Re: Woz and Amelio start new company

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

sicklittlemonkey wrote:
> I'm not saying a 1.5 GHz GS wouldn't be fun. ;-) (Though some might say
> it would no longer be a GS if you added enough modern features ...)
>
> Rich asked why, so I gave an opinion. Like I said, I'm annoyed that
> Billy G dissed the $100 computer - I guess he feels threatened. Imagine
> what the developing world could do with cheap access to IT (and
> especially the knowledge sharing part of it) plus open source.

I'm sure there are two big issues, one technical and one economic.

The technical issue is that if someone besides Microsoft/Intel start
creating a new PC design center, then Microsoft will have to support
a platform that it didn't design.  Annoying, perhaps, but you can
see their engineering motivation.

The economic issue is the biggie, though--if a complete system costs
$100, then that's a lot smaller base price to get an OS royalty out of!

The PDA version of Windows was meant to plug this product positioning
hole, but it was dumbed down enough that it can't support a real browser
and apps (and if it could, it would be a problem for WinXP...).  So it
was positioned as an app-incompatible, data-compatible platform.

If the folks whose value-add was: hardware made hardware / software
wrote software / and content sold content, then we'd have an open,
competitive environment that most major manufacturers would betray
any principle to prevent.  ;-(

-michael

Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
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