that reason may people are happy to fork out up to 100% more for a machine that does the same task as a MS product. Come in Apple!!!!!!!. Sure, they are overpriced but they simply work "simply". My daughter with the original problem is case in point. She comes with an Apple history but her budget now made her go W8 on a HP "all in one" instead. A week or two later she is still trying to get the thing working instead of her old Apple that just worked out of the box. I,m just guessing there will never be another MS product in that household! John I bought a Mac Mini for my parents in November or so. It was a replacement for an earlier Mac Mini whose hard disk died and left them with an unusable machine. Since it was slow, I figured an upgrade made sense. Of course, being the technologically-gifted one, I had to set up the machine for them. I couldn't believe how a NEW machine could be so slow. A Core i5 with 4GB RAM which was actually felt much slower than the tablet I'm posting this message on right now with 2GB of RAM and an Intel Atom. Every few weeks or so, I also had to come home and fix something which went wrong as a result of stupid permission problems. The last time, fixing permissions took two hours and even GETTING to the Disk Utility was difficult because the machine behaved erratically. Say what you will about the Mac but no, it doesn't work. Windows works and it works well. If your daughter was too lazy to figure out the new interface of Windows, which honestly takes about five minutes, then that doesn't make a platform than another. Whether Windows 8 or 8.1, the system is not as bad as zealots claim and the reality is that under the hood, Windows 8 is a fantastic system. I actually prefer it over 7. Your parents should take the Mini Mac back to the shop and either get their money back or a new one. Not sure I agree being familiar with both the Mac and Windows for decades. Setting permissions on a Mac is infinitely easier than on Windows. It's relatively simple to set/change permissions on a Mac Command I, select Sharing and Permissions then one has access to changing their own permissions on an item, for someone else or a group, folders, etc. The Mac Disk Utility is primarily for disk functions not changing permissions but for repairing permissions (most often misconfigured by the user) Windows 8, agreed, is easy to use and imo a better and faster o/s than its predecessors, yet it still has some clunks for useability that need to be rectified...though changing permissions on Win8 is about equivalent to Win7 and in some cases not as tolerant of those changes. -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
#175
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....winston wrote:
Blue wrote, On 4/6/2014 9:31 AM: Silver Slimer wrote: On 2014-04-05 11:40 PM, John wrote: One of the early "posters" I think hit the on the head. Many users are not interested in PC,s, Os,s, workarounds, obscure cures. They just want a PC as a tool that works as intuitively and reliably as possible. For that reason may people are happy to fork out up to 100% more for a machine that does the same task as a MS product. Come in Apple!!!!!!!. Sure, they are overpriced but they simply work "simply". My daughter with the original problem is case in point. She comes with an Apple history but her budget now made her go W8 on a HP "all in one" instead. A week or two later she is still trying to get the thing working instead of her old Apple that just worked out of the box. I,m just guessing there will never be another MS product in that household! John I bought a Mac Mini for my parents in November or so. It was a replacement for an earlier Mac Mini whose hard disk died and left them with an unusable machine. Since it was slow, I figured an upgrade made sense. Of course, being the technologically-gifted one, I had to set up the machine for them. I couldn't believe how a NEW machine could be so slow. A Core i5 with 4GB RAM which was actually felt much slower than the tablet I'm posting this message on right now with 2GB of RAM and an Intel Atom. Every few weeks or so, I also had to come home and fix something which went wrong as a result of stupid permission problems. The last time, fixing permissions took two hours and even GETTING to the Disk Utility was difficult because the machine behaved erratically. Say what you will about the Mac but no, it doesn't work. Windows works and it works well. If your daughter was too lazy to figure out the new interface of Windows, which honestly takes about five minutes, then that doesn't make a platform than another. Whether Windows 8 or 8.1, the system is not as bad as zealots claim and the reality is that under the hood, Windows 8 is a fantastic system. I actually prefer it over 7. Your parents should take the Mini Mac back to the shop and either get their money back or a new one. Not sure I agree being familiar with both the Mac and Windows for decades. Setting permissions on a Mac is infinitely easier than on Windows. It's relatively simple