Top 10 Disappointing Technologies 682
Slatterz writes "Every once in a while, a product comes along that everyone from the executives to the analysts to even the crusty old reporters thinks will change the IT world. Sadly, they are often misguided. This article lists some of the top ten technology disappointments that failed to change the world, from the ludicrously priced Apple Lisa, to voice recognition, to Intel's ill-fated Itanium chip, and virtual reality, this article lists some of the top ten technology disappointments that failed to change the world." But wait! Don't give up too quickly on the Itanium, says the Register.
What about the CueCat?! (Score:3, Funny)
I've got some barcodes that need scanning!
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:5, Informative)
CueCat had a lot riding on it and lots of fairly high profile partners. Perhaps if it wasn't in the retarded shape of a big plastic cat it might have taken off.
But what's this about the "ludicrously priced Apple Lisa"? Sure it was $10,000 in 1983, but it wasn't targeted to home users. The only other graphical computing package available at the time, the VisIon hardware/software kit from the makers of VisiCalc, the killer app spreadsheet, was less impressive and just as expensive.
"the base VisiOn software and a mouse cost $790, each application cost between $250 and $400, and it required a $5000 hard drive upgrade on top of a $2000 PC"
It was not hard to price a $10,000 PC in the mid-80s simply by adding a little RAM and a hard drive. The Lisa pioneered a new class of hardware at a reasonable cost compared to its newness and the competition.
Apple's Lisa also invented the Office desktop suite, which was bundled into its price. If you wanted an integrated suite of Office software, you'd have to wait out the 80s for another seven years before Microsoft could reassemble its own Office suite for the Macintosh, and then later Windows.
Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:5, Interesting)
The Lisa could also be used for Macintosh development.
During this time I had been designing without programming. I had a Macintosh but no development system for the Mac. In those days, the only way to develop serious Macintosh programs was on a Lisa computer. I had ordered a Lisa from Apple in May, 1984, but I did not receive the machine until August 1. So I spent the first three months of the project doing "paper design."
Without a development system, all I could do was read the manuals, study my references, and write proposals. As it happens, this can be a good thing...If it does not go on for too long. Too many games are hacked together at the keyboard rather than designed from the ground up. In this case, however, three months of paper design was too long because during the process I needed to test some ideas on the computer before I could proceed with other aspects of the design. It was with great relief that I took delivery of my Lisa and set to work on learning the system.
Chris Crawford BALANCE OF POWER International Politics as the Ultimate Global Game [erasmatazz.com]
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:5, Insightful)
CueCat had a lot riding on it and lots of fairly high profile partners. Perhaps if it wasn't in the retarded shape of a big plastic cat it might have taken off.
Perhaps if it wasn't a solution in search of a problem it might have taken off.
There, fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But what's this about the "ludicrously priced Apple Lisa"? Sure it was $10,000 in 1983, but it wasn't targeted to home users. Apple's Lisa also invented the Office desktop suite, which was bundled into its price.
The original Lisa had a 5 mHz 68000 series CPU, 1 MB of RAM and two Apple FileWare 871 KB 5 1/2" floppy disk drives.
It was not - let us say - the most responsive system Apple ever built.
A significant impediment to third-party software on the Lisa was the fact that, when first launched, the Lisa Off
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I guess it can't stop you from typing, but at least it will prevent you from talking.
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, MS Works does not count as a graphical Office suite because:
* it wasn't graphical until Windows arrived (unless you count colored DOS text as graphical) in the early 90s (nobody used it before then, and please don't revise history to suggest they did)
* nor was it a suite. It was an integrated app that did different tasks, like 1984's AppleWorks, at least through version 4.5 in 1995, a half decade AFTER Office arrived for the Mac.
In other words, MS Works was an AppleWorks clone.
MS Office recreated Lisa Office.
See a parallel there? Both were several years behind. AppleWorks outsold Works, and Apple forced MS to stop advertising that its Works was the top seller.
Had Apple continued to develop its own Lisa Office apps for the Mac rather than bending to third party developer pressure to leave the market open for them, Apple would never have needed to partner with Microsoft to ship its failed DOS apps for the Mac as graphical apps. Microsoft would not have been able to rip off the Mac, Bill Gates could not have used exclusivity Excel for Mac as a bargaining chip for obtaining a free license to Mac IP from Apple CEO John Sculley, and Microsoft would have fizzled out as a DOS vendor in the shadow of OS/2, without an application suite of Mac apps it could port to the PC to launch Windows.
But Apple bowed to its third party developers, Microsoft screwed the company over, and then killed off its own DOS third party developers (Lotus, Word Perfect, ect) and ended up as the company with a lock on both the PC operating system and the PC Office market.
If only this had come out in a month from now! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Back to TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
The worst bit was when they said
Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu and have it running on a home system. But unless a major manufacturer starts preinstalling it it's going to be confined to the Linux enthusiast and the hobbyist market.
Is Dell not a major manufacturer? This seems like pure flamebait, or perhaps just extremely ignorant journalism.
