From: Dave Winer (dave@userland.com)
Date: Mon May 07 2001 - 23:45:23 PDT
Yes but..
Can't I have some fun with it anyway?
Please?
I've been good!!
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Bone" <jbone@jump.net>
To: "Dave Winer" <dave@userland.com>
Cc: <FoRK@xent.com>
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2001 11:39 PM
Subject: Re: It's IBM dummy
>
> Dave Winer wrote:
>
> > Think about Mac OS X a bit. The religious issues fall aside, and think
about
> > bridges between the two worlds.
>
> To adopt a devil's advocate stance here for a minute --- and I'm *not*
> "interfering," just expressing an opinion (Dave ;-) --- but OS X is the
worst of
> all possible worlds. *Pragmatic* Mac purists can't be happy, because it
just
> screwed their world up tremendously. UNIX geeks can't be happy, because
the
> nonstandard filesystem org screws completely with portability of reams of
> code... Windows geeks can't be happy because... well... it ain't "True
Blue"
> er, I mean, "True Bill." Opensourcies can't really be happy for a variety
of
> reasons, some overlapping with the UNIX geek problems...
>
> So who exactly is the constituency? Just the Apple engineers who managed
to
> finally scale this "new OS" fence after multiple attempts and (rapidly
mixing
> metaphors) deliver this mutant hybrid bastard kicking and screaming into
> (obscure quote coming up) "a world it never made." Oh, and of course
Stevie and
> his army of sycophants.
>
> What's good about this thing, exactly? Too little, too late --- there's a
"time
> value of innovation" effect, unfortunately. This would've kicked ass in
> '88-89. It would've still kicked ass in '92-93. It would've been a
modestly
> good thing in '96-97. In '01, it's so completely ho-hum that I can't
believe
> anybody's drinking the Kool-Aid. It may very well *still* kick ass on
many
> now-irrelevant technical levels, but it doesn't matter --- the market
window of
> opportunity has closed. The tragedy is that Apple, if it had gotten its
act
> together, could've shipped substantially this product at any of those
previous
> points, if it could only have overcome its own inertia, its incredible,
arrogant
> self-absorption, and its tendency to revel in its own glory while missing
market
> opps...
>
> So the measure of any OS's potential is how much *NEW* (EMPHASIS!)
developer
> interest it generates + how much developer lock-in it already has. As
stated
> above, OS X doesn't generate substantial interest in the UNIX or Windows
world.
> Apple's playing an (IMO) failing game of seduction with the Open Source
> community --- they might have been there with their Darwin gambit but few
true
> opensourcies will tolerate having the filesystem reorg'd as egregiously as
Apple
> has apparently done. They aren't going to win any Windoze guys... so
that
> leaves the ever-dwindling Mac True Believers crowd. Where does the
> application-driven "marketing pull" come from to make this platform
succeed
> generally? Nowhere. No software product company with a non-political /
> non-religious agenda will bet on OS X as anything but a distant --- VERY
distant
> --- second in desktops, and 5th or later in servers.
>
> Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming...
>
> jb
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon May 07 2001 - 23:53:53 PDT