[clue-talk] The reason MS is winning against Linux?

[Nate Duehr]

Kevin Cullis wrote:
> You may not be aware but Express34 is PCI-X in a pc card. You want Model 
> T technology in a Dodge Viper car? ;-)

I don't need the fan-boy stuff.  I understand it's better technology. 
It's not just PCI-X, it's PCI-X and USB 2.0 busses directly taken out to 
a card.  Pretty smart idea really.

It makes sense if you're an OS manufacturer - you no longer have to 
support PCMCIA drivers... to the OS, one of these cards will just look 
like another device on either the PCI-X bus or the USB bus.  That makes 
perfect sense.

I also understand that it'll take a very large population of Mac users 
(the only people with this odd-ball standard card slot right now, and 
the card type was announced as "the next big thing for PCMCIA cards" for 
the PC world in late 2003) to make it economically viable for cellular 
carriers and others to make cards that will fit the machines.

I have a PCMCIA card for low-speed data on T-Mobile, and access to a 
high-speed card on Verizon.  I can't use either on a MacBook... simple 
as that.  I already own this hardware that works perfectly and certainly 
doesn't require PCI-X or USB 2.0 speeds to talk to it.

The ultimate solution would be a cellular device that plugs into the USB 
  or the Firewire that would work on the majority of platforms out 
there, but those haven't shown up on the market yet, either.

The other viable options would have been a phone that does Bluetooth 
data. The problem with that is, the fact that only two U.S. carriers 
support this right now, Verizon doesn't.  And the two carriers that do, 
haven't rolled out their high-speed data networks yet.

Verizon cripples their phones' bluetooth profiles so the phones can't 
(easily or normally without hacking around on the phones) be used for 
data.  They make one PDA phone they don't do this to, but if you're 
carrying a laptop, who needs a PDA?)

The other carriers haven't rolled out wireless high-speed yet, and no 
one knows if they'll have enough of a clue to allow Bluetooth tethering...

The market will shake it out... all I'm saying is that Apple made one of 
the only reasons for having a PC slot on these machines useless for a while.

It will be interesting to see what kinds of cards, if any (ever), show 
up...  The machines already have Firewire, USB 2.0, and Gig Ethernet... 
so no need for Express34 cards for those functions.  Once you have all 
those, the PCMCIA slot really only got used for a few other things... 
mainly, mobile data connectivity!  Apple didn't pay attention to what 
people were using the card slot for.

So for me anyway, the MacBook is probably a non-starter... they screwed 
up.  I'll wait for Version 2, or I'll go buy a nice PowerPC PB before 
they're all gone... since it'll probably be a while until Apple fixes 
any of the above.

The exhuberance about their stock is a little too soon, I think.  They 
have some screwups to fix... at least for mobile professional use of the 
laptop, and that's their #1 market for these.

To try to keep this on-topic... the folks worrying that Apple is now a 
competitor to Linux on the desktop -- are right.  Linux (I've always 
said this), has to do something better with standard features, or offer 
a desktop feature that no one else has to capture the market.  Linux can 
barely create a usable "modern" desktop in KDE, so I don't think this is 
the year of "Linux on the desktop" for any of the masses.  There will 
still be limited deployment on hardware intended to be locked down in 
business (call centers, etc.) and of course, geeks and developers like 
all of us (heh... sorry) will continue to use it...

But people looking for a Microsoft alternative are going to get sucked 
into Apple... and I can't blame them, they've been working hard to make 
the end-user experience a good one.  Linux certainly hasn't... other 
than distros like Linspire and Ubuntu.

I love Linux, but using at as a desktop is just not something I really 
"enjoy" yet.  I still do it with dual-boots and what not, and my 
PC-based laptop will always have Linux on it... but I could easily 
switch over to a Mac and just continue to use Linux for the servers, 
without skipping much of a beat... and I'd have commercial software 
available for various things also, and no need to dual-boot.  It's a 
pretty nice mix.

But unless I get a really wild-hair -- I probably won't be an 
early-adopter on the MacBook... it's missing the slot, and I need the 
slot.  Apple's mistake.

Nate
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