and Microsoft will reply with continued WORLDWIDE LEADING SALES in software and pc's etc, etc...
i have had pc's and windows all my life and wouldnt use a mac if ya paid me.....
So you have no frame of reference?
Posted on 02/03/2007 6:52:37 PM PST by ShorelineMike
No, they don't. What needs to happen is that Apple's detractors need to get over the idea that market share is the sole and solitary indicator of success. Why don't you look at Apple's income statement before declaring what they need to do?
Are we talking computers or I-Pods?
Excuse me. Don't let facts get in the way of your rant. You are wrong.
Apple BOUGHT the rights to use the information and inspiration they received from two visits (a total of 16 hours) to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Station in 1978 by giving Xerox one million pre-IPO shares of Apple Computer common stock worth about $1,500,000. Xerox sold that stock for about $22,000,000 less than a year later after the IPO.
The first meeting involved just Steve Jobs and one other Apple representative. He returned about three weeks later with eight Apple engineers who were not allowed to see any code, just ask questions, see operations on demo machines and to play around with the User Interface, which is distinctly different from the Lisa or the Mac UI.
Some theft.
. . . since it will be kind of difficult for Steve Jobs, the guy who is busy hiring criminal defense lawyers, to attend a launch party from prison.
Guilty until proven innocent, Eh, KellyAdmirer?
Are you aware that Bill Gates ALSO received back-dated stock options from Microsoft? And, unlike, Steve Jobs, actually benefited from his options? How about the fact that Microsoft's accounting adjustments for the backdating totaled over $150,000,000 for three years of backdating compared to Apple's $84,000,000 for ten years??? How about the fact that over 200 companies practiced Back Dating of stock purchase options... which was and is legal so long as it is properly reported on the books?
Never...with all the new Big Brother DRM "features" of Vista, XP will be my last OS.
That's fine, it was all done legally. Just like MSFT has done with Apple. Everything done legally - and Microsoft hasn't "taken" anything from Apple. Fair enough.
Except that Apple took what Xerox showed them (in 16 hours with no code) and built upon that and built and built.
Microsoft has been dining out on Apple innovations for years and years.
And without Apple's determination to turn their Xerox PARC lessons into the personal Macintosh, there would be no Windows, and you're be memorizing keystroke combos for Wordperfect 14.2 to this day.
The real problem here is the "holier than thou" attitude that somehow Jobs is this genius and Gates is a schmuck loser - I don't think so about that, either. Neither invented the wheel, both rode on others' inventions, and both are probably equally clean or dirty or however you want to look at it. Just don't lecture us about how wonderful Jobs is compared to Gates, because they are birds of a feather.
Where is the payment?
Microsoft did "steal" the UI from Apple. In fact, Microsoft essentially lost a lawsuit, Apple Vs. Microsoft, over the matter in 1997 when they were required by the terms of the out-of-court settlement to purchase $150,000,000 of Apple Preferred Stock (No, it wasn't a bailout. Apple had $2 billion in cash in the bank at the time!), continue producing and developing MS Internet Explorer for Mac and MS Office for Mac for an additional five years, and pay Apple an undisclosed sum to license the patents and copyrights under dispute for a three year period. Apple's agreement in the same settlement was to license for one year some software patents from Microsoft and bundle Internet Explorer for Mac along with Netscape in future Macs for a five year period.
The settlement was widely reported in computer industry and Main Stream media at the time. It was only several years later that the spin was started that MS "bailed Apple out of near bankruptcy."
Incidentally, MS sold the Apple stock for a tidy profit a couple of years later.
Lies can be very telling about the teller, can't they?
Research the price of the machine at XeroxPARC vs. the first Mac. As I recall (I invite correction) $80,000 vs. $2,495.
Also, compare the feature sets of the Xerox device vs. the Mac. Apple took the paper/folder/desktop metaphor and the mouse pointer and the pulldown menu and put it on retail shelves. Xerox didn't do that at all. Microsoft only did it after Gates threw a quiet fit upon seeing the Lisa.
All Apple did was make it happen. No small feat in a green-on-black "C:/>" world.
Both contribute to Apple's profits.
I was going to get to that next.
