Comment It's a fair rant, but misses the point entirely (Score 1) 1262
I think there are a few issues here that people are using unfairly to blame individuals or organsiations:
1. It is clear that the Winn has a problem with his Sony product and they are simply a torrid example of current PC manufacturers. They are a relatively new player and do not compete with experienced PC companies on the same level- they still treat PC hardware like fixing TVs [luxury items that the user can do without for 6 weeks whilst they figure out how to fix it (if at all)]. They are an enormous organisation and are not managed nimbly like newer PC companies. Their engineers have no idea about building or repairing a computer (although they bring to the party their Great Strength for making really sexy little devices extremely well). We've had 6 of their laptops over 5 models and can say that no-one should buy their product ever... not once have we been in any way happy with their 'assistance' or approach. They are simply unprofessional in the IT arena (and don't care that they are).
However Winn obviously has a wealth of PC experience and this is hardly the only reason he started this blog.
2. Many other PC hardware vendors commit terrible, dumb mistakes (remember the <a> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/22/fujitsu_hd d_fiasco_to_end/ </a>Fujitsu and <a> http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/6292 </a> IBM hard drive fiascos where millions of hard-drives were sold that they knew were faulty but did not admit it? Their refusal to admit this probably cost their customers more than the sum of the drive sales, production and enineering. THe cost of data loss and recovery, repairing machines... the lost reputations and business, literally no-end of trouble for people throughout the supply chain from end-users up.
As do driver issues, software and hardware incompatibilities and all the other things that go on every day in an IT person's world on any platform, though less so on Nix platforms (inc. OS-X) than WinTel. But so it should; WinTel provides more hardware and software choice and hence many more uses. It is everything to everyone but it is just so awfully very badly done. How lucky we are that the team at Apple have succeeded in raising the bar.
However so many of these problems come about as the environment we work in fosters them; indeed it is our business environment that has made these exact problems inevitable for any new product, including perhaps OS-X.
There is very little respect for engineering IT products and software properly, as the pressure is on to increase, release and produce. It is almost impossible to get it right when the average data product ships with such serious software flaws that make the claims on the packet look nothing short of deception.
Add to that the very short life-cycle of the products that we as consumers and consuming organisations cannot afford to follow and wait for normal replacement procedures. If a vendor sells it and it doesn't work, it's usually cheaper to landfill what you have and buy another one rather than figure out why (which the vendor often knows but but will not let on) and try to negotiate a solution from someone working on a 3% profit margin.
And don't forget to add that to the way we canibalise innovative companies at the drop of a hat in the stock exchanges, or create such enormous waste at so many other levels such as the production of plastic products and packaging (consider the widespread use of CD and DVD one-time use media as oppposed to CD and DVD-RWs) as well as our love of plastic computer and peripheral cases that have between 5 minutes and 2 years use in them. Let alone the duplication of unnecessary, out of date or misleading marketing; the production of upgrades and new models for marketing success rather than technical advancement; how inadequate products are taken to market and then dumped without support due to the manufacturer's total focus of meagre resources on the new model, etc.
Apple has come in on a niche market that pays over the odds for quality and looks. This is not bad, I pay for quality too. It is how Apple extends this to the masses whilst avoiding the problems the PC manufacturers contend with daily. It has succeeded in many ways already, however it is in the way OS-X becomes mature that will be interesting. It has in recent years absorbed cheaper PC architectures... what will it do with the move to new architectures, supporting legacy peripherals etc. Let's face it, MS would be nuts if they were not applying huge funding and the best brains Google doesn't yet employ on something light years ahead of OS-X right now.
Many are alluding to the likelyhood that this could eat Apple as it did Compaq and the cancer knawing away at Dell (who are amazing in their dealings with WinTel issues, but also make the more than their fair share of ugly, poor, plastic crap).
