A lot of ideas are so fleeting in my mind that they are gone by the time I can get my PowerBook out of its case, wake it up from sleep, and start typing.
But I couldn't use a slip of paper. I would simply lose it.
The solution? I have iPhone and take it everywhere. Then I jot down the idea instantly using the notes application and never forget it.
Price is a fairly modest premium over the MacBooks and I think a lot of people will consider it well worth the extra money despite losing the optical drive and replacable battery.
The thinness would help out quite a bit in coach, though, would it not?
I know when I was using a 15" PowerBook, it was barely possible to open it on a coach seat. This could really help.
If the battery does get consistent 5 hour life during its normal span, for most people this is not a bad tradeoff. The typical coast to coast flight is about 5 hours.
This isn't good for a flight to Asia unless you get a seat with a power socket, which I think exists nowadays in many planes, even in Coach.
I just wonder how long it will keep a five hour battery life. My 2 year old 17" PowerBook G4 has about a 1.5-2 hour battery life, down from over three originally. I have no complaints since that's the way the battery crumbles, and a new one can be obtained to fix the problem without too much grief. But to have a 5 hour battery life shrink to 2-3 within a couple of years of ownership and no economic way to replace it would be pretty cruel. I wonder what Apple will do about this.
Not for it to become successful as a presentation system, but certainly the web could not have evolved into the sophisticated software platform it is today without client-side programming - i.e. JavaScript.
Mosaic was an academic project, developed primarily by Marc Andressen. As usually happens in the case of such things, Marc was hired away by Netscape, and Netscape in turn took over the development of the product. This is very common in the academic world, so I think we can say this was a fairly common way for a research project to turn commercial.
In any event, most of what made the web browser a successful platform, from the table tag to JavaScript, was developed in an entirely commercial environment.
The definition of open source can be spun any number of ways. If open source is any GPL-licensed software, then you can certainly claim a lot of things as open source. I think my argument stands - most GPL software is not terribly innovative, but instead is cheaper versions of something that already exists.
I think it's still a highly defensible view that the most creative software comes from closed source entitites like Apple, Adobe and any number of other smaller organizations.
The problem is that, unlike viruses or spyware on PCs, malicious software can cost real money.
In early 2006, I visited a friend in the Philippines. She was upper middle class, which means about a $1,000 a month income. She also had a beautiful, expensive phone, the Nokia 6600. She bragged that she waited until the price came down; she bought it for about $250. At the time, her phone included an entirely open Java subsystem.
One day she came up to me and said "I think Celly's sick." And he was indeed. Celly had an exceptionally cruel virus, which sent expensive MMS messages to all her friends. Of porn. Now, my friend has the firey personality and attitude that makes Filipinas wonderful, but she also is a lady and so this was profoundly embarassing to her. Fortunately, most of her friends didn't have MMS phones and so they didn't manage to receive the messages.
I was able to look up the virus it got on the web and eradicate it for her. I also told her how to make sure this didn't happen in the future.
That did absolutely nothing about the $300 phone bill she got next month. And since she lived in the Philippines, that had might as well be a $3,000 bill. Worse, her phone company was nothing like AT&T. Instead of writing off the ridiculous bill, they insisted that she pay it. I think she was a little embarassed by the situation, so she never told me what happened, but I think she had to cancel her service and switch to Globe's competitor, Smart.
Ever since that I have not been nearly as upset as most Slashdot users that more cellphones run proprietary software and don't have any user-modifiable programming. I had no problem paying $10 for SSH for my Sidekick.
So it was no big problem for me to switch to iPhone. As a glance through my posts shows pretty clearly, I'm extremely happy with iPhone and the overall quality of its software experience.
It would be nice if the owner could specifically install software through iTunes. I think that would eliminate most problems since there is no automated way to control iTunes. And I certainly hope that Apple, or someone close to Apple, introduces a good implementation of SSH.
But because of how nasty the outside world is nowadays I absolutely don't think the guts of iPhone should be accessable without some kind of security. Otherwise I'll wind up with a $3,000 phone bill some day and that won't be cool at all.
This seems to escape the whole point of the article.
The question is not whether there's open source software, but whether it is creative or original.
KDE was designed as a copy of Windows. If you use Windows, you've used KDE and vice versa. I hated it from the start; I want something that's at least an attempt to provide a fresh experience.
