Now that I think about it, I think that controlling the hardware and
software may be the one large practical advantage Apple would have in the
mobile computing market--as devices get smaller, reliability and
compatibility seem to be more visible. This control could be the one factor
that allows Apple to make and sell a device that not only behaves like it's
supposed to but also allow for a greater variety of features--making the
device go beyond servicable and actually become useful.
I'm thinking that as devices like the OQO device come around, they will
steadily have to "feature-down" to retain a certain acceptable level of
stability and compatibility with like products. Creating sort of a stale
market with few new features and holding onto others which should have gone
away long ago. I think that's basically what's happened with the Palm/PDA
market of today. No one wants to innovate because they fear no software
support for their product's new features and no one wants to drop something
that their competitor's still have and the s/w still supports.
With the control that Apple has over both the hardware and software, adding
new/enhanced features over time with backward compatibility and reliability
would be much easier. I suspect that's why the Newton had quite a few
features back in the day that we're just starting to see now and lots of
things run on almost every newt made.
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Goggan" <jgoggan_at_dcg.com>
To: <newtontalk_at_newtontalk.net>
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 12:55 PM
Subject: Re: [NTLK] [OT now] The OQO xp power mgt
<snip>
> My laptop seems to hibernate just fine. Again, I just think we are
blaming
> hardware for software issues in many cases. Apple/MacOS has the advantage
of
> building most of the hardware too, of course. There are a ton more issues
> when someone else is making the hardware. Granted, maybe that is a
downside
> to Windows -- but the point is that a lot of hardware problems look like
OS
> problems when they aren't.
>
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