3. Many avoid the fact that OS-X is a solid OS as it the foundations (BSD) were designed by a team of people not driven by a tyrant and was designed to run servers not PCs. Naturally credit for this often goes to Apple when it was not an Apple development as paradoxically DOS was not MS's, however once it becomes polluted with the PC-like world software rubbish that Ma&Pa, the kids and joe-average (think of the hordes of apathetic users out there using Windows OSs every day) installs then who knows. The marketers and charlatans are not in there with their adware and malware quite yet, and of course Apple has brought a far better product to market so I can't really see how it can ever be as bad as NT based systems, however I am worried when I think how many times I've taken software off a Windows PC and explained why it should not be there in the first place. This will happen on OS-X too. Perhaps what we should be talking about is why it is there in the first place... ie.
4. Why our society allows the monstrous commerical and illegal rape and plundering of our computer tools and personal information. The laws covering this are ill-conceived and unclear, let alone how we (don't) police them. There is only one certainty: That if we as unhappy consumers and society members keep allowing this to go on, if we don't expect more of our governments to fix the problems we face... if instead we do as they want and continue to blame suppliers and creators (rather than officials they ingratiate, we will never see that it was more really our inability to manage our society and maintain freedom of expression, foster thought, analysis, innovation and good communications in the light of a small amount of technical and economic change.
No matter what mass-market vendors will always supply products that a) Many will find cause to abuse the flaws and vulnerabilities of, b) More and more flaws and vulnerabilities will be found in them to the limit of society's tolerance: so IT professionals will always be seeking new non-mass market solutions [such as (at present) Sun, OS-X, Free/OpenBSDs, Gentoo, RHE, and SUSE to get things done.
Perhaps if Apple takes BSD to the mass market, Linux will be affected by common vulnarabilities. Could it be like over using anti-biotics? Will we find/build something else to use?
Either way it's our apathetic response to marketing and politics that create the environment for this to get so bad. The vendors are less responsible for it than people think- they are creating and making do as best they can. Of course, Microsoft could have done things differently. My guess is they are too paranoid to innovate- and that is Bill Gates's old freshman approach to success- ie barely doing better than you have to because innovation is only a few weeks of code away. Only the market has moved to a new platform now- as you can see- too many people have had a bagfull of his approach.
I wish we as a society would work on the cause of all this, not the effect, before we lose so much more than Windows (yay!), such as; the effort we invest fixing poor engineering; putting up with unaccountable political and commercial interests and the loss of our wallets, let alone freedom of speech to unethical men in grey suits lining their pockets in the corridors of power.
For me the NT/2k/XP/2k3 install program is bad enough to hit F3 and re-think my choice of build platform.
1. It is clear that the Winn has a problem with his Sony product and they are simply a torrid example of current PC manufacturers. They are a relatively new player and do not compete with experienced PC companies on the same level- they still treat PC hardware like fixing TVs [luxury items that the user can do without for 6 weeks whilst they figure out how to fix it (if at all)]. They are an enormous organisation and are not managed nimbly like newer PC companies. Their engineers have no idea about building or repairing a computer (although they bring to the party their Great Strength for making really sexy little devices extremely well). We've had 6 of their laptops over 5 models and can say that no-one should buy their product ever... not once have we been in any way happy with their 'assistance' or approach. They are simply unprofessional in the IT arena (and don't care that they are).
However Winn obviously has a wealth of PC experience and this is hardly the only reason he started this blog.
2. Many other PC hardware vendors commit terrible, dumb mistakes (remember the <a> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/22/fujitsu_h
As do driver issues, software and hardware incompatibilities and all the other things that go on every day in an IT person's world on any platform, though less so on Nix platforms (inc. OS-X) than WinTel. But so it should; WinTel provides more hardware and software choice and hence many more uses. It is everything to everyone but it is just so awfully very badly done. How lucky we are that the team at Apple have succeeded in raising the bar.
However so many of these problems come about as the environment we work in fosters them; indeed it is our business environment that has made these exact problems inevitable for any new product, including perhaps OS-X.
There is very little respect for engineering IT products and software properly, as the pressure is on to increase, release and produce. It is almost impossible to get it right when the average data product ships with such serious software flaws that make the claims on the packet look nothing short of deception.
Add to that the very short life-cycle of the products that we as consumers and consuming organisations cannot afford to follow and wait for normal replacement procedures. If a vendor sells it and it doesn't work, it's usually cheaper to landfill what you have and buy another one rather than figure out why (which the vendor often knows but but will not let on) and try to negotiate a solution from someone working on a 3% profit margin.
