7 ms·

I mostly agree with Phil, but I still wouldn't call Microsoft an underdog. I mean, I recently fell in love with OSX, but my opinion still stands that Windows 7

• houseabsolute 16y ago
  And apple can't even remotely be called a monopoly, unless you are referring to their monopoly on products sold by apple.
  • hasenj 16y ago
    Apple is a monopoly in the sense that I can't drag and drop mp3 files into my iphone. They impose strict control on how you can use your device. They control the app store. and they seem to moving towards more control; not less. I was considering getting a Mac at the beginning of this year. I got an iPhone, and decided never to buy any iThing ever again. I like good design and visual appeal, but not to the point of sacrificing substance for form.
    • ra88it 16y ago
      > Apple is a monopoly in the sense that I can't drag and drop mp3 files into my iphone. Having a hard time with this one. Can you please explain how this makes Apple a monopoly?
      • Gibbon 16y ago
        I've got an alias in my downloads folder that auto adds mp3s to iTunes and iTunes auto-syncs to my ipod when I plug it in. I don't even have to think about dragging and dropping anything.
    • raganwald 16y ago
      This is like saying that Kim Il Jong is a monopoly on the World Stage. If you want hyperbole, Apple is a Dictator ruling mercilessly over its subjects. But not a monopoly.
    • sokoloff 16y ago
      I got an iPhone, and decided never to buy any iThing ever again. So, I assume that you'll be buying competing devices from other vendors for your future computing, mobile phone and portable media consumption needs? If you answered yes, THAT is what makes Apple a non-monopoly.
    • hasenj 16y ago
      hm I think I can't edit my posts? I suppose monopoly in English only refers to market control (my bad). In certain other languages, the word for monopoly is the same word for "complete control". I was assuming the word monopoly in English has evolved to capture that meaning as well -.- All Apple devices are closed and restricted, it is as if when you buy an iPhone, you don't own it; you're merely getting permission (from Apple) to use it. Five years ago, one would've imagined that only Microsoft can do something as evil as that.
  • fxj 16y ago
    apple has the monopoly on iphones. and every geek wants an iphone. so apple has a monopoly in the geek world. microsoft has the monopoly on windows. and every pc in the world is sold with windows.this is what i call an effective monopoly. add that to the wannabe bing monopoly and you know why microsoft is not an underdog at all!
    • cookiecaper 16y ago
      I don't want an iPhone or any other Apple product really. I may reluctantly update my MacBook Pro in a few years just to have something not-slow that can run OS X natively and properly, but I don't really _want_ to do that, just feel like it's a smart investment so that when a client asks if I can use some Mac-only software, I can reasonably and compatibly do so. That is the only Apple product I want. iPhones are immensely overrated and Android is a far superior platform for hackers.
      • fxj 16y ago
        yes you are totally right. but why is apple selling so many iphones? yes android is catching up (and for me it is a no-brainer that android is the superior platform) but still the iphone4 is the holy grail in the press. there was a time when i really wanted a macbook because it was the better os (wrt linux, not windows) but apple lost its credibility by no longer fixing bugs and selling them as features now. (think about the finder or the shitty keyboard).
    • houseabsolute 16y ago
      Just selling a single popular product in a sector does not make you a monopoly. Brushing up on the definition of the term might help you understand.
    • usaar333 16y ago
      Every geek? I'm a geek and don't own/want any Apple product. There are many geeks out there like me - a minority for sure - but enough that Apple lacks a monopoly over geeks.
• jomohke 16y ago
  He's not talking about desktops: Apple still has tiny (but growing) market share there. He's talking about mobile platforms. Microsoft is very much the underdog after ignoring the platform for so long. Apple had a monopoly over good smartphones by beating everyone to market by such a large margin, though it's hard to call them a monopoly now that Android has been selling so well.
  • guywithabike 16y ago
    Agreed. A better assertion might be that Apple has a monopoly on revenues in the mobile space.
