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by Raphael_Amiard
6050 days ago
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I don't agree at all with Gruber on this one. It seems in fact that software manufacturers, and for good reasons, are taking more and more control into how hardware is designed. And that is a good thing because hardware ought to be designed for the software, not the other way around. But it doesn't mean that what we need is more monolithic entities like apple. The fact that hardware and software is at least somewhat decoupled is a VERY good thing in my opinion. What google is doing with android is interresting in this regard, and i wonder if their strategy with Chrome OS is gonna be similar; they release an OS (open-source, and this is quite important in the end), do the usual strategy of partnership with hardware manufacturers, and in the end , also decides to produce their own smartphone. It's an harder path cause your partners are your opponents at the same time (something apple for example, hasn't to deal with concerning OS X). But for the user it's clearly the best path : You have the freedom of using the software as you want (!= Apple) and you can also buy a proprietary solution that supposedly offers a better synergy between software and hardware |
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I don't see Intel, (ok easy example) or any other hardware manufacturer dying anytime soon.
I don't think that, when the author said PC makers are "busy dying" that he meant that they're necessarily on a direct trajectory towards bankruptcy. I took it in the softer, more poetic sense that they're listless, apathetic, lacking in the proud vigor and vibrancy of their youth. This was captured best when he said this:
People today still love HP calculators made 30 or even 40 years ago. Has HP made anything this decade that anyone will remember fondly even five years from now?
I agree with you that hardware and software decoupling is a very good thing. I also do not see this as being mutually exclusive to what Gruber is suggesting. If Dell wanted to invest in being a player in user experience, there's no reason that they would have to tie their system software to their hardware.
The biggest flaw that I see in Gruber's article is that he might be overestimating consumers themselves. Sure, the computer industry is different from the days when you tried to sneakernet a 1-2-3 file to a friend's machine only to find that he was running Visicalc on CP/M. But will consumers accept this change without knowing what an open standard is, or a document format, or a portable runtime, or cross-compling, or virtual machines?
I'd guess not, given that I've talked to seasoned geeks who haven't yet fully internalized that things are different today. Consumers, recoiling from the fear of "incompatibility", all happily ran to one side of the boat in the 90s and nearly capsized it. Teaching them that diversity doesn't have to mean incompatibility seems like a daunting task.