“A novel plan to develop a $100 laptop computer for distribution to millions of schoolchildren in developing countries has caught the interest of governments and the attention of computer-industry heavyweights,” Steve Stecklow reports for The Wall Street Journal. “First announced in January by Nicholas Negroponte, the founding chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, the initiative appears to be gaining steam. Mr. Negroponte is scheduled to demonstrate a working prototype of the device with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Wednesday at a U.N. technology conference in Tunisia.”
“Mr. Negroponte and other backers say they have held discussions with at least two dozen countries about purchasing the laptops and that Brazil and Thailand have expressed the most interest so far. In addition, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney recently proposed spending $54 million to buy one of the laptops for every student in middle school and high school in his state,” Stecklow reports.
Stecklow reports, “Mr. Negroponte discussed the project last week with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Craig Mundie, chief technical officer of advanced strategies and policy. ‘We’re in serious discussions to determine what the appropriate type of involvement is with us with their project,’ says Mr. Mundie. Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.’s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company’s operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative’s founders. “We declined because it’s not open source,” says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.”
Full article here.
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MacDailyNews Take: Here, have a Lexus for free. No thanks, we’d rather have this here Ford Fiesta. You can’t tinker much with a Lexus, but the Fiesta’s hood always seems to be open. Check this out, we put some big knobby tires on it, filled in the rust spots and holes with Bondo, took it to Earl Scheib and, voilà! All your Lexus does is smoothly go 150 mph without complaint. Plus, nobody can break into it and it just runs and runs and runs.
Wouldn’t Mac OS X – which runs a wide range of polished applications, networks easily, accepts peripherals painlessly, is extremely secure, plus many other reasons – work best for such a project, especially if Jobs offered it for free? What a boneheaded decision to decline Apple’s offer!
And what about Darwin? http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
Related MacDailyNews articles:
PC Magazine: Apple PowerBook 17-inch ‘a joy to work on, highly secure, one fine computer’ – November 12, 2005
Analyst: new Power Mac G5 and PowerBook models should help Apple – October 19, 2005
Apple enhances PowerBooks with higher-resolution displays, longer battery life – October 19, 2005
Well get freak’n tinkering!
Lately we’ve been doing a lot of work with FreeBSD. It’s been solid and relatively easy to tinker with. It also has roots in Apple Darwin.
Let’s see what the Open Source movement comes up with. I like their spirit, but generally, you get what you pay for.
Who cares. It’s their loss…
so why are they talking to microsoft? open and insecure are NOT synonyms!
MW: paper (+ t)
The $100 laptop crowd is going to have a steep learning curve.
I have been using computers since I was 10, have a BA in Computer Science, and work in IT, yet my experience is that Red Hat Linux in it’s current form can be extremely frustrating to administer. Even if the $100 laptops include someone to set them up for “daily use” type work, the OS simply does not approach the ease of use of Windows, which says a great deal.
I understand the altruistic purpose of putting OSS on these laptops, but if they want the project to succeed, they need someone _intuitive_ for people who quite possibly have never touched a computer before. Even if you ask Red Hat’s marketing folks, it is not an OS for first time computer users!
MSN word: science
Who cares????!!! If this initiative gets off the ground what do you think it will do to Apple’s laptop in schools business?
Is the point to get tools to the children or have toys for the grownups? They were offered an awesome tool for free. Free?! That is a shame. They couldn’t use it at least temporarily while they work on their “project”.
Too appropriate MDN word: soviet
“…the designers want an operating system can be tinkered with.”
For Pete’s sake, why? I’m sure some middle-schooler is going to tweak OpenOffice or the Linux file system — and rebuild it! — on a $100 laptop. That’s going to take a lot of cranking…
Or maybe, just maybe, the designers want to hand-tune the OS to the hardware. Darwin doesn’t enable this?
More likely is that this is more about the designers’ egos and the giant sandbox they want somebody to build for them, as opposed to, say, the needs of the users of those laptops?
I am sure that “every student in middle school and high school in his state” will just LOVE to tinker with that OS when they start trying to hook up printers and networks and cameras and hard drives! (Not to mention their parents!)
