slate.com — The success of the iPhone and other smartphones demonstrates how the market for software is changing. Applications are no longer bound to a single device—your programs come in different flavors on different gadgets and share data across the Internet. The model by which we pay for software is also shifting.
Jan 21, 2009 View in Crawl 4
puterJan 21, 2009
Just because it is a great OS does not mean it will save the company.The competition is not just about how has the snazzier easier to US OS. Blackberry has massive market share in smartphones simply because they were the first. Apple has the appStore, which is a huge bonus for them. you know when you buy an Iphone there will be plenty of independant apps you can get...are you absolutely certain that the pre will be picked up? and that it will have all the software you want?You're only looking at one thing (how the device looks) and going "yup, this will save the company". Palm is in bad shape, it would take a lot to save it, and there Pre is a big unknown. maybe it will help maybe not. But you can't say that because it "looks nice" it will save the company. If you really believe that, I suggest you go buy a few thousand dollars in stock...personally, I have no intention of throwing my money away like that. If you're not willing to buy the stock...then you don't really believe what you just said.
matt_rubinJan 21, 2009
they release what they believe will be useful in the future. they think ahead so its stuff that will not be useful now but later when we need it it will be up to standards.
cysseroJan 22, 2009
Microsoft are trying to establish a larger presence online though, as it seems this is where the money is. They have WinMo, so they don't need Palm, and while they don't have any graphic design tools (well, except for mspaint.exe) they seem to be doing fine on the software side of things.
scott2Jan 22, 2009
Speaking from Microsoft perspective - not consumer perspective.
scott2Jan 22, 2009
Microsoft has stated over and over again that they don't want to be a hardware company. They're even said to be considering making an XBOX OS and licensing it out.
steggJan 22, 2009
If I put the whole summary in the comment, would you consider that spam?
sammykeyesJan 24, 2009
Actually, their search service is better (Image & Video?)Personally, I don't think Yahoo! is worth it with all the turmoil going on. Also, they won't respond as to why they terminated some of my friends' accounts on Yahoo! Answers and some stupid corporate policy won't let them find out.
johnnysoftwareDec 9, 2009
Yeah, I have read accounts by some people saying they used Google Docs at their companies.For web based collaboration, Google Wave, which is out and I have tried - does look pretty usable. Authoring eforms might be a little ways off with Wave but the plugin architecture might allow for it.The most horrible data entry application I have ever used was implemented in Sharepoint. I shudder now just thinking about it and rejoice that I do not have to use it anymore. It was quickly decommissioned too, which in my experience is pretty unusual for an IT application.Open office has lots of collaboration options for it -<a class="user" href="http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Solutions" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffic ...</a>and Open Office now comes with a filter that lets you save its Writer (word processor) documents to Media Wiki (that is the Wiki that Wikipedia and Wikia are using).If Wikipedia is not the most collaborative software thing on the planet, other than the web as a whole - I do not know what is. Linux and certain other huge open source software projects, perhaps. But for document creation, it is Wikipedia.
johnnysoftwareDec 9, 2009
Letting Microsoft own both Windows Mobile and Palm might be anticompetitive, and in multiple markets at that.Microsoft owning Sidekick seems to have been anti-competiive, in retrospect. They seem to be letting Sidekick die off - it not outright trying to kill it off by deleting user's totally cloud resident data.
johnnysoftwareDec 9, 2009
Uh, no. Actually, Palm, like the recently ill-fated Danger (makers of Sidekick) was founded by ex-Apple engineers. The Palm originally had a very Mac like OS and GUI API. And I mean *very*.I think 3com bought Palm a while back and then Palm bought itself back from 3com or something like that. I am not too sure, though. I used to have a couple of Palms a long time ago, but I have not been keeping up with the company in years.
johnnysoftwareDec 9, 2009
Well, except for Microsoft: COBOL, MS-DOS, Frontpage, FoxBase, SQL Server, Posix partial compliance in original Windows NT (3.1), Internet Explorer, Visual Basic (I think), the original TCP/IP stack used in MS-Windows, etc.Microsoft C, I think I read they bought from Lifeboat ("Lifeboat C") back int the 1980's.Microsoft created: Word (both character based and GUI), Excel (with Apple engineer's help, I heard), Visual C++.Yeah, I keep forgetting, most people were not reading the trade journals back in the day when Microsoft bought so much of the products it sells today.Apple tended to "roll their own" programs in the 1970's and 1980's (Except for UCSD Pascal and a few other things), and at the end of the 1980's they experimented with buying some apps but those most or all went away. Not sure if Claris produced FileMaker itself or Apple bought it.Apple bought NeXT from their mutual founder in mid-1990's. In the 2000's, Apple gets open source projects and produces open source out of them (Darwin, WebKit, etc.) but does not really sell a lot of products today that resulted from a buying spree the way Microsoft does.These days, if you sit at a Windows computer to do anything, you are likely running a lot of software that Microsoft bought from another company. If you are using an Apple Mac, you are using quite a bit of software that Apple wrote itself or got+improved as open source projects. The companies have two different approaches to software craftsmanship.