Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on Thursday 03 January 2008 22:22 : \____
>
>> On Jan 3, 9:26 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> ____/ ness...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on Thursday 03 January 2008 15:55 : \____
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > On Jan 2, 4:56 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> >> ____/ ness...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on Wednesday 02 January 2008 23:22 :
>>> >> \____
>>>
>>> >> > Microsoft up 15%
>>> >> > Google up 50%
>>> >> > Apple up 133%
>>>
>>> >> > I think if you look over the last 5 years the comparison is even more
>>> >> > dramatic.
>>>
>>> >> It means very little. Microsoft is pumping cash into the stock. In
>>> >> general, stock price does not indicate much because it doesn't just gauge
>>> >> actual wealth. IBM and Dell, IIRC, are in heavy buyback mode as well.
>>> >> Novell will inevitably end up this way as well.
>>>
>>> > Yes, I've read how many large corporations in the US are buying back
>>> > stock. But to the extent that is true of Microsoft, it means that
>>> > their 15% gain means less than it seems. I don't know if Apple has
>>> > been buying back stock, but surely their 133% gain is related to the
>>> > success of iPod, iPhone and OS/X.
>>>
>>> I don't watch Apple to be honest (I closely track RHT/RHAT, NOVL, INTC, AMD,
>>> IBM, MSFT, ^FTSE and SCOX in the finance feeds), but all that I know based
>>> on bankers' word is that Novell is *advised* to buy back stock (many layoffs
>>> coming next year and jobs continue to move east-wards). It's not looking
>>> great for the US economy in general and I suppose you've heard about the
>>> price of oil (a Benjamin per barrel).
>>
>> The Sibold troll is posting an item on how great Apple has been doing,
>> and taunting Linux advocates. I think he's a Wintroll not an Apple
>> troll, which is odd since the news is mostly bad for Microsoft, not
>> Linux. Also, even according to NetApplications, Linux is up from
>> about 0.35% in Jan 07 to 0.66% now. I don't know what their
>> methodology is, I couldn't find out, for example, these are OS
>> statistics as reported by browser hits? In the US only?
>
> You can't get absolute numbers, but you can spot trends. Surveys indicate that,
> given the samples at hand, Linux usage on the desktop (not necessarily
> connected to the Web), has doubled in the past year. Think of this as a
> subsample of a sample. Sites like Groklaw and other popular 'congregation'
> areas for Linux users (there are characteristic attached) honour privacy, so
> their logs are not included in these Web stat-based surveys. It's a shame in
> a sense because by compromising privacy they could help the image of Linux,
> namely by showing its popularity.
We're well past the tipping point for linux now. All we need to do is
wait.
>
>> I'm guessing
>> that this represents desktop usage in the US. But the point is that
>> both Apple and Linux are up in the last year, Windows is down, getting
>> nibbled from both directions. At this point Apple and Linux are not
>> competing much with each other. But the report on Apple in the last
>> few days really is impressive. Looks like half the universe got a Mac
>> and an iPhone for Christmas. My father-in-law was one (Mac last fall,
>> iPhone for xmas). I hadn't seen an iPhone before. It's really
>> beautiful, I've got to say. My father-in-law is deaf, so he doesn't
>> use the phone part, but he does do a lot of internet from hand-held
>> devices (his main way of communicating), and he's a technology nut.
>> He also loves his new Mac and vows never to go back to Windows, which
>> he used for 10 years. Anyway, I'd love to see Ballmer's face when he
>> sees these statistics. I won't feed the Sibold troll, but this is
>> an interesting story. All the curves I've seen on Apple are aiming
>> for the stars, so it's got to give Billy and company bad dreams.
>>
>> 2007 has been a bad year for Microsoft. I can't wait to see what 2008
>> will bring.
>
> Apple's growth is definitely symbiotic as far as Linux goes. It's UNIX, it uses
> Samba, it runs open source apps without performance penalties, and so forth.
> Some Apple Mac users move to Linux or mix the two (desktop and server or
> desktop and desktop).
>
Apple's hardware is, in the main, very good quality, and their products
overall tend to be well engineered, and typically do "what they say on
the tin". We've a dual-PPC mac and a mac mini here, and I had a really
old colour mac which recently had to be disposed of due to water damage,
all of which are well-built and well-conceived devices.
For me, the iPhone is the exception, though - it's data performance is
always going to be awful compared with 3G devices; why Apple would
release something based on 10 year old technology is hard to understand,
but perhaps the lack of 3G penetration in the US, and a very strong
US-market focus explain this. For the rest of the world, it's a
dinosaur machine, though.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
|