to set/change permissions on a Mac Command I, select Sharing and Permissions then one has access to changing their own permissions on an item, for someone else or a group, folders, etc. The Mac Disk Utility is primarily for disk functions not changing permissions but for repairing permissions (most often misconfigured by the user) Windows 8, agreed, is easy to use and imo a better and faster o/s than its predecessors, yet it still has some clunks for useability that need to be rectified...though changing permissions on Win8 is about equivalent to Win7 and in some cases not as tolerant of those changes. On the older versions of MacOSX, you could open a Terminal and use CHMOD. chmod 755 mynovel.txt http://linux.die.net/man/1/chmod You can even do a directory tree with the recursive option chmod -R u+w somefoldertree That turns on the user write bit. I did lots of stuff on my Mac, from the Terminal. The "top" program runs in there, so you can watch what is using your CPU cycles. It has all the toys hiding down there. Just what a skilled debugger might need. Paul |
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On 4/6/14 9:32 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| Usually it was started by saying Apples were | "overpriced" or similar comment. Yet, when someone actually sat down, | and specced out a Windows computer using comparable internal components, | the price difference dropped dramatically. Yes, Apples were still more | expensive, but there are things you get from Apple you don't get from | Microsoft and probably Linux. When was the last time you walked into a | Dell store for help? Or an HP store? How many malware issues are there | with Windows compared to OS X? | | There's more to making a purchasing decision than just money. My iMac | display is still superior to any Windows display I've seen,..... I don't think you really have to look far to see that Apple charges "through the nose". They have no direct competition. I remember when iMacs first came out. A friend bought one. He spent a total of $2,700, with the printer and whatever else he needed to set it up -- for a 1-piece box with no upgradeability other than the RAM. And there's no real competition for MS either. That was around the time that Apple stopped installing floppy drives. I asked AppleSeed friends if that didn't bother them. I always got the same party line in response: "Floppies are outdated. Nobody uses them anymore. Steve Jobs is a genius. He understood that." If Steve Jobs stole their wallet they'd call him a genius. But, they were ahead of everybody, hard to even buy a floppy now from what I hear. Meanwhile, I read an article saying that including a floppy drive would have cost Apple about $7.50 per box. Then Microcenter started featuring blue, USB external floppy drives for Macs. $100. They sold like hotcakes. Every Mac owner had to have one. Their new connector design has forced people to buy new, wildly overpriced cables. Which connector are you talking about? I'm actually using a PC now partly because of Apple pricing. When I first used a computer it was a Mac. I shared a friend's AOL account. It was fun. When I decided to buy a computer myself I went to Microcenter. "Mac or PC?", asked the clerk. I thought they were just 2 brands. "What are the prices?", I asked. The cheapest Mac was $2,200. The cheapest PC was an eMachines for $500. What about software? The area for Windows software was like a gymnasium. Then there was a small room for Mac software, all of which cost more than the Windows version. My decision was made for me. Many apple fans are not even capable of comparing comparable components. I have to say, the same observation would apply to most computer users these days. Linux users possibly being a bit of an exception. Remember the snail ads? Apple was claiming their IBM CPUs could run circles around Intel CPUs because of their extra cache, even when it got to where PCs were running 1 GHz CPUs while Mac CPUs were still down around the 300 MHz range. Finally even Apple admitted their CPUs were nothing special, and changed to Intel. I honestly don't remember seeing those ads. Do a search on the cost of manufacturing iPhones. The results I find are that the total cost is $200+ while the retail price is $600+. That's done with virtual slave labor in China while the income is kept offshore to avoid taxes. They aren't the only company that does that. And in a free market system, you charge what people are willing to pay. Apple is a sleazeball company, no matter how you look at it. But I don't mean to single them out. Microsoft has become one of the biggest companies in the world by ruthlessly maintaining a monopoly on the grossly overpriced software of Windows and Office. Pretty much everything else they do loses money. (I think XBox broke even recently, but I'm not sure the total cost of XBox since the beginning has been recouped.) Even without all the facts and figures, there's a glaring, basic inconsistency that calls the operations of many tech companies into question: They're among the top earners of all companies worldwide. Yet Microsoft just nurses their software monopoly and Apple makes gadgets. That doesn't add up. And why is Bill Gates the richest man in the world? What did he do to deserve such wealth? Last I heard Microsoft had an $8 billion yearly "research" budget. That's $100K per year for, say, 60,000 people, if you figure they somehow spend $2B on materials. This is where the lack of competition comes into play. Not much of a need to produce better products if there's no competition. As you said, things like XBox, Windows phones, Windows tablets, don't seem to do so well when there's competition. