Google's Growing Love For the Mac 222
An anonymous reader writes "While browsing the 2007 Macworld speaker bios, I found an interesting Google+Mac piece of news. Looks like Google has appointed the famous Amit Singh in charge of their Mac Engineering (also confirmed on Singh's website). While Google generally seems to lag behind in Safari compatibility they have been offering some native Mac software. We earlier heard Google CEO Eric Schmidt's joining Apple's board of directors. Then following Microsoft MacBU's lead, Google started their own Mac Blog a few weeks earlier. Google's jobs website also lists several Mac openings. If Singh's technical expertise and history of OS X wizardry any indication, we can hope for some cool Mac software from Google. Also wondering if all this is just Google's response to Apple's market growth or maybe a more serious partnership is coming? ;-)"
Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Going to all web apps would be going back to the mainframe/dumb terminal days of the 1970s. It would negate most of the advantages of owning a PC.
-b.
makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google Loves Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sensible (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you mind elaborating how exactly Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly to defeat Google?
Bundling IE is the major method, and then what they include and do not include in IE.
The only concrete example I see here is that they do not implement standards in IE - but pray, I ask you, does Firefox fully implement all the standards?
Well, Firefox does implement standards in general. Every time I've followed the W3C spec it has worked in Firefox (and Safari and Opera, etc.) but it has not worked in IE. IE implements about 50% of the standards while other browsers are close to 90% I'd guess. No one is perfect, but IE versus the industry shows a huge difference.
All of this, however, is academic. Firefox is not bundled with a monopoly and what works and what is included and what is broken does not help the Firefox team take over some other market. Unless you have a monopoly, you can't use that monopoly as leverage. If Firefox does not implement some feature, it is just as easy to use Opera. If IE fails to implement something, because it is bundled in Windows, most people will not switch because everything else is harder. It requires education, knowledge, and technical expertise to download, install, and run any browser but IE.
Last time I checked, Firefox 2 did not pass the ACID2 test (if that's any measure of standards).
The ACID2 test is edge cases for the most part, not a test of how comprehensively a given browser adheres to standards. It is like shining a laser on a mirror to see how reflective it is. Firefox and Opera and Safari are all consumer grade mirrors and the ACID2 test is useful for determining which is best. IE is like a piece of aluminum and using the ACID2 test on it is a waste of time.
IE7 is a great improvement over IE6 and an indication that Microsoft is listening, and doing something to change themselves.
I auto-generate some pages. I wrote the code based upon the spec. When I wrote it, I tested it. It worked fine in every single browser I could find, except IE, which completely failed because they did not implement most of CSS2 and any of XHTML that was not coincidentally HTML. When IE7 came out I tested it too. It completely failed to render as well, and added an additional random bug. From reading the IE dev teams comments it seems they're up to implementing about 50% of CSS2 and still haven't implemented any XHTML. They fixed some bugs, but are nowhere near implementing the standards the rest of the industry has had for many, many years.
My point is that with so many eyes watching Microsoft at any given moment and at their every move (DOJ, EU, *every* software company affected by Microsoft), this monopoly thing is getting old.
I agree, MS should stop abusing their monopoly or the courts should actually take meaningful action against them. MS won't stop though, because they're making a fortune breaking the law. The courts won't act though, because MS is one of the largest contributors to both the Republican and Democratic parties and our government is absurdly corrupt.
Perhaps when making this statement, you should provide concrete examples on how exactly that is happening.
I did and I've elaborated upon them, but I find explaining antitrust abuse tedious. I've explained it on Slashdot a hundred times by now, but the vast majority of the people who respond have no understanding of the law or the purpose of the law. Somehow they missed that chapter in Econ 101. It isn't really all that complex, but I'm sick of explaining it over and over again. Five minutes with wikipedia and a reasonably intelligent person can see the obvious abuses from Microsoft and why they are detrimental/illegal. And yet, every time I post about MS's monopoly abuse someone has to respond with an analogy and those analogies always (and I do mean always) reference the actions of a company that is not a monopoly. Maybe these people are astroturfers, but I only have so much time.
Even your post, you compare IE to Firefox, but IE is bundled with Windows, which is a monopoly, while the Firefox team has no monopoly on anything. Why people can't understand how this changes things is beyond my understanding.
Re:Macs... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because Mac OS X is more like NeXTSTEP 5.x than it is Mac OS 10.x.
Steve Jobs and his engineers took over when Apple bought NeXT* in 1997. First step was damage control, next step was marketing, and now we're finally seeing the sweet products and solid engineering. Apple was great in the 1980s, but that old hardware sucked on newer versions of Mac OS by the early 1990s, and the new machines then weren't much better. By 1996 the Mac OS world was a hellufa mess.
*Some people say NeXT bought Apple for negative $400M
Re:makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, that's the stupidest comment I've seen in days. Congratulations!
iTMS + Ads = money, lots of mony! (Score:4, Insightful)
They are talking to the TV companies who currently control video distribution. But why tie yourself to yesterdays companies, it is iTMS (and possible YouTube) that are likely to control video content soon.
Google have already realised that keyword searching isn't a killer 'product' for video content, people just don't want to plug keyboards into their TV's. So the are looking at other ways to enter and dominate that ad market.
What surprises me is Google's (public) lack of contact with the big games companies. Obviously in-game advertising has significant potential, but it is also likely that the next gen winner will control a significant portion of the 'living room'. Why should a Blue-ray disc force you to sit though last months trailers when it is being played on a PS3 sitting on a nice fat broadband connection. Live may be for downloadable games now, but what would stop Microsoft using that network to push video (to your TV and/or Zune).
Mac = Google PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though their stuff is essentially web-based, Google still needs a delivery platform. As others have suggested, it's possible that the killer-apps of the future will be both on-and-offline and thus having both Apple and Google working on both sides of the equation, together they will provide enough benefit to take on Microsoft, who has proven time and again that they want the playground for themselves, alone.
If a Google/Apple partnership works out, they have a very real potential of hitting at both of Microsoft's profitable products: Windows and Office, upon which the MS empire rests.
Re:A new hope (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the biggest problem/complaint people have against net storage versus local storage is the ability of others to access the data. There are some things you trust to store outside of your home like money, since the bank guarantees better security with tight access controls. They have a history of less risk than a more personal solution. It makes sense to trust them rather than your mattress.
Online info storage, though, more resembles a train station locker. Sure, you may be the only one with the safe combination, but it's stored in a public place and you really don't know how easy it is to pick the lock. And since the location experiences a lot of traffic passing through, you don't know who could be eavesdropping/reading over your shoulder.
I think that web-based tools will migrate more to personal/intranet versions for this reason. I can run my LAMP tools on my PowerBook and access them locally, and in fact I already do this. Companies would love to use (for example) Google's office tools on their own servers, and not have to trust Google all the time. It's all about controlling who has a copy of the data, about maintaining privacy/secrecy.
Re:Sounds like a good thing to me. (Score:4, Insightful)