NB - the following may come off as hostile. It is not meant so - I
would advise a bit of massaging of your text to more clearly make the
points you want to make.
I might also suggest a bit of massaging of your text to make it clearer
why you are saying what you are saying, and to add a bit more analysis
and support for your contentions. At this point, much of what you have
said is just a restatement of other web sites, along with some slightly
fuzzy text assigning motives. For example, "It is Jobs belief that" is
making a statement of SJ's opinions, and we do not really know them.
What we _do_ know is what he said on stage, so say "At WWDC 2005, he
said ...", then follow it with "At this point, Apple is shipping a 1.67
GHz powerbook, which competes with Intel products at 3.something GHz.
Benchmarks indicate that the gap is narrower than this might indicate
<reference here>, but the gap between desktop and laptop Macintosh
speeds is widening. <timeline here>"
This then gives people something specific to argue with. Essentially,
without that, and without hard, practical statements to back those
arguments up, people will not see things worth debating. (In other
words, while you 'agree on some aspects of the switch', the previous
paragraph consists only of potential problems, all of which have been
debated already.)
I understand what you are saying, providing hard facts to back up
statements. There is a lot of hard facts to back up statements, via
bench marks etc., like say an AMD vs Intel discussion. However you have
to consider the nature of this topic. Right now it's all speculation
but in a few years the real reasons why the switch was done will
probably be revealed.[/QUOTE]
Yes and no - when I read your page, it was not clear to me which
statements were inference, which were paraphrase, and which were quotes.
I was at the keynote, and I do not recall any statement about Job's
beliefs, but I do recall some definitive statements about the market
direction. (He may have said otherwise in follow-on interviews.)
Changing that phrasing from 'Jobs believes' to 'In his WWDC 2005
keynote, SJ said....' and 'From that, Robert and I infer different
things. I take this to mean ..., while he takes it to mean...' would
make your breakpoint, and your reasoning clearer, and thus give someone
something to debate.
By they way, I am not trying to harp on 'believe'. There were several
spots where you shifted from quotes to paraphrases to opinion, without
clear distinction. For example, 'He believed that there was some
stagnation in delivering high performance products to consumers and IBM
was holding them back.' is unclear to me - did he state that IBM was
holding back product, which was how I first interpreted this line, or
did he state that their slower than expected delivery was holding back
Apple's progress.
Similarly, I thought the statement 'Technically there are a several
disadvantages in regards to this switch' was unsupported, in that you
really only named one disadvantage, as best as I can tell, and did not
provide any factual information about how important that would end up
being. The following paragraph seemed instead to support the contention
that 'Those already using XCode should see a very fast port, but those
still using Metrowerk CodeWarrior will not, as they have to convert to
XCode first, and then they have to address endian issues just like
current xcode projects.' - insert quote from CW developer here -
'Further, since these are older code bases, they are more likely to have
unsupported technology.
Assuming, of course, that this _is_ a fair summary of that paragraph.
For our report we decided that the "hard facts"
was what CEO of Apple said at his recent keynote conference. We did not
make up anything. After that it was followed by speculation of the
implications of the switch. Our main purpose was to create a healthy
discussion. You do not need to be an expert. For example there could
have been something that we missed or said incorrectly.
A healthy discussion requires definitive statements, if only so that
people have something to discuss. THis does not mean that it has to be
dry or purely technical, just that you need to be very clear about when
you are switching from quotes and paraphrase to interpretation. I found
it difficult to tell just when you were speculating, and when you were
quoting, and I found that it was hard for me to determine just what
points you were adding to the debate.
Breaking the paragraphs up more, and being clearer about transitions
might help make that more clear.
quoting Ward McFarlane on my other thread: [DRM]
This comment makes a lot of sense. Apple's success with Itunes,
actually getting people to buy music rather than steal it is
unbelievable. If they use the same model for movies, it could change
the movie industry forever. However software DRM has not been received
kindly kindly by consumers, and hardware DRM is another story.
I am not sure how unkindly it has been received - I know half a dozen
people buying music from the ITMS than on CD now, and some that had
stopped buying music because of RIAA action who are doing so again.
Balance this against one person opposed to the ITMS for DRM reasons, and
I am not sure this comes out as a poor reception.
(NB - this is what I was talking about above. The contention 'not
received kindly' seems a bit unsupported to me, as I am not sure why you
are saying that. I could believe it is from news, blogs, FSF press
releases, or personal experience, and I could make my own judgement
about the credibility of any of the above, were I to know where you got
the information that led to that interpretation.)
Again, I am really not trying to rip on you or what you wrote, I just
think you will get a more interesting response if you write something a
bit clearer.
Take it for what you paid for it.
Scott
. The two of us notwithstanding, there are a