Apple uses Microsoft!

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: mormit
Not going to find DeltaV, Wonderware, or iFix for Mac. It's a mature and low volume market that I think Apple has little to no interest to break into. More selfies on the innernets than white papers. If you are manufacturing, you are using Windows maybe Linux.

The users typically do not see the operating system only the aministrators do.

I support pharmaceutical manufacturing and one of our older processes runs on 15year old hardware running Windows NT with an iFix user unterface. We've done preemptive hard drive replacements and changed out CD drives but otherwise an industrial PC can run 24/7 for a long time. We are currently building replacements from a business risk perspective. Obsolete 15yo hardware cannot run forever.



A lot of industrial robots run Windows 2000 on the front end (command response, interface to network, etc) too, but of course the motor control part is running RTOS or just some micro kernel.

There are always PC104 CPU boards you can run with any OS, but the custom IO boards are the hard ones to replace. I think the industry's migration to Ethernet and USB based system will make it much easier to future proof.

 

[Mystic]

According to reports Apple is going to start using the Microsoft Bing search engine instead of Google for desktop Macs at any rate.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
According to reports Apple is going to start using the Microsoft Bing search engine instead of Google for desktop Macs at any rate.


iOS and Mac OS's spotlight search feature will use Bing... The Safari browser will stick with Google. Either way, I guess they're tossing valuable traffic to a rival.

I am convinced, Mystic, that software developers measure their success by to what degree and for how long they can keep their users confused and/ or frustrated. I wonder if Microsoft and Apple are secretly owned by the makers of blood pressure medication.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
There are always PC104 CPU boards you can run with any OS,


And you can always run your toaster with NetBSD!

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
I wonder if Microsoft and Apple are secretly owned by the makers of blood pressure medication.

They sure do a good job keeping them in business anyway!

 

[Mystic]

I think Apple is concerned about privacy issues with Google. And I don't think there is any question that there are privacy concerns with Google. Google openly tracks the activities of its users so as to enable those users to be targeted by advertising. The companies doing the targeted advertising are paying money to Google.

But also Google is becoming a major competitor to Apple. So it gets back to the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

No matter what, in the end it is usually best to ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL! That is true with about anything. Why do people write malware? There are a few high school kids who do it for fun and to impress their peers but mostly malware is written FOR THE MONEY! And the same goes for everything else. Even if a corporation is trying to appear as the company of the people and all of that mumbo jumbo, in the end profits rule. In the end they are all capitalists, even if they go out of their way to celebrate the birthdays of revolutionaries. Behind whatever public face they are trying to present, they are all capitalists.

Google and Apple are two of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. Apple is either number one or at least was number one for a while I believe, passing Exxon/Mobil. Google has become extremely wealthy.

Apple made a lot of money selling expensive hardware and building equipment using cheap labor in China. And allegedly Apple keeps a very large amount of money in foreign banks.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
I think Apple is concerned about privacy issues with Google.


Apple could care less about your privacy. They track and retain information about their users as much or more than Google. Information about you is capital with considerable value.

I recall someone asking me once how Facebook made money. "What is the product they're selling?", he asked me. "YOU are the product!", I replied.

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Google openly tracks the activities of its users so as to enable those users to be targeted by advertising.


Off-topic; but I found out the other day that Google uses information about how fast Android phones with their GPS enabled are travelling along thoroughfares to help estimate driving times when you punch in a route from Point a to Point B in their Maps app/ web site... Clever, but also creepy!

Originally Posted By: Mystic
But also Google is becoming a major competitor to Apple.


Android phones handily out-sell iPhones already.

Originally Posted By: Mystic
In the end they are all capitalists, even if they go out of their way to celebrate the birthdays of revolutionaries. Behind whatever public face they are trying to present, they are all capitalists.


Thankfully there are many anarcho-commie Linux-based OS's out there that respect our freedom and privacy, eh?!

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Apple made a lot of money selling expensive hardware and building equipment using cheap labor in China. And allegedly Apple keeps a very large amount of money in foreign banks.


I wish more people knew and cared about that.

 

[Mystic]

But who is behind Ubantu Linux-isn't he one of the wealthiest guys in the world?

I was a very big fan of Apple for a long time. I used Apple Computers for a long time and I own an iMac right now. But I have become somewhat disillusioned with Apple as they have become one of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. Something valuable was lost along that path. And the big wheels at Apple either did not notice when that something was lost or they did not care. And losing that something special may in the end cost Apple dearly.

