Apple Isn't the Next Microsoft (and That's a Good Thing) 269
Nerval's Lobster writes "In a new Gizmodo column, Andreas Goeldi calls it the 'frosted glass' effect: when a prominent tech company's latest upgrade to its flagship operating system features frosted-glass highlights as its primary innovation, you know that company is facing a period of severe stagnation. That's what happened to Microsoft around the time of Windows Vista, Goeldi wrote, and Apple's going down the same road with iOS 7. In light of what he views as Apple's sclerosis, it wasn't difficult for him to abandon his iPhone in favor of a Google Android ecosystem. But is Apple really becoming the next Microsoft? In short: no. Apple seems to recognize everything that seemed to elude Microsoft's corporate thinking six years ago: namely, that even the most successful companies need to keep breaking into new categories, and keep innovating, if they want to stay ahead of hungry rivals. Rumors have persisted for quite some time that Apple is prepping big pushes into wearable electronics and televisions, both of which could prove lucrative strategies if executed correctly. Goeldi faults iOS 7 for its frosted-glass effects, which he compares to those of Vista; but similar graphical elements aside, it's unlikely that iOS 7 will run into the same complaints over hardware requirements, compatibility, security, and so much more that greeted Vista upon its release. In fact, iOS 7 isn't even finished."
Comes to show to trust NO ONE (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a time back in 1999 in the good old days of slashdot and IT where I had a debate with someone over how evil MS and Bill Gates were.
Back then MS was unstoppable! If investors found out MS was going to compete agaisnt you then your stock would be shorted as no one could stop the all powerful Microsoft!
I mentioned if Steve Jobs won the world would be heaven. No more expensive crap. Free standards galore. No more DRM with .WMV and IE 5.5 dictating the future of computing. Apple was cheered as the good guys trying to stop the DRM madness of RealPlayer and Windows Media Player. Remember?Fastforward today and I think Steve Jobs is fucking a more greedy monster than Bill Gates ever was. True their products are better quality and more UI and consumer data is put into products before being released, but man they charge and lock you in.
What Changed?
Itunes gave Apple a financial incentive for DRM and lock in. Apple monopolized the mp3 market and almost the phone before Android did a quick rescue. Their Macs are falling behind as more effort is on consumer gadgets these days.
Would I want a Google only world? Fuck no equally
Chrome's webkit is not W3C compliant compared to IE and Firefox with its extensions and some sites that only work with Chrome when you turn on HTML 5. If they owned 93% of the market ala IE 6 from 2003, you can bet javascript would go bye bye for whateverthefuck script that they invented, sites would not render properly if you used advanced features, and Google would ignore W3C and put Google Store as the master of the e-commerce universe!
I would not want just Android phones either streaming ads from Google servers 100% of the time, nor would shop owners want to pay 300% more for ad revenue as they would ahve a monopoly on this.
Business and greed is evil. We are all greedy and evil ourselves with a shade of gray. It is our human nature sadly. Competition frees us, though I do have to say I am disappointed in all web browsers recently and kind of miss Firefox when is owned just 15% of the market but maybe that is because IE sucked so bad then it seemed like heaven?
Re:Shifting paradigms is easy with no momentum (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but this is a corporate management problem, not a technical one. Go read the sad history of Xerox where, at one point, they needed the signatures of 47 managers to make a change to a copier, as hungrier companies cranked out modern innovations.
Re: Gizmodo (Score:0, Interesting)
My vanilla install crashed at least daily for about a year. I re-installed the OS several times to no avail. XP, win7, win8 and Linux variants have run and continue to run on the same hardware.
Your post is BS and Vista IS still shit!!
My wife said I never swore as much as when I used Vista.
Re:Gizmodo (Score:4, Interesting)
Vista had fresh eye candy, but nuts-and-bolts problems. It sucked.
OS X had fresh eye candy, and a somewhat revolutionary software framework behind it. It rocked.
WinXP had fresh eye candy, and a more solid NT kernel underneath. It rocked gently.
The bottom line is that everything new is going to be loaded with new eye candy, because it can be. If you want to determine whether that eye candy is trying to disguise problems with the underlying system software and company behind it