Be warned, silly introduction to a serious thought: Remember back when that company wrote an OS powered by the BSD kernel? Yeah, OSX.... why does it work so well? Oh, because they force you to use their hardware.... That isn't nice to force people into something, but then again, who cares when your system works so well with the hardware designed for it.... I wonder what would happen if some company created a linux distro like Ubuntu that was geared towards the end user that wanted something shiny without doing any work... Now imagine if the same company created Laptops and Desktops, and found a way to encourage users to take advantage of the hardware the OS was built for? (Note I didn't say force) Simple idea: Copywritten/trademarked logo for OS "Foo" requires that you use their hardware to use the "Foo" trademark. If it detects any other hardware, it swaps the logo/image out for their other logo/image of "Bar", giving the same software functionality, but different logos/startup screens/etc. Now a user buys a FooPC with Foo logo on it, and OSFoo. They take it home, and it works out of the box, and when they upgrade hardware with Foo approved hardware, those work out of the box as well. When the user adds different hardware, OSFoo becomes OSBar, and no longer has the official support it once had. It also installs all the extra hardware support that is developed by the community. There will also be software designed to work together... perhaps "FooLife" which will work on any linux OS, but will initially be geared for OSFoo. This gives users the option of any hardware, but lets them know if they stick with the proprietary hardware, they will have official support, and things will "Just work", from multi-channel audio to video-in. It would also help if OSFoo/OSBar wrote a simplified scripting language similar to vbscript/applescript... keep in mind we are gearing this for the iPOD generation, not those of us who grew up playing LOTRD on their favorite BBS.
So you want OS X but on other platforms? First question is how do you make money out of this? If its from the hardware then you have to differentiate the hardware from everyone else as your software is going to be available to eveyone for free. Your obviously trying to modify Apple's bussiness model however Apple has OS X which it has full control over and thats the main attraction to a mac. It just happens to be that the hardware is quite nice as well.
Nice idea... But I'm affraid it won't work... If you ever start one... Contact me, I'll surely help you
OK people, quit shooting this idea down without serious thought. Just saying "Nah, that's too hard" is what 13 year olds do. If you've got a vision, and the time and money to implement it, it sounds like a great idea. However: You'd have to make this OSFoo very special, or at least look very special. Ubuntu does NOT look special. Ubuntu is just a linux distro that works fantastically. You'd need to add flashy things like the shadows behind windows that OSX renders and that 3D window manager called XGL or whatever it is. Sorry, I don't know that much about Linux. In fact, first consider the market. Who would buy this product? Enthusiasts already have the OS of their choice and their own special hardware. The arty-farty mac users have no hope of switching away from Apple. The techie mac users may consider this, if your hardware and software design is spot on, or comparable at a greatly reduced price. You'd also need to integrate Cdegea (whatever) or WINE with a really simple interface for people who want to play games. I presume this wouldn't be aimed at busnesses? I'm interested to keep talking about this. Those are just some intial reactions. ch424
I agree with the negatives posted, and the positives. I'm not saying I want to go out and do this, I'm just saying I think it would be a cool idea. The money would come in licensing hardware to be supported. If the parent company is choosing the hardware, I see no reason the hardware couldn't be picked out based on its compatability with linux. Sorry I didn't mention it in my post earlier, but yes, the goal would be to make an Apple-like business model that doesn't lock you into hardware, it just encourages you into hardware. By forming a standard for both hardware and software, it would be easy for developers to write code for it, and if the parent company makes money off of hardware and support, then surely they could offer bounties on specific apps. I am thinking of a system that could be based on Gnu/Linux with a gnome front-end. I hear the complaints coming in now, but you can always install your own desktop, it would after all, be Gnu/linux at the core. The point would be to make open source software more available to the general public. By controlling hardware specs, the parent company should be able to easily support 3d gaming (including directx 9 games). There would have to be some way to package it with proprietary software though, so DVD/MP3 playback could be included. The end result would be an Apple-like business that sells hardware, and gives the rest of the software away for free. Bringing a much larger focus on the Open Source community, not to mention being able to use the business to provide good user feedback to the developers. The company would be designed more to support Open Source than to make money, but should also make enough money to support itself and foster financial growth in the OS community. Once again, just an idea. Considering ubuntu has Compiz/XGL in their repositories, I think they could easily start something like this, since they've got an eccentric rich guy backing them, but just about any distro could do this as long as they focused on the end user, and not the linux super-users who run fluxbox on 64-bit server chips...
Maybe you should need to go talk to Google They have the gift to make money from giving things away...
