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Free is too expensive (Economist)Free is too expensive (Economist)Posted Apr 12, 2012 16:55 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576)In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by anselm Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
>So what? You tell the app store that your machine is running Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 on an amd64 architecture.
Oh my god. I don't think you understand how completely outside the realm of feasibility this is for the non-technical user.
When tech support people bitch about users who only know that they're running 'Microsoft', and know that 'the blue e' is the internet, *they're not exaggerating*. That's not hyperbole. It's a literal description of a sizeable proportion of the user base.
I don't think it's even a significant minority, but actually the *majority* of users who don't know what version of Windows they're using - assuming they even know they're using Windows at all.
The proportion of people who know what processor architecture they're running has got to be far, far below 1%.
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Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 12, 2012 17:14 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I don't think it's even a significant minority, but actually the *majority* of users who don't know what version of Windows they're using - assuming they even know they're using Windows at all. Well, usually they do know that - Windows is too hyped-up to miss. What they don't know is where Windows ends and other things begins. I've seen the cases when people bought new PC (with Windows obviously) and vainly tried to find Excel there (which they have not bought). The proportion of people who know what processor architecture they're running has got to be far, far below 1%. This is quite obviously not true because Linux occupies about 0.5% of the market share and most Linux users know that.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 12, 2012 20:16 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Oh my god. I don't think you understand how completely outside the realm of feasibility this is for the non-technical user. The machine will presumably know (or be able to find out) about its own distribution and architecture, so it can tell the app store on the user's behalf. A method to do this is the first thing a prospective app-store proponent would want to standardise.
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