Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Netflix Killing DVDs Like Apple Killed Floppies?

Posted by Soulskill on from the steve-did-it-in-the-library-with-one-button dept.

cheezitmike writes "While there has been lots of outcry about Netflix separating their DVD service from their streaming service, media expert Eric Garland says they're just doing to the DVD what Apple did to the floppy disk. 'I was reminded of so many precedents: Facebook revamping its user interface, the introduction of the first Blueberry iMac, the one with the conspicuously missing 3.5-inch floppy drive on the front. All of these were moments when there was a paradigm shift that led to an immediate public outcry. People made a lot of noise and had a lot of complaints. People were very upset about these shifts...until they weren't. In the news cycle, the outcry is significant and it is problematic, but it's also important to note how quickly these things are forgotten.'"

10 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What did apple do to floppies?

  2. ha by nomadic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple has never been relevant enough on the desktop to kill any desktop technology. PC CD-Rs and then the internet killed floppy drives.

    1. Re:ha by Stormthirst · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That and cheap USB keys which were faster, considerably more reliable and many times the capacity.

    2. Re:ha by rubycodez · · Score: 3, Insightful

      somehow they were relevant enough to push and make popular by being early adopters, even of tech they didn't invent and even of things others sold but didn't make wildly popular. USB, Firewire, SCSI, gui with mouse, touch smartphones,

    3. Re:ha by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why would you want to do that? (I'll make an exception if you work for a charity or something that won't waste donations on modern hardware).

      Older hardware has it uses. I mean, you don't need a brand new, screaming i7 multi-core box with SLI graphics cards to run a home firewall with iptables, etc....you don't need it to make a nice little audio server for the home stereo to host your music collection ripped to flac, etc.

      I am by NO stretch of the imagination a 'green' person, tree hugger or someone who has ever bothered with recycling anything...BUT, hey, if something is still useful, why spend money on something new if the old will keep working reliably for awhile longer?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    4. Re:ha by icebraining · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, if it's supposed to run 24/7 for some months or even years, it might be 'greener' to get a new device like a router that runs Linux or a Sheevaplug, since they'll probably use much less energy than older machines (the Sheeva uses about 7W or so).

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
    5. Re:ha by localman57 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The funny thing is, in a lot of elecrical engineering labs the floppy is still alive and well. A lot of expensive measurement equipment, such as Techtronix oscilloscopes and logic analyzers had a floppy inside for storing .bmp files of the captured wave forms, and tables of raw captured data. These devices remain useful for many, many years, as the measurement capabilities change/improve much more slowly than the digital interfaces to them. There's a USB floppy disk drive duct-taped to one of our lab benches downstairs for just this reason.

    6. Re:ha by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Both of which took a couple years to become affordable after Apple prematurely killed floppies.

      I was still using floppies long after Apple "killed" them. And when a worthy replacement came along... I switched.

    7. Re:ha by rotorbudd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We have several planes, jets I might add, that use floppies to update nav databases. That's a lot of floppies every 2 weeks.
      We could get the CD upgrade but Honeywell wants 12 grand for each aircraft.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
  3. E-mail killed floppies by rwade · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I would say that the wide-adoption of corporate/small-business e-mail systems in the mid-late 90s killed the floppy disk. Up until then, legal assistants, secretaries, financial analysts, and other workers on the lower-rungs would truck a floppy disk from desk to desk to collaborate with colleagues, present work to the boss, or deliver documents to clients. With e-mail, the small files that could go on floppy disks could more easily be sent more easily with even the slower LAN and shared-internet connections.