More important, Apple partisans--and to some degree, the company itself--believe the public should care about things like pixel count, aspect ratio and data transfer rate. This compliments the public too much. When it comes to discerning quality, we're simpletons. Instead, corporate buyers and individuals just want to know how much their computer will cost and will they get busted if they make one or two copies of their software.
I'm not a knee-jerk Apple partisan (I think the performance of Macs trails the PC in many respects), but man, this article sucks. How many times do we hear that Apple sucks because it has a small market share? By the journalist's logic, BMW and Porche suck cause they don't have the market share like GM. Also, the public just full of "simpletons" who can't appreciate things like horsepower, power steering, leather seats, etc. and who only care about how much a car will cost. If we don't apply such thinking to cars, why do journalists always apply such logic to computers?
Microsoft and Intel understand this completely. Standards exist in the industry not because of a secret, evil conspiracy. They exist because, in many circumstances, conformity is more important than perfection. That's why the two companies, and the rest of the PC market, spend more time talking about price and availability than anything else.
Like I said, while I am not necessarily an Apple partisan, I am definitely a J2EE partisan who sees the benefits of open standards and Sun's motto of "agree on standards, compete on implementations." The article is confusing industry standards agreed upon by many with Microsoft's own proprietary standard. Microsoft does not conform to any standards--it has always taken standards agreed upon by the industry and "Microsoft-ed" them to make them run only on Windows. Think of J++, Direct X, Windows Media Player, Windows XP Media Center, and, of course, .net. The latter especially infuriates me--instead of making Windows more compatible with Java (the programming langauge of choice for web applications), Microsoft threw billions into developing .net and making it incompatible with Java. C# is essentially a Java clone that runs only on the .net platform. Microsoft has basically reinvented the wheel and is now pushing a "standard" (designed to jut Windows as the middleman in any form of computing) onto developers.
Look, Microsoft isn't some evil empire--it's just a company. And as a company with a dominant position in computing, it is throwing its resources at trying to maintain its dominance. I would do the same if I were them. However, people (especially journalists who loves to write about such things) need to recognize that Microsoft isn't producing innovative products, but producing products designed to lock users to the Windows platform. We as consumers need to use our buying power and support products and standards that won't trap us into buying from a single vendor.
Sorry for the rant, but articles like this are so damn formulaic: Apple has a miniscule market share, ergo, Apple just doesn't get it like us smart journalists. Retard.
