I don't think anyone will be required to buy a pricy developers license - Apple doesn't require that for any of their development environments now, so I doubt they will require it in the future. So far, on OSX and iPhone/iPad, Apple have made their environments free to use and cheap to release for.
Yup. A couple of months ago a friend of mine was complaining to me that he couldn't get good wireless coverage over his house. He described the set-up: a Netgear ADSL router and base station, an Apple Airport Extreme base station connected over Cat5, and an Apple Airport Express as a wireless range extender. He had already spent hours fiddling with channel allocations and power settings, and had already asked the neighbours what channels they are using.
My solution? Turn off the Airport Express and set the Netgear router to be a router only (no wi-fi) so that the Airport Extreme is the only base station. Instant perfect reception all over the house and garden.
I don't think the pixels are actually LEDs, the TV is an LCD TV with LED backlighting. I don't know whether different colours are more expensive to produce on LCDs, though.
Useless to you. Me - I'd love to have an iPad. I have a MacBook Pro, I don't use it to earn a living but I code websites on the side and programming projects for fun, and churn statistics related to me job. Prior to getting the Mac I used Linux exclusively for 6 years: Debian then Ubuntu. When I'm not doing real work, I like to sit on the couch and browse Facebook, reply to emails, chat on whatever IM is popular this month, browse online news, check out movie trailers. I'd *love* to have an iPad if I had the spare cash.
Sure. It depends whether you want the premium hardware/styling of a Mac. Certainly within the MacBook range, if you look for a genuinely equivalent Sony or Dell machine the prices are broadly similar. The point of the discussion was perceived 'lock in' which seems to me to be a myth.
WinAmp - OK, where do you get those mp3's from - you know you can use those with iTunes too, so you wouldn't be locked-in if you used iTunes. Even if you used the iTunes store, that's now DRM-free for music. For movie downloads that might be a problem, but I'm not aware of any source of DRM-free mainstream movie rental or purchase so no disadvantage with Apple here.
iPod - OK, you're semi-right with that, although there are third-party utilities to sync the iPod, if you're keen to be completely hassle and lock-in free then the iPod probably isn't the best choice.
BlackBerry - OK, right, so RIM will freely provide you with equivalent apps for the Android or iPhone if you decide to jump ship? Thought not.
iMac / Mac Desktop - OK, you know you can install Ubuntu and/or XP if you want to. Again - I'm sure Dell or Microsoft won't supply you with equivalents of the commercial apps that you've bought if you choose to switch to another platform, so you're no worse with Dell/XP than you are with iMac/OSX. If you want FOSS then most popular packages are available for Windows, Linux and OSX so no disadvantage there.
So pretty much, the only valid argument you make is to steer clear of the iPod, but only on the basis that you might not want to use iTunes, but since you can use iTunes in a non-lockin manner for music that's not really a firm argument either. So I can't really understand why you would be more locked-in using Apple products compared to Microsoft, RIM and Canonical. I really would like to understand - can you explain?
Can you explain how that's any different from the other smartphones, or indeed any general-purpose OS? I bought a bunch of apps for my Palm TX, guess what - they don't work on my new (non-Palm) phone. Very few software companies support free cross-grading of apps from one OS to another - about the only large company I ever remember supporting that were Macromedia who usually put Windows and Mac executables on the same CD, but that's stopped since Adobe bought them up.
It's not meant to have funny quotes. It's a sitcom. You have to watch the whole show to see the situation build to a comic climax. That's the whole point. And 'you wouldn't steal a car' is great - check it out on You Tube - it's a really good parody of the guilt-trip copyright messages at the beginning of DVDs.
If you watched a small portion, then that explains it. It's a sitcom, a situation comedy. The cheap-shot jokes are there to keep things moving while the situation is being set-up. It's meant to converge in a catastrophic or embarrassing situation. Maybe it's not your thing, but it's the same sort of thing as Fawlty Towers which had silly lines but a great comic climax.
IIRC Usenet wasn't a network so much as local repositories which synced. Your local Usenet server would sync up with other peer servers on a schedule, I suppose a bit like a massive distributed email system. Some Usenet sites weren't strictly Internet connected, but many used the Internet as the means to communicate with peer servers.