OpenOffice is a blatant copy of one of the previous versions of Microsoft Office. It is distinguished only by the fact that it's free, on the good side, and that it's unoriginal and drab as Office 97 was. Whenever I've tried it, I feel like I'm back in 1997.
Consider Pages and Numbers, made by Apple. They are both bursting with original ideas, design innovation and creativity. I use them all the time and prefer them to both the Microsoft versions and Openoffice.
MySQL has innovated, but it seems to be a largely proprietary product developed by a fairly small team - i.e. open source in name, but closed in development. The have a hybrid model where they license special versions and provide pay support. Alas, I have to ignore PG SQL since I have no experience on it.
Certainly nobody is going to argue that Apache configuration files are particularly user-friendly in this point and click age.
On the other hand, take Apple. The dock, coming from NeXT, was new and different compared to its forebears. Apple then put a lot of effort into reworking it to become more "Apple-like". KDE and Enlightenment, on the other hand, both have obvious copies of the Start menu.
The iPhone has an interface almost completely unlike any other phone, and of course it came from a commercial team determined to produce the world's best design. They were not trying to copy a HTC phone; they blazed their own path, in such a dramatic fashion that my jaw dropped when I first saw it, and now, despite its high cost, it's on my desk right now.
In conclusion, innovative software does seem to come from private companies. People who develop open source software are people who had a need for something they could not afford, and created a copy of their own. At the time Linux was developed, a SCO license cost $1,000! That kind of enterprise is something to be proud of, especially when done successfully. But when it comes to developing interesting and original products, the open source world is way behind.
There's nothing wrong with open source; I use a lot of it, and enjoy the fact that I can compete in the world without having to pay $10,000 for a Unix operating system and SQL database. But that doesn't mean it's interesting or innovative.
Of all the Windows computers I have seen in the wild, the only ones that are not full of spyware and virii are those managed by professional computer people.
The problem is that most people think of their computer as an appliance and have no real understanding of how to use anti-virus/spyware software, even if they have it. The software itself seems to be better at trying to bludgeon people into buying upgrades than it is at actually doing anything to protect systems.
I do not think computer and operating system developers should expect people to understand the care and feeding of anti-virus software, so I just tell people to buy Macs. It's a bit more expensive but a lot less misery and pain. Eventually the Mac may be cracked, but with its 5% market share I think it will be a long time before it will be even 1% as dangerous as running a Windows computer.
There appears to be a new 30gb Zune and most likely the fire sale was to try and sell out the old model first.
I saw a new 30gb Zune at the Wal*Mart in Belle Vernon, PA. It doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere else, including (last time I checked a couple of days ago) Wal-Mart's web site or Best Buy.
Don't ask me why an obscure rural hamlet got it first; it seems strange to me too. Here are pictures I took at my Wal*Mart:
Interestingly enough, the Apple iPhone has all of those but a big screen. Resolution's about the same as the Kindle at 160dpi.
I think iPhone is the best casual reading device I've ever used, and its overall utility (combining phone, iPod and Internet device in one unit) makes it easy to remember to carry around and use.
If you want comfortably large type on a wide screen, hold it horizontally. If you want to read the middle column of a web page, hold it vertically and double-tap the column and the type sizes up nicely. If you want bigger type, hold it closer to your eyes:-).
It also has a color screen. With more and more books being printed in color nowadays, Kindle's choice of a monochrome screen seems a bit too retro for me.
I defend the psychology of the early adopter, the person who buys the iPhone, Mac Book Pro, digital camera, etc, etc, and uses them. Those nice people help drive down the prices for everyone else, and pay for the R&D that is needed to pay for great things. I'm an early enough adopter to have bought iPhone shortly after release, because I could see that its functions were a perfect fit for my needs. And so far, they have been; after three months of steady use I can say it's the best small device I've ever owned, bar none.
The Kindle, though, can do only one thing and just doesn't seem all that useful to me. Maybe if it could browse web sites without massive charges (and in color, geez) I'd look more favorably at its chances.
I don't know about Porsche, but when I was shopping for a Mercedes-Benz, just out of curiosity I visited the Newport Beach Mercedes-Benz dealer on the web.
There was a wonderful selection of ONE YEAR OLD S-Class models available. In other words, many people in Newport Beach are so rich they trade in their $90,000 S-Classes annually - for, of course, new $90,000 S-Classes!
