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Cringely: blame Vista's delay on OEMs, Apple to sell OS X for PCs
You've got to love the pundit on their soapbox, don't you? This week Cringely, whose previous insightful predictions have rung true in Intel buying Apple and Apple quitting their iPod business, in his usual roundabout prose blames OEMs like Dell or HP for Vista's delay. He connects the two by asserting that Microsoft must not have anticipated the buffer / test period required by their larger OEM partners to get the OS running stably on their boxes before release; thus, since Vista had to go gold long before launch -- and MS wasn't ready for release to OEMs -- they had to delay so as to give their partners the time necessary to confidently release Vista boxes. (All of which kind of invokes the hysteron proteron fallacy of the unproved premise supposing its conclusion). But Cringley's not done: after we're all integrated and settled with our Macs with Boot Camp either as beta or in Leopard, he'd like us to believe Apple will become a Windows OEM and start selling Macs with Vista and OS X out of box "if it will help sales." Um, ok, but there are lots of things Apple could do to increase sales. And what's more, he goes on to suppose Apple will again fork their processor platform by going to 64-bit Intel chips, which they'll use as a ploy to sell a standalone 32-bit version of OS X to Windows users for installation on their non-Apple PCs (since you'll no longer be able to get 32-bit Apple boxes). Whoa, Cringely, you're gonna have to slow things down next week, ok? So many absurd suppositions at once are making our heads hurt a little.
Microsoft WILL support Blu-ray? In Vista at least (maybe?)
Much has been made of Microsoft's supposed plan to include native support for only HD-DVD in their next OS, either in order to force customers to install extra software on their own and/or to force OEM's to face licensing costs on their own. Despite that, Windows IT Pro says internal Microsoft documentation indicates a plan to add Blu-ray DVD support to beta versions of Windows Vista.Microsoft still officially says it has no plans for Blu-ray support, leaving that to third party companies like Cyberlink. All of this comes just after Microsoft denied Blu-ray plans for the Xbox 360, so the question remains: Does Microsoft really hate Blu-ray, or do they really like it and are just playing hard to get? Be true to your feelings Bill.