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.8.5 Firefox 25.0 Thunderbird 24.3.0 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
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Ken Springer wrote, On 4/6/2014 9:47 PM:
This is where the lack of competition comes into play. Not much of a need to produce better products if there's no competition. As you said, things like XBox, Windows phones, Windows tablets, don't seem to do so well when there's competition. Xbox is actually the bright spot on the alternative MSFT devices - while not equivalent to PS4 (cumulative to date total) the XB1 is still selling units (most recently reported) over 100,000 per week. In 2013, over 3 million XB1's were sold (over 4 mil cumulative to date) and more than PS4 in 2013. - just like the pc vs tablet, desktop vs. modern UI. Ford vs. Chevrolet...favorites exist and no amount of discussion from the peanut gallery will ever substantiate which is better or worse Phones have an uphill struggle to gain market share. - one of the strangest decisions MSFT did was provide POP3 access on Windows Phones but not on Win8. Granted the preference for syncability (email, contacts, calendar) has always been the designed plan since 2006 (for all MSFT email clients including the phone)....in fact the underlying code for Win8 is based more on their phone than on existing email clients for obvious reasons (one of which - phone code is smaller and easier to deploy across smart devices) Tablets likewise have a challenge and MSFT is attempting to leverage the 'computing' ability vs. competition on their devices (Office 365 on Surface RT ARM architecture and installable software (equivalent to desktop o/s) on Surface Pro Intel architecture. It also appears that to avoid inventory build up, the supply of Surface devices is being controlled very carefully to limit expense without recievable cash flow. -- ...winston msft mvp consumer apps |
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Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-04-06 11:53 PM, ...winston wrote: [...] It also appears that to avoid inventory build up, the supply of Surface devices is being controlled very carefully to limit expense without recievable cash flow. Including the accessories. The Type Cover and the Dock are on back order. I'm getting seriously frustrated about that. We should be able to buy Surface with these accessories bundled. Even if only you and two other people might want such a bundle? Would you buy it that way if it tripled the cost of your Surface? ;-D -- best regards, Neil |
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Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-04-07 11:27 AM, Neil Gould wrote: Wolf K wrote: On 2014-04-06 11:53 PM, ...winston wrote: [...] It also appears that to avoid inventory build up, the supply of Surface devices is being controlled very carefully to limit expense without recievable cash flow. Including the accessories. The Type Cover and the Dock are on back order. I'm getting seriously frustrated about that. We should be able to buy Surface with these accessories bundled. Even if only you and two other people might want such a bundle? Would you buy it that way if it tripled the cost of your Surface? ;-D I think that's a retailer decision, but maybe not. Eg, our "local" Best Buy (two hours away from here) had both on back order in February, which tells you there was more demand for them than they anticipated. The Source is promising to deliver my order on or after April 12th, seems they too underestimated the demand. Online, only TigerDirect had some covers in stock. Demand is inversely related to price while price is directly related to the cost of manufacture which has an inverse relationship to the production volume. So, you could get your cover fast if you want to pay more for it (I suspect you could have had it by now, if price was no object), and you could get it bundled with the Surface if you are willing to wait long enough. Or else MS underestimated, in which case that's a fail, maybe a major one, I bought because it's a nice tablet, and a portable PC. According to some sources, MS originally *overestimated* demand, and as a result had to scale back production, and that could account for the delay you're experiencing. -- best regards, Neil |
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