Mac VS PC

[Ted Striker]

The rest has largely been MS using its market share as leverage to force out competitors

AGAIN, tell us HOW this different from what Macintosh does to its competitors? But hey if they want to shoot themselves in the foot that's their own business.

[Asher]

Well well the question I asked was "Ripped an MP3 lately?" You know MP3, the open standard for sharing music on the internet, don't you?

MP3 is hardly an open standard. It's a proprietary standard that actually makes the distributer of encoders PAY Fraunhauffer a royalty for every copy sold, and it's an outdated format.

OGG, MP3Pro, and WMA are all much more sophisticated.

Don't you mean the "proprietary" WMA format. Are you employed by MS or something, it certainly sounds like it.

WMA is just as proprietary as MP3 is. Perhaps you should do some more research again. MS Research developed WMA, Fraunhauffer(sp?) developed MP3. MP3 is outdated, WMA is continually being updated (WMA9 supports up to hundreds of channels, rather than just left/right stereo, and has a far better sound quality at equivalent bitrates)

Tried controlling the app from the QL toolbar?

Certainly. Applications can be controlled from the toolbar, they just need to be designed to do so. Programs off the top of my head that do so are WMP9 and Samurize.

Tried looking at the hideous thing?

Surely you realize Windows XP's GUI is powered by an XML-based UI scheme? You can download or create any damn theme you want if you find it "hideous". Even the Aqua clones some people have created!

If only this was true -

It is true -- and the fact that you responded with this comment shows me just how little you do have to back up any of your statements...

more to the point MPEG4 is an open standard.

Why don't you define "open standard" for everyone, and how it differs from a standard like WMA, then explain how an open standard can charge people who distribute decoders a royalty fee for every unit.


Do you have any idea why Apple delayed the latest quicktime with MPEG4 support? Hint: It had to do with having to PAY per decoder (ie, per QuickTime installation). MPEG4 is certainly not an open standard, but it is simply a standard.

I didn't know Palladium was already out. It isn't yet, is it?

It's implemented in alpha hardware and software, the design docs have been final for over a year now, and it's been talked about at length by many people. It's been made painfully clear that Palladium will ship disabled, and when enabled the user controls to what extent it's enabled to.

But you are right -- it's not out yet. Remind everyone again why you brought it up?

Would you care to argue that monopolies are generally a good thing or would you care to shut up?

I have done this before on here, if you'd really like to hear the full speech then you can use Apolyton's search feature. A single operating system on a consumer desktop is a good thing. Apple thinks so too, in fact, Apple thinks that restrictive hardware choices are good too. I disagree there, I think all we need is a standard OS and a HAL like DirectX to abstract the hardware below it. Hey, MS agrees with me. And look who's on top?

Would you care to argue that Microsoft did not engage in anti competitive practices by bundling IE?

How is it anticompetitive?
Before MS bundled IE, consumers had to PAY for an internet browser.
You're somehow telling me it's anticompetitive for MS to give away an internet browser? If anything, it's OVERLY competitive. Netscape is still around and still making craptastic products, so what's the problem? By MS bundling IE, not only did consumers benefit from getting such basic functionality for free, but there are more internet browsers available today than there were 5 years ago. And most of them are free, too!

So why do my Greek fonts look a lot better in Text Edit for OS X than they do in Word XP? That's my test benchmark - looking. What is different in Word XP that makes it worse? I don't know - but as an end user I don't care.

Take some screenshots for us, otherwise take your rhetoric elsewhere.

Did you even enable ClearType? Did you even calibrate it? PEBKAC.

As for all of your endless rhetoric on Apple being far more "open" than MS, have you considered:

• Office 11 will save files in XML format (you can also choose to use .DOC if you want), which means the format is not proprietary.
  
