Month: December 2005

Overzichten van post aan WebWereld geven een aardig kijkje in de breinen van internettende nederlanders.

In de zelfde categorie is door XS4All een opsomming gemaakt van de raarste vragen aan de helpdesk.

Allemaal goed voor een flinke lachbui. Maar ergens is het ook vreemd hoe mensen zulke domme, slordige vragen kunnen bedenken.

Ik denk dat op dit moment geen enkel bedrijf zo succesvol aan het groeien is als google. De bedrijfsstrategie van Google is dan ook duidelijk anders. Google neemt zijn medewerkers erg serieus, geeft zijn kenniswerkers de ruimte en het resultaat mag er zijn.
Dit weblog is van ex-google medewerkers en geeft een aardig kijkje in de keuken: http://xooglers.blogspot.com/

Meer algemeen over de manier waarop google werkt is dit een aardig artikel:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10296177/site/newsweek/

Zo, nu weten we hoe engineers tevreden blijven. De volgende stap is denk ik om een idee te vinden. Met dat idee dan vervolgens een bedrijf stichten waar we ook aardig zijn voor medewerkers. Dan is het nog maar een kleine stap op er ook miljonair mee te worden.

Thomas

Een aardige redenering over waarom Apple niet OS X ook voor Dell beschikbaar zou moeten maken:

It has become increasingly the case that Dell and Gateway computers have been using cheaper and cheaper components to undercut each other’s price points, and quality has suffered. Many recent news stories and articles on this topic have been published lately. Have you not been reading?

Windows is a system designed to be installed on any commodity PC and with proper drivers operate flawlessly. I personally have had great luck with Windows on many PCs because I am careful in selecting my hardware when I put together systems. Unfortunately I have seen it is more often the case that people buy preassembled systems that were designed to meet low price points and the systems are absolute trash. Windows is unstable and the users are typically unsatisfied.

In these cases Microsoft almost always gets the blame. *nix users love to make jokes about Windows instability and what have you, because as a general rule the stories they tell of blue screens and lost data are backed by hard numbers. And yet there is still a huge percentage of users that have rock solid systems running on Windows without any problems (without Viruses and Worms, even, though that’s an entirely different issue).

At some point you have to realize that when it comes to computers, sometimes you really do get what you pay for. That cheap CD-Burner is going to make coasters. That cheap sound card is going to hang and leave applications wihtout sound, or not allow different applications to share the sound device, this USB interface is going to interfere with that Parallel Port so you can either use your web-cam OR your printer, but not both (and sometimes your Sound Card or your Printer, but not both).

This all sounds like bullshit from MS-DOS days, but it’s quite true today. I have on many occassions found that while repairing someone’s practically brand new system that there really wasn’t much wrong with it except that they were attempting to do two things with their system at once that it just doesn’t like to do.

THESE are exactly the sorts of problems that Apple wants to keep tight control over.

"Why should they care?" people will ask.

They care because OS X is more stable than Windows. It functions more reliably, it does so with less complication and less knowledge required by the user. Apple does NOT want to add in the nightmare of universal hardware support and complicate things by trying to figure out what crap component some users added that made this or that program stop working unexpectedly.

If Apple can control the number of failure points in the OS, they can keep that reputation of being a more solid and easier to use/configure OS than Microsoft.

If they decide to open the floodgates of cheap hardware and 3rd party commodity system resellers, then they will simply turn into yet another *nix distributor, and take on all of the headaches that come with a huge sea of unsupported hardware. After all, Joe Sixpack would be pretty pissed if he buys a USB webcam that won’t work on the OS X system he bought from Dell/Gateway/Whoever. That would then reflect negatively on Apple.

You might say you’d rather have OS X on generic x86 haredware, but Apple doesn’t want the negative factors. They make OS X and you don’t. They win.

For now, there won’t be any official support for OS X on generic PCs. That isn’t stopping you from buying a copy of OS X and tricking in into installing, but when something doesn’t work right, don’t expect Apple to care. You are, after all, an unsupported user.