    • houseabsolute 16y ago
      But that would still be a terrible assertion since many other companies are generating a lot of revenue in the space. You might more properly be able to say that they have a monopoly on profits in the space, but that would be an ill-formed claim because "profits in a sector" are not a valid parameter for monopoly, except in the colloquial sense.
  • spoondan 16y ago
    Winning a particular market segment does not a monopoly make.
    • blantonl 16y ago
      unless that particular market segment is making a market.
    • _delirium 16y ago
      I thought that was the definition of a monopoly? I mean, Standard Oil didn't own the coal market, but they were still a monopoly, because they did own the oil market.
      • semanticist 16y ago
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• sjs 16y ago
  There are more than a few of us who don't consider a machine suitable for real work unless it ships with a derivative of the bourne shell and makes it easy to run the same software we use on our servers. My process to get up and running on a new machine is to change the keyboard layout to dvorak and run `wget -qO - bit.ly/newbox | sh`. On Windows I have to do everything in a Linux VM anyway, because I hate messing around with cygwin, coLinux, etc. I know a lot of people will disagree with this, but to me a Windows box is a glorified Xbox with a web browser. Sure people work with them but unless you're using VS I don't really see the point of using Windows for development. edit: I know I'm not representative of the larger population but I think there are more people switching away from Windows than to it these days.
  • nkassis 16y ago
    I pretty much just install emacs and I'm ready to go on any unix box(Until I get to emacs I can use Vi, useful for things like Arch linux)
  • mambodog 16y ago
    Thing is, for a lot of people, a computer for 'work' purely means one on which they have first class Office (docx, xlsx, pptx) compatibility at the lowest possible price. Even Office:Mac is pricey, and not 100% identical (and no MS Access).
    • Ben65 16y ago
      I know this probably isn't for most people, but I've gone to emacs' org mode for creating documents and spreadsheets. The cost is nothing, it's highly functional, and can be exported to TEX or html if you want to make it pretty.
      • semanticist 16y ago
        emacs isn't suitable for almost all computer users. Try to imagine telling a non-hacker manager that all their spreadsheet work needs to be done in a command-line text editor/kitchen sink emulator. It's always easy to forget just how much of a minority hackers actually are - there's far far more computer users out there who aren't hackers than are. Orders of magnitude more.
• senki 16y ago
  Don't forget that 2010 is the year of the Linux desktop!
  • wazoox 16y ago
    Well, there may be no "year of the Linux desktop", but someday the "desktop" will become a thing of the past, and whatever comes next may be running Linux.
    • senki 16y ago
      Hey, I meant to be sarcastic, but actually you are right! The smartphones and tablets are already here, lots of them running Android, and Microsoft really is an underdog.
  • melling 16y ago
    2010 is the Year of Linux on the Phone. Linux is outselling Apple and Microsoft.
    • blasdel 16y ago
      Android is not recognizably Linux and you know it. It's using the Linux kernel about as minimally as they could get away with, they patch it to expose all kinds of things directly to userland through hacked-together APIs. The userland bears no resemblance to POSIX, and developers don't get to write for it (Dalvik or JNI only). It's even less Linux than a TiVO. Compare Android: http://mjg59.livejournal.com/100221.html http://mjg59.livejournal.com/100221.html with WebOS: http://mjg59.livejournal.com/111453.html http://mjg59.livejournal.com/111453.html from a linux kernel developer's perspective
      • cookiecaper 16y ago
        I wouldn't call Android even less Linux than a TiVO just from the links you gave. The guy says that he is disappointed that the power management is jacked up, especially when Linux already provides normal interfaces for that kind of thing, but other than that I didn't see anything hugely awful. As the author of those posts says, the other stuff has no prospect of going upstream anyway so it doesn't really matter. There's certainly still a lot of Linux running under the covers there. The userspace is different, but if you want Gnome on your phone get Maemo/Meego.