Of course you are talking about the top 1/100th of 1% of incomes over there. But still, I'm sure most people who buy $90,000 Porsches or Teslas new are not going to hold them for 20 years. It would be unusual, I think, for them to wait 5 years before getting a new one to replace their old model. To give you an idea of the area, house prices start at $1,000,000 for the humblest shack, and top out at around $25,000,000.
Definitely helps with the battery replacement quandry - current owners will almost certainly never replace theirs at all.
But then again... let's think about you or I. Five years from the middle of 2008, when the first Tesla is sold and hits the streets, we will be in a position to buy their old model for $40,000. Let's see what happens when we run it for 15 years.
Tesla (used) $40,000 + $10,000 replace battery + $6,000 fuel for 15 years = $56,000 or 3,733 a year
I'm a little confused by your projections since I don't understand why the Boxster went up to $70,000 and fuel went down to $15,000, or why the Mazda3 went to $52,500 and the price down to $11,500? I think you or I might have mixed up some figures. But if the Mazda3 is $18,000 and we're spending $2,300 a year on fuel, if it lasts 15 years we are here:
Mazda3 (new) $18,000 + regular maintenance not included, probably more than Tesla + $2,300 x 15 = 52,500 or $3,500 a year.
In other words, a used Tesla over 15 years might actually cost less than a Mazda3, if Tesla maintenance costs can be kept under control. If gas prices went up it might wind up being cheaper, even substantially cheaper, to run the used Tesla once they become available.
Unfortunately, if you don't live in super-affluent areas like the Bay Area, Newport Beach or the Palm Beach/Miami region, it might be very difficult to get service for a Tesla unless their follow-up ventures are very succcessful.
There is a rumour, which I hope is true, that Mercedes-Benz will be working with Apple on a state of the art car user interface. It does seem strange, though, that they wouldn't take it to BMW first since BMW had the first iPod integration in their car. Unfortunately, BMW is in bed with Microsoft since they use Windows for Cars, aka iDrive (a definite reason for me to boycott BMW, alas). So Mercedes seems likely to get the newest Apple technology if it wants it.
It's amusing to note that Mercedes' COMND system, which I have in my 2000 S-Class, was widely panned by reviewers as being complex and difficult to use, until BMW came up with iDrive, which was even MORE complex and difficult to use! So now whenever a giant comparison of full-sized luxury cars is offered, the take away is that Mercedes' system is OK but BMW's infamous iDrive is an embarrassment.
If you're unfamiliar with it, COMND integrates the radio, navigation and a bunch of other features, so that (for example) when you get directions from your GPS the radio volume fades down first, just like iPhone will fade out music whenever you get a call. It also offers cellphone integration which probably works in a similar way, although the option was not installed in my car. (I bought it used about a year ago.) Like any modern navigation system, it offers the usual range of onscreen maps, driving directions and so on. Of course the screen in 2000 was considerably lower resolution than we have today; I think my iPhone's resolution is higher than the in-dash display even though the display is about twice as large.
I quickly checked out the latest S-Class and it has a much improved COMND system with a much higher quality LCD, better maps and the use of a DVD instead of CDs, making it possible to get national maps on a single DVD instead of (if my memory serves) about six CDs for the whole USA in COMND.
So as you have said, COMND is already similar to a small computer or cellphone and so using cellphone software to enhance it is certainly far from unrealistic. It would be really nice, in fact, to just pop iPhone in a slot somewhere and for the big navigation display to be used to manage calls and maps in the same way iPhone does, tied in to the already existing in-car GPS. Perhaps that's something Apple is working on too.
Actually, road trips are usually made with your kids and spouse, so you could have one family member own a large vehicle and the other own an electric and still be perfectly cost effective as long as the electric was not prohibitively expensive.
Incidentally, if you look at the advertised specs of the Tesla, it's quite a bit cheaper to run than gas cars because the electric drivetrain is super-efficient. If we take the Tesla's claim of 150mpg equivalent, and compare that to a typical Porsche at 20mpg equivalent, we find that the gas car gets about $ 0.15 per mile (at 20mpg) while the electric gets $ 0.02 per mile (assuming $3 a gallon gas). If we drive 20,000 miles a year, Porsche costs $ 3,000 and Tesla costs $ 400 per year. Over a 200,000 mile lifespan, Porsche will cost $30,000 and Tesla $4,000. So the costs are interesting:
Porsche Boxster - $40,000 + $30,000 = $70,000 Tesla = $90,000 + $4,000 = $94,000 So if you look at the pure costs Tesla costs 225% of the Boxster, but over its lifespan it will cost you only about 34% more.