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well... Stupid as the CueCat was, I finally found use for it years latter. For the price (free), it's a workable barcode scanner with just a little bit of coding.
http://linux.wareseeker.com/Internet/cueact-0.1.1.zip/318832 [wareseeker.com]
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=cuecat [freshmeat.net]
http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2007/03/06/1815618.aspx [msdn.com]
Now if I could just find a use for all those damn AOL CDs in the attic.
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:5, Funny)
CD FIGHT!!! Seriously it's a lot of fun as long as nobody minds a few scratches. Back, oh god, 10 years ago a friend of mine interned at Microsoft and was on their developer network. If Microsoft made a CD for distribution anywhere in the world, any version, he got it. He had 300+ by year's end. We had about 15 guys in the dorm hucking CD's down the hall and stairwells. Everybody still had the correct number of eyes and nobody needed stitches, just a couple bandaids. And what else are you going to do with Windows 98 OSR 50.2.4.6.A-4 in Swahili?
VR (Score:5, Interesting)
I honestly think if the VR headgear had been less expensive back in the 90's, VRML would have been a LOT more mainstream; I used some of the better goggles, with (IIRC) 480x480 elements, and they rocked. Bulky, uncomfortable, HEAVY, but cool & useful as hell.
Off Topic: Can anyone tell me what I can do to get back the "you have 3 replies to your last post" info at the top of my /. page? I thought I had just been particularly un-interesting until I checked my email notifications.
Re:VR (Score:5, Insightful)
The current 3D MMORPGs are virtual realities.... Millions of people spend the majority of their time in these virtual worlds. Just because they don't wear bulky helmets they're disqualified?
The article is a bit misguided on some of it's top 10 choices.
Re:VR (Score:5, Informative)
I do actually think that current MMORPGs should not be considered VR.
VR was never about creating a persistent virtual world populated by masses of real people, it's all about the sensory experience. The technology aims to replace all perception of the real world with the virtual, and make the user's interaction with the computer as close to interacting with the real world as possible. If the user is alone in the Virtual Reality or not doesn't matter, nor if there is any persistence between each session.
"Cyberspace" is the combination of Virtual Reality with a persistent, populated Virtual World, but just because MMORPGs are approaching that concept from one direction, it does not mean that they are VR.
Itanium? (Score:4, Informative)
Technologies vs products (Score:5, Interesting)
And for fucks sake, can we please stop beating on 10+ year old technology? I'm sick of hearing retards go on and on about Apple Lisa, Microsoft Bob and a bunch of morons who have to make a 640k joke because they don't understand anything more than that. These are the same asshats who've probably never even touched a machine with less than 128 megs of ram.
Re:Technologies vs products (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Technologies which haven't yet and may never live up to their promise:
2)Good products which failed to break into the market:
3) Products which should have never seen the light of day.
Re:Raymond begging the question much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also it's wrong anyway.. Firsly, if you decentralise too much the communication issues between developers mean that you get fragmentation, and most of the work ends up never being used because nobody ever hears of it. Secondly you can't even really do it - there will always be one definitive release, with a set of core developers. For most projects that's basically as far as it ever goes - despite intentions few people have the time to devote to a project, so most (I expect nearly all) opensource porjects whilst being theoretically decentralised are really only one tree with 3 or 4 people maximum committing to it. The linux kernel is the exception to this somewhat, but it can't be used as a general model.
In the corporate world of course decentralisation makes no sense (tracking,auditing and access control is *important* to a company and you can't have people going off and doing their own thing). So in no way is decentralisation 'inherently superior' - it depends on your circumstances.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Utter bullshit.
What most distros do is just collect together applications and make it as seamless as they can to install them. Development is spread over a pile of different applications that ultimately end up in every distribution if they are good enough. I think the confusion above comes from
Palm (Score:5, Interesting)
At one point, I could write Palm better than block letters. I remember one class where I forgot my Palm. I took notes on a piece of paper. When I got home, I noticed that I had written in Palm!
Anyway, Palm is now a could-have-been. Lost out to Smartphones I guess...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Bluetooth? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's only now that Bluetooth is getting to be useful, and only then in very limited terms. Sure, it allows people to walk around babbling into headsets, but it could have been so much more.
Umm....the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii make major use of Bluetooth technology. In fact those are the only devices I own that I use Bluetooth for.
I wouldn't say the Bluetooth being in the Dualshock 3 and Wiimote is a disappointment at all for both the creators and consumers of the technology.
Even if Bluetooth is underperforming based on its technological potential is it really one of the 10 most disappointing technologies currently?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Bluetooth is on the list because it's been around for years and you still can't get decent support for stereo headsets or other simple connections to work. It's been underwhelming.
Re:Bluetooth? (Score:4, Informative)
Bluetooth is on the list because it's been around for years and you still can't get decent support for stereo headsets or other simple connections to work.
Get a proper phone.
This stuff has worked for *years*. Bluetoothing files between phones and PCs is a staple of a lot of people around here (I used to participate, but it gets a bit dull when you've had the 50th 'welcome to the gay hotline' ringone sent to your phone).