• kmfrk 16y ago
  They may not be an underdog, but my image of them is Sideshow Bob walking around surrounded by rakes. Some of their products have launched with a reverberating thud, and their marketing campaigns make me cringe. They are screwing up a lot, and they don't come across as great innovators (nor as people adapting to the world they're in) rather than a company who is still relying on the same core platforms they did a handful of years, if not a decade, ago. Granted, their corporate structure is different than, say, Apple's, and I don't want another Apple, but they feel gridlocked. I don't know which term is the most apt for this, but it's not a gratuitous one. I'm a Windows user myself, but I can't help but feel that I am putting my eggs in the wrong basket sometimes.
• bbuffone 16y ago
  I completely agree, Windows 7 is amazing. After being forced to use OSX for the last two months, I can't wait to get back. The windowing system is better in Windows 7, multi-monitor is easier (Windows have their own menus), task bar works better, battery life is better, look and feel is better. I will throw in Zune as the best portable media player as well. After having an iphone and using itunes. Zune is far better then the lastest generation ipods. Super slick and easy ui, better integrated store, also the zune desktop app is better. Subscription service is definitely the way to go. I pay my $13 a month music tax and can have any song I want, I haven't listened to this much music ever.
  • illumin8 16y ago
    Are you kidding me? The single biggest fault with the Windows UI is that any event can pop up and take focus from the current task. Do you know how many times I've accidentally rebooted a computer during a critical task because Windows popped up and told me updates were installed and Windows needed to restart just as I hit enter? This is just horrible, horrible UI design. A system notification or request to reboot should NEVER, EVER take focus. This is one of the many way that Windows punishes users every day.
    • bbuffone 16y ago
      You list one thing that happens to you that doesn't make the OS or windowing bad. OSX has the following UI issues: Scrollbars are hard to use Window Max & Min buttons randomly work depending on the application file dialog can't do any of the things the window file can do (Create folders, manage files) Finders is pretty basic I won't mention right clicking accelerator keys are not as easy *System monitor is pretty non-helpful most times OSX shell is good, Windows 7 is the far better operating system. The hardware is also better but microsoft can force people to build awesome hardware
      • lsb 16y ago
        Scrollbars being hard to use is mostly because most users have an easy time scrolling (laptops use the two-fingered scroll, mice all have buttons or touch-sensitive surfaces), and scrolling requires only mouseover not focus (try it! scroll the window behind you!). I've almost never used a scrollbar as an input mechanism, only output to see where in a document I am.
• illumin8 16y ago
  To be forward looking regarding OS marketshare, you need to look at what college students are running. When I went to college in the 90s, it was overwhelmingly Microsoft. We ran DOS, then Windows 3.11, then Windows 95. Microsoft got us hooked with mostly free (pirated) software and by the time we got to the workforce, a Microsoft monopoly was a foregone conclusion. Apple is overwhelmingly capturing college marketshare. At some universities they are more than 50% of the market now. The workers of tomorrow will be comfortable in a Mac environment, not a PC one. By 2020 I fully expect Mac dominance of the corporate market as well. The retraining costs would be too high otherwise.
  • Aaronontheweb 16y ago
    Apple's cradle-to-the-grave strategy hasn't carried over to the workforce the same way Microsoft did decades earlier - you can thank the depth of Microsoft's ecosystem today for that.
  • usaar333 16y ago
    I have no idea what will happen in 10 years, but I don't see training costs as an issue. When 99% of work is done in a web browser and one or two desktop applications, switching OS's is pretty trivial.
  • jff 16y ago
    Among us engineers, it's not Mac but Linux that is taking the lead. Maybe more of us would use Macs if they weren't already what those dirty art kids use...
• bconway 16y ago
  Yes, there's no question that Windows 7 is a decent OS, but the desktop is becoming less and less relevant with each passing day. The new decade is about web services, cloud computing, social networks, and mobile platforms. Microsoft has been caught flat-footed on all of these and is playing a big game of catchup.
• mrb 16y ago
  "2.6x" is hardly what I would call "immensely". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... (In June 2010, Windows 7's market share was only 2.6 times larger than Mac OS X's, when considering the market of "web clients", which is composed mostly of personal computers)