And to be even more fair, the money has to come from somewhere. At least with property taxes I have *some* control of the quality of my children's schools (as long as I have a nice income and live in a nice house, that is). As is usually the case, people are crying for services, but don't want to pay taxes. You can't have both. Take away the taxes and bye-bye free schools.
It is much harder for a public figure to go after someone for libel, but does an elected official that most people don't even know count as a "public figure"? Calling all IANAL's out there in/. land.
Why do you throw DRM into your argument? DRM has nothing to do with the fact that AT&T is the lone provider for the iPhone. And just for the record, go back through the slashdot archives and find all the articles about how nobody would take a chance on Apple. Evidently "all" the cell phone providers actually WON'T stock phones. Most of them are kicking themselves right now, but hey, if you want to reap the rewards, you have to take the risk. Good on AT&T for that.
I'm just curious as why anyone would want a glorified iPhone with a much larger form-factor? Just make my iPhone better (cough, SDK, cough) and all this "tablet pc" nonesense can go into the dead rumor pile already.
You damned revisionists piss me off. It is an old story that none of the carriers were willing to gamble on Apple as an upstart cell phone offering. AT&T won this by being the only carrier willing to take the risk.
What is sad is that you called a Chevy Malibu cool and hip....
Re:The iPhone as a weapon against the cell carrier
on
Top Inventions of 2007
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· Score: 1
I would suggest that more people who DON'T own Macs (i.e., Apple lovers) bought iPhones than people who do own Macs (and thusly labeled as Apple lovers???). Apple is not one of the bad guys, because Apple makes good stuff, which automatically exempts them from "bad guy" status (in my book). And by the way, the iPhone IS better than nearly all the competition. As with the Mac platform (well, anything from Apple generally), Apple's success with this product comes FIRST and foremost from the fact that it is a great product. It doesn't hurt that Apple has figured out the marketing side to make things like their iPod so popular as well. If only they'd have figured out how to give the Mac an 80% market share back in 1990...
Just for fun, care to tell us what phones you consider to be better than the iPhone? There are only about 50 technology websites/magazines that would disagree with your assessment, but I'm curious none-the-less.
I agree with your post entirely. I'm a VERY satisfied iPhone customer but I recognize the fact that my phone is not an invention at all; it is merely one of the best implementations of a group of previously available technologies on the market (typical Apple product, in other words). I think the iPhone as #1 has more to do with trying to gather hype about their article in general than it does picking a real #1 invention.
Well I pointed my Safari enabled Mac to the site and WANT to buy the album, but nothing loads correctly. I guess I'll have to punish them (by not downloading their album for free??) for NOT making their site Mac/Safari/anythingnotmicrosoft friendly?
Teens don't have a long enough attention span to enjoy Radiohead, do they? Radiohead actually delivers more than your standard 15 second sound-bite of a song.
Radiohead isn't a very good band to analyze in the first place because they have a rabid fanbase. I like them and all, but I'm not the usual Radiohead head (did I just make that up?), so I'm not going to just buy their albums unheard. As a matter-of-fact, I think they are a pretty typical example of (in my case, at least) buying one or two tracks of each album for.99 cents. If their new album has two or three interesting songs, I'm willing to willingly give them $2-$3 or so, no problem. But, if we are looking at this as a representation of potential for the entire industry, I'd suggest using a more mainstream band that lacks the installed fan base.
How is it a bluff, when you claim it will "soon be called". That means, in the meantime, it hasn't happened yet. No viruses yet != bluffing. No viruses yet = reality. Sure, it'll change, and then if your Mac friends keep clamoring "Mac's don't get viruses", then you can call their bluff.
What's the point of installing anti-virus software when there aren't any viruses for the anti-virus software companies to write anti-virus software against? You can't really keep your anti-virus software up-to-date either if there are no viruses. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being a smug smart ass here, I'm just saying the anti-virus software has to know what it is attacking for it to be effective, but there is NOTHING out there for it to be programmed against (yet). Or maybe I don't understand how anti-virus software works?
If I used anti-virus software on my Mac now, all that would happen would be that it would keep interrupting my daily routines by taking wild guesses as what is malicious code and what isn't...exactly the sort of thing that drives many people away from Windows in the first place.