BTW, are they going to give the 3rd world countries the necessary accessories (printers, etc.) and software to make these machines really useful?
This whole scheme just seems pie-in-the-sky to me. In order for computers to be really useful for most people, they need a large infrastructure: software, peripherals, etc. which is not easily available in third world countries.
When did Darwin become closed source?!!
I see why they’re wanting to use Open source but if they’re being OS X for free why not just install it along with some Linux distro and allow use of both? If OS X then becomes expensive or inpractical or whatever then dump it and they’ve lost nothing but gained x amount of times use on the most advanced OS on earth.
The only problem I could foresee is how to build in the security measures apple is including to make sure OS X will only run on apple machines, how much would that add to the cost of these machines?
Urban myth has it MIT is full of smart people….???
The purpose of computers is to do work. Having to “Tinker” with an OS runs contrary to that purpose.
Linux is “cool”, but it’s a time burner. For an average desktop user, Linux is too needy in its requirement for attention and its demand for thorough understanding.
OS X is the antithesis of that.
Let me get this straight: they declined a free version of OS X because it is not open source and now they are in discussions with Microsoft?! This can’t be real. No-one is that stupid.
2 quotes caught my eye:
1) “Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.’s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company’s operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative’s founders. “We declined because it’s not open source,” says Dr. Papert.”
SJ offered them FREE copies of OS X (probably OSx86) and they turned him down?!?!? Idiots.
and 2) “Mr. Negroponte discussed the project last week with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates… ‘We’re in serious discussions to determine what the appropriate type of involvement is with us with their project,’ says Mr. Mundie.
Answer to Mr. Mundie: how about NONE!
Okay, let me get this straight: Apple offers them FREE OS X and they turn it down ‘because it’s not open-source’. Yet, they are ‘in serious discussions with Microsoft’, because… they’re the king of ‘open-source wares’??? More like, ‘open SORE’ wares.
Mr. Negroponte, et al, are a bunch of morons.
I have been using computers since I was 10, have a BA in Computer Science, and work in IT, yet my experience is that Red Hat Linux in it’s current form can be extremely frustrating to administer. Even if the $100 laptops include someone to set them up for “daily use” type work, the OS simply does not approach the ease of use of Windows, which says a great deal.
Or even the greater ease of use of Mac!
Can’t really see why Jobs just didn’t give them the computers too. He’s obviously thinking about growing the market share. But I got to believe that there were plenty offers by everyone in the computer industry too. If it were me, I’d have thrown in the computers and OS for $100, but then again, I’m not an numbers guy nor a marketing guy. Sounds to me like that was the best offer he could make and it didn’t get taken, is all.
hypocrites.
some of the best software for OS X is open source.
Why not an operating system.
Here we go with the car analogies again…
I personally rather have a Fiesta (but not he Festiva) than a Lexus. I really enjoyed our `79. It was economical, fun to drive, responsive, cute… great basic transportation! Fiesta is still one of the most popular models in Europe. Unfortunately, Ford only imported them to the USA for three years. I’d have one now, if it was sold here.
Lately, the U.S. car buyer has really gotten their heads up their butts… believing that quality cars can ONLY come from Toyota, or Honda.
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Not so! I just hope we don’t kill off some U.S. car companies before the fog lifts.
Not hard to see why this was refused. In developing countries, there is a big movement gathering steam to ensure that they are not dominated by the US-led tech companies. The “tinkering” mentioned in the article has nothing to do with schoolchilren using vi to edit their smb.conf, and more to allow, for example, the Government of Brazil to tailor the laptops to their needs whilst, for example, schools in Botswana take a different direction.
If the laptops ran OSX, the project would be entirely at the mercy of Apple to ensure it stayed current with the future. However nice and cuddly some here think Apple are, being at the mercy of ANY single company is not what MIT are trying to achieve.
What an idiot! You have a project, which may turn out to be great, focused on getting computers to the people, but then you develop a crippling ideology—”no software that isn’t open source”.
