Boot Camp For Suckers? 610
DigitalDame2 writes "PC Magazine's Editor-in-Chief says the whole Mac/Windows dual-boot thing is really nothing to get excited about. He writes that Boot Camp is really just a plan to get Windows users to convert to OS X." From the article: "Once you've laid out a few kilobucks on your BC system and been frustrated a few times with Windows limitations, what are you going to do? Jobs's bet: You'll start spending more and more time in OS X, until you--too--become one of the pod people. It's sad to see so many of my compatriots being turned into lemmings. Perhaps they'll wake up and smell the Apple pie in the sky--and realize they've been taken for a ride. But I doubt it."
Re:Apple's Confidence (Score:5, Informative)
I'm just nitpicking here, but that's not what defines efficient markets in economics. A discriminating monopolist market is also efficient. Efficiency is defined by Pareto efficiency
Here is a link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficient [wikipedia.org]
Although, its true a perfectly competitive situation results in an efficient market. Most of the time, people like perfect competition mainly because its the market with the lowest prices, not because of its efficiency to allocate resources.
By the way, neither Apple nor Microsoft exist in a highly competitve market (as defined by those terms in economics).
Re:Consider the source: Louderbeck (Score:5, Informative)
Trouble is, it has rather gone over the average Slashdotter's head. He'll be laughing his arse off now.
iqu
Re:Jealousy is a terrible thing. In the meantime.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Might work the OTHER way around (Score:3, Informative)
Most people who already use OS X and Macs do so because they've already tried Windows at some point or other, and decided it wasn't really the environment they wanted to be in all day, every day when using their computer. The new ability to boot into XP via Boot Camp isn't likely to open many existing Mac users' eyes to "the undiscovered world of Windows - the platform already used on 95% of the computers out there".
Re:Message for Captain Obvious (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I agree with the fundamental premise that if you don't like the MM then get something else. Mouse choices (and KB choices, for that matter) for heavy computer users are very personal choices and there's just no way to please everyone when you're trying to provide a standardized PC (which is the Apple way). I used to tote my MS split-hand keyboard back and forth between home and work because I found that I couldn't tolerate regular keyboards after using it...and because I was too cheap to buy one for my workspace and too timid to ask my boss to buy me one (which she would have done in a heartbeat).
Pareto Efficiency probably not the best model (Score:3, Informative)
Economic Efficiency in a Nutshell (efficiency described in an abstract, mostly model-independent way) [ingrimayne.com]
Economic Efficiency (links to descriptions of various models) [wikipedia.org]
Pereto Efficiency doesn't have much to say about efficiency in the global scope, and consequently doesn't have as much to say about things like this as would, say, some other allocative efficiency model. It's premise is interesting as an analytical tool, but also somewhat fantastic. In the local universe it assumes, allocations that transfer wealth or other valuable resources from you to me would not normally be regarded by you as a non-event, and I regard transfer of non-valuable items from you to me as a liability, so this model has limitations in real world application from the outset, even with limited scope.
Furthermore, economists also understand that real world markets typically are not all that efficient. If they were, then the hundreds of billions of hours spent futzing with Windows PC systems would have led to the ascendancy of Mac OS X as the dominant computing platform back when it was called NeXTSTEP. In the real world, those futzing hours are not measured, and represent an identifiable inefficiency in the market.
Most economists also understand that efficiency is inherently a value judgement, and even the criteria by which efficiency is measured and even modeled involves value judgments.
Economic Efficiency (considered as the basis for society) [dieoff.org]
Of course, I studied economics for four years at a university, and still regard the entire field of micro-economics with considerable skepticism, so take my observations with a grain of salt. Perhaps it is politicians rather than economists who are to blame for willful misuse of the tools. However, failure to understand the limitations of a given economic analysis tool allows voters to be snowed into supporting all manner of initiatives which are, on the whole, not in their individual nor collective self-interest.