Vizio Plans To Undercut The Market For All-In-One PCs

TV maker Vizio is famous for undercutting competitors' prices on LCD TVs; now, the company has released word that it will introduce a new line of budget computers, and next week will be showing them off at CES. Bloomberg reports that the company won't yet disclose actual prices (the kind with numbers), but says instead only that they will be at a "price that just doesn’t seem possible." As the article mentions, the all-in-one desktop machines shown look a lot like Apple products; BetaNews has pictures, and ominously mentions Apple's tendency to sue over similar-looking products.

Comments

The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[betterunixthanunix]

Aside from rounded rectangles, is there anything else that looks similar to an Apple product in the picture? Has Apple been marketing truncated-pyramid shaped computers lately?

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Osgeld]

the color silver

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Anonymous Coward]

There is that minimal keyboard that looks like it would be hell to type on if you have any sort of speed. That's very Apple.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[bonch]

If you really think that the only thing that makes it similar-looking to Apple products is "rounded rectangles," then you're intentionally being obtuse for whatever reason. There comes a point where it's obvious that other companies are liberally borrowing from Jonathan Ive's design shop at Apple.

Vizio's PC concept looks like this. The keyboard looks just like Apple's flat keyboard introduced a few years ago, the trackpad is a clone of the Apple Trackpad, and though it's less of a copy than the others, the screen is certainly reminiscent of an iMac, especially taken as a whole with the rest of the components.

I'm not surprised at all that, with all the design work Apple puts into its products, it is going to try to protect that work from knockoffs. Not only is this taking advantage of design work done at Apple, but if the products turn out to be low-quality or problematic, their resemblance to existing Apple products ends up damaging Apple's brand as well. I realize Slashdot comments tend to have an Apple slant (to put it mildly), but come on, this is completely obvious "inspiration" from Apple.

I think what really goes on here is that some people just don't want to give Apple credit for anything, and they hate when people do credit them, so when comparisons between designs are pointed out, it pisses them off and they make snarky remarks about "rounded rectangles."

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[viperidaenz]

You mean that TV shaped thing in the picture from the company thats been making TVs since 2002?

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[AngryDeuce]

My question is, at what point does a particular design go from being something proprietary to something obvious for it's function? For instance, when does "rounded rectangles" go from being a style feature to a "of course the corners are rounded, what else are they going to do with them, make them pointed?" When does a particular size go from a "design style" to "duh, of course it's going to be about the same size, it is intended for the same function"?

Personally, I have no problem with design being proprietary, but when it requires competitors to actually produce inferior products and impede on their functionality to avoid just looking too much like another product that it is directly competing with, it doesn't seem right to me. Of course tablets are all going to be about the same size, people have about the same size hands, more or less. Every chiclet style keyboard looks basically the same, every trackpad is going to look basically the same, every tablet is going to look basically the same, every smartphone is going to look basically the same. A manufacturer shouldn't be forced to put physical buttons on a touchscreen device just because Apple's touchscreen devices don't have any, or point the corners of their tablet just because Apple's are rounded, or not bevel the edges (that would just be uncomfortable to hold for anyone, I mean, come on), or any of the other silly things that I've heard come out of these patent lawsuits...

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Hackintosh! (tm) ;-)

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Shifty0x88]

OMG, thank you!!!! I have been thinking the same thing as all of these companies started to sue each other over whatever they can think of (OK, well Apple is leading the pack on that one)

I believe they are stifling competition because no one is allowed to have products that look anything remotely resembling Apple's. Now I do agree they are sexy designs(as always), but at what point can you sue over such things.

My TV looks like just about every other TV, but you don't see TV companies suing each other. (or do you, and I'm just misinformed?)

I mean, how much different can you get, before you provide an inferior product or experience?!? Which no one will buy and no one will like and continue to use.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, yeah. It is a well known FACT that TV is just an acronym for AppleTV. Also, surprised no one has mentioned this. Ever notice how the layout on most keyboards is the same as the layout on Apple Keyboards? Rip. Off. It is an ever more well known FACT that QWERTY is Martian for Apple. There are a billion ways to design a keyboard but they all come out rectangular just like Apple. Key sizes pretty much the same as Apple. Even the SAME LANGUAGE AS APPLE!!!!!! They all use the "keystroke" which is the term that high-energy physicists at the LHC have used for centuries to describe touching the brilliance that is Apple products. Most damning is this Vizio product is made from Aluminum. How many things in your house are made from Aluminum. One thing? Two? Most tech products not made by Apple are made from Lead and use molten lava for electrical wires.

It's gotten so bad even general appliance makers are ripping off Apple. Went in my kitchen and saw that my refrigerator was not only rectangular but also made from brushed stainless (like the iPod) and used the English language!!!! And the sink was made from the same exotic Apple exclusive materials as well. And obviously Kohler ripped off Apple's trademarked ease-of-use. All I do is lift the handle and it magically knows what temperature I want my water. Probably ripped of iOS for the sinksoftware as well. Where are the GPL whiners to defend Apple? Nowhere, that's where. And my sink also, not my favorite part honestly, has the same "walled-garden" type block as iOS. Try as hard as I can, but I still can't get the thing to give me soda or beer when I want it. That's really all Android based sinks have going for them. But in the end it's OK because I need Apple, er, Kohler to protect me from evil soda and beer. Don't want to cross the streams. (Copyright Apple).

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[dreamchaser]

You have to drink an awful lot of that KoolAid to think that looks like an Apple product, aside from it being 'glitzy and shiny'.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[stephanruby]

Finally, they've perfected the giant iPad with a keyboard, and a bunch of accessories, without any wires whatsoever (not even for electricity).

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Anonymous Coward]

All Apple did was use a "modern" design. There was nothing special about it. In fact it sucks. It is attractive and that is about it. Functionality shit. I'd rather go back to my Palm m500 than touch an Apple product. The Palm was both functional and worked well. Palm at that time knew wtf they were doing. It is sad they copied Microsoft and released hefty units. They should have stuck to thin and gone free. It isn't like there was ever anything special about the software. To this day there isn't anything competive from a boot/design stand point for the software though. Software for taking notes and simialr though is a comodity though so keeping it closed didn't make any sense.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[grahamd0]

Hunt and peck? That would be an improvement. I've known several "creative" types who refused to touch a 2 button mouse.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[artor3]

Please tell me how you would design a trackpad that isn't a smooth, flat, rectangular surface.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Nemyst]

Corners should have spikes on them... You know, just so you can run them through particularly annoying fanboys.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[jo_ham]

Well, Logitech did it. Their trackpad has curving sections at the top - in fact, I don't think it has a straight edge on it, other than where the touch surface itself meets the casing.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Bacon Bits]

My question is, at what point does a particular design go from being something proprietary to something obvious for it's function?

The point at which your lawyers can't convince a judge any longer, of course.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[mrchaotica]

My house has lots of wooden things with square corners.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Bogtha]

hell to type on if you have any sort of speed. That's very Apple.

Apple keyboards are the first I've been happy with since the Model M. What's wrong with them?

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[rtb61]

On noes they stole the obvious minimalist design for a TV screen, one that has been used on cheap scifi for flat screens for ever (generally driven by let's save money on sets to spend on special effects). You mean someone stole the chiclet keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiclet_keyboard, you see it is all wikipedias fault, how dare they have a section on a generic 'CHEAP' keyboard design. I always thought the reason chiclet keyboards never dominated was a lack of tactile feedback limiting the typing usability and why the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard is still refereed to as the best keyboard ever.

You Apple wanks, are really out there, seems like Pluto's orbit is too close perhaps there is a new planet out in the Oort cloud Apple marketdroids can call home. Perhaps you can rename it to the iOort cloud and permanently claim patent and copyright on any objects found out their.

Lets be honest the Visio design was driven by cost efficiency, least amount of materials and, reduced packaging ie. cheap but, wait, does that mean Apple minimalist design was to actually same money and produce cheaper gear, gees, you guys are really good at marketing you sure got them suckers fooled.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Egads! *This* is a good keyboard: http://www.mikecase.net/ModelM/IBM-Model-M-Keyboard.jpg *That* looks unusable.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[nedlohs]

http://www.vizio.com/lcd-hdtvs/va26lhdtv10t.html
http://www.vizio.com/lcd-hdtvs/vx240m.html

They aren't copying Apple, they are copying Sony: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-NSX-32GT1-32-Inch-Featuring-Google/dp/B004BBA6B2 (who very well may have copied Apple, but that's beside the point).

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.yaddablog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/old-tv.jpg

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Joce640k]

Ohh, I don't think speed is an issue. These are Apple users. Hunt and Peck is plenty of speed.

I remember the iPad launch and Steve Jobs describing the iPad keyboard as "excellent".

I'll miss Steve ... he was one of the greatest stand up comics in history.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[ajo_arctus]

I can touch type on an iPad keyboard with pretty good accuracy and adequate speed. There's a website that lets you test yourself against Project Guttenberg texts and measures your speed/accuracy -- I tested myself on the iPad and the results were good. It was a while ago, so I can't remember the exact figures, but I'm certain I was over 30 wpm and 98% accuracy with the onscreen keyboard. The keys are all in the same place as a regular keyboard, so you just need to have faith that your fingers will hit the right spot. And they do. The main downside is that there's no apostrophe on the main keyboard, and that really slows you down -- you need to flip to the character keyboard to get at it. They should fix it in an update, but I bet they won't.

I get about 60wpm at the same accuracy on a real desktop keyboard, so I'm about half as fast on an iPad. I wouldn't use it for any real typing though -- I'd just connect a wireless keyboard.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[93 Escort Wagon]

they're garbage

Well... at least your "argument" was succinct.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[mykdavies]

Engadget has some better views of the components, and I think that shows them to be using some of the same design cues as Apple (silver, flat, clean lines), but looking different enough to avoid trouble.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[B1oodAnge1]

Apparently having a slick looking, minimalist design now qualifies as looking "a lot like Apple products."

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[SpaghettiPattern]

I think what really goes on here is that some people just don't want to give Apple credit for anything

Oh come off that high horse you ride. There are similarities between Apple and the pictures of Vizio devices. Vizio seems to be inspired by Apple but they are not copycats. There's only so many things you can do in designing a monitor, e keyboard and a trackpad.