And don't forget to add that to the way we canibalise innovative companies at the drop of a hat in the stock exchanges, or create such enormous waste at so many other levels such as the production of plastic products and packaging (consider the widespread use of CD and DVD one-time use media as oppposed to CD and DVD-RWs) as well as our love of plastic computer and peripheral cases that have between 5 minutes and 2 years use in them. Let alone the duplication of unnecessary, out of date or misleading marketing; the production of upgrades and new models for marketing success rather than technical advancement; how inadequate products are taken to market and then dumped without support due to the manufacturer's total focus of meagre resources on the new model, etc.
Apple has come in on a niche market that pays over the odds for quality and looks. This is not bad, I pay for quality too. It is how Apple extends this to the masses whilst avoiding the problems the PC manufacturers contend with daily. It has succeeded in many ways already, however it is in the way OS-X becomes mature that will be interesting. It has in recent years absorbed cheaper PC architectures... what will it do with the move to new architectures, supporting legacy peripherals etc. Let's face it, MS would be nuts if they were not applying huge funding and the best brains Google doesn't yet employ on something light years ahead of OS-X right now.
Many are alluding to the likelyhood that this could eat Apple as it did Compaq and the cancer knawing away at Dell (who are amazing in their dealings with WinTel issues, but also make the more than their fair share of ugly, poor, plastic crap).
3. Many avoid the fact that OS-X is a solid OS as it the foundations (BSD) were designed by a team of people not driven by a tyrant and was designed to run servers not PCs. Naturally credit for this often goes to Apple when it was not an Apple development as paradoxically DOS was not MS's, however once it becomes polluted with the PC-like world software rubbish that Ma&Pa, the kids and joe-average (think of the hordes of apathetic users out there using Windows OSs every day) installs then who knows. The marketers and charlatans are not in there with their adware and malware quite yet, and of course Apple has brought a far better product to market so I can't really see how it can ever be as bad as NT based systems, however I am worried when I think how many times I've taken software off a Windows PC and explained why it should not be there in the first place. This will happen on OS-X too. Perhaps what we should be talking about is why it is there in the first place... ie.
4. Why our society allows the monstrous commerical and illegal rape and plundering of our computer tools and personal information. The laws covering this are ill-conceived and unclear, let alone how we (don't) police them. There is only one certainty: That if we as unhappy consumers and society members keep allowing this to go on, if we don't expect more of our governments to fix the problems we face... if instead we do as they want and continue to blame suppliers and creators (rather than officials they ingratiate, we will never see that it was more really our inability to manage our society and maintain freedom of expression, foster thought, analysis, innovation and good communications in the light of a small amount of technical and economic change.
No matter what mass-market vendors will always supply products that a) Many will find cause to abuse the flaws and vulnerabilities of, b) More and more flaws and vulnerabilities will be found in them to the limit of society's tolerance: so IT professionals will always be seeking new non-mass market solutions [such as (at present) Sun, OS-X, Free/OpenBSDs, Gentoo, RHE, and SUSE to get things done.
Perhaps if Apple takes BSD to the mass market, Linux will be affected by common vulnarabilities. Could it be like over using anti-biotics? Will we find/build something else to use?
Either way it's our apathetic response to marketing and politics that create the environment for this to get so bad. The vendors are less responsible for it than people think- they are creating and making do as best they can. Of course, Microsoft could have done things differently. My guess is they are too paranoid to innovate- and that is Bill Gates's old freshman approach to success- ie barely doing better than you have to because innovation is only a few weeks of code away. Only the market has moved to a new platform now- as you can see- too many people have had a bagfull of his approach.
I wish we as a society would work on the cause of all this, not the effect, before we lose so much more than Windows (yay!), such as; the effort we invest fixing poor engineering; putting up with unaccountable political and commercial interests and the loss of our wallets, let alone freedom of speech to unethical men in grey suits lining their pockets in the corridors of power.
For me the NT/2k/XP/2k3 install program is bad enough to hit F3 and re-think my choice of build platform.