Re:Bluetooth? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard for telcos to figure out how to charge you for it, so they cripple the phone instead.
Apple Lisa?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not following them on that one, and they have the chronology completely wrong. Jobs, in particular, knew the Lisa was DOA and knew that the Mac was the way of the future for the company, and pulled people off it all the time to work on the Mac. They are right, in that the Lisa was a very nice machine (I wanted to get my father one to replace his typewriter a few years ago - he needed and wanted no more - instead he wound up with a $299 Officemax Dell shitbox that still barely functions from day to day) but I think it certainly doesn't deserve a Top 10 list. It wasn't a big enough deal to matter. I would have put the Newton on there before the Lisa.
Brett
Failed Product != Failed Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Firewire (Score:5, Informative)
"Outside of a few models of high-end video cameras, FireWire isn't seen much these days."
How about audio applications? If you want an audio interface for your laptop, you're almost always better off buying a Firewire model than a USB one; but also for many desktop applications Firewire can fit the bill over PCI/PCI-E. Plenty of the audio gear companies (M-Audio, RME, MOTU, Tascam) of course are still putting out new models using Firewire now and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Re: Firewire (Score:4, Interesting)
How about audio applications? If you want an audio interface for your laptop, you're almost always better off buying a Firewire model than a USB one; but also for many desktop applications Firewire can fit the bill over PCI/PCI-E. Plenty of the audio gear companies (M-Audio, RME, MOTU, Tascam) of course are still putting out new models using Firewire now and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
I like Firewire and especially as of a few years ago, it's (finally) ubiquitously included with decent PCs/System boards and pretty much every Mac.
However, I'm concerned about the future of it. When Apple did not include FW ports on their Macbooks several months ago, I wondered what this meant for Firewire. They also didn't include them on the Air.
Firewire is Apple's brainchild and they've been pushing it for a decade, but what was the motivation for this? I like to think maybe it was to entice people to purchase the Macbook Pro (which still has FW800 ports) -- No, actually I don't like to think that -- but at least it isn't the other potential reason: The end of Firewire.
Re:Firewire (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Firewire (Score:4, Insightful)
I was in full agreement with all the items they brought up until I got to firewire. You could tell the author has had little or no exposure to it. It's only major downfall if you want to call it that, is that very few windows pcs come with it by default. For the people that can use it, it's very handy for streamed raw video, high speed data transfer, and occasionally in unexpected places like networking and scanners.
Calling USB the "firewire killer" is almost laughable. I ran some tests recently on drive IO speeds on a variety of interfaces here, including IDE, SATA, firewire 400, firewire 800, and watched firewire 400 drill USB480 into the ground on a consistent basis. Insert a hub (since USB is not chainable) and the speed gets butchered even worse. Considering that (for whatever silly reason) windows pcs don't come with it and have such a large market share, and manufacturers are still making products that use firewire as an option or the only interface, there's obviously an advantage to it over USB.
Since there is currently no video-over-usb standard, all sorts of bad things result from a usb only camcorder. USB is not designed to be peer-to-peer, it's peer-to-host, and that severely limits its application and what works naturally with it. I don't even see why the author made a blanket comparison between the two, since mass storage is the only use they really share. Though nowadays high end scanners can use USB480 which is a good thing.
Macintosh was not a replacement for Lisa (Score:5, Informative)
Neat way to sum it up, but not accurate. Macintosh was nearly finished while Apple was still pushing the Lisa, and Jef Raskin's original concept for the Mac pre-dated the Lisa.
Of course, once Jobs got his mitts on it, he completely changed it from Raskin's vision, eventually provoking Raskin to quit Apple.
Re:Macintosh was not a replacement for Lisa (Score:4, Funny)
Flamebait!? How? This is documented on Folklore.org among other places.
Fucking crackhead mods, you're ruining Slashdot!
I'm going back to posting anonymously. :P
Real Top 10 (Score:5, Insightful)
There are much greater fails. Fails of such epic magnitude their ripples are easily confused with the tides on the ocean of technology:
10. Floptical storage. Great stuff if you want to lose data.
9. DIVX DVDs. The ones that you could only buy at Circuit City.
8. VRML. Virtual reality is still around. But VRML was an abortion.
7. CueCat. The epic fail that made Slashdot famous.
6.iOpener. What happens when you try to sell a blade free razor using the razor blade model.
5. The Apple Pippen. You've never seen it, it's that bad.
4. Windows ME. Awful, bad, hideous don't describe this one.
3. Chandler. Mitch Kapor's been a part of lots of great things, but Chandler is the PIM we'd all like to forget.
2. MS Bob. Any top 10 tech failure list without it is not credible.
1. Windows Vista. One would think ME would have taught Redmond a lesson.
Bubble Memory (Score:5, Interesting)
Top so far (Score:5, Insightful)
The close second, if we include transportation are (antigrav) flying cars, of course.
Slow adoption rate designates failure? (Score:5, Interesting)
The best line (Score:4, Insightful)
What is wrong is expecting businesses to pay for something they don't need.