Currently it seems the PC fashion is aluminum and smaller sizes. Even real fashion where design isn't just nice-to-have but paramount, inspiration goes even further than what Vizio does here. Yet the original designers only press charges in severe copy cases.
Look at cars. Nowadays matt black is very hip. Yet the first designers to choose matt black as colour won't sue. (Possibly because this designer was busy painting a shed. But that's a personal taste issue I have.)

Apple's design is cute but they annoy me when claiming their designs are so innovative. How many ways are there to arrange icons on a desktop? Will Apple again almost claim that they invented the desktop GUI?

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[anonymov]

How is this is just like this except for "it's a keyboard and it's thin"?

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[gnasher719]

My question is, at what point does a particular design go from being something proprietary to something obvious for it's function? For instance, when does "rounded rectangles" go from being a style feature to a "of course the corners are rounded, what else are they going to do with them, make them pointed?" When does a particular size go from a "design style" to "duh, of course it's going to be about the same size, it is intended for the same function"?

That is relatively easy. Anything that is designed in some way because that is necessary for it to work is fine. Round wheels on a car or bicycle would be an example. Very thin tyres on a racing bicycle would be an example as well. Rectangular screen is another example. A good criterion is looking at other products; if they achieve the same thing with a different design, then the design is quite likely not forced by the function. In your example, of course you can have square corners instead of rounded.

Beyond that, it is not one design choice, to get into legal trouble you would need to make a whole series of design choices the same or very similar. If manufacturer X says "my design consists of A, B, C, D, E and F" then using any of those in your own design is fine. Just not all of them at the same time. And what are the chances that a different designer who is _not_ copying would make six arbitrary design choices in the same way?

You say that a manufacturer shouldn't be forced to put physical buttons on a touchscreen device because Apple doesn't have any, but then I would say a manufacturer shouldn't remove them because Apple removed them.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Vegemeister]

That sound's a lot like a manufacturer using a sub-optimal design to avoid lawsuits from Apple. The motion of the user's finger on the trackpad is an analogue for the motion of the pointer on the screen. The screen is rectangular.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[serviscope_minor]

but then I would say a manufacturer shouldn't remove them because Apple removed them.

You mean IBM, not Apple. Apple followed about 15 years after.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[pantaril]

I realize Slashdot comments tend to have an Apple slant (to put it mildly), but come on, this is completely obvious "inspiration" from Apple.

What's wrong with inspiration? Would you prefer world where people don't take inspiration from each other? World where everyone reinvents the wheel and once the best wheel is invented and patended, you can only make sub-par wheels?

I don't see what's wrong with copying good ideas. Unless Vizio stamps apple trademark on their products, it's benefical for end-user if they inspire themself in good way from it's competitors.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[gnasher719]

You mean IBM, not Apple. Apple followed about 15 years after.

So you are saying that sometime around 1995 IBM built tablets without buttons and sold gazillions of them, and all the kids wanted one for Christmas, and Apple just copied them?

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[jo_ham]

Sheesh. *Everything* is somehow Apple's fault, right?

It can't possibly be a design decision to make it fit in with the rest of the products Logitech makes, right?

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Anonymous Coward]

but then I would say a manufacturer shouldn't remove them because Apple removed them.

You mean IBM, not Apple. Apple followed about 15 years after.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Lenovo-X61-Tablet-Mode.jpg you mean hardware-button-less like this?

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Anonymous Coward]

I can Swype on my phone as fast as you can type on a desktop keyboard.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[sglewis100]

I type 110 words per minute, and have no graphical ability at all. And use Apple. I used to type a smidge faster, but now I do all that copy and paste all day long so I guess I slowed down just a bit. And for the record, I flunked typing as a kid in school, since I refused to rest my hands on the home row, and told the teacher I would do it after she typed faster than me with more accuracy.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Anomalyst]

How does one equate design = work

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[jedidiah]

> and sold gazillions of them

That is entirely irrelevant to the question of invention.

You are not the inventor if you merely popularized something or plagarized the real inventor. You are portraying Apple's potential ability to get away with theft as invention.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Chang]

Heads up - If you hold down the comma key for a couple of seconds you'll get an apostrophe.

This shortcut has been in there from the beginning on the iPad.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[lsatenstein]

New TV standards are 1080p, which I believe is 16x9 ratio. Put a frame around a 16x9 ratio screen and round the corners so you don't cut your fingers on the edges, add a stand, some bluetooth functionality and wow, you leave a lot of manufacturers in the 6 months to 1 year to catch-up.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

All Apple did was use a "modern" design.

So all other computer manufacturers use "outdated design".

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Please tell me how you would design a trackpad that isn't a smooth, flat, rectangular surface.

The way everyone but Apple and Samsung does and did for years.

Re:The Curse of the Rounded Rectangle

[Phoghat]

the color silver

You are now being sued by Alice Walker, Oprah Winfrey, Harpo Productions, et al for the similarity of your reply to "The Color Purple". Cease and desist.

Good for them.

[Nyder]

Cheap computers are a good thing for the poor people. computers might suck, but at least it will allow some people to get online.

Not that you can't find a ton on craigslist or anything.

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

a local thrift store had a compaq pentium I machine that booted up to a 98 bluescreen and wanted 100$, and some dumb shit bought it. Meanwhile across town at the habitat for humanity reuse center (and this like 5 min away, ... small town) they were selling 2ghz p4 pizza boxes for 5 bucks each, and they sat there for months.

poor people for some reason often have a skewed vision of a good buy, that 100$ computer HAD to be good, and those 5$ computers were useless shit, point being its often better to direct them away from ripoff list cause they will plop down 600 bucks for that mac G4 that some douche thinks is still the sweetest thing on the planet

Re:Good for them.

[nurb432]

Even if they 'suck' compared to other brands, they are still an order of a magnitude more powerful than we had 10 years ago. And we got along just find back then.

Re:Good for them.

[mrclisdue]

Habitat for Humanity (dot org will resolve) often give stuff away, never mind just having $5 Pentium 4s.

They'll take donations, too.

cheers,

Re:Good for them.

[Ethanol-fueled]

But what good are they if they're not useful? Every e-machine I've seen in operation takes an hour to boot regardless of the specs. That's probably where all the "high error rate but still sellable" stuff gets compiled into systems, at a markup.

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

I told everyone I saw, including the operators of the thrift store and people at the thrift store TY

Re:Good for them.

[Baron_Yam]

While some people just can't catch a break, or have suffered from lack of opportunity... people who are poor long term often have related poor decision making skills. Whether that's genetic or due to poor parents teaching them the wrong things, I'll leave to the social scientists.

You'll see a surprising number of fairly wealthy people play the lottery - one ticket here and there. You'll see an equally surprising number of poor people play the lottery, dozens of tickets at a time. You'll also see them maxing out credit cards and going to paycheque cashing stores, seemingly without realizing that if they'd just hold off for ONE paycheque, they'd have 10-20% more money to spend. I know a guy with a bottom-end job who is very modest in his purchases, and keeps socking most of his money away. 20 years later, he's a freakin' LANDLORD to some of his former coworkers, and he built it all on a minimum wage job. It can be done.

Seeing a poor person get taking isn't surprising, but when they're fleecing themselves and the person profiting *isn't* trying to take advantage of them, what do you do? Give up on the adults and hope for the best for the kids.

I say this as someone whose extended family has both middle and lower income families in it.

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

for your information i am nowhere near well off, less than a couple hundred away from qualifying for food stamps in fact.

It doesnt keep me from making an informed purchace

Re:Good for them.

[hedwards]

I find that hard to believe an economic system like that is called communism. In order for a capitalist society to exist, at least in the type that the US is, you have winners and you have losers. Most of the winners had quite a bit to start with and most of the losers didn't have much to start with.

This whole notion of upward mobility hasn't been true in at least 40 years. Sure you get some people that manage it, but the money that would have gone to making that work out is now being siphoned directly to the richest Americans.

Re:Good for them.

[AmberBlackCat]

If you think rich people don't say "you get what you pay for" and poor people never go for the cheapest option then you know nothing about rich people or poor people. Rich people buy iPhones & poor people buy Cricket phones. Rich people buy Mercedes & poor people buy Hyundai. And what the heck, rich people buy Sony TV's while poor people buy Vizio.

Oddly enough, I've got the Vizio and the Hyundai. But I suppose poor people don't buy EVO 3D's. Maybe that's where I went wrong. But still, poor people don't waste money on things nearly as much as rich people. They just don't have the capability to do so.

Re:Good for them.

[Solandri]

In order for a capitalist society to exist, at least in the type that the US is, you have winners and you have losers.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism. Economics is not a zero-sum game. In a capitalist society, you have big winners and you have small winners. Every transaction is made because both participants feel it is advantageous for them to make it. If either party feels a transaction will make them a "loser", they simply will not make the transaction. Failing to be a big winner is not losing.

If you're consistently generating losers, that points to a problem either in your implementation of capitalism (e.g. overly broad patents prevent competition from introducing and lowering prices for flat, rectangular computing devices), or in the people (lack of education/information, or irrational decision making).

Re:Good for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the people and implementations are flawed, not the theory. The theory is beautiful and perfect. Why can't reality be more like the theory?

Why don't we take capitalism to its fullest extent and just give one guy all the money. The only way that you get the game to reset is a 100% estate tax. Otherwise oligarchy/fascism/plutocracy is inevitable.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

Re:Good for them.

[dragonsomnolent]

Sometimes those people going to a check cashing place have to have that money right then and there. For example, a poor person's car breaks down, they need a part, they have no savings (they are poor, remember), and if their car doesn't work, they can't get to work (for whatever reason, it happens), so if they don't go to work, they lose their job. They literally do not have a choice to make, either take a loan at an absurdly high interest rate, or get fired, have no car and no way to get a car that runs. Not much of a choice that. You are correct, in that sometimes (hell maybe a lot of times) people could wait for one more check, but if it's a choice of "lose your job" or "get taken by an industry set up to rob you blind", which are you going to do?

Re:Good for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand what a zero-sum game is. Zero-sum games occur when winners win exactly what losers lose. If economics was zero-sum no growth would EVER be possible, by definition. Anything gained by expanding producers would necessarily be lost by someone else (other producers, probably).