Xerox voluntarily gave up on the GUI. I know it seems hard to believe, but at that time they were simply into basic research. Computers were practically a hobby for them. They wanted to build copiers, not computers. Yes, Apple "made it happen" - just like Gates "made it happen" from his purchase of the original Windows source code while IBM got into the disaster that was OS/2. The similarities between the rise of MSFT and the rise of Apple are really astonishing when you look at them - both got their start because the real originators either decided to take a pass or just got off track somewhere along the line. To say that Apple has somehow succeeded at building on the original idea where Microsoft failed flies in the face of history. Both "built and built and built" on the original ideas.
I didn't mean to imply Microsoft failed to do it, only that Jobs saw it and first had the **gasp** vision (I hate that word), to do it, to put it in a tiny box. Oh, he also had Wozniak and Hertzberg and the rest of that crazy engineering team to make it happen. And if it weren't for that jackass Scully, the Macintosh was going to premiere at $1995.
Anyway, I only mean to say that in my observation, Windows GUI innovations trail Mac GUI innovations.
OTOH, Windows had true preemptive multitasking before the Mac...no small potatoes that.
To this day, that's gotta hurt. LOL
Well, you are simply giving Jobs credit for being there first - and he was. No question about it. I remember playing with an Apple II in 1978, when I think Gates was still in school. Yes, it was astonishing at the time, being able to manipulate pictures on the screen whereas a few years earlier, in 1975, the computers I was using were glorified adding machines on typewriters. So Gates came along later - terrific. He assembled some fine talent of his, and they haven't done half bad.
The reason that there isn't more press about Mac vulnerabilities is that the virus writers don't bother with hacking Macs - there isn't enough of an installed base for it to be worth their while.
The Mac "Security by obscurity" myth is just that: a myth.
Consider the case of the Witty Worm. The Witty Worm was a Windows worm, really quite nasty, that was written to infect Windows server computers that were protected by Internet Security Systems' BlackICE Firewall.
Three months before Witty was released into the wild, ISS released a security update that CLOSED the vulnerability that Witty exploited. By the time Witty was out, all but around 10,000 ISS BlackICE protected computers had been patched. The 10,000 or so computers were spread-out all over the world in over 24 countries.
Within 45 minutes of Witty's release, ALL ~10,000 WERE INFECTED!
The point of this story is that any and every computer on the internet is as close as next door... scarcity has no function in avoiding infection on the internet because of the vast interconnection and high speed which anything can be sent.
There are approximately 22,000,000 Mac OS X computers in the installed base. TWENTY TWO million. That's 2,200 times less scarce that the Windows computers that were susceptible to Witty. It probably can be safely said that the vast majority of those Macs do not run any anti-malware apps at all. Yet not one, ZERO, viruses have been found in the wild in six years.
Gates' point, I think, is that Microsoft is getting tough and tested from all these attacks, while Apple isn't.
The core of Apple's OS X is FreeBSD UNIX, one of the most secure OSes in the world. It has undergone 30+ years of trial by fire and patching by the open source community. The code is open. Anyone can look for vulnerabilities... and any one can patch one they find.
The reason that there isn't more press about Mac vulnerabilities is that the virus writers don't bother with hacking Macs . . .
There have been a few Proof-of-Concept viruses such as Leap-A/Oompa-Loompa, Renepo, InqtanaA and MacArena... but at best, they are Trojan Horse applications and have never been seen outside of a Computer security laboratory. . . and they require an Administrator' Name and Password to be installed. Each and everyone of these were trumpeted in the press... the vaunted Mac has been brought down by the (insert name here)... but after examination, the Mac community laughed at the FUD and went on, unimpressed and uninfected.
Have you hit all your talking points yet?
I haven't read the replies yet.
We got Vista along with the new computer. Absolutely love it.
People that just bought the software are having problems...maybe not enough computer?
Who cares how Apple should react?......I don't.
He assembled some fine talent of his, and they haven't done half bad.
I'm an XP user. My wife has an iBook, but my desktop and notebook both run XP (albeit skinned and tweaked to look like OSX).
I like the Apple style, but I find it hard to give up open architecture.
I'm reminded of the Stephen Wright joke about how he owns the ax Washington used to cut down the cherry tree. Although he had replaced the handle...and the head...it still occupied the same space.
My current computer is just like that. I don't go into the store and buy the whole box, I replace what's broken, and it runs on parts that I've bought in each of the past eight years.
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