That line can be used in many places at many times for many sides of an argument. It's my favorite argument for staying with Windows XP and Office 2003.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
10GB ethernet will happen.
8 years ago I thought a 128kb bonded ISDN line was fast. Now 8mb is considered normal - a 64x speed increase. Fast forward another 8 years and you're talking about your raw internet speed being about half a gig (maybe even faster.. I should be on 100mb by the end of the year). It goes without saying a lot of that will be taken up with video and large files which will need to be transferred. Gigabit ethernet will creak under that kind of load.
Failed Technologies: All RISC Chips (Score:5, Interesting)
I literally cannot buy a non-x86 desktop or laptop even if I paid $5000.
In the early 1970s, who could have guessed that the great-great-great-grandson of the 4004 would dominate 100% of the desktop market and a sizeable chunk of the rest of the computing market?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Combining Linux with Wine, ReactOS and qemu is the basis of a Wintel killer.
The platform? LUK [wikipedia.org] on Loongson [wikipedia.org].
Perhaps no match for Nehalem based desktops but a challenger for the Netbook market. A platform that runs Windows applications via seamless x86-->MIPS translation. Intel and MS may struggle to match the price point, which is good for consumers because Intel with be forced to considerably beef up the performance of Atom, to compete on value. (Not to mention multi-core AR
Weird choice (Score:5, Insightful)
They did not mention DRM? What the hell?
Also this quote about Ubuntu:
Maybe it was just the overenthusiastic marketing or the fanboys who swarmed to the system but Ubuntu really was supposed to change everything, where as the operating system landscape looks very much the same these days.
It did lower the price of XP for netbooks down to a few dollars though... In a way, desktop Linux made netbooks possible - otherwise Microsoft wouldn't lower the price of their system enough for this class of machines to become viable.
Uh, what about the SEGWAY???? (Score:5, Funny)
Talk about the most ridiculously overhyped invention in recent memory...for a damn scooter.
Can't do better than this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of the products, like FireWire, are in widespread use, although maybe not for consumers. I used to work in broadcast; we had a ton of FireWire equipment where I worked.
Itanium, similarly, has a place in certain markets. If you have an HPUX or VMS shop (like lots of government agencies), you're buying Itaniums. I know that Navy and Coast Guard have quite a few Itanium systems in production.
As for Vista, after three years of use, I am very impressed. The only major issue I've had was with the audio/network performance present in the RTM build. Only bluescreen I've had during that time was due to a stick of RAM that'd gone bad. I can't say the same about 95, 98, NT4, 2K, or XP. And it's poor short-term memory on most people's part; XP was a steaming pile when it was released. The shop where I was working didn't start adopting XP over 2k until SP2 came out. People just have forgotten how bad it was, because after several years, it became a stable product. Vista was far better at release.
Similarly, I've been very impressed with 2008 Server. Am in the process of implementing it throughout an enterprise, and haven't encountered any major difficulties. /UAC is annoying, though
Push (Score:4, Insightful)
PointCast anyone?
my friend... (Score:5, Funny)
My friend, Duke, just read the article, and man is he pissed.
Bah! Another list... (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the 432? (Score:4, Interesting)
No list of tech disappointments could be complete with the Intel 432 [wikipedia.org]. Object oriented machine code and hardware-assisted garbage collection - what's not to love?
Top 10 technologies the author doesn't use (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, that's a more accurate title.
My "most disappointing" list (Score:3, Interesting)
Since the article is almost completely pointless (it could've been written at any point in the last decade, almost), here's my list.
1) The Linux kernel. Yes, I use linux almost exclusively these days, but what the fuck happened to the quality since 2.6 came out? ext3 performance issues, CFQ and general i/o issues (I could do things on my 550MHz athlon w/ 256M - with respect to concurrency of tasks - that made my 1.2GHz, 512M system grind to a halt); VM priority; potential libata problems with PATA disks; breaking and shipping a new version with broken drivers (acpi) or architectures (PCMCIA/bluetooth) when it worked previously, just because the architecture was being re-written to make it 'work better'. "Leave it to the distro packagers to fix".
2) Ubuntu. It has a lot of promise, but once you scratch the candy coating, you can see the rust underneath due to hasty product development. Part of this is due to #1, but the rest is due to simple negligence. There is absolutely no reason for basic SMB/CIFS filesharing to be fundamentally broken in a distro indefinitely; and there is no sane reason why a bug that's been fixed upstream should not be in a new distro release months after the bug has been fixed.
3) Xorg. I remember when it forked from XFree86 and thought "good, maybe they can improve it". It's being improved, but damn is it taking a while. I imagine an alternative could've been written in the time they've taken to get this far, with the ability to run Xnest (and still have all the features of today). Why is X taking almost a gig of memory?
4) "netbooks". I know they've only been out for a couple years now in any concrete form, and that they're "wildly" popular, but they're selling something which doesn't take advantage of what was learned 7-9 years ago when "HPC" computers were around. There were certain features which were almost a sure-thing sell: long battery life, decent display readability, touchscreen, and a usable keyboard. Current netbooks are awkward and lacking in all of these points.
