[geeks] Microsoft Surface...

[Doug McLaren]

On Sun, Jun 03, 2007 at 01:20:49PM -0700, William Kirkland wrote:

|  > Wow.  Those are some remarkably broad brushes you're painting
|  > Microsoft and Apple with.
| 
| Yes, I did ... and similar to another discussion on this board, I too  
| feel that profiling is appropriate. Including it's use when comparing  
| the ethics and products a company produces especially the how ...
| 
| Microsoft tends to acquire a company with a particular piece of  
| technology they find interesting.

Is there anything wrong with that?  Seems to be business as usual,
though often it does stifle the company being acquired.  But on the
other hand, many companies are built with the express intention of
being acquired -- because it's either that or an IPO that makes it's
founders immediate millions.

| Apple tends to invent and design.  

Apple acquires too.  Remember NeXT?

Pretty much everything that ever gets released as a product, somebody
else did it before, or did something that lead up to it before.  But
if Microsoft releases some new product, people go `oh, X did that
years ago!' ... but if Apple were to do the same thing, people would
go `look what Apple did!  They innovate!'

| Sun also has a much better tendency to invent rather than acquire  
| technology.

Sun acquires companies too.

Microsoft is just much bigger than Apple and Sun, so they do it more.

(It's funny when I find myself in the position of being a Microsoft
apologist.  Usually I'm bashing Microsoft -- but when I do, I prefer
to bash them for things they really should be bashed for -- and
there's plenty of these without making things up or bashing for
irrelevant things.)

|  > Microsoft has done some pretty remarkable things over the years.  And
|  > so has Apple.  And both have done some pretty underwhelming things
|  > over the years as well.
| 
| Yes, they have marketed well. You are proof of that.

If you ask me, Apple is the king of marketing, not Microsoft -- and
they do it for a lot less money.  Nothing wrong with that either.

Still, don't confuse me with a Microsoft fanboy.  The only thing I use
Microsoft software for is playing games, and that's only because the
alternatives are a lot more trouble.  (Though as I've said, I'm pretty
happy with some of their hardware.)

Really, I'm very resistant to marketing of all sorts.  Personally, I'm
far more interested in evaluating things based on it's merits, rather
than it's marketing or the actions of it's fanboys.

|  > As for Microsoft deliberately making their products aren't
|  > compatible with competitor's products, that's really only true
|  > for a small subset of their rather large product lines -- and I'm
|  > not even sure it's really been *proven* rather than just
|  > theorized anyways.
|
| Others have already posted a partial list of things Microsoft has  
| done to "help" technology along ...

Yes, people have talked about a small number of Microsoft products
where were not compatible with the competitors, and of course it was
deliberately done to squash the competition, because it was Microsoft!

(I'm sure there's a few logical fallacies in there.  Of course, I've
sort of done a straw man, so perhaps it evens out.)

| and I may have missed it, but I did not notice anything indicating
| the great leaps backward Microsoft attempted with Microsoft Java
| ... as I recall the first paragraph of the java specification
| REQUIRED that the code be cross platform compatible, yet Microsoft's
| implementation would not run on any platform except another
| Microsoft platform.

Huh?

The java code itself is supposed to be cross platform.  The JRE itself
doesn't have to be cross platform.

| I think that qualifies as deliberate ...

So you're saying that Microsoft was trying to squash it's competitors
by not releasing a JRE for the Mac?  (or Sun, Linux, or for Amigas,
etc.)

IBM didn't release a BeOS version of their JRE either that I'm aware
of.  So was IBM deliberately trying to squash BeOS?
 
| Maybe you would rather talk about the lame gui that Microsoft  
| uses ...

Boy, this is becoming quite a rant.  And you're preaching to the
choir.

My point was NOT that all Microsoft software is great.  It was that
not everything that comes out of Redmond sucks, which seems to be the
position of many people on this list.  Another point is that not
everything Microsoft does is bad.

| While I do not know off hand who first developed an optical mouse,  
| the first ones I saw were out long before Microsoft thought of an  
| optical mouse.

So what?  I recall using Sun optical mice (the ones that required a
special pad) decades ago, and I doubt they invented it either.

I didn't say that Microsoft invented the optical mouse.  I said that
the ones they sell (at least the basic one) are really good quality
and are really reasonably priced as well.  In short, they rock.

I had a Microsoft z80 card for my Apple ][+ at one point.  It rocked
too, letting me use Turbo Pascal!  (At least I think it was Turbo
Pascal that it let me run.)

Apple mice are pretty, oh so sexy.  But most are one button?  Still?
(In their defense, MacOS X supports other mice seamlessly.)

| Oh, what about SCSI ... that was such a nice decision to go with  
| IDE ... today, we are still limited to two disk drives on each bus.  
| Microsoft chose IDE

Wait ... Microsoft chose IDE?

[ sarcasm imminent ]

Was this for the Microsoft PC? 

I guess Microsoft chose the 8088 (x86) for their PC over the obviously
superior 680x0 as well?  The fools!

[ sarcasm subsiding somewhat ]

Are you confusing IBM with Microsoft?  And IDE came along a while
after the IBM PC -- the first ones had no hard drives at all, then MFM
and then RLL drives, then ESDI.  Then IDE and SCSI came out, not sure
which came out first, but SCSI was generally faster, but cost several
times as much, especially when considering how much cheaper an IDE
controller was than a SCSI controller.  Perhaps THAT is why IDE won?

(Perhaps IDE and SCSI came out before ESDI?  Not sure.  Either way,
ESDI, MFM, RLL, IDE, SCSI and probably others were all competing at
one point, and we know how that turned out.  But I really don't think
we can blame that on Microsoft.)

| because Apple was suggesting SCSI.

For the record, Microsoft OSs have always supported SCSI.  Perhaps
they required that the SCSI card vendor make their own drivers, but
they were available and generally worked.

| *IF* Microsoft would have shifted when they saw their decision to be  
| less than optimal, we could have 256 devices on one SCSI bus,  
| including the use of multiple computers on that same bus.

Now Microsoft is to blame for shortcomings in the SCSI specification?

Perhaps Microsoft was the second gunman on the grassy knoll too?

-- 
Doug McLaren, dougmc at frenzied.us
Which is worse:  Ignorance or Apathy?  Who knows?  Who cares?