If we consider Tesla equivalent to the 911, of course, the Tesla is much cheaper because the price is $90k for both models. But the Lotus Elise, on which the Tesla was based, costs about the same as a Boxster, so that seemed like a more reasonable comparison.
Of course this assumes Tesla's batteries will last that long. Porsche has much higher maintenance costs but they would be overwhelmed in the end by battery replacement if it was needed.
I agree with you. I would at least like to see some sort of demonstration of what the product will be like. The description of the minimum spec, as I recall, made it sound pretty bare bones.
I respect the guy who's in the middle of gPhone because the Sidekick/Danger/HipTop device was really a great gadget for its time. It stagnated after he left the company and that makes it pretty clear that he can design a phone.
I find using my iPhone as an Internet device indespensible and I truly have not left home without it since I purchased it, something that's quite remarkable given my absent-minded nature.
To compete with iPhone, it needs a big display and fast processor, and neither of them appear to be required by this spec. If this mainly creates devices with Blackjack and Blackberry like form factors, I doubt iPhone will be affected at all.
Finally, an interesting question about this project is what the point of it is. Google already leads search in the mobile phone space. It doesn't seem to me that it needs to create its own phone just to expand search to mobiles.
Apple/AT&T (with iPhone) and T-Mobile (with Sidekick) have probably done more for Google on mobile phones than anyone else, by introducing flat rate data plans at fair prices for their phones.
I suspect you represent only about 1% of drivers, though, and the gasoline system isn't going to go away overnight, so you can still buy what you need. If the USA could even go 50% electric, it would be a huge achievement and do a world of good to us. We're not (hopefully!) trying to force anyone into a means of transport that doesn't suit their needs.
The Tesla Roadster gets a shade under 250 miles per charge and I think that's good enough for almost everyone. Unfortunately, the $100k price of the Tesla is not good enough for almost everyone, but they think they can get the cost down over time.
I'd certainly rather have a $91k Tesla than a $70k Scion. Who the heck thought of that one?
I really like Tesla's model: Build an electric car that's not a penalty box, but rather a vehicle you'll love to drive. Their site [teslamotors.com] is well worth checking out.
On the other hand, iPhone is by far the best phone I've ever tried, bar none. If you want to use your phone primarily for web browsing and email (that's not super time-sensitive), as I do, it is completely unmatched by anything else in the universe.
I would wait until the February iPhone SDK announcement before writing off the device.
On the other hand, Steve Ballmer is, much as I hate to admit it, right about the press release angle. Engadget went to the Android press conference, and I felt positively queazy as I read the extracts from the various announcements. The various telcos and handset makers there were all talking about how wonderful the open world was, in that typically hideous corporate language that telegraphs insincerity in every word. My reaction was that these people are lying, or at least understating their real commitment. In short, my initial reaction was exactly the same as Steve Ballmer's: This is unlikely to do well.
The fellow who developed the T-Mobile Sidekick is undeniably a fine, brilliant man. I owned one myself, and for the time it was fantastic. If it's up to him, I'm sure he would come up with a good iPhone competitor. But with this split between hardware and software, and all these people with differing agendas, I honestly don't know if it will work.
A good example is what happened between the Sidekick and the Sidekick II (I don't remember the exact model in which this change happened, just that it did.) The old Sidekick had a menu where you could spin the wheel all the way to the top and get the web browser. The new one replaced that with Download Fun, where you could buy stuff. I was annoyed since I had gotten used to spinning the ball quickly to get all the way up to the web browser and then hitting it. In the new model, I would have to look at each option and stop the ball when the web browser showed up.
This is the kind of marketing think that makes great products into rotten ones. Amazing how much the simple things matter, no? And I understand Verizon is even worse at this than T-Mobile.
If this is the kind of process by which the Android becomes the HTC Android and the HTC Android becomes the AT&T 7550, I don't think Apple's going to face that much iPhone competition after all.