Nah. I make a fine living having NO IDEA what the stuff is that I'm creating lessons for. There's a whole process involved, and I won't bore you with the details, but an instructional designer that knows what they are doing is much more effective than a subject matter expert who has no clue when it comes to instructional design. Knowing your audience is a valid point, and a very important step of instructional design. As a matter of fact, I would say skilled Instructional Designers know the target audience better than the actual trainer/instructor/lecturer does, because Instructional Designers actually go through the labor of assessing learner needs whereas the instructors either just follow a script or talk to hear themselves talk (generalization, of course).
Keep trying and maybe you'll look even more pathetic. I hate trolls like you. Somehow I find your credibility to be far less than someone like David Pogue when it comes to Mac OS expertise. You can't even spell, for starters.
Maybe Mac OS X is harder to hack, or maybe the virus writers consider the Mac's 8 percent market share too piddling to bother with. But in its six years, Mac OS X hasn't experienced a single virus outbreak or spyware infestation.
So, to recap: some schlubb named El Lobo rambles on about irrelevant nerd culture urban legends, all the while littering his post with poor spelling to give credence to his effort in being clever(?), or David Pogue, who makes more money with one article than El Lobo probably makes in a month....hmmm. I think I'll side with Dave on this one.
And people wonder why Mac users come across as smug. Meanwhile, you slashdot dorks are going on and on congratulating yourselves at how smart you are to never infest your computers because you take all the right "precautions" and how have conversations about how dumb Apple engineers must be to even have certain features in Safari that would never work on a PC.
Egocentrism is a bitch, especially for switchers to the Mac. It's a Mac, not a PC. As soon as you figure that out, the faster you can enjoy your new Mac. m.
I don't buy it and won't buy it until there is at least ONE virus on OS X. Even though there isn't critical mass with OS X, you can't write off the lack of viruses because of that. Certainly some disgruntled windows fanboi would have written malicious code for Mac OS X by now if it were easy to do. The fact is, it ISN'T easy to do because of the security measure Apple has consciously put in place. If Microsoft would put half the real effort into their OS, they wouldn't have nearly as much crap as they do, but instead, they keep their OS wide open for anything, because that's what keeps their business going. The fact that anybody can write anything for Windows is the only reason we even use Windows in the first place.
Let's put it another way. If Windows controls 90-ish% of all computers, then it would make sense that somewhere about 90-95% of the viruses would be Windows targets. Yet there are still ZERO serious OS X infections since the early 2000s. There are 100million + macs in use right now and 2 million macs sold last quarter, most of them being more vulnerable laptop versions used in public wifi spots a lot. Why haven't any of these suckers being brought down?
I don't think Mac users think they are smarter; I think they don't care. This comes off as smug when dealing with insecure Windows lovers. To be fair to Windows though, their average intelligence is dragged way down because they have all the REALLY stupid people in their camp. I think the standard deviation with Windows users' intelligence is much broader than the Mac side. This glaring lack of bottom-dwelling mouth-breathers on the Mac side is what makes their intelligence numbers higher. So, like you said, we are on par with each other (and some of us use both), especially when you drop the all the riff-raff that is skewing the Windows mean lower.
I remember several studies during the Inernet boom that indicate the Mac user base is at least far more educated (if that makes one smarter) and have more income due to supposed intelligence. I think it is an interesting phenomena. Paradoxically, the smartest people I know are Mac users, but most of them are really dumb when it comes to using computers. There are very few real Mac Power Users out there.
PowerPoint isn't very good at handling ANY kind of media (relatively speaking, and especially on the PC side). BUT...it is "good enough" for the masses, and that's exactly why everyone complains about it. In skilled hands, it can be pretty good, but the problem with PowerPoint is that you can ALWAYS tell when something was made in PowerPoint (due to the limitations it presents to graphic designers).
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And to be even more fair, the money has to come from somewhere. At least with property taxes I have *some* control of the quality of my children's schools (as long as I have a nice income and live in a nice house, that is). As is usually the case, people are crying for services, but don't want to pay taxes. You can't have both. Take away the taxes and bye-bye free schools.
I live in Austin. The worst thing about Austin is that it is surrounded by Texas.
It is much harder for a public figure to go after someone for libel, but does an elected official that most people don't even know count as a "public figure"? Calling all IANAL's out there in /. land.
Why do you throw DRM into your argument? DRM has nothing to do with the fact that AT&T is the lone provider for the iPhone. And just for the record, go back through the slashdot archives and find all the articles about how nobody would take a chance on Apple. Evidently "all" the cell phone providers actually WON'T stock phones. Most of them are kicking themselves right now, but hey, if you want to reap the rewards, you have to take the risk. Good on AT&T for that.