Indeed. Just like the respective manufacturers do for the Wii, PS3 and XBox, PSP, DS, etc... Number of posts in the past 3 years complaining that Nintendo controls what is released on their console... about 0. What's the problem?
It's not new. I got to the article before it was slashdotted. The author (who is also the author of the story) created a python script that spits out different inline CSS depending on the button you select to style some text, loading it into an iframe, in other words the sort of messy 'dynamic' pages that many sites used before being replaced by AJAX.
No. It's someone who has stuck an iFrame in their page and written a python script to return different html for the iFrame depending on what you click. It's 1998 technology 'dynamic' pages. Nothing to see here...
That's a fair point. I guess there's a lot of platform loyalty, but then I remember in the Amiga/Atari days that was pretty much the same, so personally I quite like a bit of healthy rivalry. What I'm sick of is the massive flames about Apple's choice in this matter, which doesn't really make sense to me.
Then what in the nine hells is the point of apple store.
Any computer handheld or otherwise lives and dies on its application, having a richer market for applications will serve the non-geek endusers.
And the apple politbureau is keeping that market from reaching it full potential, we are not talking about kernel modification or system upgrades.
If you think the App Store model is in any kind of trouble, then you're living on a different planet. Whatever Apple may have got right or wrong, the App Store is a huge success from a business perspective. The overwhelming majority of iPhone end users are completely happy with the App Store, with the selection and type of software available, the prices and the mode of delivery.
Well, the issue I have is that a lot of people seem to accept that it's OK for consoles to be closed, but seem to have a huge amount of anger against Apple for keeping the iPhone closed. Having owned a Palm TX for several years and seen the general [lack of] quality for most of the apps on there, I'm actually very happy with the app store model.
You can develop for the iPhone for free, you have to pay to distribute code outside of your organisation / testers, which seems reasonable to me given that Apple developed the libraries and sells the product that makes the market possible. I would say a car analogy would be if GM provided you with detailed wiring diagrams of their car and you developed an add-on to the car's electrical system it might be reasonable for them to charge a licensing fee when you sold that product.
You know such geeks who have this strange incapability to grasp this obvious fact? I've never met one.
Huh? Slashdot is full of them! Every discussion of the iPhone or Apple in general is a massive flame war about the closedness of the iPhone. Go check out a Wii or PS3 story - you don't see the same debate - yet those platforms are just as closed as the iPhone. People are upset with Sony about removing the Other OS feature, but very few seem to be opposed in principle to the idea that a console is a closed system. A lot of people seem to have a great deal of anger against Apple for keeping the iPhone closed. I can't see the difference between the PS3 or Wii being closed and the iPhone being closed - they're both computing appliances designed for a very specific set of tasks - but clearly lots of people can't accept that this is how the iPhone works and that it's a good thing.
I would guess there are expensive solutions and free solutions for PC games development. Unlike the console market I would expect that it's possible to develop a game and bring it to market using only free or comparatively cheap tools. BTW, looking at the specs of the Revo, it would make a terrible alternative to a dedicated games console, it has integrated graphics and an Intel Atom CPU, and certainly doesn't seem to be marketed to the PC gamer market. What is your point exactly?
This isn't geek purchases, the bulk of the buyers are regular old folks. And they don't know up front about the limitations of an Apple product, and don't know until it hits them on the head.
See, you're still missing the point. Almost everyone I know either has or desires an iPhone. I'm a bit of a Mac head, and I'm actually trying to talk friends out of buying an iPhone because I know they can't really afford it and don't really need the features. I know of exactly _no one_ who has found the iPhone limiting in an unexpected way. Everyone knows the camera isn't great compared to many phones, every knows you have to use iTunes and the App Store. Surprisingly, none of my geek friends are upset that they can't program in BASIC on their iPhone. What limitations have your non-geek friends discovered with their iPhone that were non-obvious at time of purchase? It's not a rhetorical question, I'm really keen to know.
The Aspire Revo isn't a console, it's a small form factor PC that's designed to be a general-purpose computer and runs Windows / Linux / other mainstream OS of your choice. What has that got to do with the discussion?
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I don't think anyone will be required to buy a pricy developers license - Apple doesn't require that for any of their development environments now, so I doubt they will require it in the future. So far, on OSX and iPhone/iPad, Apple have made their environments free to use and cheap to release for.