I care mostly about the USA but I do not like to see workers mistreated. I have some serious issues with how workers in Chinese manufacturing plants are treated. There are also serious accusations about things like child labor, etc. There are news reports about there being suicide nets around the Apple manufacturing plants. Manufacturing in China probably is plenty rough in general and it probably takes something for Chinese workers to be willing to commit suicide.

Like I said, I am mostly concerned about the USA. But I don't like seeing workers mistreated while a very small number of people get very, very rich. If anybody is willing to condemn the worker conditions in the early industrial age in the Western World they should also be willing to condemn the alleged mistreatment of workers in China. Just because those workers are in China does not mean I do not care. I am a pretty conservative guy but I care more about the human race in general than I am given credit for.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
But who is behind Ubantu Linux-isn't he one of the wealthiest guys in the world?


That's relative: Mark Shuttleworth made a **lot** of money selling Thawte, which is/ was one of a small handful of companies that basically underwrote SSL certificates. I think he was also the world's second space tourist.

Anyhow, he sunk a few million bucks into a trust for a for-profit company called Canonical that sponsors and sells support for Ubuntu. Ubuntu's source code is open-source and has spawned a whole lot of derivatives (Mint being the most notable) and is free both as in "no-cost" and as in "freedom" to modify and re-distribute. Some organizations and governments elect to purchase support contracts from Canonical. It should be noted that Ubuntu itself is a derivative of the Debian Linux distribution, which is a world-wide collective community of developers.

There is also a very successful company called Red Hat that makes it's (considerable) revenue supporting their own Linux-based OS (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). Like Ubuntu, the source code is open and anyone can therefore compile their own derivative of it.

In both of these situations (SuSE is a third example,and the last one I can think of), the companies are selling a service (support) rather than trading in capital (software as "owned" intellectual "property") since the concept of private "ownership" in the open-source world doesn't get far. The other commonality between these enterprises is a general lack of egregiously exploitative labour practices, which in turn removes the necessity for suicide prevention nets around labour compounds.

 

[Mystic]

SuSE is the Linux operating system I tried out on a CD. That was years ago. The major issue I personally have with Linux is that I can't get support for hardware and software that I need. But I was more than willing to give Linux a try years ago. It is all just technology. The one thing I remember about the SuSE was that the screensaver was HORRIBLE! It gave me a headache. I could hardly stand to look at it.

I do a lot of photography and I need to work on photos and create videos. There may well be expensive solutions utilizing Linux software for large companies like Pixar, but I can't afford that.

Running an older version of Photoshop in WINE does not cut it for me. I wasted time giving GIMP a try. I did like OpenOffice but it has gone downhill. VLC Player is pretty good. But it seemed like it needed updates every day.

I am not really very fond of Adobe Software anymore but they provide about the only decent solutions to working on photos. I guess Aperture is Abandonware from Apple. Supposedly they are going to be coming out with something this coming fall. Too late. Most people using Aperture have long since moved on.

Personally I can't really say anything bad about Microsoft. I can't remember Microsoft ever treating me bad. There are various things Microsoft has done that did not make me very happy. And they have been kind of goofy recently with some changes they have made to their operating systems. Start8, third party software, makes Windows 8.1.1 useable for me. Hopefully Microsoft will get Windows 9 right.

I can't wait an eternity for Apple to MAYBE have some good photo editing software. And I can't wait an eternity for Linux to meet my needs either. I have to have solutions that work TODAY. And not some sort of multi-million dollar exclusive software for Pixar. I don't work for Pixar.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
I remember about the SuSE was that the screensaver was HORRIBLE! It gave me a headache. I could hardly stand to look at it.


I concur, and I believe I recall that era of SuSE. The good news is that their wallpaper is no longer headache-inducing; the bad news is that the gecko is ever-present.

 

[Mystic]

Was it the wallpaper? I thought it was the screensaver. That was a long time ago. I can't even remember how many years ago. It was so bad it was like being on some kind of drug trip. Maybe anybody who saw that and had used LSD would have had a relapse. I guess whoever created that wallpaper or screensaver must have thought it was really cool.

Now that you mention the gecko I sort of remember that too.

But you see that I was willing to give Linux a try. And a long time ago. It is all just technology for me. I will use whatever works. None of it (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Unix, BSD) is my religion.