And capitalism has no requirement that there be any losers at all. It doesn't preclude losing situations, but in a strict market capitalist system, any transaction that is KNOWN to be a losing proposition will never go forward. Every transaction that does go foward in such a system.. has no known losers. Both sides expect (and generally do) to come out in better positions than when they went in. Which is why they went into the transaction in the first place.

Re:Good for them.

[russotto]

Meanwhile across town at the habitat for humanity reuse center (and this like 5 min away, ... small town) they were selling 2ghz p4 pizza boxes for 5 bucks each, and they sat there for months.

Sounds like you missed an arbitrage opportunity. Buy 20 for $5, sell for $100 each on Craigslist.

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

I bought a couple, cleaned them up and donated them to a church that has a program for computer use... I often donate computers I have no use for, as I am sort of a local go to guy for both the shops in town and a handful of people I often get extra machines that are too old to really waste time selling, but not old enough to be useless in modern application

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

I still get along just fine with computers 15 years old

if they have enough ram slap linux on them (debian, or antiX) be a little patient and they do everything you would want ... I recently went on a tiny vacation with a pentium MMX subnotebook / netbook, 1 inch thick, less than 3lbs got on gmail just freaking fine and while it was loading up a map I got dressed

I use a 1997 powermac 9600 with debian on it every day at my little electronic workbench ... while admittedly I would not want either as my main machine in this day and age they both do what I want, in the case of the powermac, edit text, browse web, look at pdf files, compile programs for microcontrollers, hey it even does fine as a spare tv

course I grew up during the age of "stop every freaking thing while this document prints" so maybe I am just getting old

Re:Good for them.

[timeOday]

Economics is not zero-sum. Neither is it infinite-sum. If it were, there would be no competition. In reality, a company that is doing fairly well can be driven out of business by another company that is just a few percentage-points more efficient (winner-takes-all).

The principle of voluntary transactions is much less significant than you make it out to be. Freedom is no more valuable than the best option made available to you. Only children and fools are placated by making their "own decision" from a range of options that are all bad, and all designed by the other party to benefit themselves.

Consistently generating losers is the natural outcome of unregulated markets - that is, monopoly.

Re:Good for them.

[timeOday]

People got along fine using horse-drawn carriages for transport around New York City 100 years ago, too. That doesn't mean it would be a practical means of transport in today's NYC.

Re:Good for them.

[cduffy]

Re: "get taken by an industry set up to rob you blind" -- a line of credit with a credit union is the better / more responsible choice in that case. Granted, it's very few credit unions that have actually put effort into marketing to the same segment that payday lenders target, but it has been done.

Speaking to your specific example -- the city I'm in has crappy mass transit, yet I have a friend who fills shifts for a local chain of stores with no car and she gets around by bus just fine. A car can be awfully convenient, sure, but the number of people who genuinely need one to keep their jobs vs the number of people who think they need one to keep their jobs... well, the former is a smaller set than the latter. (Personally, I tend to the multi-modal thing -- transit+bike, which helps a great deal with the last-mile problem).

Re:Good for them.

[Rockoon]

They literally do not have a choice to make, either take a loan at an absurdly high interest rate, or get fired, have no car and no way to get a car that runs. Not much of a choice that. You are correct, in that sometimes (hell maybe a lot of times) people could wait for one more check, but if it's a choice of "lose your job" or "get taken by an industry set up to rob you blind", which are you going to do?

Your example of when this isnt the case is an exceptional car repair, yet your default insinuation (with a bailout clause of "maybe a lot") is that its rare to not have an exceptional need for the money immediately?

Do you see the bias?

The reason poor people use these check cashing ripoffs is mainly because a lot of them dont have bank accounts. The reason they don't have bank accounts is because they either cannot or do not save. I see "poor" people enjoying expensive things that I choose to live without (high end cell phones and their plans, for example) because I feel that they are too expensive, and I am certainly not poor.

What makes me different isnt that I make a decent living. Its that I make good choices. The GP is right that "poor" people in American are mainly on our bottom rung because they make choices that keep them there.

I put "poor" in quotes all the time with reference to Americans because "poor" Americans arent really poor. The standard of living of our "poor" is the envy of literally billions of people. Part of the reason that our "poor" people make consistently bad choices is because being "poor" aint so bad, and thats artificially so... the real cause of the "problem."

Re:Good for them.

[westlake]

a local thrift store had a compaq pentium I machine that booted up to a 98 bluescreen and wanted 100$, and some dumb shit bought it. Meanwhile across town at the habitat for humanity reuse center...they were selling 2ghz p4 pizza boxes for 5 bucks each, and they sat there for months

Because no one knew they were there for sale ---

while the thrift store has a daily walk-in trade and maybe a weekly add in the local shopping papers?

Re:Good for them.

[unimacs]

In order for a capitalist society to exist, at least in the type that the US is, you have winners and you have losers.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism. Economics is not a zero-sum game. In a capitalist society, you have big winners and you have small winners. Every transaction is made because both participants feel it is advantageous for them to make it. If either party feels a transaction will make them a "loser", they simply will not make the transaction. Failing to be a big winner is not losing. If you're consistently generating losers, that points to a problem either in your implementation of capitalism (e.g. overly broad patents prevent competition from introducing and lowering prices for flat, rectangular computing devices), or in the people (lack of education/information, or irrational decision making).

For a transaction to occur both parties have to have something that the other wants. It could be an object of some sort, a service, or a form of currency. If you have little (you're poor), you are at an inherent disadvantage. You can certainly still provide some sort of service, but if there are millions of other people as poor or poorer than you, they may be willing to exchange their services for less.

Further complicating the problem, - what if machines are introduced that can perform the service for even cheaper? It doesn't take machines to wreak havoc on the system though. What if the potential buyers of said service collude, and agree that none of them will pay any more than a paltry sum?

The more you have, the more you can control the nature of the transactions and the exchange rate. The less you have, the more you are at the whims of those that do. This is playing out every day. It has nothing to do with patents or irrational decision making.

Playing a simple game of Monopoly bears this out fairly quickly. It's not hard to grasp.

It's been a while, but 10 or 15 years ago, economists were freaking out over the tight labor market. It was driving up costs and was bound to lead to trouble. You know what? There were still lots of people unemployed. Capitalism depends on having a supply of employed people, - i.e. losers.

Re:Good for them.

[drsmithy]

Every transaction is made because both participants feel it is advantageous for them to make it. If either party feels a transaction will make them a "loser", they simply will not make the transaction. Failing to be a big winner is not losing.

Of course, you can make the same statement about a condemned prisoner choosing whether to die by hanging, firing squad, or lethal injection.

Re:Good for them.

[DraconPern]

It's those dumb decisions that caused them to be poor. Oh, and they won't believe you when you tell them those $5 computer runs better.

Re:Good for them.

[unimacs]

Oh, and it's capitalism that leads to things like the patent system. Capitalism wants to put a price tag on everything and creates this concept of "ownership", whether it's food, a service, a design, or an idea.

I'm not advocate for communism, but I don't believe that pure capitalism is a better system. It needs strict controls for it to work for anything beyond the minority of people that end up controlling most of the resources. A mixed economy is the way to go and the right mix varies from place to place.

Re:Good for them.

[wbr1]

Poor people also have a habit of buying from rip-off places like Rent-A-Center, where a $300 laptop will probably cost you $1000 in the end. We as a society know the underprivileged make poor financial decisions (or have them thrust upon them by need), yet we still allow the Rent-A-Center and payday and title loan, and check chasing scam companies to prey on them. It's a shame.

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

the reuse center is a thrift store right next door to good will, its not some hidden thing

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

yea, bestway left a flyer in my door the other day, one of the "deals" was a base model iPad for only 99 bucks a month for darn near a year

Re:Good for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

If either party feels a transaction will make them a "loser", they simply will not make the transaction. Failing to be a big winner is not losing.

What a load of oversimplified armchair theory bullshit.
In reality, you often don't have a choice of not making the transaction! You cannot just say: "No, this apartment is not worth that amount of money, I'm not paying it!" Cause you would be homeless. In the winter. And dead in a couple of hours!
I've been there. No, there was NOBODY where I could go. No homeless shelter anything. I would have simply died.

Same thing with food. Or clothes. You can't just "not eat". You'd starve. Or run around naked. (Well, I'd love to, but you know, the cops are not that open-minded...)

The whole concept of the "free market" you Americans seem to have, is oversimplified theory like that from top to bottom. In reality, "free market" just is an euphemism for "lawless society". (With laws, the market is not truly free, now is it?)
And a lawless society always ends in the law of the jungle.

The strongest one bashes your head in, takes all your stuff, rapes you in the ass whenever he pleases, and enslaves you forever.

Which is EXACTLY what is happening in the US right now. Nearly all people there are slaves of "their debt". Nearly all products and services you can buy, are total rip-offs. Because they can. Companies get away with capital crimes with a slap on the wrist. And if you don't agree to their terms, you will die on the streets.

Yay. Hail the "free market"!

What you people don't seem to get, is that the point of the control your government exerts over companies, and the limits it imposes, is to support YOUR interests. The government's power is YOUR side.
Yes, I know in the USA this is not the case anymore and seriously fucked up. But it's still how it should be. It's the whole point of a republic, that the general citizens can exert power over the big lords again.

So what do you say... let's do a French revolution, behead some assholes, and make it a RePublic again?

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

not my fault you have brand new Jordan's and no dinner tonight dude

Re:Good for them.

[tepples]

In reality, you often don't have a choice of not making the transaction! You cannot just say: "No, this apartment is not worth that amount of money, I'm not paying it!" Cause you would be homeless. In the winter. And dead in a couple of hours!

You are choosing to win by choosing to remain alive.

Re:Good for them.

[tepples]

the number of people who genuinely need one to keep their jobs

Include people who have to work on one of the 59 days of the year when buses don't run. I'm fortunate to not be one of them, at least yet.

Personally, I tend to the multi-modal thing -- transit+bike, which helps a great deal with the last-mile problem

How can this be made bearable in sub-freezing temperatures with snow on the ground?

Re:Good for them.

[cduffy]

Include people who have to work on one of the 59 days of the year when buses don't run. I'm fortunate to not be one of them, at least yet.

Oooh. Don't have that problem here (the busses run on reduced schedules on holidays and weekends, but -- unlike the train -- they always run).