5) ARM processors/SBC/SoC as offered to the 'consumer'. This directly, somewhat, relates to #4. In the last 3-5 years, their prices have gone up - but with no substantial improvement in their specs. Yes, you can get a SoC with a 400MHz ARM CPU and 512M and host USB and SATA, but it'll cost you over $400 to do so. And really, for the cost of a 200MHz non-Intel SoC, running at ~130-250MHz with 32-64Mb, it'll still cost more than an entire Atom system (WindPC).
6) Intel Atom. 40W power use with the Intel chipset, and (until just now, basically) you were limited to the Intel chipset. That's horribly self-defeating, making them only desirable on price.
7) "Smartphones". If they're so damn smart, why can't I use them to their full potential? Most of them have some awesome hardware, yet we're restricted to the horrid software stacks on them (Apple included). Why no host mini-USB? I can't wait for MS to release a WinMo phone, because at least then things would (hopefully) get stirred up a bit.
8) Anti-spam filtering. It's still a huge up-hill battle to try and deal with it, and there isn't a solution in sight.
9) SSD storage, and rotation-free storage in general. It is not living up to expectations or promises, never mind the crystal storage methods mentioned almost a decade ago that got some really nice density.
10) Duke Nukem Forever. Let's face it: everyone wanted to at least see if it'd be as fun as Duke3D.
If Sony executives had wrote this list (Score:5, Funny)
Bluetooth and Firewire? Whaaaat? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bluetooth has always worked great for me. For the last 7 or 8 years I've used it to sync contact/calendar data between my Mac and whatever mobile phone I've had (I'm still an iPhone holdout). Plus I use it for file transfers between the computer and phone, and to tether to the phone to use its WWAN connection.
And I'm a huge fan of Firewire and hate that it lost out to USB. Firewire is a lot more versatile and was designed that way from the start (comes in damned handy as a network port between two Macs sometimes, because you can run TCP/IP over it). USB was never supposed to be much more than a new connection for keyboards and mice, and now they're shoehorning other capabilities into it that it was never designed for-- which IMHO never leads to good things. This line from the article particularly annoyed me: "I know of at least three people who purchased shiny new portable video recorders and were stuffed when they realised they'd have to upgrade their systems to support FireWire." Oh, noes! They have to spend a few bucks on a PCI card! The horror!!!! Seriously? Is this a real gripe? I mean, the cheapest Firewire card at NewEgg costs $6. A really good one will only set you back $40 or so.
~Philly
Who writes up these lists? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ten real disappointing technologies (Score:4, Insightful)
Not products, technologies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe, maybe not.
However, I think that Ubuntu's a bit too young to call it a 'flop.' The project still has plenty of forward momentum behind it.
That it's the most popular Linux to date is certainly a feat, and major manufacturers have adopted it (albeit in limited circumstances). It may not have changed everything, though it did give things an enormous shove in the right direction. Currently, my eyes are on OpenOffice to clean up its act, or for a new competitor to emerge. The OS itself is no longer the limiting factor.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I think that Ubuntu's a bit too young to call it a 'flop.'
Who's calling it a "flop?" The reason for quoting a word is because you're indicating that someone else said it. It's a disappointment, not a flop. It may still do great things, but before and just immediately after it was released, to hear a user talking about it you would have thought it was God's own OS.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only go by my own experience regarding Ubuntu. Every new version of Ubuntu Studio goes on a machine in my media production suite just for that purpose. And every version falls short of being able to do any meaningful media production work. As long as "jack" is my only choice for an audio platform, I'll never be able to replace my Windows and Mac machines. In fact, I can do more actual media production on an old BeOS machine than I can on a Linux machine using current hardware.
I will say this: The ReaMote technology that Cockos Reaper DAW software has allows me to use that Linux machine to offload some of my more resource-intensive processes, such as rendering, sample streaming or real-time effects processing. This makes the Ubuntu box extremely useful. This is why I do my best to support Cockos financially and in other ways. I really want to see more professional media production software companies develop for Linux. Someday soon, I hope to be able to have an all-Linux production facility, but for now, I'm disappointed that this area has been so badly neglected. And I know the money's there, because companies that develop DAW and video editing software for Windows and Mac OS are doing OK.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your final point is the key thing here. The OS is no longer the limiting factor.
The limiting factor is that the linux ecosystem is just not complete enough for a lot of users (accounting software, games, application specific software of so many types), and running a windows VM is mostly pointless if all you do is run windows apps (good for winding back, snapshots, image management etc).
Other thing that is not mentioned enough. Lots of users have struggled for years to accumulate just enough know-how to just get by with Windows. They simply are resistant to having to learn anything new. Total change fatigue dominates the user experience. Think how immense the effort Apple has put in and how long it's taking to win new customers, and it has a far superior ecosystem to Linux in the desktop world.
The great advantage in the server market is that the people making decisions have a clue, so you see Linux win on technical merit, and do very well indeed.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft products got where they are now on the back of tech folks copying them and using them at home. Those tech folks then took to helping friends and family by installing those same products for them. Nowadays, as MS becomes better and better at locking down their products with DRM and more and more tech folk start coming to grips with linux you will find that this will eventually trickle down to the non tech users.