Someday all of this will be museum displays. We will probably talk to future computers.

I am much more open-minded than I am given credit for. I have tried all kinds of stuff. I even have a very limited amount of experience with a giant computer in the basement of a university that used punch cards. And our first computer at work was an expensive Unix computer and we had special software for it. The software slowly improved over the years. But I am not going to talk about all of that in detail. And we eventually had desktop computers running Windows. First Windows 3.1. I hated Windows 3.1. And then Windows 95 and from there.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
But who is behind Ubantu Linux-isn't he one of the wealthiest guys in the world?

I was a very big fan of Apple for a long time. I used Apple Computers for a long time and I own an iMac right now. But I have become somewhat disillusioned with Apple as they have become one of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. Something valuable was lost along that path. And the big wheels at Apple either did not notice when that something was lost or they did not care. And losing that something special may in the end cost Apple dearly.

I care mostly about the USA but I do not like to see workers mistreated. I have some serious issues with how workers in Chinese manufacturing plants are treated. There are also serious accusations about things like child labor, etc. There are news reports about there being suicide nets around the Apple manufacturing plants. Manufacturing in China probably is plenty rough in general and it probably takes something for Chinese workers to be willing to commit suicide.

Like I said, I am mostly concerned about the USA. But I don't like seeing workers mistreated while a very small number of people get very, very rich. If anybody is willing to condemn the worker conditions in the early industrial age in the Western World they should also be willing to condemn the alleged mistreatment of workers in China. Just because those workers are in China does not mean I do not care. I am a pretty conservative guy but I care more about the human race in general than I am given credit for.


As someone who tour these factories on a regular basis, I would say that if you have 1/2 million labor in a factory campus (yes they are that big, as big as a US city in population some case and a large college campus land wise) , you will see all sorts of people doing all sorts of things once in a while. These labors tend to be late teen early 20s and won't be as mature as the more senior labors you see in, say, a US auto manufacturers.

There's also life insurance police that's equivalent to about 10 years of income, and it covered suicide death. The suicide rate goes down significantly after suicide death is excluded in the policy.

Yes, there're suicide net around buildings.

There're also lots of smart phone users among the factory workers, and I do overheard conversations while walking among them about going to roller skating, dating, dining, eluding with boyfriends / girlfriends against parents wish to marry someone else back in hometowns (and going back after having a kid).


There are good and bad work conditions in China, no doubt, but Foxconn tends to be the better condition one (Pegatron in Shanghai is as good as the US factory condition!). I can't say this about every single factory there especially their mom and pop small factories.

 

[Mystic]

Well, if you have seen the factories, are the Apple factories about as bad as any of the others, or worse, or better? There is a lot of stuff being made there. Computer components, Dell stuff, etc. Are the apple plants especially bad?

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Someday all of this will be museum displays. We will probably talk to future computers.


My guess, just in case someone stumbles across this post in 250 years, is that mankind will eventually incorporate nanocomputing technology into our DNA so that we will first have the entirety of the world's knowledge at our immediate access mentally. This technology could also monitor and adjust the biochecmistry of our bodies to ensure long and comfortable lives.

Eventually I could see doing away with the bag of bones and meat altogether and just become sentient beings encased on a printed circuit board the size of a pinhead.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Well, if you have seen the factories, are the Apple factories about as bad as any of the others, or worse, or better? There is a lot of stuff being made there. Computer components, Dell stuff, etc. Are the apple plants especially bad?


The same site have different buildings and each building could be contracted for different customers (i.e. Dell, Apple, HP, etc). However the contracts between customers and OEM (Foxconn, Pegatron, etc) dictates compensations, yields, treatment of employees, liabilities, must do must not do, etc.

That's as much as I can say.

What I can say is Foxconn is in general regard as a pretty good place to work for these kind of jobs if you compare it against the local mom and pop factories, but you cannot compare them to US standard or other kinds of jobs (i.e. engineers, VPs, CEOs), because of standard of living difference.

 

[Mystic]

Well, if one or more humans could be the machine I guess a very long trip to other solar systems would become possible. But it seems like it would still be a long trip. But maybe the humans in the machine could just have lower necessary equipment functioning until the spaceship was almost there.

And maybe a kind of eternal life would become possible. At least until the end of the Universe, if there is an end to the Universe.