Personally, I tend to the multi-modal thing -- transit+bike, which helps a great deal with the last-mile problem

How can this be made bearable in sub-freezing temperatures with snow on the ground?

Heh -- I'm in Austin, TX, so the question I get more often is how I bear it in >100F temperatures in the middle of summer (to which the answer is (1) working up to it, and (2) preferring employers with shower facilities, and having a membership at the nearest gym otherwise).

That said, studded bicycle snow tires are available, as are gloves which are both insulating and reflective -- and some of the manufacturers of higher-end rain jackets and such are in the Pacific Northwest, meaning that their local climates are wet and cold enough to ensure nontrivial testing. ...and again, if you're just biking the last mile or two from the transit station, it's a lot easier to deal with some weather than if you were biking a full 10-mile commute.

Re:Good for them.

[residieu]

More likely, no one knew about those $5 computers at habitat for humanity. And even if they did, were they properly loaded with software for someone to just take them home and use them?

I honestly doubt that the people who bought the $100 machine that wouldn't boot properly knew they were buying something nonfunctional.

Re:Good for them.

[Osgeld]

I dunno that 100$ machine was powered on and bluescreened when I walked past it, Its not like I took the time to hook it up laugh, unhook it all and walk away

Re:Good for them.

[k8to]

re: biking in snow, it's not really that hard in most cities.

There are a wide variety of purchasable and homebrew solutions to ensure a good grip on snow/ice, from spike tires to zipties. From there it's a matter of ensuring you have sufficiently warm bike-appropriate clothes, and plotting a reasonable route.

In some large cities with heavy traffic and no side streets (new york city) this might seem a bit tough, but it's totally workable in most. My sister in law commuted all winter long in Ann Arbor on her bicycle. It was only a 4 mile route, but that covers what most people would need to get to work in the type of scenario the grandparent post raised.

Re:Good for them.

[jedidiah]

What does it matter? You're still going to get stuck in traffic anyways. At least from the "consumer" perspective, there really isn't much difference in this particular context between the best most expensive and newest thing you can get yourself in 2011 and what you would have to settle for in 1870.

Sometimes the added tech and expense just doesn't get you much.

OLD doesn't mean it isn't useful.

Re:Good for them.

[timeOday]

My recent experience was that I bought a P4 for my kids to use on the web and found it was too slow. It's not enough horsepower to run youtube or most flash games. (At least under Linux, where the flash implementation isn't great). So I got them a Sempron 3200+ (single core), which is adequate, although barely.

it has rounded corners

[amoeba1911]

I sense Apple lawsuit coming, Apple owns the copyright on rounded rectangles.

Re:it has rounded corners

[getto man d]

FTA

...will go on sale by June at a “a price that just doesn’t seem possible,” he said, declining to provide specifics.

They're stealing one from Apple's pricing scheme too!

Re:it has rounded corners

[stephanruby]

TV maker Vizio is famous for undercutting competitors' prices on LCD TVs...

Is Vizio famous for that? Is Vizio famous for anything (other than chart creation software)? On Best Buy, they seem to be listed for a DVD about the Rose Bowl, a single blue-ray player, and a single TV remote control, all at average (or above average) prices.

It seems a /. editor has just been fooled by a Press Release.

Re:it has rounded corners

[LordLimecat]

That laptop you linked looks nothing like a macbook pro. In fact, the article linked doesnt even assert that it does; they simply moan that the user logon symbol resembles some kind of abstract apple (which is a heck of a stretch).

I mean, the trackpad is not a single piece, the keyboard looks nothing like a macbooks, the colors are all wrong, the plastic casing is all wrong, etc.

Re:it has rounded corners

[smart_ass]

Visio not Vizio (for the charting software)

Re:it has rounded corners

[UnknowingFool]

They have a larger presence in Target, Walmart, and Amazon where consumers are more likely to focus on pricing than anything else.

Re:it has rounded corners

[UnknowingFool]

I mean, the trackpad is not a single piece, the keyboard looks nothing like a macbooks, the colors are all wrong, the plastic casing is all wrong, etc.

Huh? It certainly looks like a MacBook Pro 13. For the most part the MacBook Pro hasn't changed much since 2009 Other than the Samsung trackpad having buttons and the Apple trackpad not having buttons, I don't see how you can can say they look nothing alike.

Re:it has rounded corners

[nedlohs]

They only have the second largest market share (with Samsung) being first for LCD TVs in the US (http://www.isuppli.com/Display-Materials-and-Systems/MarketWatch/Pages/Vizio-Remains-on-Top-of-US-LCD-TV-Market-in-Q4-2010.aspx). And they are one of the cheap (and possible nasty...) brands.

But of course your peek at Best Buy is much more representative than actual statistics.

Re:it has rounded corners

[drinkypoo]

TV maker Vizio is famous for undercutting competitors' prices on LCD TVs...

Is Vizio famous for that?

YES! In fact, they are. Vizio makes fairly decent televisions that cost a hell of a lot less than the Tier 1 brands, and they have few processing stages which means little latency, which was a big deal to gamers for a while. (Even if you can't perceive the latency of the LCD TV, you add all the latencies together, and then it becomes noticeable.) Now of course it's fairly typical for LCDs to have low latency.

Re:it has rounded corners

[drinkypoo]

In order to be a proper Slashdotter, it is important to maintain the delusion that Apple does not lead the tech industry.

Apple leads the design industry. It took Intel's acceptance of every Apple technology to push it.

The cognitive dissonance will turn you into a mostly unlikeable person,

Capable of mistaking quality for marketing.

ARM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one thinking that this might be driven by some cheap ARM hardware? Only way I can think of to achieve "a price that just doesn't seem possible" in an all-in-one computer.

Re:ARM?

[mirix]

Doesn't have to be ARM, there are cheap x86 processors too. Problem is they are also slow.

Not quite as cheap, I suppose. Guess we'll have to see what their 'unbelievable prices' are.

Whatever happened to that Chinese endeavour.. Longsoon? Think that was MIPS based.

Re:ARM?

[Vegemeister]

Not really. Atom is slow. But very few desktop tasks are CPU bound these days, and the Sandy Bridge Celerons and Pentiums are pretty damn fast, considering a P4 is sufficient for many user tasks.

Re:ARM?

[pr0fessor]

Almost all of my family and friends a couple are even mac users, just use their computers to store pictures and music, check email, facebook, watch a video on youtube, play silly web based games, search for product reviews and possibly make an online purchase. This really wouldn't require very much horse power and I really don't know anyone that actually uses all the horse power under their computer's hood (except the one friend that has that warcrack addiction we should probably stage an intervention).

Underengineered

[Anonymous Coward]

Vizio products are terribly built. They're fine under perfect circumstances, but the insides are like a freshman EE student built them. Accidentally plug a USB drive into the firmware update port (which accepts a USB form factor)? New motherboard time. Live in a house built before 1978 and took an electrical surge? New motherboard time. And none of it is under warranty. All you can do is plead ignorance and hope for the best.

Re:Underengineered

[dgatwood]

That was the conclusion I came to after reading reviews of their Blu-Ray players a few weeks ago as well. I ended up buying an LG.

Then again, all the reviews said that Samsung makes some of the best Blu-Ray players, yet both of mine have been train wrecks to various degrees, which is why I'm replacing the worst of the pair with the LG, so....

Re:Underengineered

[TheRealMindChild]

I use all samsung BluRay players in my house. I have the least difficulty with it seeingmy DLNA server on the wireless connection and it ALMOST can play any video file I can throw at it. There is a catch, however. The software is unstable. I've had video freeze the machine enough to need "rebooted" (at least with current firmware, that just means turning it off and back on, where the older firmwares would require unplugging the device). More or less, what they can do on paper is leagues better than anything else I've delt with. In real life, I constantly yearn for new software updates.

Re:Underengineered

[dwillden]

Well your experience is different from what I've seen in their TV's and Tablets. And who puts any electronics directly onto the house power without a surge protector?

They may not be high end systems but they work. And they don't break the bank. Also most consumers are not opening the cases (as that usually voids the warranty) and thus don't really care what it looks like inside as long as it works.

Re:Underengineered

[bill_mcgonigle]

Flat screen TV's are all problematic on repairs (so says the guy who fixes my CRT's but does most of his business on flat screen warranties). Get the extended warranty, hope you get 5 years out of it.

On inflation-adjusted basis, they cost 25% of what CRT's used to cost, so 5 yrs vs. 20 years seems about right.

Re:Underengineered

[bill_mcgonigle]

I constantly yearn for new software updates.

What happened to all the talk about Chinese manufacturers everywhere embedding mplayer? I want to buy one of those!

Re:Underengineered

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, Vizio's products are very robust. An angry ex-girlfriend threw my 37" vizio LED TV on the floor and stomped on the back. The front bezel cracked off, but it still works perfectly. Pretty amazing for something so thin (the tv, not the ex).

Re:Underengineered

[Kjella]

For the most part, neither are worth repairing anymore. I remember my parents' CRT broke, my mom absolutely wanted it fixed even though it was 10 years old. The cost came out to about 1/3rd of what a new TV would cost and with no guarantee that any of the other old components won't fail soon. I bought an LCD that failed spectacularly 5 years later, at that time you got an LCD that had better picture, more inputs and of the same size for 17% of the price. The CRTs are like the IBM PCs that failed spectacularly in the 80s, they were built to last 20 years with expensive repairs. They were run into the ground by cheap clones that people used as long as they worked, then threw away and bought a new one.

And no, this isn't some kind of conspiracy. It's just that repairing something takes a large distributed network of skilled people with the right tools and an inventory of parts, with parts becoming increasingly integrated and the interconnects finer and finer. Meanwhile building highly specialized assembly lines that just churn them out in the thousands or millions and do precision point welding in clean rooms has gotten cheaper and cheaper. Less and less items are actually repaired, even refurbished items are typically returned for other reasons not because they're broken. If you return something on warranty, they're just likely to take another box off the assembly line as a replacement. It's only a matter of who carries the cost of that risk.

Re:Underengineered

[dgatwood]

My problems are all software problems, but the problem is that they're debilitating software problems that prevent it from carrying out its primary purpose.