Not that it really needs it, you know.
You know Steve Jobs is up there on the top floor of his building in Cupertino, and he's thinking about "How the heck can I top this?" and he has some ideas. Love him or hate him, he's really competing with himself nowadays. He has to figure out how to put together a device so compelling that I will sell off my iPhone and buy his iPhone II... and that's not an easy job at all.
But one he's been more than equal to in the past...
D
Re:Wow. I'm about to comment on. . .
on
SCO Layoffs Begin
·
· Score: 1
I'll bet most of the people laid off were in some way related to the actual product, though. The product's on life support - thanks in part to the litigation - and the litigation itself goes to the bitter end.
D
Re:Wow. I'm about to comment on. . .
on
SCO Layoffs Begin
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't see any reason to be vindictive against those who worked on a pioneering version of microcomputer Unix, from way before the time it got cool. For a long time, I'm sure this was a source of great pride, and it's tough to give up on a company that's been handing you your paycheck for eons.
The lawyers, alas, have already gotten rich off this and I don't think destroying them is within our power. Darl McBride and the top executives have probably managed to funnel money out of the company by selling stock. Anyway, they'll be last to be laid off, for sure.
Or you could say this was Apple's brilliant plan to eliminate DRM.
If so, it seems to be working.
Steve has actually made fairly consistent anti-DRM statements before the iTunes store was introduced, and after iTunes Plus was introduced. It's not impossible that he planned for this outcome all along.
People may say Steve is a power-mad meglomaniac, and I'm sure he is. But I don't think anyone's ever said he was stupid.
Looks like it's time for you to get out while you still can:-).
Seriously - or more seriously - that's an interesting development and we'll see how it works out for them.
Cellphone service, of course, is subject to about a million taxes already. The real difference between the US and UK is that in the UK, the taxes are included in the quoted price, while they are unloved additions to the bill in the US.
When I ran a bulletin board system years ago, I wrote a detailed explanation of my phone bill and every item on it. This was in the old days when people using BBSs would have incredibly high phone bills from calling other computers long distance, so it was a really hot issue at the time. I remember being amazed at how a nominal $30 or so bill would turn out close to $50 by the time the government and others got their hungrey paws on it.
In the end, the more I look at the US versus UK question, the more I think the two bills are really at parity - the terms and conditions in the UK cause you to use fewer minutes on average and the price net of the real benefit of the WiFi is almost exactly the same. Might even be a bit lower in the UK.
Thanks for the correction. I had forgotten about incoming calls and texts at no cost, which makes the plans roughly equivalent.
Also, I didn't know VAT was applied to services - in the US, services don't get charged sales tax, only tangible goods do. So all purchases get charged VAT in the UK? That definitely makes it a pricey place to live overall.
I will note that I doubt that life in the UK is a ripoff if prices are uniformly higher than elsewhere. It sounds to me that simply mirrors the cost of doing business there and the level of competition.
The Cloud is free as part of the iPhone plan in the UK. That 7 pounds (about $14) goes a long way towards explaining why the plan is so expensive in the UK.
In fact, the plan is UKP35, which means it would be UKP 28 if The Cloud's fee was excluded. 28 UKP = about $56 USD, which is actually a little less than the US iPhone plan of $59 USD.
However, the US plan has more than double the minutes and double the text messages, so you're still not getting that good a deal - but it's not as bad as it sounds at first.
You know, that's just too funny. My first Linux distribution was Yggsdrasil too, and about all I remember about it is that it took forever to get to work, and I could finally use a real emacs after years of settling for alternatives.
Now, we're both Mac users.
As for why, in my case, Apple's best in the biz for both hardware application design. Not to mention integration with my iPhone, which truly is the most amazing device I've ever used.
I must admit to a love of origniality and a hatred of imitatiors. Linux seems to be designed to look and work as much like Windows as possible. It's not inventive, at least not on the design side. I call my Mac the designer computer, because someone really thought about how it should work and implemented a coherent vision.
That's why Mac software is better, too. They took a fresh look at how things are, as with Pages and Numbers. I really love the fact that they do that, and that's why in the end I plead guilty for being an Apple fanboy.
In this business, you have to drink someone's Kool-Aid. You have to spend so much time with products that they become part of you. So in the end, you have to drink the Microsoft drink, the Linux drink or the Apple drink. The best tasting drink happens to be Steve's. It's a bit more expensive, and not everyone can drink it, but it is the fullest and tastiest.
