I found an interesting article (via MacNN) that discusses the merits of Apple splitting up into a software/OS company and hardware company. The justification appears to be that the OS/software group would be able to develop and sell software for Macs and PCs, while the hardware division would equally be free to create PPC and x86-based machines. PC manufaturers might be more likely to license a x86-OS X if it didn't come from a competing hardware manufacturer, and the hardware company might get some cash from those wanting sleak machines that run Windows.
This all sounds good, but I wonder what the "costs" are. When I say "costs" I don't mean financial costs, but technical and cultural costs. IMO, what makes Macs great is the tight integration between the OS and hardware. If the two were made by different companies, I wonder if they can maintain that level of integration. I also have a feeling that splitting Apple would kill its culture, and turn the two parts into run of the mill PC company and software house. Besides, which company would Steve stick with? Wouldn't Steve's portion of the post-breakup Apple have an unfair advantage? What if the two halves of Apple disagree on something? Couldn't that kill the Mac as a platform? Is it really worth saving Apple if it'll kill the Mac? This sounds an aweful lot like a "bomb the village to save it" argument from someone who only cares about money.
I've been going through reading some feedback about BlogMatcher. Well, maybe "feedback" isn' the right word, since I'm looking up blogs that link to BlogMatcher and digging through to see what, if anything, people are saying.
A pretty large number of searches have been made in the last few days (my logs tell me over 5300 at the time of writing), and comments made on various blogs are generally positive. It seems like in most cases, bloggers indicate that the search results were at least satisfactory and it seems to have offered some level of entertainment. Some of the major "complaints" seem to be:
- BlogMatcher's inability to distinguish languages
- The system's inability to tell that www.something.com and something.com are the same
I'm also glad to hear that at least some people found new blogs of interest through BlogMatcher. The way I see it, if even a tiny fraction of BlogMatcher users find new blogs that they didn't know about before, it was all worth the while.