One does not play DVDs correctly. This started after a firmware update. At the DVD layer switch, it stalls for anywhere from a fraction of a second up to five or six seconds because it fails to buffer data far enough ahead to handle the layer change.

Both of my Samsung players fail to play the Blu-Ray versions of the last two Harry Potter movies. They seem to skip playback of a frame of audio about every twenty or thirty seconds in certain stretches, resulting in a very noticeable audible glitch. In the worst cases, you can see a visual glitch as well.

These are two different models, bought probably a year apart or more. Both have seen multiple firmware updates since the Harry Potter movies came out, none of which fixed the playback problems (nearly a year after the first problem disc came out). I can only assume, then, that Samsung doesn't care. By contrast, I understand that LG units had trouble playing these same discs, but they quickly released a firmware update to fix the problem.

My hatred for their products is further compounded by the nightmarish power lights. Every piece of Samsung gear I own has power lights that remain lit (sometimes a different color) even when the unit is turned off. I actually ended up putting a piece of black electric tape over the power button on my Samsung TV because it kept me up at night. Unfortunately, this also means I can't tell if I successfully turned it on because I can't see the power light blinking. And, of course, the light is controlled by software, so it would have been trivial for them to add an option to not leave the light on all the time, but they didn't. I don't know what Samsung was thinking, but it's a really horrible user experience, and there's no good way for the user to work around it without negatively impacting the device's operation. By contrast, my LG is completely dark when turned off—the way electronics should be.

So I don't see myself buying Samsung gear again in the near future. I bought their gear because they manufacture some of the best flat panels in the industry. It's a shame that the rest of their design doesn't meet the same high standards. Not by a long shot.

Wondering about desktop sales ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that with smart phones, tablets and lowered priced laptops; desktops should be in decline right? Of course, there's a market for super cheap desktops, but I wonder when the whole concept of a desktop will just banish.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Never, probably. Very few whole concepts entirely vanish. There's movies and television, but stage plays still exist. There's television and MP3 players, but radio still exists. There's internet streaming, but radio and television still exist. There's e-readers, but print books still exist. There's laptops, tablets and smartphones, but desktop computers still exist.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[dgatwood]

And yet outside of a few hobbyists, the telegraph is defunct. The short-wave and long-wave radio bands are basically defunct. Analog TV is defunct. Celluloid movies are rapidly becoming defunct. ISA slots are defunct. It's not at all uncommon for a specific type of product in a larger class of products to go away if the replacements completely obviate the need for the original product. I see no reason why traditional desktops can't or shouldn't go the way of X terminals eventually.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Desktop sales are already in a steep decline in the western world. People are moving to mobile platforms like smartphones and tablets.

Desktop sales:
2005: 35 million units
2008: 32 million units
2010: 25 million units
2014 (predicted): 22 million units

Mobile sales (tablets and smartphones):
2005: 66 million
2008: 126 million
2010: 170 million
2014 (predicted): 264 million

Desktops are becoming as irrelevant to computing as traditional windows PCs are to gaming in the face of consoles.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[mirix]

I think a big chunk of that is that even a 5 year old desktop is fast enough for most consumer tasks now, no?

The market is rather saturated with fast desktops, not like the leaps between 486 -> P1 > P2/3. There's less incentive to upgrade regularly.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[sensei moreh]

Performing a linear extrapolation of the sales data, we see that sales of desktop PCs drop to zero by 2028.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[AngryDeuce]

Desktop's will never die, not as long as they have the capability of being 10 times more powerful than their portable brethren.

When did everyone get this huge blind spot when it comes to what people do with computers? There are still people out there that do more with their computer than surf the web and consume digital media. People that need as much raw power as they can get for what they're doing have no choice but to remain on the desktop. Although laptops are now beginning to fill that niche (and even then, cheapo ones struggle), tablets and smart phones aren't going to fill that niche for a long, long time.

When tablets, smart phones, and laptops come out that are able to directly compete with their desktop counterparts in terms of raw power, productivity and potential, then I'll say the desktop's days are numbered. Until then, desktops aren't going anywhere...

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are still people out there that do more with their computer than surf the web and consume digital media.

Sure, but nowhere near enough to sustain an industry just for that. There are still people using Symbolics LISP machines too, but you don't see a vibrant industry producing new ones.

Just look at the decline in desktop sales and the rise of the mobile platform. You think that trend isn't going to continue? Desktops will be effectively dead within 20 years, 30 tops.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[viperidaenz]

Do laptops sit in desktop or mobile sales? Anyone at my company who hints at working from home gets a laptop. My house has 1 desktop, 2 laptops and 1 smart phone for 2 adults. In 2006 there were 4 laptops and 2 smart phones for 4 adults - 0 desktops

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[Lanteran]

Development? Power-users? Stallman? There's always going to be a subset of the computer using population that needs more than the latest iShiny.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[Ayanami_R]

This is ultimitley why PC sales are down. Good enough old systems coupled with a broke populace = no new sales. Take it from someone who fixes computers for a living. My sales are way up as more people are getting older systems upgraded or repaired because they're still fast enough, and cheaper than a new machine. Ultrabooks aren't going to do dick to spur sales, as they are too expensive (even at price points like 649 usd) and most customers I talk to plan to spend less than 500 when they absolutely need a new machine. Apple is running out of people that can afford their product, and with food and fuel expected to surge next year I am fairly sure they have peaked. If people have to choose between an idevice or food and a non idevice I think we all know which one wins.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[AngryDeuce]

Yes, but the desktop computer itself is not a particular technology. Telegraph is defunct but people still communicate long distance electronically. Analog TV is defunct but TV's are everywhere, Celluloid movies are on their way out but people still go to the movies just the same as they did 80 years ago.

With "The Cloud" we may see more people move to tablets and smart phones that serve as little more than a terminal, but desktops aren't going anywhere. Honestly, it's funny, but the majority of people I know with laptops use them in exactly the same manner as a desktop: sitting at their desk, plugged in, often with a standard wired mouse plugged in for good measure since most people don't care for trackpads. For all the portability, they unplug their laptop like once a month, if that, so it's a wasted feature. And tablets, I honestly don't know how people can do anything with them that requires more than basic text input or coarse pointer control. I've heard the anecdotal "I wrote an entire novel on my iPad and it was as easy as a keyboard!!1!!1!1!" but I honestly don't see how people can stand software keyboards, it's just way too inefficient for my expectations, I guess.

Anyways, my point is, as long as people are sitting at a desk using a computer, there will be desktop computers. Not everyone needs portability or a particular form factor.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[foniksonik]

Desktops will go away in the next 5 years to be immediately replaced by "workstation" class machines.

Apple already has this. They don't sell desktop PCs they sell minis, all-in-ones, laptops and workstations plus tablets and handhelds. They've branded them to avoid any connection to these segments though so they can evolve as needed.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[symbolset]

There's a "performant enough" level. Tegra 3 looks to be almost there. Maybe within the year...

What the mobile platforms are giving us is amazingly swift progress and remarkable flexibility. This is winning fans.

We've been playing "Intel giveth and Microsoft taketh away" for a very long time. But in time, all things end.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[gutnor]

The majority of people just wanted a device to surf the web and do basic stuff. Before they needed to buy a desktop, now they have the choice. Desktop will never die maybe correct (as in, sure you will probably find desktop for sale in 50+ years, just as you can buy a brand new horse carriage today), they just become more and more irrelevant for the mainstream consumer. Soon, they will be a professional tool only, later, a specialist tool and after that they will peacefully become a legacy tool.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[c0lo]

Yes, but the desktop computer itself is not a particular technology. Telegraph is defunct but people still communicate long distance electronically

Is the telegraph dead? I'd argue it got upgraded: to insane speeds, doesn't use Morse code any more, the addressing/dispatching of the messages are automated (and fast) but... seems pretty much the same principle - a zeroes/ones/silence type of information encoding.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[jo_ham]

I'm not so sure - they have seen year-on-year growth for the past 6 years, in opposition to the general trend of the industry as a whole (this is exclusively talking about OS X machines). The number of people who use a computer is extremely high, and Apple have been welcoming switchers for more than half a decade and still have plenty of room for growth. Plenty more affluent/well enough off people to consider the switch to Mac when they look at upgrading/replacing the old computer - especially now that it's even easier than ever to run Windows in a VM or dual boot if you still have "that one program" that you really must keep that is Win only.

I'm not sure they're close to a plateau yet.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[DogDude]

To say the market is saturated with fast desktops is an understatement. I haven't bought a new computer in about 20 years. My company runs on $200 off-lease/refurbished desktops and $400 off-lease servers. There's not a single new machine in the entire company because the owner doesn't see a point in a new computer. I tend to agree.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[tibit]

ISA slots are hardly defunct. Ever heard of PC/104? Alive and well is what they are, with new products being still developed all righty.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[evilviper]

Very few whole concepts entirely vanish.

No, but they all become massively impractical, and only a tiny few CHOOSE to use them, for nostalgia or recreation, or whatnot.

How many horse & buggies do you see going down the street?

There's movies and television, but stage plays still exist. There's television and MP3 players, but radio still exists.

Plays are practically dead. Some people choose to attend them for various reasons, but they are a negligible fraction of the entertainment business. Got a good play? Film it.

OTA broadcast radio is on its last leg. Clearchannel helped it along, but wasn't the only cause. It's hanging on, but once the baby boomers die off, and we're all internet connected all the time, I expect there will be no profit left in it, and you'll just have some hobbyists playing junk.

There's internet streaming, but radio and television still exist. There's e-readers, but print books still exist.

Internet streaming looks like it'll kill off cable / satellite, but it'll take several more years. Print books are doing well because e-books haven't been practical for long (DRM issues), so it's just a matter of time before they see a sharp decline. Books are pretty low cost, and have a few practical advantages, so they might stay strong in a few niches, but they'll be largely marginalized in time.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[evilviper]

Desktop's will never die, not as long as they have the capability of being 10 times more powerful than their portable brethren.

Mainframes have always been more than 10X as powerful as PCs, but they still lost their dominance, and are struggling to stay relevant.

