Sunday, March 4, 2012

Lecture Post - Operating Systems


Myheadline.com will be a social media website that facilitates the reading and sharing of a wide array of news stories. The idea is for people to create a user account, much like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin accounts, that will allow the user to subscribe to a variety of local and national newspapers that will then appear in a single home. This will facilitate the user to browse through several sources of news simultaneously.

         This week in class operating systems were discussed. We touched upon the different pros and cons that each operating system has in terms of running different kinds of software and how operating systems differ for personal computers, servers and handheld devices such as smart phones and tablets.

 I was interested the most by two aspects of different operating systems that came up in our discussion. Firstly, I was interested in how specific software can run on some operating systems and not on others. For example, some of my friends are into an online game called League of Legends and they are capable of playing it because they use Windows operating systems on their computers. However, if one were to try to play League of Legends on a Mac OS, one would find that the gameplay is significantly worse and that the program would be riddled with bugs that make it completely unpractical to attempt to play. This interests me a lot because, as a company trying to profit from their game, League of Legends loses a large number of potential users simply because the game only runs well on Windows OS. That is a lot of money lost. In my entrepreneurial project, I would make sure that my website and the software associated with is compatible with as many operating as possible.

Also, for a company to remain competitive in todays market, there is a need for an app that runs efficiently and on as many embedded operating systems as possible. This becomes interesting when one understands the differences in creating an app to run on Google Android, iPhone OS or BlackBerry, for example. The differences in getting the app published also differs, as some embedded OS’s are open source, like Google Android, and others are not, like iPhone OS. 

2 comments:

  1. Since your blog is really content heavy I would recommend you put in some graphics such as pictures or videos to draw more traffic to the site. Otherwise, I think you walk in easy language that anyone can understand without taking an IT class. Your relaxed way of writing is very beneficial on a blog that does not have many images. Good job!

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  2. This has interested me for the longest time! I have always been astounded at how companies will make products specifically for one OS. Your idea of making your website compatible with as many softwares as possible, would be a dream to some! The only thing that could potentially give you problems is the licensing of software. It may be a bit difficult making a software that runs efficiently on many operating systems because one is trying to make software as compatible as possible. Sometimes the reason that companies only produce software for one operating system is because they can optimize the software to run as efficiently as possible. In other words, a software with no flaws. That isn't the most ethical or profitable way, but I'm sure that the buyers of the software subsidize company for the profit they could potentially have received.

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