Yup. A couple of months ago a friend of mine was complaining to me that he couldn't get good wireless coverage over his house. He described the set-up: a Netgear ADSL router and base station, an Apple Airport Extreme base station connected over Cat5, and an Apple Airport Express as a wireless range extender. He had already spent hours fiddling with channel allocations and power settings, and had already asked the neighbours what channels they are using.
My solution? Turn off the Airport Express and set the Netgear router to be a router only (no wi-fi) so that the Airport Extreme is the only base station. Instant perfect reception all over the house and garden.
I don't think the pixels are actually LEDs, the TV is an LCD TV with LED backlighting. I don't know whether different colours are more expensive to produce on LCDs, though.
Thanks for enlightening us with your study, sample size n=1.
Like Octarine?
Come on, who can be the first to submit an 'Ask Slashdot' for the most effective way to put your pants on in the morning.
Useless to you. Me - I'd love to have an iPad. I have a MacBook Pro, I don't use it to earn a living but I code websites on the side and programming projects for fun, and churn statistics related to me job. Prior to getting the Mac I used Linux exclusively for 6 years: Debian then Ubuntu. When I'm not doing real work, I like to sit on the couch and browse Facebook, reply to emails, chat on whatever IM is popular this month, browse online news, check out movie trailers. I'd *love* to have an iPad if I had the spare cash.
Sure. It depends whether you want the premium hardware/styling of a Mac. Certainly within the MacBook range, if you look for a genuinely equivalent Sony or Dell machine the prices are broadly similar. The point of the discussion was perceived 'lock in' which seems to me to be a myth.
WinAmp - OK, where do you get those mp3's from - you know you can use those with iTunes too, so you wouldn't be locked-in if you used iTunes. Even if you used the iTunes store, that's now DRM-free for music. For movie downloads that might be a problem, but I'm not aware of any source of DRM-free mainstream movie rental or purchase so no disadvantage with Apple here.
iPod - OK, you're semi-right with that, although there are third-party utilities to sync the iPod, if you're keen to be completely hassle and lock-in free then the iPod probably isn't the best choice.
BlackBerry - OK, right, so RIM will freely provide you with equivalent apps for the Android or iPhone if you decide to jump ship? Thought not.
iMac / Mac Desktop - OK, you know you can install Ubuntu and/or XP if you want to. Again - I'm sure Dell or Microsoft won't supply you with equivalents of the commercial apps that you've bought if you choose to switch to another platform, so you're no worse with Dell/XP than you are with iMac/OSX. If you want FOSS then most popular packages are available for Windows, Linux and OSX so no disadvantage there.
So pretty much, the only valid argument you make is to steer clear of the iPod, but only on the basis that you might not want to use iTunes, but since you can use iTunes in a non-lockin manner for music that's not really a firm argument either. So I can't really understand why you would be more locked-in using Apple products compared to Microsoft, RIM and Canonical. I really would like to understand - can you explain?
Can you explain how that's any different from the other smartphones, or indeed any general-purpose OS? I bought a bunch of apps for my Palm TX, guess what - they don't work on my new (non-Palm) phone. Very few software companies support free cross-grading of apps from one OS to another - about the only large company I ever remember supporting that were Macromedia who usually put Windows and Mac executables on the same CD, but that's stopped since Adobe bought them up.
It's not meant to have funny quotes. It's a sitcom. You have to watch the whole show to see the situation build to a comic climax. That's the whole point. And 'you wouldn't steal a car' is great - check it out on You Tube - it's a really good parody of the guilt-trip copyright messages at the beginning of DVDs.
If you watched a small portion, then that explains it. It's a sitcom, a situation comedy. The cheap-shot jokes are there to keep things moving while the situation is being set-up. It's meant to converge in a catastrophic or embarrassing situation. Maybe it's not your thing, but it's the same sort of thing as Fawlty Towers which had silly lines but a great comic climax.
IIRC Usenet wasn't a network so much as local repositories which synced. Your local Usenet server would sync up with other peer servers on a schedule, I suppose a bit like a massive distributed email system. Some Usenet sites weren't strictly Internet connected, but many used the Internet as the means to communicate with peer servers.