Tablets don't need to compete with PCs on raw power by any means. Even now, "the cloud" provides a viable alternative. My phone can't do the video encoding I want to do, but it can keep me always connected to an unlimited number of servers, which are (collectively) infinitely faster than any PC I've ever owned.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[unixisc]

So are gramaphone records, tapes and maybe some day, even CDs. Yeah, right now, Blu-Ray discs are being made, but once you have USB drives in the TB range, you're not going to see new discs that match that. Ultimately, it'll all be on semiconductors. Of course, there's another debate on whether silicon can be shrunk infinitely and whether other materials may be more economical, but that's another story.

But I do ultimately see desktops going away, for the simple reason that as entire chipsets go onto an FPGA or ASIC, you'll ultimately end up w/ laptops more powerful w/ 3-chip solutions - CPU, memory and everything else on the third chip. When such a solution will fit in a small form factor and have minimal power requirements, it just won't make sense to put it in a tower and sell it. The price of the casing aside, even monitors are going to cost something that would make the overall price of a system close to laptops. Particularly if there ain't a need for desktops that a laptop cannot provide. Only thing I can think of is a business requiring computers that are theft-proof and therfore, insist on having desktops for everybody. Other than that, I just can't see the purpose.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[Kjella]

Anyways, my point is, as long as people are sitting at a desk using a computer, there will be desktop computers.

People will still be using a computer on their desktop, but I'm not so sure they'll need a desktop computer - at least not in any traditional sense. Already you have machines like the Transformer Prime that blurs the line between tablet and laptop. With smart phones now getting quad core processors, a gigabyte or more of RAM and 32GB+ of storage, full HD decoding in hardware and so on I think the whole line between phone, tablet, laptop and desktop will start to blur. That your "desktop computer" is just your phone with a breakout box for keyboard, mouse, screen and so on - and presumably a bluetooth headset so you don't have to undock to answer the phone. I suppose you can make it more complicated with hybrid graphics, NUMA, additional media libraries etc. when you dock, but I don't really think it's necessary. As long as you're docked and not power constrained, many people will do just fine with the power of their phone.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[mapkinase]

"no?" Yes.

That's exactly what I have, $300 AMD-based desktop I bought 4 years ago and it works like a charm.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[mikeg22]

How can tablets/phones/whatever replace the desire for a screen bigger than 10" and/or a real keyboard designed for typing and/or a real mouse designed for precision?

Sure, I believe for consuming media content "on the train" and a small fraction of business purposes, a touchscreen is sufficient and arguably better than a desktop, but I cannot see a future where these small touchscreens can replace the vast majority of business purposes which require lots of user input and accurate cursor control on a screen big enough to do multitasking functions.

Even for home entertainment, I have a smartphone, I have a tablet, and I have a desktop. I use all three, however I spend most of my time on the desktop because using a real keyboard is easier than a touchscreen whose keyboard takes up half the view, I have a much larger screen so I can do more than one thing at a time, and I like to game so the precision of a good mouse is important to me.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[dgatwood]

Yes, but the modern PC/104 bus designs are PCIe-based, not ISA-based.

And even if there is still a fair amount of original ISA-based work going on in the embedded space, that's only being done to maintain legacy infrastructure. Eventually, all that gear will have been replaced with newer devices based on PCI or PCIe, and they won't continue building ISA-based PC/104 devices, either. The only reason they still do it now is because the costs of replacing that infrastructure all at once are too high, leading to a much longer phase-out in the embedded space.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[tepples]

That your "desktop computer" is just your phone with a breakout box

Let me know when scripting languages are as convenient to use on a "phone with a breakout box" as they are on a PC. Also, let me know when this "phone with a breakout box" doesn't cost 69.99 USD per month plus taxes and fees to own, in addition to the Internet connection you already pay for at home.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[tepples]

Desktops are becoming as irrelevant to computing as traditional windows PCs are to gaming in the face of consoles.

If traditional Windows PCs are becoming irrelevant, then for what platform will indie video game developers develop video games in genres unsuited to touch screen control?

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[tibit]

There's plenty of low bandwidth peripherals where PC/104 is perfectly adequate and offers lowest cost. It's easiest to design for. To deal with PCI or PCIe in a fully conformant way, you need an FPGA. If all you need is to control a bunch of, say, relays, then nothing beats ISA as the interface is a dollar or two worth of trivial glue logic. There's plenty of automation where I/O is simple like that.

Re:Wondering about desktop sales ...

[ganjadude]

I believe that the point of his argument is your excusionary argument. He argues they still exist,you are arguing they are so small they dont count.

Apothecary is laughing now.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

So there is going to be brutal price war in the PC market. And Apothecary wanted HP to get out of that business and was excoriated for it. Now what? Fate of HP (and other manufacturers who threw in their lot with Microsoft) is doomed. Not that I shed any tears for them. Not that any of the PC maker big execs showed any kind of leadership or foresight.

They agreed to every non disclosure clause from Microsoft, accepted tainted money to keep Microsoft's competitors out, missed every opportunity to set themselves apart from their competition by something other than price. Did any of these geniuses think, "What is the major complaint about the PCs? Lack of security. Let me pitch a line of PCs with Firefox front and center, with NoScript pre loaded. Throw in some OpenOffice free too" when it would have mattered, may be five years ago? Nah, they obediently kow-towed every line drawn by Microsoft and reduced themselves to mere purveyors of commodity boxes. When there is no difference between the brands qualitatively what happens? Price war, gimmicky sales tactics, pre-loading of crapware and nagware. Good riddance. Go die in a price war somewhere clueless idiots.

Re:Apothecary is laughing now.

[mirix]

Apothecary

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Re:Apothecary is laughing now.

[mythar]

Apothecary

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Apotheker

Gimme a break

[bogie]

Apple's the only one allowed to use Aluminum in their designs?

Btw they'll probably keep the cost down by using netbook cpu/gpus. So yea you can have a 27" iMac that does 2560x1440 with a quad core i5 for $1700 or a 27" tv set running at 1920x1080 with a net book stuck to the back for probably $800. Different strokes and all that...

Re:Gimme a break

[viperidaenz]

Don't forget 27 inches of Angry Birds and Facebook

Re:Gimme a break

[jo_ham]

It's hilarious that Apple is being demonised in this thread for something they haven't actually done. They haven't said word one about the iMac-inspired design (Vizio's CEO quote: [we have] worked on [our] computer designs for two years in attempts to offer an aesthetic that competes with Apple Inc.'s popular products but at a lower price ), but everyone is quick to jump on it.

They're certainly not the first company to make an All-in-one that was clearly a response to the iMac, and thus far none of those other (and there have been several) designs have faced lawsuits.

In my opinion it looks ok - I'm not sold on the slender neck, since it feels like the screen might wobble around (although I'm sure it's actually solid).

Was hoping for a MUCH bigger screen

[unrtst]

This is just more of the same. I was really hoping that, with Vizio being a big flatscreen maker, they'd just be slapping a PC on the back of them.

Many big LCD TV's these days have built in network media stuff (netflix, hulu plus, pandora, and loads of more minor players), so they've got some computing guts in them already. I was hoping they'd just up the power a little and bring out an integrated webtv type thing on 55"+ screens, and include a keyboard. If it ran like a real PC, they could even skirt the hulu plus issues (and similar from other providers) since it could be considered a PC. Toss in external storage device support (USB3 + gigabit network) and it'd be a winner.

But no... it's just another all-in-one monitor and another (likely underpowered) laptop. I wonder if the 27" model will at least have more than 1920x1280 resolution (ie. 2560x1600)?

Re:Was hoping for a MUCH bigger screen

[UnknowingFool]

I was hoping they'd just up the power a little and bring out an integrated webtv type thing on 55"+ screens, and include a keyboard. If it ran like a real PC, they could even skirt the hulu plus issues (and similar from other providers) since it could be considered a PC. Toss in external storage device support (USB3 + gigabit network) and it'd be a winner.

Who really wants a gigantic all-in-one costing thousands of dollars that they can't upgrade? Seeing how 55+ TVs alone run at least $1200 for the cheap ones. Add the computer components and you're looking at $2K. Geeks want them separate as they can upgrade either the computer or the screen separately. Average consumers could care less that their 55" TV is a computer. They would rather it stay an appliance. I think that would be a mistake on Vizio's part. Instead they are going for computers to be cheap so that they can sell millions of them rather than the handful who would really want to buy what you describe.

Re:Was hoping for a MUCH bigger screen

[Vegemeister]

>same resolution
>less PPI
>more money

Why do you consider this a good thing?

apple needs to make so you get ro the HDD with out

[Joe_Dragon]

Have to take the screen off.

Now why does all other AIO's make it so much easier to get to the HDD?

Samsung SwipeIt

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung also introduced the SwipeIt a competitor to Apple AirPlay and probably the best name for a Samsung product ever.

blame the cable co's + dish and directv

[Joe_Dragon]

For nor make pc tunner's and cable co's for makeing cable card a joke. Most people use the cable or dish / directv box GUI on there TV. At least the directv DRV's can view some youtube video.

Re:blame the cable co's + dish and directv

[Nemyst]

Huh. I'd never heard of this dialect before.

Re:blame the cable co's + dish and directv

[gmhowell]

ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER. Do you speak it?

                                                                     

What?

Re:blame the cable co's + dish and directv

[dissy]

If you click the "parent" link twice on the post you quoted/replied to, you would see it was a reply to this:

For nor make pc tunner's and cable co's for makeing cable card a joke. Most people use the cable or dish / directv box GUI on there TV.

So yes, that was a perfectly valid question :P

Re:blame the cable co's + dish and directv

[gmhowell]

You're not familiar with the works of Quentin Tarantino and Samuel Jackson, are you?

You were supposed to say "say 'what' again!"

Re:blame the cable co's + dish and directv

[dissy]

You were supposed to say "say 'what' again!"

But I didn't want to get shot before getting to finish my tasty kahuna burger :{

Trolling.. must try HARDER

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you even bother switching accounts to post in the same story?

The keyboard looks exactly like Apple's flat keyboard, and the trackpad is the Magic Trackpad that Apple started offering a year or so ago.

--it's not at all surprising that Apple is going to be proactive in protecting its design work.

But sites like Slashdot are full of Apple-haters who don't want to give the company credit for anything

bonch writes

The keyboard looks just like Apple's flat keyboard introduced a few years ago, the trackpad is a clone of the Apple Trackpad

I'm not surprised at all that, with all the design work Apple puts into its products, it is going to try to protect that work from knockoffs.