I'm just curious as why anyone would want a glorified iPhone with a much larger form-factor? Just make my iPhone better (cough, SDK, cough) and all this "tablet pc" nonesense can go into the dead rumor pile already.
More Razrs have been sold than iPhones? iPhone has been available for what, 4 months now???? Let's revisit this comment in a year, shall we?
You damned revisionists piss me off. It is an old story that none of the carriers were willing to gamble on Apple as an upstart cell phone offering. AT&T won this by being the only carrier willing to take the risk.
Uhhhhh, this is how all media outlets have operated for the past 50 years (advertising dollars). Have you been asleep?
What is sad is that you called a Chevy Malibu cool and hip....
Just for fun, care to tell us what phones you consider to be better than the iPhone? There are only about 50 technology websites/magazines that would disagree with your assessment, but I'm curious none-the-less.
I agree with your post entirely. I'm a VERY satisfied iPhone customer but I recognize the fact that my phone is not an invention at all; it is merely one of the best implementations of a group of previously available technologies on the market (typical Apple product, in other words). I think the iPhone as #1 has more to do with trying to gather hype about their article in general than it does picking a real #1 invention.
Well I pointed my Safari enabled Mac to the site and WANT to buy the album, but nothing loads correctly. I guess I'll have to punish them (by not downloading their album for free??) for NOT making their site Mac/Safari/anythingnotmicrosoft friendly?
Teens don't have a long enough attention span to enjoy Radiohead, do they? Radiohead actually delivers more than your standard 15 second sound-bite of a song.
Radiohead isn't a very good band to analyze in the first place because they have a rabid fanbase. I like them and all, but I'm not the usual Radiohead head (did I just make that up?), so I'm not going to just buy their albums unheard. As a matter-of-fact, I think they are a pretty typical example of (in my case, at least) buying one or two tracks of each album for .99 cents. If their new album has two or three interesting songs, I'm willing to willingly give them $2-$3 or so, no problem. But, if we are looking at this as a representation of potential for the entire industry, I'd suggest using a more mainstream band that lacks the installed fan base.
How is it a bluff, when you claim it will "soon be called". That means, in the meantime, it hasn't happened yet. No viruses yet != bluffing. No viruses yet = reality. Sure, it'll change, and then if your Mac friends keep clamoring "Mac's don't get viruses", then you can call their bluff.
If I used anti-virus software on my Mac now, all that would happen would be that it would keep interrupting my daily routines by taking wild guesses as what is malicious code and what isn't...exactly the sort of thing that drives many people away from Windows in the first place.
Nah. I make a fine living having NO IDEA what the stuff is that I'm creating lessons for. There's a whole process involved, and I won't bore you with the details, but an instructional designer that knows what they are doing is much more effective than a subject matter expert who has no clue when it comes to instructional design. Knowing your audience is a valid point, and a very important step of instructional design. As a matter of fact, I would say skilled Instructional Designers know the target audience better than the actual trainer/instructor/lecturer does, because Instructional Designers actually go through the labor of assessing learner needs whereas the instructors either just follow a script or talk to hear themselves talk (generalization, of course).
Egocentrism is a bitch, especially for switchers to the Mac. It's a Mac, not a PC. As soon as you figure that out, the faster you can enjoy your new Mac. m.
Let's put it another way. If Windows controls 90-ish% of all computers, then it would make sense that somewhere about 90-95% of the viruses would be Windows targets. Yet there are still ZERO serious OS X infections since the early 2000s. There are 100million + macs in use right now and 2 million macs sold last quarter, most of them being more vulnerable laptop versions used in public wifi spots a lot. Why haven't any of these suckers being brought down?
http://www.news.com/2100-1040-943519.html
I remember several studies during the Inernet boom that indicate the Mac user base is at least far more educated (if that makes one smarter) and have more income due to supposed intelligence. I think it is an interesting phenomena. Paradoxically, the smartest people I know are Mac users, but most of them are really dumb when it comes to using computers. There are very few real Mac Power Users out there.
PowerPoint isn't very good at handling ANY kind of media (relatively speaking, and especially on the PC side). BUT...it is "good enough" for the masses, and that's exactly why everyone complains about it. In skilled hands, it can be pretty good, but the problem with PowerPoint is that you can ALWAYS tell when something was made in PowerPoint (due to the limitations it presents to graphic designers).