Indeed. Just like the respective manufacturers do for the Wii, PS3 and XBox, PSP, DS, etc... Number of posts in the past 3 years complaining that Nintendo controls what is released on their console... about 0. What's the problem?
It's not new. I got to the article before it was slashdotted. The author (who is also the author of the story) created a python script that spits out different inline CSS depending on the button you select to style some text, loading it into an iframe, in other words the sort of messy 'dynamic' pages that many sites used before being replaced by AJAX.
No. It's someone who has stuck an iFrame in their page and written a python script to return different html for the iFrame depending on what you click. It's 1998 technology 'dynamic' pages. Nothing to see here...
I'm really confused now. Either make your point or stop wasting time answering questions with questions.
That's a fair point. I guess there's a lot of platform loyalty, but then I remember in the Amiga/Atari days that was pretty much the same, so personally I quite like a bit of healthy rivalry. What I'm sick of is the massive flames about Apple's choice in this matter, which doesn't really make sense to me.
Nah, that can easily be defeated by a tachyon burst, particularly if you invert the polarity of the shield harmonics.
Then what in the nine hells is the point of apple store. Any computer handheld or otherwise lives and dies on its application, having a richer market for applications will serve the non-geek endusers. And the apple politbureau is keeping that market from reaching it full potential, we are not talking about kernel modification or system upgrades.
If you think the App Store model is in any kind of trouble, then you're living on a different planet. Whatever Apple may have got right or wrong, the App Store is a huge success from a business perspective. The overwhelming majority of iPhone end users are completely happy with the App Store, with the selection and type of software available, the prices and the mode of delivery.
Well, the issue I have is that a lot of people seem to accept that it's OK for consoles to be closed, but seem to have a huge amount of anger against Apple for keeping the iPhone closed. Having owned a Palm TX for several years and seen the general [lack of] quality for most of the apps on there, I'm actually very happy with the app store model.
You can develop for the iPhone for free, you have to pay to distribute code outside of your organisation / testers, which seems reasonable to me given that Apple developed the libraries and sells the product that makes the market possible. I would say a car analogy would be if GM provided you with detailed wiring diagrams of their car and you developed an add-on to the car's electrical system it might be reasonable for them to charge a licensing fee when you sold that product.
You know such geeks who have this strange incapability to grasp this obvious fact? I've never met one.
Huh? Slashdot is full of them! Every discussion of the iPhone or Apple in general is a massive flame war about the closedness of the iPhone. Go check out a Wii or PS3 story - you don't see the same debate - yet those platforms are just as closed as the iPhone. People are upset with Sony about removing the Other OS feature, but very few seem to be opposed in principle to the idea that a console is a closed system. A lot of people seem to have a great deal of anger against Apple for keeping the iPhone closed. I can't see the difference between the PS3 or Wii being closed and the iPhone being closed - they're both computing appliances designed for a very specific set of tasks - but clearly lots of people can't accept that this is how the iPhone works and that it's a good thing.
I would guess there are expensive solutions and free solutions for PC games development. Unlike the console market I would expect that it's possible to develop a game and bring it to market using only free or comparatively cheap tools. BTW, looking at the specs of the Revo, it would make a terrible alternative to a dedicated games console, it has integrated graphics and an Intel Atom CPU, and certainly doesn't seem to be marketed to the PC gamer market. What is your point exactly?
This isn't geek purchases, the bulk of the buyers are regular old folks. And they don't know up front about the limitations of an Apple product, and don't know until it hits them on the head.
See, you're still missing the point. Almost everyone I know either has or desires an iPhone. I'm a bit of a Mac head, and I'm actually trying to talk friends out of buying an iPhone because I know they can't really afford it and don't really need the features. I know of exactly _no one_ who has found the iPhone limiting in an unexpected way. Everyone knows the camera isn't great compared to many phones, every knows you have to use iTunes and the App Store. Surprisingly, none of my geek friends are upset that they can't program in BASIC on their iPhone. What limitations have your non-geek friends discovered with their iPhone that were non-obvious at time of purchase? It's not a rhetorical question, I'm really keen to know.
The Aspire Revo isn't a console, it's a small form factor PC that's designed to be a general-purpose computer and runs Windows / Linux / other mainstream OS of your choice. What has that got to do with the discussion?