Personally, I sick and tired of fixing malware infestations for my relatives. These days I just stick dual boot ubuntu on their PC's, show them how it works and tell them they can use the non infested ubuntu or their old broken Windows. It's their choice. So far most people are quite happy as long as they don't want to run games, which mostly they don't.
Most of them just want to browse the web, send emails and write simple documents and you don't need windows for that.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
I love Linux, but sadly I agree with him.
I don't.
"While Linux has definitely caught on in the enterprise server and database market, the open-source OS has never really been able to move into the greater market."
You have to draw the line before you can cross is. KIA's not the first brand that comes to mind when citing car manufacturers that are prevalent in the United States, like Ford or Dodge or Mitsubishi, but it certainly exists and will continue to exist.
"Those who do use Linux as the primary OS for their home or work PC are still by and large tech-savvy users who comprise what used to be known as the 'hobbyist' market. The larger end-user crowd has not been able to warm up to Linux."
The large end market, no. Users who are not tech-savvy, yes.
"Ubuntu was supposed to change that. When the OS was launched, I remember all of my Linux-advocate friends predicting that this would be the product to make the jump and challenge Microsoft in the consumer and workstation spaces. Nearly five years after its release, Ubuntu remains popular amongst Linux users, but has yet to really pick up any sort of real momentum in the greater desktop OS market."
Number one on Distrowatch, Dell, System 76, massive consumer backing, fanatical support, extremely active development, et cetera...
"Yes, getting rave reviews from the Linux community is nice, but get back to me when the housewives and pensioners, not just the IT pros and college students, start dumping Windows for Ubuntu."
How can we know that housewives and pensioners aren't using it?
"But the more he explained his position the more I came to agree. Maybe it was just the overenthusiastic marketing or the fanboys who swarmed to the system but Ubuntu really was supposed to change everything, where as the operating system landscape looks very much the same these days."
Overthrowing Microsoft would have been nice but it doesn't have to go down to change anything. It's easy to think nothing's changed but under the waters the change really is there to behold.
"Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu and have it running on a home system. But unless a major manufacturer starts preinstalling it it's going to be confined to the Linux enthusiast and the hobbyist market."
Dell.
From wikipedia...
Total assets US$ 27.561 billion (2008)[1]
Not major enough?
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
I love Linux, but sadly I agree with him.
The most intractable problem for Linux as a client OS is that it arrived too late.
The mass market desktop in 2009 runs 64 bit Vista Home Premium on a quad core CPU with 4 to 8 GB RAM.
The geek will rant -
but this is fundamentally a very solid platform on which to build.
The budget dual core Atom netbook with Win 7 and ION graphics is just down the road. The form factor is attractive, the price is right - and you can even play games.
If UNIX is more to your taste and you want a mature and standardized GUI, than Apple has you covered.
It's tough to find any breathing room here.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you didn't (try to) use linux on the desktop before Ubuntu.
The author (in GP post) talks as if Ubuntu IS Linux.
Ubuntu is just the best desktop Linux so far. By a long shot And I've tried a LOT of desktop linux distributions, and been using linux on the desktop as my primary OS (outside of gaming) for 10+ years.
It's sad that such a great movement in the direction of good desktop linux is being broadly painted as a disappointment. When you hear Ubuntu talked up its because its the best linux yet, not because it's going to overnight put Microsoft out of business and convince everyone to use free software and open formats.
Must be an Australian thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Is he just complaining that Dell doesn't offer the same Ubuntu packages that it offers in the United States [dell.com]?
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, are they wrong? Ubuntu really has remained for Linux hobbyists. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it is, for the most part.
Brett
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But did anyone promise that ubuntu would kill off MS or something? Has it actually failed to deliver?
Because from where I'm sitting Ubuntu is doing a great job of streamlining and simplifying linux. And it sure has had an impact on how a distro is expected to work these days. People even use the term "modern distro" to mean pretty much *buntu and Suse.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Funny)
But did anyone promise that ubuntu would kill off MS or something?
Ubuntu pretty much considers the fact that MS hasn't been killed off, or at least humbled, to be a bug [launchpad.net].
Promise? No, but they're trying.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
" The question is, are they wrong? Ubuntu really has remained for Linux hobbyists. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it is, for the most part."
Yes, yes they are. The article's name is "Top 10 most disappointing technologies". Maybe the marketshare of Ubuntu has somewhat lagged behind what people hoped for, Ubuntu's tech itself is great and its improvements from release to release are worth the pain of switching to a newer OS. The fact that MS is holding the market hostage with Windows(and it's gigantuan legacy heap) can hardly be described as a fault of Ubuntu.
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OS/2 and BeOS were also technically excellent, and only held back by Microsoft's dominance. I would consider their lack of success to be a disappointment.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Informative)
You should've read further, there's this hilarious bit:
You'd figure at least someone who likes Ubuntu and runs it themselves would have known that Dell has been offering systems with Ubuntu preinstalled for two years now.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dell has been offering systems with Ubuntu preinstalled for two years now.
