Comments on: Are Apple and Google Flaming Out?

By: Edward Dinovo

Edward Dinovo — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:10:25 +0000

Microsoft has had a lot of competitors over the last two decades: C64s, Apple IIs, Tandys, Amigas, Ataris, along with a bunch of other x86 OSes. Two things stand out for me:
1) Standardization: Microsoft makes a tremendous effort to standardize and commoditize the platform. I have seen no other company work harder at backward compatibility.
2) Development tools: Programming languages is where MSFT got its start. Apple and Commodore were already using Microsoft BASIC before MS-DOS ever existed. MSFT has kept up the competition in the development space and is a world class competitor to Sun/Oracle and IBM.

This leadership in compatibility and tools is extremely important: it makes their OS easy to develop for, and, due to compatibility, yields a certain longevity to development investment. I believe these factors to be the story-behind-the-story to much of Microsoft's success.

By: Steven

Steven — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:48:34 +0000

Very good article. I must say though that Google wanted a completely different OS for a completely different market. It wouldn't make much sense to port iPhone OS to a full fledged computer would it? The place where things get fuzzy is netbooks. That is where the two OS's will overlap. But each has its own set of tools. Android was made to be a communications OS. That is its main focus and therefore cannot carry out the functions of a full fledged operating system. It will make for a good netbook with a broadband adapter for video messaging and mobile computing. Chrome OS is a totally different animal. Its focus is not on communications, but on the cloud. This OS is more of a browser than a full OS. It was made to be fast boot and almost always internet connected. It would use mostly web apps and some basic local apps. It would not compete for the mobile base, but for the everyday computer user. It is a direct attack on Microsoft while Android is a direct attack on the iPhone. I do appreciate your opinion and the way you pulled great facts together. Please keep up the good articles!

By: dan

dan — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:28:58 +0000

its only a matter of time. The Mac environment has always been a security concern for me. OSx is a nightmare, because it uses opensource products, but many of them can not simply be updated by the end user without breaking something within the OSx UI. Because of this users have to wait to Apple re-packages the applications and delivers an update ususally weeks after a problem is discovered. Apple has always had a small attack vector, but now with the iPhone is has gotten larger, and because of that more blackhats are looking at OSx and iPhone etc. And the way apple handles their updates is CrAzY, everyone complains about microsofts updates, but in a managed environment it works great, small update packages to deploy to end clients based on needs, not a ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL. OSx releases HUGE rollup updates all the time, but usually never releases a small patch to fix a small problem. Doing this is usually a bad thing because a small patch to fix a small problem does just that, and usually does not introduce any other issues. Doing large updates can fix problems, and then introduce more zero-day issues...

As the author stated it wont be long till something horrible is released on the Mac, and because a majority of the users have ZERO anti-virus installed this could be a HUGE event.

By: Andreas EklÃ¶v

Andreas EklÃ¶v — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:58:01 +0000

An interesting and oh so accurate reflection upon recent event, well done Rob.

As a Apple customer, using Mac OS X on my desktop and Iphone as my mobile device, I am definitely a fan of Apple's products, but not always of their behaviour.

If Apple are going to continue blocking certain apps and making it a hassle for people to publish legitimate apps in the App Store they may find themselves loosing developers (and customers) to the app stores of Android and Windows Mobile. Apple should realize that a big piece of their big business is based on the good will they still have in the minds of their customers.

The verdict is still out on ChromeOS, but in theory I'd say it doesn't make all that much sense. Feels as though a different flavor of Android would make more sense, in the minds of users as well as for hardware manufacturers.

Again, great article, keep up the good work.

By: Mat Ellis

Mat Ellis — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:13:43 +0000

Completely agree, been increasingly bothered watching Apple's approach to OSX for a while, see http://mat.ellis.name/2008/12/the-slippery-road-to-being-microsoft/“ title=”http://mat.ellis.name/2008/12/the-slippery-road-to-being-microsoft/“ target=”_blank” ref=”nofollow”>http://mat.ellis.name/2008/12/the-slippery-road-to…