I like the idea but as Kipman725 said it would require lots of capitol. It might work very well for people (like the majority of Mac owners) who know nothing about computers and never really do anything more exciting with their computers than surf the web, instant message and word process. If you can get media center functionality built in that will just work out of the box then its starting to sound alot like a low cost version of viiv. You could set things up for remote updating so for example if you plug in a new Foo certified Tv tuner card it gets on the net and grabs the drivers off the Foo server and installs itself, and because its already been tested it works perfectly. Google would definatly be the people with the money and market presence to implement something like this. sorry if i'm talking c**p, i'm doing exams at the moment and my minds in freewheel. (procrastination; the nemesis of revision) Moriquendi
I think Moriquendi has a great idea... Instead of reinventing the holy water (OS X) why not make a well supported Media Center version? With the growing market of Media PC's... Like making a Windows MCE with good support for the media cards? That might be more viable, at first, then a whole OS I guess...
But support for only a few TV cards so that the ones that are supported are fully functional and bugless. Also you make your money by supplying the hardware not the software (a la Apple) I wouldnt even matter if the cards you sold were also sold elseware, there are plenty of people who would pay your markup just for the peace of mind that having the Foo certified sticker would bring or would never consider that the tv card on that website for £10 less was the same as the one you were selling. You wouldn't have to modify the hardware at all or keep track of the serial numbers. And i do think that it should be a full OS (linux distro) so that everything fits together seamlessly (visualy as well as technicaly) and people see it as their Fooputer rather than their computer running Foo. Keep the customer in the dark about how it works just ensure that if they plug this card into this slot inside the box the next time they power-on their Fooputer will be able to record two digital Tv channels rather than one. Moriquendi
Okay, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea... I'm thinking something "similar" to ubuntu, but with even better software support, more limited hardware support, but insanely better quality on hardware support. The thing I like about ubuntu (for those who don't use distros that let you be this lazy) is I can download and install apps by simply clicking "add/remove" and choosing the category I want (such as graphics) then selecting the app (such as blender) and clicking "apply". It then downloads and installs it and tells me where it is in the menu. The only thing I would want to change about this is I want to do automatic updates of all the major software, such as firefox, thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc. (not just security updates) By selling hardware, we could probably get specialized DVD players that legally play DVDs. The only thing I'd need to learn is how to package proprietary software alongside open source software.
Now here's what I want to avoid. "{insert favorite app here} is better" I'm sure the equations the GIMP uses for making beveled edges are more efficient than those that Photoshop uses... but in Photoshop, I right click on a layer, and select "beveled edges" and get to choose the details and I'm done. If I change the shape of the item in the layer, the beveled edges change dynamically with it. The goal here is usability, and I don't want to lose sight of that in favor of elitist opinions. (those are supposed to come after we sell these PCs and make commercials bashing everyone else...) Now, "I prefer Emerge because..." would be just fine. Why do you prefer Emerge? Because it downloads source and compiles it for your system, therefore giving you the perfect app for your hardware? Keep in mind we're selling the hardware here, we can tell what configuration people are using and just give them the binaries based on the hardware they bought from us, negating the need for downloading source and compiling. Also, I'm talking crap here. I don't have the capital for this (yet), and probably won't for a long time, if ever. So this is more to throw out ideas, and wait until I win the lottery. The goal of the business would be to make computing easy, cost-effective, and reliable. That would be done by: easy: no command-line required (still provided, of course), software installs/upgrades automated, no compiling required cost-effective: attempt to do everything with free open-source software, and fall back on free closed-source software when licensing requires it (such as DVD playback, Flash rendering, etc.) reliable: code pre-compiled for the user's hardware, possibly create tools specifically for this OS similar to iLife, and continually provide security updates for all software (even Firefox/office/etc) Man, we need to find some rich eccentric guy that likes open source, and is willing to give me tons of money for the idea... which is copyritten 2006 Woven Thorns Productions.... it's mine! I'll let you know if I find a crazy rich guy, and all the good ideas here will get some money.
OneSeventeen, I actually really like this idea. It would be difficult to pull off and all, but the whole goal (persuading people into getting certian hardware, etc) of it is a great concept. Copyright the idea and wait for someone to steal it, then sue!
*scribbles down idea* In september i've got a breakfast business meeting with some crazy guys from sveeden. It was all setup by the Oxford Entrepreneurs (www.bouncwithit.com) Is it alright if i mention it to a couple of guys there? There's a gentlemens agreement that nothing is to be discussed outside of the meetings unless agreed.
Same idea..... I had this same idea a while back, I thought the thing keeping some people from linux is that it takes some fiddling to get to work, but if it just did...