Ya, and the incredible impact of this holy grail of Linux has been.......
That's what they should have put on this list :)
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sadly Linux COULD be a solution for many more people but they seem to be so used to Windows that they can't even figure out how to use something else.
Uh huh. Yet people happily figure out how to use Macs. Ok, well, maybe not happily. Why do they do it?
marketing and brand loyalty blindness
Bingo. When Ubuntu started up I really got the feeling that Shuttleworth got that it wasn't about technology... sure, an OS has to do a certain amount of "stuff" before people can use it, but that's the easy part. Getting people to try something new isn't about how great the new thing is, it's about style and bullshit. Using a Mac is no easier than using a PC.. in fact, the vast majority of people fin
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What won me over was the "just works" (especially sleeping the laptop, which linux may have improved with by now) combined with the terminal abilities. And as for the 300% price, when I bought my first MacBook it was the best value for the hardware with my student discount (not taking into account value of the OS and bundled iLife software). My current (refurbished) MacBook
MacOS is a good example (Score:3, Insightful)
Of a quote from "Mostly Harmless" the final book in the Hitchhiker's series:
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
This is the case with the "just works" mentality in MacOS. When things are as expected, yes everything and just work with no effort and it's cool. However when something goes haywire, the tools needed to find and f
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I'll give my classic example (still not fixed), in iTunes:
Insert a CD
It should "just work" and start ripping the CD, but it doesn't.
Look for an error message.. there is none.
Search the menus, look for a button, nope, there's no way to actually *tell* iTunes that you want it to rip the CD.
etc.
I've had similar experiences with wireless.
"Do you have wireless here?"
"Sure do."
"Umm.. I don't see it."
"Well, it's there, it's called NETGEAR."
"Yeah, it's not coming up. I'd tell you why, but when I click on the littl
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Fire up itunes, grab your collection of 200 CDs, now start building your library. If you have ever done this then you would have experienced the "Why the fuck won't this CD import?" problem.. you will also experience the "Why doesn't it name the tracks for this CD?" problem and at least three other problems that I've blocked out of my memory.
So, for that one, I think you're just being a fanboi. As for the wifi, yeah, maybe you haven't experienced the exact same thing as me. So what? The point of the dis
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well - in fairness, the other part of the problem is that Ubuntu (& Gnome) are not really designed for end users. They're built for how developers believe end-users should work - which is quite different. I don't mean that they're built for developers - rather their built for a developer's notion of what is a logical interaction.
Unfortunately, that often collides with real workflows in subtle but jarring ways. Look even at the desktop menu names ("Applications" "Places" and "System"). The reason that the Start menu has worked is because it gives users /one/ path to get to the things they want. Instead, using gnome/ubuntu, users are immediately faced with a choice - they have to categorize the task they want to do, before they can do it. Every single time, as they learn the system.
One issue among many that shows the disconnect.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you seriously suggesting that it's better for a user to have to click a button before being presented with essentially same choice?
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Replace Linux with Vista and you'll see its not just the Linux OS that is having the problem. People are very comfortable with what they have and don't WANT to change.
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Re:I stopped reading... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
I installed Ubuntu for the first time last year, and man, I was disappointed.
Right out of the box, so to speak, there were problems:
1. NVIDIA graphics card drivers weren't installed because they were proprietary. Come on. Even then, dragging windows around and typing into text boxes had a minor delay that didn't feel natural.
2. All websites looked different and ugly as sin, because the package didn't come with the fonts that every other system used. Come on!
3. Multi-monitor use was difficult to set up without having to alter configuration files ( though I do wish taskbars on multiple screens would come to Windows 7). Some things I found simply couldn't be done without writing scripts: setting up a hotkey to send a window to the other monitor, etc.
To resolve most of these issues, I had to navigate a bunch of forums and wiki help pages. I couldn't imagine trying to show my mom how to do that, for instance.
Ubuntu has a lot of strengths, and many of its features made me go "OOOO, cool!" But the Linux learning curve is freakishly steep. To do something of medium difficulty in Windows generally requires advanced console command knowledge in Ubuntu.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. NVIDIA graphics card drivers weren't installed because they were proprietary. Come on. Even then, dragging windows around and typing into text boxes had a minor delay that didn't feel natural.
Since when did Microsoft start shipping NVIDIA drivers with their Windows releases, anyways?
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1. NVIDIA graphics card drivers weren't installed because they were proprietary. Even then, dragging windows around and typing into text boxes had a minor delay that didn't feel natural.
To install the nVidia drivers you must accept an EULA. If it was automatically installed, you would have to accept an EULA to use Ubuntu at all. Clearly that is not acceptable, but it's a point-and-click install. At any rate, what kind of machine are you running??? With or without those drivers I have absolutely zero problems doing anything 2D. Just don't even think about running anything 3D or enabling desktop effects without acceleration, but I can't notice any lag at all.
2. All websites looked different and ugly as sin, because the package didn't come with the fonts that every other system used. Come on!