I've never really understood the point of bluetooth.
If you're near enough to your computer to use Bluetooth for syncing, shouldn't you have your phone in its charging cradle so that you can fill up its battery? And wouldn't the wired connection used by the iPhone for that purpose work both faster and more reliably than Bluetooth?
I'd agree that it might be nice to use a Bluetooth keyboard but I'm not sure what the great appeal of Bluetooth synching is.
Your keyboard point is reasonable, but I've been surprised at how fast I can type on the iPhone keyboard, and of course text legibility and screen quality is miles ahead of any other device.
Maybe it's just me, but I'll take something great over something mediocre any day. I suppose that's why I'm a fanboy - I appreciate that Steve Jobs, while a flawed human being like the rest of us, at least tries to achieve greatness.
Microsoft achieves acceptable mediocrity in all its products, and I find it sad that's what the world seems to want.
All I need as a phone application is ssh, so I can get to my web server in case of emergencies or just to tinker. ssh appears to have finally been introduced, so it's about time for me to finally get my iPhone.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of ideas are so fleeting in my mind that they are gone by the time I can get my PowerBook out of its case, wake it up from sleep, and start typing.
But I couldn't use a slip of paper. I would simply lose it.
The solution? I have iPhone and take it everywhere. Then I jot down the idea instantly using the notes application and never forget it.
Works better than anything else I've ever tried.
D
Price is a fairly modest premium over the MacBooks and I think a lot of people will consider it well worth the extra money despite losing the optical drive and replacable battery.
The thinness would help out quite a bit in coach, though, would it not?
I know when I was using a 15" PowerBook, it was barely possible to open it on a coach seat. This could really help.
If the battery does get consistent 5 hour life during its normal span, for most people this is not a bad tradeoff. The typical coast to coast flight is about 5 hours.
This isn't good for a flight to Asia unless you get a seat with a power socket, which I think exists nowadays in many planes, even in Coach.
I just wonder how long it will keep a five hour battery life. My 2 year old 17" PowerBook G4 has about a 1.5-2 hour battery life, down from over three originally. I have no complaints since that's the way the battery crumbles, and a new one can be obtained to fix the problem without too much grief. But to have a 5 hour battery life shrink to 2-3 within a couple of years of ownership and no economic way to replace it would be pretty cruel. I wonder what Apple will do about this.
D
Not for it to become successful as a presentation system, but certainly the web could not have evolved into the sophisticated software platform it is today without client-side programming - i.e. JavaScript.
D
Mosaic was an academic project, developed primarily by Marc Andressen. As usually happens in the case of such things, Marc was hired away by Netscape, and Netscape in turn took over the development of the product. This is very common in the academic world, so I think we can say this was a fairly common way for a research project to turn commercial.
In any event, most of what made the web browser a successful platform, from the table tag to JavaScript, was developed in an entirely commercial environment.
The definition of open source can be spun any number of ways. If open source is any GPL-licensed software, then you can certainly claim a lot of things as open source. I think my argument stands - most GPL software is not terribly innovative, but instead is cheaper versions of something that already exists.
I think it's still a highly defensible view that the most creative software comes from closed source entitites like Apple, Adobe and any number of other smaller organizations.
D
The problem is that, unlike viruses or spyware on PCs, malicious software can cost real money.
In early 2006, I visited a friend in the Philippines. She was upper middle class, which means about a $1,000 a month income. She also had a beautiful, expensive phone, the Nokia 6600. She bragged that she waited until the price came down; she bought it for about $250. At the time, her phone included an entirely open Java subsystem.
One day she came up to me and said "I think Celly's sick." And he was indeed. Celly had an exceptionally cruel virus, which sent expensive MMS messages to all her friends. Of porn. Now, my friend has the firey personality and attitude that makes Filipinas wonderful, but she also is a lady and so this was profoundly embarassing to her. Fortunately, most of her friends didn't have MMS phones and so they didn't manage to receive the messages.
I was able to look up the virus it got on the web and eradicate it for her. I also told her how to make sure this didn't happen in the future.