I realize Slashdot comments tend to have an Apple slant (to put it mildly), but come on, this is completely obvious "inspiration" from Apple.

I think what really goes on here is that some people just don't want to give Apple credit for anything,

Re:Trolling.. must try HARDER

[LoverOfJoy]

Looks like bonch needs to be more proactive in protecting his literary work. Overly Critical Guy is making a cheap knock off of his posts and selling it at a discount.

Either way, though, I'm not buying.

Disposable hardware, how cheap it is

[DigiShaman]

Once again, proving how disposable hardware is. Got a virus? Need an upgrade? Throw it away and get a new one! The only thing of value is personal data such as pictures and documents.

The industry will eventually adopt two approaches with how data gets stored. The OS and Apps data will be installed on the build-in drive. All user apps will be stored on a removable drive. That can be flash, or a removable 3.5" HDD. If a drive isn't available, the OS prompts the user to install one so all local profile data can be redirected to it. Optionally, user data can be backed up over the cloud with an account provided. The idea being, if the PC turns into a boat anchor, you simply pull the easy-to-remove drive and toss the machine overboard.

We live in a disposable society. The numbers back it up. Don't get angry with me, I'm simply pointing out a known fact.

Re:Make it open and serviceable to kill everything

[hedwards]

You mean other than ergonomics and durability. Which are quite significant if you think about it.

An impossible price?

[davidwr]

100Pi US Dollars?

Eleventy-two Euro?

100e Pound Sterling?

Or maybe it's vaporware, at 10,000i Yen.

Yeah but still.

[hideouspenguinboy]

Sorry, it's just a screen a keyboard and a weird shaped tower in stainless steel. Cool looking, but not a blatent copy of anything - though it looks a lot like a microwave and toaster I used to own.

I suppose I can see where you would get frustrated if you spent hundreds of hours designing a rounded rectangle and a flattish keyboard, but I don't look at that and think of apple - I just think it looks like some generic (cool looking) computer parts.

I bought my wife a 17" powerbook with all the fixins - we have other apple products and will buy more, so I'm by no means anti-apple . . . I suppose I'm a little bit anti 'being way to pretentious about a design element that seems really generic'.

Re:Yeah but still.

[hideouspenguinboy]

Ha! Also I just realized the super old 15" NEC LCD I'm using looks a lot like that as well. They were geniuses! They copied apple before copying apple was cool!

Re:Yeah but still.

[PopeRatzo]

I bought my wife a 17" powerbook with all the fixins

Apple hasn't made a Powerbook since 2006, right?

How about blowing the dust off that wallet and getting the little lady something newer?

To be fair, I also have a Powerbook G4, 17", one of the first one with all silver, and while it doesn't really look as nice as the new Macbook Pros (the display, I mean), it still works. It won't run a lot of software I use though. Everything seems to want Intel processors now. It's too heavy to tote, but I spent a fortune on that thing and I hate to toss it. On cold nights, we use it as a space heater.

You got six years out of the Powerbook, so spring for nice new machine for the lady. You know what they say, "Happy wife, happy life". Actually, my wife is the only one who says that, but I've learned to not contradict her.

Re:Yeah but still.

[EthanV2]

How about blowing the dust off that wallet and getting the little lady something newer?

Typical Apple user, once something is s few years old, replace it. What's the point in replacing something if it still works fine, don't you people realise how wasteful you are?

Re:Yeah but still.

[hideouspenguinboy]

Actually I realized that later on and wondered if anyone would comment - it's not a powerbook, I've just been buying apple products that long. It's a still covered under apple care 17" macbook pro - lightup keyboard, solid state drive, and it came with a free pony. Or it must have, considering what it cost. Maybe I misplaced it.

Re:Yeah but still.

[PopeRatzo]

17" macbook pro - lightup keyboard, solid state drive, and it came with a free pony

Oh, I bet you got a little present that night too...

I'm a lot older than you and In the old days, we had to give 'em jewelry for that kind of action.

Re:Yeah but still.

[PopeRatzo]

Typical Apple user, once something is s few years old

Typical asshole, not knowing when someone's playing.

I don't care if he buys a new macbook, I'm just all about keeping wives happy. And nothing says "I love you" like a hunk of aluminum with an SSD in it.

Re:Yeah but still.

[toddestan]

Problem with the Powerbook is that it no longer gets any updates, and no one makes any software for it anymore. It's the Windows 98 of Apple computers, only several years newer. Though you can always blow away the Apple crap and put Linux on it :)

Welcome to iCloud

[mveloso]

That's the basic idea behind cloud + web (or, I suppose, iCloud + iOS + Facebook). Your music, pictures, mail, chat, and documents are just sort of out there somewhere on the network. Do you really care where they are?

There's a point where when you're the 98% of users who just consume media, write emails, and Facebook you really have no use for a general purpose PC as it's understood today. That's the brutal truth. If you're a student you need more (word/excel), but for that mcjob - do you really use your PC to edit 1080p video or reencode your video library?

Re:Welcome to iCloud

[b0s0z0ku]

Yes, I care where they are, and they'd damn well better be stored locally in addition to online. Or not on the "cloud" at all if they're something which I care about the privacy of at all. That's the difference between my PC (Macbook that also runs Windows) and my iPhone.

Re:Welcome to iCloud

[tepples]

If you're a student you need more (word/excel), but for that mcjob - do you really use your PC to edit 1080p video or reencode your video library?

If you're a film student (whether in school or self-taught), then yes, you do need to use your PC to edit and encode video.

Horrible Glass

[robwmc]

They can undercut all they want but their glass is horrible. I bought one of their TVs and told everyone I had it stolen because I couldn't take the picture quality.

A price that doesn't seem possible

[Arancaytar]

Do they actually say anywhere that they mean a low price?

Betanews is in a poodle like frenzy

[mrmeval]

News with editorial spin along the lines of "OH NOE we can't have MORE budget X the market she will DIE!"

If I wanted spews I'd go to Betaspews rather than have to step over the poodle puddles.

If Apple does sue Vizio it's publicity when they will really need it.

The quality is not that good

[WOOFYGOOFY]

They sell them at COSTCO alongside Panasonic and Philips and Sony. The quality is not that good, esp. the build quality- knobs housings etc.

If you need to save 80 bucks that badly, then it lets you get a product that you're otherwise priced out of. But it's not like they fond some way to do the same thing more cheaply through a manufacturing revolution or technological innovation. It costs less b/c it's cheaper.

Re:The quality is not that good

[abradsn]

I for one welcome my all in one pc overlords.

Marketing/PR Bulls***

[evilviper]

PCs are already rock-bottom pricing with tiny margins. Visio isn't going to be able to do anything significant. Maybe their first units will be loss-leaders to try and get into the market, but that's about it.

Visio is already in the business, remember? Their Android tablet is pretty expensive, at $320 USD on Amazon right now.

The only unique and cost-cutting thing they could do would be to introduce PCs with ARM (or MIPS) CPUs, instead of x86. I doubt it, but if so, good luck to them. That still won't bring prices down significantly.

I'll wait for the release

[pbjones]

i3, Win7 basic, or Android? 2GB RAM, DVD? optional Blu-ray? basically a netbook with a bigger screen.
There is enough difference in hardware to ward off the Apple legal boys. Apple keys are white, not silver. It looks like a few monitors and PCs that have been around.

Re:I'll wait for the release

[Vegemeister]

i3s are pretty damn fast, considering. Windows 7 starter is a piece of shit though. It is a tragedy that Microsoft managed to browbeat OEMs into shipping it on netbooks.

Yes, well...

[fyngyrz]

...so is this.

I can't stand the Apple chiclet keyboards, and Apple is what I run. So I swap the Apple keyboard out. Simple. Just like your model M, the aftermarket is the place to go if you're a typist of any sort.

Re:Yes, well...

[Joce640k]

"The best keyboard Apple ever made" is like saying "The most secure operating system Microsoft ever made", ie. Not much of a yardstick.

Re:Yes, well...

[ajo_arctus]

I love the current Apple keyboards (at least the wired model with the proper cursor keys). I use them on my PCs too. Different horses for different courses.

However, the first thing I do on any computer (Mac or PC) is swap the mouse out for a Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical.

Re:Bottom line

[ajo_arctus]

Not necessarily true, but I don't think they'll make much of a difference. They might affect Apple sales because some people will look at iMac (or, more likely, have one recommended) but then see this and think "hey, it looks similar enough, I don't care about that extra gloss -- I think I'll get this and save $500". Those people would have bought a Mac, but are either a bit too price sensitive or just not that in to Apple to care that it's not the same thing, and they're going to get a poorer experience as a result.

That in itself is fine, but it kind of tarnishes the Apple brand by association. That's why Apple are suing Samsung -- not because of rounded corners and whatnot, but because if you look at it superficially, it appears to be 'a cheaper version of the same thing'. Apple don't want to get lumped in with everyone else, that's way they create individual products and so carefully build and protect their brand.

Vizio has found their niche!

[93 Escort Wagon]

We were doing research before purchasing a new television recently, and we'd narrowed it down to a choice between Vizio and LG. Poking around the Vizio support forums, though, it became apparent that a significant number of Vizio "smart" televisions had a problem with frequent random reboots. This weighed heavily in our eventual decision to buy an LG.

But I now see how Vizio is addressing this problem! They're putting PC hardware in their smart televisions - now when they randomly reboot, Vizio can blame it on Windows and everyone will believe it! It's sheer genius, I tell you!

Re:Bottom line

[Tharsman]

Not necessarily true, but I don't think they'll make much of a difference. They might affect Apple sales because some people will look at iMac (or, more likely, have one recommended) but then see this and think "hey, it looks similar enough, I don't care about that extra gloss -- I think I'll get this and save $500". Those people would have bought a Mac, but are either a bit too price sensitive or just not that in to Apple to care that it's not the same thing, and they're going to get a poorer experience as a result.

When a user has already the disposition to spend the extra amount of money on a mac, there are very little aesthetic replacements that will convince him to do otherwise. You are talking about someone that already decided to spend that money on an iMac. If he hasn't, he was never an Apple prospect to begin with, and was going to go to Best Buy to look at their all-in-one desktop offerings.

