News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by dcurtis on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @01:07AM (#227196)
Well, think about...

Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite.

Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus.

Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter.

Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player Ultimate Pack...

Compared to:

Mac OS X

iWork

Mighty Mouse

iTunes

I think the lesson here is obvious.

Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by aneesh on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @02:49AM (#227265)
Yeah, all those, plus you missed a couple whole divisions:

Entertainment: XBox, Zune

Servers stuff: Windows Server, Visual Studio, etc

Online stuff: Live search (and ads, etc), hotmail, etc

Have a look at the organization and you'll see Microsoft is WAY bigger and more complex than Apple.

Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by silencio on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @03:00AM (#227270)
Visual studio part of "server stuff"? All those versions of visual studio are replaced by Xcode for the basic functionality, then you mix and match whatever else you might need that may or may not come with Xcode/OSX e.g. svn for scm. There's OS X Server as well...

Also, iPod and Zune (to be fair, this is where the tables are turned with iPod nano, iPod touch, iPod classic, etc.), iPhone OS and Windows Mobile..

Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by aneesh on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @03:10AM (#227280)
Visual studio part of "server stuff"?

Yep, take a look at any Microsoft org chart (http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/orgchart/s...)

Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by silencio on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @03:14AM (#227283)
Ah, under the server and tools division. Interesting, thanks.
Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by hugh on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @09:19AM (#227453)
Apple products you're forgetting include: iMac, MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, all the iPods (four types, I'm not gonna list 'em all), the iPhone, various keyboards, Apple TV, Time Capsule, Quicktime, iLife, Aperture, iMovie, Final Cut, Mac OS X Server (if we're going to count every permutation of the OS separately), Logic Express, GarageBand, Shake, WebObjects, and probably a bunch more.

It's true that Microsoft has more products in each category, but Apple (as a hardware/software/consumer electronics) company covers more categories.

Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by username2 on Thursday June 26, 2008 @11:20AM (#228685)
Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Studio, Motion, LiveType, Color, ...
Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by michaelneale on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @02:34AM (#227254)
yes - but many of those MS products are just configurations of the one thing, not a separate product.
Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by narag on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @03:15AM (#227285)
Yesterday I spent some time online looking for a new laptop. I would like 14'', thin-and-light, and long battery life. I needed no more than five minutes to know all the offer from Apple.

Other companies like Sony or Asus are extremely annoying with dozens of "lines" of very similar products with confusing names. I didn't look at HP, but I remember it was weird, because they kept the Compaq brand so it was even worse.

Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by rms on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @03:17AM (#227286)
Lenovo's T series is probably the best one in that class. Linux is well supported. Not sure that it is a better buy than a Macbook though.
Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by curiousgeorge on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @08:34AM (#227425)
Fujitsu has some good, relatively inexpensive ultralights. I use whatever their 13.3 screen model is. Anything bigger is tough to use in an airplane/cram in a bag.
Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by narag on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @11:25AM (#227572)
I didn't mean to provoke an off-topic, but thank you anyway :-)
Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by silencio on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @03:10AM (#227278)
This is not necessarily a good thing for end users when there's a handful of different versions of Vista. Assume the average consumer in the US...that's Vista Home Basic and Home Premium and possibly Ultimate to choose from. At first glance do you know what the differences are? Or whether or not you need an upgrade or full version? (Let's not even get into the other versions of Vista, System Builder/OEM, EU versions, Windows Server et cetera.)

Compare with OS X (ignoring OS X Server). There are only two versions, period: OS X and OS X Family Pack. How obvious is it what the difference is between the two? Very. You just count the number of computers in your household you want to install OS X on, and buy accordingly. No upgrade/full version worries, no "what does this have over the other one?" worries, no buying something you don't need...

Sure, OS X doesn't come in so many "flexible" configurations as Vista does, but the thing about it is that you could just do that on your own if it meant so much, and otherwise you get a default config that works for most people.

Re:Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant by michaelneale on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @07:15AM (#227380)
Its a terrible thing for consumers.