That did absolutely nothing about the $300 phone bill she got next month. And since she lived in the Philippines, that had might as well be a $3,000 bill. Worse, her phone company was nothing like AT&T. Instead of writing off the ridiculous bill, they insisted that she pay it. I think she was a little embarassed by the situation, so she never told me what happened, but I think she had to cancel her service and switch to Globe's competitor, Smart.
Ever since that I have not been nearly as upset as most Slashdot users that more cellphones run proprietary software and don't have any user-modifiable programming. I had no problem paying $10 for SSH for my Sidekick.
So it was no big problem for me to switch to iPhone. As a glance through my posts shows pretty clearly, I'm extremely happy with iPhone and the overall quality of its software experience.
It would be nice if the owner could specifically install software through iTunes. I think that would eliminate most problems since there is no automated way to control iTunes. And I certainly hope that Apple, or someone close to Apple, introduces a good implementation of SSH.
But because of how nasty the outside world is nowadays I absolutely don't think the guts of iPhone should be accessable without some kind of security. Otherwise I'll wind up with a $3,000 phone bill some day and that won't be cool at all.
D
This seems to escape the whole point of the article.
The question is not whether there's open source software, but whether it is creative or original.
KDE was designed as a copy of Windows. If you use Windows, you've used KDE and vice versa. I hated it from the start; I want something that's at least an attempt to provide a fresh experience.
OpenOffice is a blatant copy of one of the previous versions of Microsoft Office. It is distinguished only by the fact that it's free, on the good side, and that it's unoriginal and drab as Office 97 was. Whenever I've tried it, I feel like I'm back in 1997.
Consider Pages and Numbers, made by Apple. They are both bursting with original ideas, design innovation and creativity. I use them all the time and prefer them to both the Microsoft versions and Openoffice.
FireFox is a special case, since it was started as commercially funded development. Still, tabbed browsing, which I've always associated with it, was actually introduced by Opera, which is a commercial product. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_of_the_Opera_web_browser#Tabbed_browsing
MySQL has innovated, but it seems to be a largely proprietary product developed by a fairly small team - i.e. open source in name, but closed in development. The have a hybrid model where they license special versions and provide pay support. Alas, I have to ignore PG SQL since I have no experience on it.
Certainly nobody is going to argue that Apache configuration files are particularly user-friendly in this point and click age.
On the other hand, take Apple. The dock, coming from NeXT, was new and different compared to its forebears. Apple then put a lot of effort into reworking it to become more "Apple-like". KDE and Enlightenment, on the other hand, both have obvious copies of the Start menu.
The iPhone has an interface almost completely unlike any other phone, and of course it came from a commercial team determined to produce the world's best design. They were not trying to copy a HTC phone; they blazed their own path, in such a dramatic fashion that my jaw dropped when I first saw it, and now, despite its high cost, it's on my desk right now.
In conclusion, innovative software does seem to come from private companies. People who develop open source software are people who had a need for something they could not afford, and created a copy of their own. At the time Linux was developed, a SCO license cost $1,000! That kind of enterprise is something to be proud of, especially when done successfully. But when it comes to developing interesting and original products, the open source world is way behind.
There's nothing wrong with open source; I use a lot of it, and enjoy the fact that I can compete in the world without having to pay $10,000 for a Unix operating system and SQL database. But that doesn't mean it's interesting or innovative.
It would be nice if it was.
D
Of all the Windows computers I have seen in the wild, the only ones that are not full of spyware and virii are those managed by professional computer people.
The problem is that most people think of their computer as an appliance and have no real understanding of how to use anti-virus/spyware software, even if they have it. The software itself seems to be better at trying to bludgeon people into buying upgrades than it is at actually doing anything to protect systems.
I do not think computer and operating system developers should expect people to understand the care and feeding of anti-virus software, so I just tell people to buy Macs. It's a bit more expensive but a lot less misery and pain. Eventually the Mac may be cracked, but with its 5% market share I think it will be a long time before it will be even 1% as dangerous as running a Windows computer.
D
There appears to be a new 30gb Zune and most likely the fire sale was to try and sell out the old model first.
I saw a new 30gb Zune at the Wal*Mart in Belle Vernon, PA. It doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere else, including (last time I checked a couple of days ago) Wal-Mart's web site or Best Buy.
Don't ask me why an obscure rural hamlet got it first; it seems strange to me too. Here are pictures I took at my Wal*Mart:
http://amazing.com/creations/show/8561
D
Not always.