This is like saying that Toyota can introduce a cheap Ferrari knockoff tomorrow, and prospect Ferrari buyers forego the Ferrari in favor of the cheap knock off. Again: thinking about buying a pretty mac is not the same as having ever accepted to pay the price, meaning you were never a potential customer.

That in itself is fine, but it kind of tarnishes the Apple brand by association. That's why Apple are suing Samsung -- not because of rounded corners and whatnot, but because if you look at it superficially, it appears to be 'a cheaper version of the same thing'. Apple don't want to get lumped in with everyone else, that's way they create individual products and so carefully build and protect their brand.

Apple is going after Samsung not for just one copy. They are going after them because Samsung is overdoing it. They make some of their products not only look like Apple products, but they make the friging box and even the frigging charging cable look like the Apple equivalent!
I'm sure you must have seen this image before:
http://cdn.iphonehacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/applesamsungsimilar.jpg

Mind you, I think Apple is taking the case too far into too many product lines. Not all Samsung products are Apple knockoffs, but it does seem they have a department dedicated to produce just knockoffs.

This is typical Samsung behavior and they have done it over the years to any dominant force in the market. Apple is not the first one to sue them over it. The Samsung BlackJack was just a copy of a Blackberry (and got sued by RIM over it's name) and same goes for the Samsung SYNC vz Motorola RAZR. It's Samsung's DNA to just copy design. I am not too familiar with Android Phones (too many of them) but I'm sure you will find an EVO ripoff somewhere in the Samsung lineup.

Blocked at customs

[tepples]

What happened to all the talk about Chinese manufacturers everywhere embedding mplayer?

MPEG-LA members have probably convinced national governments to stop them at the border.

Apple v. eMachines

[tepples]

They're certainly not the first company to make an All-in-one that was clearly a response to the iMac, and thus far none of those other (and there have been several) designs have faced lawsuits.

No lawsuits for responses to iMac? CNET disagrees, as does SFGate.

Re:Apple v. eMachines

[jo_ham]

Ah, I forgot to cast my mind back more than a decade! My bad.

Also, the "objective" reporting of the SFgate article from 13 years ago begins with this:

Twenty years after Steve Jobs ripped off Xerox PARC's graphical user interface technology, Apple Computer's ever-interim CEO can't believe someone would have the nerve to knock off his iMac.

Apparently giving a company stock options in exchange for their technology is "ripping off" now.

I recently "ripped off" a store when I went in there and stole some groceries. All I did was give them money and just walked out with them.

Still, you got me. A 13 year old story about the original iMac still counts

Not all subsets are profitable to serve

[tepples]

Development? Power-users?

Can buy the more expensive niche product.

Stallman?

Too small of a market for mass production.

There's always going to be a subset of the computer using population that needs more than the latest iShiny.

What Slashdot regulars have been drilling into me lately is that not all subsets are profitable to serve at consumer prices.

Re:Not all subsets are profitable to serve

[Lanteran]

I said nothing about being sold at existing prices, you seem to be under the impression that they'll die off completely or become a hobbyist thing.

Re:Not all subsets are profitable to serve

[tepples]

you seem to be under the impression that they'll die off completely or become a hobbyist thing.

Some pundits claim that general-purpose computers will soon die off near-completely in the same sense that playing a video game with multiple players holding gamepads on one general-purpose computer has already died off near-completely. See also a previous Slashdot story about a predicted "war on general-purpose computing".

Replication costs

[tepples]

once you have USB drives in the TB range

USB hard drives have been near 1 TB for a while now.

you're not going to see new discs that match that. Ultimately, it'll all be on semiconductors.

There's a reason that video game consoles switched from cartridges to discs around the fifth generation. If movies and video games will be coming on SDXC cards in the future, good luck getting replication on SDXC anywhere near as cheap as replication on BD. Or did you mean using most of your household's monthly download quota whenever you buy a movie or video game?

Sports blacked out online

[tepples]

once [...] we're all internet connected all the time

How much will that cost per month? Right now, entry-level smartphone service costs five times entry-level dumbphone service. Compare Virgin Mobile USA's $7/mo "payLo" dumbphone plan to its $35/mo "Beyond Talk" smartphone plan.

Internet streaming looks like it'll kill off cable / satellite, but it'll take several more years.

It'll especially take years for professional and collegiate sports leagues to revise their concepts of "blackout".

Windows for VM: $200. Windows PC: $250.

[tepples]

especially now that it's even easier than ever to run Windows in a VM or dual boot

But you still have to buy a copy of retail Windows in order to run Windows in a VM. There are entire PCs including OEM Windows that cost only about $50 more than a copy of retail Windows 7 Home Premium.

Re:Windows for VM: $200. Windows PC: $250.

[jo_ham]

Sure, if you want to buy a cheap POS computer.

A copy of Windows 7 can be picked up for £60 (£90 something for 7 Pro), so while you can certainly buy computers for a couple of hundred quid, those looking at a Mac aren't going to do so - the numbers are suggesting people are looking beyond a race to the bottom.

There will always be the bargain basement PCs, but the numbers show that Apple is selling more and more OS X machines every year (far too many to be "just rabid fanboys upgrading every year" as has often been claimed) - they're genuinely and consistently growing their install base. The fact that you can run Windows in a VM is certainly no hinderance to that.

Dockable

[tepples]

How can tablets/phones/whatever replace the desire for a screen bigger than 10" and/or a real keyboard designed for typing and/or a real mouse designed for precision?

All those can be plugged or paired to any tablet with HDMI out and Bluetooth. The idea is that a single device would be your tablet and then dock to become your desktop. Look at the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer and the external keyboards for the iPad to see how.

Cost per month

[tepples]

Tablets don't need to compete with PCs on raw power by any means. Even now, "the cloud" provides a viable alternative.

Good luck with that at $600 per month for mobile broadband. PC applications tend to "work offline" better than some tablet applications.

My phone can't do the video encoding I want to do, but it can keep me always connected to an unlimited number of servers, which are (collectively) infinitely faster than any PC I've ever owned.

But how many gigabytes per month will your ISP let you send to and retrieve from the video encoding server?

Re:Cost per month

[evilviper]

Good luck with that at $600 per month for mobile broadband.

You mentioned Virgin Mobile USA in response to another comment, so obviously you know as well as I that "unlimited" data runs as little as $35/mo.

Cheap point-of-sale computers

[tepples]

Sure, if you want to buy a cheap POS computer.

Say all you need is one point-of-sale application that works on Windows, and it ran on an old computer that recently broke, and a cheap computer will run it adequately. So of course you'd buy a cheap POS computer to replace your old POS computer.

A copy of Windows 7 can be picked up for £60 (£90 something for 7 Pro)

Is that OEM pricing? Because OEM Windows is not licensed for use on one's own computer, only for use on a computer that will be sold to an unrelated party.

Re:Cheap point-of-sale computers

[jo_ham]

Sure, if you want to buy a cheap POS computer.

Say all you need is one point-of-sale application that works on Windows, and it ran on an old computer that recently broke, and a cheap computer will run it adequately. So of course you'd buy a cheap POS computer to replace your old POS computer.

A copy of Windows 7 can be picked up for £60 (£90 something for 7 Pro)

Is that OEM pricing? Because OEM Windows is not licensed for use on one's own computer, only for use on a computer that will be sold to an unrelated party.

Oh true that £60 price was for an OEM copy, how odd that Amazon sells OEM copies to consumers. The "legit" retail price is £90 for 7 Home Premium.

And my POS was not shorthand for point of sale - it was piece of shit. Probably a little harsh (I'm sure budget machines are not *that* bad, but most of them are pretty shoddy). Like I say, there will always be a market for "as cheap as possible".

Re:Bottom line

[k8to]

The cables come from the connectors, and the connectors are pretty much mandated by the form factors.

The box is stretching it, but how far can you defend trade dress on "a picture of the product" on white background? It's not really distinctive, and should lose in court.

The tablet similarly. It's black, and it has rounded corners... ?

The plug is more worth consideration. I'm betting they're using the same supplier, but there are probably similar solutions that wouldnt' be so slavish.

Re:Bottom line

[jedidiah]

> All these things can do is cut a slice of the PC market

+...which by far the biggest piece of the pie.

They could be an "also ran" in the PC market and still ship more units than Apple.

Re:Bottom line

[jedidiah]

Any OS that is not prone to malware is suitable for the "light web user". It doesn't have to be a Mac. It just has to be preloaded and ready to go out of the box.

Re:Bottom line

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

The cables come from the connectors, and the connectors are pretty much mandated by the form factors.

Yes, they copied the connector because they copied the form factor. Doesn't mean that somehow that doesn't make it copying, because there is nothing that forced them to use basically the same connector for their far more limited docking connector compared to the now ancient iPod docking connector Apple (and dozens of peripherals makers) is using. It also doesn't explain why they chose to drop the USB port from their tablets and instead come out with something that copies form and function of Apple's Camera Connection Kit (wildly derided by Slashdotters) - but wait, Samsung's is black, not white - like totally different. Go Samsung, great job getting rid of that useless USB. Why not also drop Flash, because that sucks too. That move will further prove how innovative you are.

Re:Bottom line

[Phoghat]

Not everybody who's into tech has money, dude.

Couple of years back, I was in the market for a flat screen TV/Monitor combo, and being of the techie/anal retentive sort that I am did my research. Vizio was cheaper, and to my eyes, as good as my sons' Sony, etc., TVs. So good, in fact I bought another, and recommended Vizio to another relative in the flat screen market. She bought 4 in total.

Good and cheap sometimes is just good, period.

In the near term

[tepples]

so obviously you know as well as I that "unlimited" data runs as little as $35/mo.

You have a point; I had forgotten that the data included with Beyond Talk plans was in fact unlimited. But this is still limited to applications designed for a smartphone. In the near term, you'll still need a PC even if only to port all the applications that you use to Android. Entry-level phones don't appear to support an external HDMI monitor, and even with a more expensive phone, I'd probably end up having to SSH or VNC to an application server to run anything not yet ported to Android.

Re:In the near term

[evilviper]

Once you upgrade to an android phone with a keyboard, you'll find they make surprisingly good thin clients, and still have plenty of decent local apps.

CORRECTION

[tepples]

I meant $50 per month or $600 per year, which is typical for wireless plans with U.S. coverage that aren't restricted to a 4" screen. Sorry. Mod parent to -1 if you want.