My comments have nothing to do with open source technology, I use quite a lot of it. But they do have everything to do with what’s the mission/primary goal of the project. Is it just get those poor people some computers, regardless if they can afford $100 or not; or is it let’s make an affordable laptop so that people/children in developing countries can participate in tomorrows economy. The first assumes that technology itself is the saviour, the second assumes that people can use technology to save themselves. But that still requires the technology to be usable.
And let’s face it, Linux, while great server software, has a ways to go before it becomes a great desktop environment. An offer of a free OS that is worldclass, easy to use, encouraging to educational endeavors, has open source underpins, and can be run much of the open source code in today’s marketplace, seems like a no brainer. But then, my thought is if your going to offer a country that could use $100 to pay for food, education, and some shelter for a number of people per year; a laptop that would cost $100, then the least you can do is guarentee that the laptop is easily usable and readily learnable.
But what can I say, I also believe that if your going to come up with a cheap laptop for under developed countries, you shouldn’t try to get $15 billion dollars out of them that could be used on actually feeding the people who would be using the laptops. You know so they could actually focus on learning and or the computer screen without those distracting hunger pains.
This project will fail. Brazil which is a country of over 150M people (very key to Microsoft). CNET has already detailed the problems that they have had with their national laptop initiative and open source. Check it out at:
http://news.com.com/Brazils+bumpy+road+to+the+low-cost+PC/2100-1041_3-5928985.html.
This is a bigger deal to MS. They do extensive biz in the region. Bill Gates has tried to stir the president of Brazil away from open source initiatives but has failed. I can’t speak for Taiwan but I have travelled to Latin America extensively and I can tell you that no one there would use/pay for OSX because it is fairly unknown and hardly supported. Accesabiliy to Apple hardware/software there is scarce. In addition to this you can buy Windows PCs for $300-$500 and mac mini doesn’t have enough power to be used as a substitute. Jobs should not be surprised. Apple does very little marketing in Latin America in fact I believe is the only region of the world where they don’t have an Apple office/walk in-store/music store. It would be great if Apple had more direct presence in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Markets of almost 300M people.
With lack of support from Apple there you can’t blame developers for not wanting to use in their regions.
I never had a reason to really hate Dell until I read that elitist quote from Gretchen Miller from Dell’s marketing division where she says:
…”We don’t believe it’s feasible at this point to manufacture a $100 notebook that meets our quality performance standards. Those things are all customer driven,” she says, adding, “It’s important that a computer prepare students for the applications they’ll be using after they get out of school.”
No Gretchen, you just don’t get it. These kids are so poor that any help is better than no help. Microsoft was antagonistic and then changed. A future market perchance? What the hell. Apple’s Steve Jobs made an offer as well. Ditto and good for him.
The spokesperson for Intel was open in their answer:
…Meanwhile, Intel Corp. says it isn’t worried about the thought of millions of laptops in developing countries powered by a competitor’s chips. “Our view is that whatever it takes to get computer power to places where it hasn’t been before is a good thing,” says spokesman Chuck Mulloy. “But there will be different flavors of these kind of devices.”
Ms Miller talks of such a notebook not meeting their performance standards? I hear case after case of Dell computers just packing it in. Now if we’re talking of HP well that’s a different matter. They make good machines. They just spoil the package with a sub-standard operating system.
I come back to my original point. I may dislike windows and hate Microsoft’s predatory business practices but in the past few years they have tried to help or at least Bill Gates has tried to help the needy. Apple has done the same thing.
Well Mr Dell, so that’s what your company is all about, performance at a price. And now you know why I hate Dell so much. Their company is all about greed. When Dell is taken over (and the company sales aren’t exactly healthy) I for one will be pissing on their grave. New advertising slogan. “What’s that smell? Oh it’s a Dell”
They are still in talks with microsoft probably because their laptop is in the 400 to 500 dollar range and MS will kick in 300 if and only if windows is the only OS allowed on the laptop. Or maybe Seymour Papert will lose an endowment if he doesn’t go with winders.
You can be sure though that the decisions will be made in the best interests of the users not the greedy corporations pulling the strings.
uh huh.