Believe it or not, fonts as in th
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I installed Ubuntu for the first time last year,
Did you install LTS 6.06 (Dapper Drake)? Or maybe this is a copy/paste from 2007? Gutsy and even Hardy solved these issues:
1. NVIDIA graphics card drivers weren't installed because they were proprietary. Come on. Even then, dragging windows around and typing into text boxes had a minor delay that didn't feel natural.
There's a little pop-up that says: click here to install proprietary nvidia/ati drivers. And it does it, unlike a windows machine where you have to go to nvidia/ati's website and jump through some hoops (hopefully you know what your graphics card is).
2. All websites looked different and ugly as sin, because the package didn't come with the fonts that every other system used. Come on!
I don't know what you're talking about. At all. Unless you're looking at geocities or angelfire.
3. Multi-monitor use was difficult to set up without having to alter configuration files ( though I do wish taskbars on multiple screens would come to Windows 7). Some things I found simply couldn't be done without writing scripts: setting up a hotkey to send a window to the other monitor, etc.
Totally clicky-pointy. I know for a
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Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on! proprietary driver issues are the fault of the hardware maker. Nvidia is the 5uXX0r when it comes to Linux support. Anyhow, since last year, Ubuntu auto installs proprietary drivers.
What would we say if Microsoft or Apple took that attitude?
I know for a fact both companies have people who's job it is to work with specific hardware vendors all day long resolving issues and making sure everything works perfectly.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Informative)
It depends on your viewpoint. Has Ubuntu saved the unwashed masses from the evil empire yet? Not really. On the other hand, I think it's safe to say that Ubuntu has become the overwhelmingly dominant distro of choice for just about any Linux use case that can be classified as "mainstream". After Red Hat kind of went astray, Mandrake went bye-bye, and Debian (brought into the limelight by Knoppix) decided that ideological purity was more important than being popular, there really WASN'T any distro that was an obvious choice to recommend by default to just about anyone interested in Linux. Gentoo? Good god. I've personally had hours of good clean & wholesome fun with it, but there's no way in *hell* I'd suggest it to my dad... or use it for anything meaningful at work in a context that could get me fired if things went disastrously wrong. Slackware? Yeah, you never forget your first... um... well, you know. But it's just a little more retro than I'd prefer now.
I'm still undecided as to whether i prefer Ubuntu or CentOS for servers, but for desktop use it's no contest whatsoever -- Ubuntu. That's not to say it's the best in every conceivable way... but it's good enough in enough ways. More importantly, it's the one distro with enough market inertia right now to have books dedicated to its specific details. Someone who's been building their own copy of KDE for 10 years probably doesn't need to know the exact directory paths on ${his-specific-distro}... but someone like... well... my dad *does* need to have it given to him in explicit detail. And frankly, even if I don't necessarily need click-by-click details anymore, having the examples in the book actually *work* DOES make things a lot nicer and more enjoyable. In fact, IMHO the "book advantage" *alone* is enough to recommend Ubuntu to just about everyone. When the day comes that they understand the Linux multiverse well enough to stray from the well-marked, illuminated and crowded path known as Ubuntu, they'll know it and be able to find their own way. Until then, Ubuntu.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Funny)
"Has Ubuntu saved the unwashed masses from the evil empire yet?"
The unwashed masses have been saved from the evil long time ago.
It is the people that wash that are still enslaved.
Re:Just as disappointing as... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, first post technology never really panned out. It is sometimes funny as a second post though, but the joke really is on the AC there.
Re:Nanotech, virtual reality... (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably by nanotechnology you mean molecular manufacturing.. and that should hardly be on that list because it hasn't happened yet. The list is about shit that happened but fizzed. If an assembler was created tomorrow (and it could happen if Merkle pulls his finger out) and the entire fucking materials world didn't change in under 12 months, I'd be entirely surprised and put it at #1 on this list.
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Agreed, it can drive you nuts when there's a regression , but for the most part, Ubuntu has been great. It's important to understand that there is a long term support version, and then all the other releases. If you want stability & reliability, stay with long term support. If you don't mind getting cut on the bleeding edge, then stay with the current version.
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You might be confusing with OLE...Pretty much the only people that ever used it seriously were Microsoft, and I don't think even they do it any more
Actually, it's the underlying foundation of the clipboard and drag/drop, among other things, so yes OLE is still very much alive. That said, I completely agree about the messy and unintuitive API when it was a new and magical thing, and when computers could just barely support pasting a spreadsheet inside a word document. If you want to see an example of an OLE-like concept that's more narrow in scope, but widely adopted, check out Steinberg's VST [wikipedia.org], which is used in many audio applications.
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I agree - the technology itself was fairly sound, especially in the later versions
The main issue were definitely market implementation:
1) Software stack - why were the basic stacks so buggy and counter-intuative. Most windows users had to pirate a third party stack to do anything usefull.
2) Price - I rarely saw anything bluetooth (even generic brands) for under A$100 (US$70) which is rip off for a wireless keyboard or mouse.
I daresay both of these were caused due to restrictive and expensive licensing sche