• MS has submitted the programming language it developed, C#, to the ISO and it's on it's way to becoming an OPEN standard (a true one, not what you think MP3 and MPEG4 are)
  
• MS created Rotor, a runtime environment ("virtual machine") for .NET code that runs on Linuxes. The source code for Rotor is freely available. The specfications for the .NET CLR (which converts .NET code into machine code, like Java's VM) are also an open standard now submitted to the ISO. MS is also making an OS X version, and are helping Ximian in producing "Mono", or another .NET CLR for *nix. The result: .NET code can be run in Windows, MacOS, or Unix -- not just Windows.

The bottom line is Apple is far worse than Microsoft. Apple not only has a monopoly on their OS, but also their hardware. Apple buys up people all the time just like MS does (you really think Apple made iTunes themselves?).

The difference between Apple and Microsoft is Microsoft commoditized the PC market and Apple tried to monopolize. The ironic result is Apple's marketshare continually shrinks and MS has an effective monopoly on PC OSes, and therefore PCs.

In summary, Jobs is a moron and Gates is a genius when it comes to running a business. When it comes to marketing, however, Jobs is a genius. There is absolutely no logical reason to buy a Mac, yet millions of people do buy Macs. C'est la vie, not everyone likes logic and instead pays way too much because they think the interface is purty.

And I'm still waiting for your examples on how many more clicks it takes to do things in Windows XP than OS X.

[Asher]

Interesting article on MPEG4 for you:

http://www.commsdesign.com/news/tech_beat/OEG20020920S0026

MPEG4 rivals are getting upper hand
By Nick Flaherty

EE Times
September 20, 2002 (11:33 a.m. EST)

The current generation of the MPEG4 compression standard looks set to lose out in the broadcast field to technology from Microsoft and coding technologies under development.

Broadcast equipment leader Tandberg and receiver specialist Pace Micro Technology are both backing Microsoft's non-MPEG4- compatible Windows Media 9 (WM9) as the next wave for compressed media.

At the same time, the industry is still finding ways to get more out of the existing MPEG2 technology.

Charles Cartwright, product manager for advanced coding systems at Tandberg in the UK, said: "MPEG4 doesn't offer enough advantage over MPEG2 to make it worth the swap. Windows Media 9 is definitely better than MPEG2."

Pace is backing a programmable approach for its Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) set-top box launched at IBC. Based around the BSP-15 chip from Equator Technologies, Pace's 440 and 442 are among the first set-top boxes to run WM9, although they can be programmed with MPEG4 and other proprietary codecs.

Fujitsu Siemens has also developed an IPTV set-top box, based around a PC architecture and running WM9. Further down the line, the H.264 standard threatens to supersede MPEG4. Work here is also led partly by Microsoft.

Philips demonstrated an H.264 codec at IBC, and Avi Katz, chief executive of Equator, says a codec will also be on his company's chips by the year-end.

H.264 is sometimes referred to as ‘part 10’ of the MPEG4 standard. It will use the existing system infrastructure but will require more complex hardware for coding, meaning that existing MPEG4 decoders will not run it. This has led to the focus on WM9 for streaming video in applications such as video-over-broadband DSL lines.

Rob Koenen, president of the MPEG4 Industry Forum, said: "The DVB Digital TV group is looking at going to MPEG4 part 10 straight away."

Supporters of MPEG4 say work should continue on the standard because of the need for open standards and multiple sources.

Envivio, a spin-off from France Télécom, has teamed up with French operator Canal+ to port an MPEG4 decoder for an interactive set-top box. Julien Signes, Envivio's president, said: "MPEG4's an open standard and I think that's important to the operators."

Urgency over licensing

The MPEG4 Industry Forum (M4IF) is rushing to plug holes in the licensing and interoperability of the video compression standard.

Licensing issues over the current generation of MPEG4 delayed its commercial rollout until this month. The M4IF is determined that this will not happen with the next generation standard called H.264, or MPEG4 part 10.

Rob Koenen, the forum's president, said: "Licensing this time will be much, much, much faster. The process started last week with the call for essential patents, and we are compressing into two months what took a year for MPEG4."

The M4IF has also joined with the Internet Streaming Media Alliance to work on the interoperability of different MPEG4 systems.