:-).
Mac OS X Leopard is faster than Tiger, which was faster than Jaguar.
Apple's a bloody impressive company nowadays
D
Interestingly enough, the Apple iPhone has all of those but a big screen. Resolution's about the same as the Kindle at 160dpi.
:-).
I think iPhone is the best casual reading device I've ever used, and its overall utility (combining phone, iPod and Internet device in one unit) makes it easy to remember to carry around and use.
If you want comfortably large type on a wide screen, hold it horizontally. If you want to read the middle column of a web page, hold it vertically and double-tap the column and the type sizes up nicely. If you want bigger type, hold it closer to your eyes
It also has a color screen. With more and more books being printed in color nowadays, Kindle's choice of a monochrome screen seems a bit too retro for me.
I defend the psychology of the early adopter, the person who buys the iPhone, Mac Book Pro, digital camera, etc, etc, and uses them. Those nice people help drive down the prices for everyone else, and pay for the R&D that is needed to pay for great things. I'm an early enough adopter to have bought iPhone shortly after release, because I could see that its functions were a perfect fit for my needs. And so far, they have been; after three months of steady use I can say it's the best small device I've ever owned, bar none.
The Kindle, though, can do only one thing and just doesn't seem all that useful to me. Maybe if it could browse web sites without massive charges (and in color, geez) I'd look more favorably at its chances.
D
I don't know about Porsche, but when I was shopping for a Mercedes-Benz, just out of curiosity I visited the Newport Beach Mercedes-Benz dealer on the web.
... let's think about you or I. Five years from the middle of 2008, when the first Tesla is sold and hits the streets, we will be in a position to buy their old model for $40,000. Let's see what happens when we run it for 15 years.
There was a wonderful selection of ONE YEAR OLD S-Class models available. In other words, many people in Newport Beach are so rich they trade in their $90,000 S-Classes annually - for, of course, new $90,000 S-Classes!
Of course you are talking about the top 1/100th of 1% of incomes over there. But still, I'm sure most people who buy $90,000 Porsches or Teslas new are not going to hold them for 20 years. It would be unusual, I think, for them to wait 5 years before getting a new one to replace their old model. To give you an idea of the area, house prices start at $1,000,000 for the humblest shack, and top out at around $25,000,000.
Definitely helps with the battery replacement quandry - current owners will almost certainly never replace theirs at all.
But then again
Tesla (used) $40,000 + $10,000 replace battery + $6,000 fuel for 15 years = $56,000 or 3,733 a year
I'm a little confused by your projections since I don't understand why the Boxster went up to $70,000 and fuel went down to $15,000, or why the Mazda3 went to $52,500 and the price down to $11,500? I think you or I might have mixed up some figures. But if the Mazda3 is $18,000 and we're spending $2,300 a year on fuel, if it lasts 15 years we are here:
Mazda3 (new) $18,000 + regular maintenance not included, probably more than Tesla + $2,300 x 15 = 52,500 or $3,500 a year.
In other words, a used Tesla over 15 years might actually cost less than a Mazda3, if Tesla maintenance costs can be kept under control. If gas prices went up it might wind up being cheaper, even substantially cheaper, to run the used Tesla once they become available.
Unfortunately, if you don't live in super-affluent areas like the Bay Area, Newport Beach or the Palm Beach/Miami region, it might be very difficult to get service for a Tesla unless their follow-up ventures are very succcessful.
D
There is a rumour, which I hope is true, that Mercedes-Benz will be working with Apple on a state of the art car user interface. It does seem strange, though, that they wouldn't take it to BMW first since BMW had the first iPod integration in their car. Unfortunately, BMW is in bed with Microsoft since they use Windows for Cars, aka iDrive (a definite reason for me to boycott BMW, alas). So Mercedes seems likely to get the newest Apple technology if it wants it.
It's amusing to note that Mercedes' COMND system, which I have in my 2000 S-Class, was widely panned by reviewers as being complex and difficult to use, until BMW came up with iDrive, which was even MORE complex and difficult to use! So now whenever a giant comparison of full-sized luxury cars is offered, the take away is that Mercedes' system is OK but BMW's infamous iDrive is an embarrassment.
If you're unfamiliar with it, COMND integrates the radio, navigation and a bunch of other features, so that (for example) when you get directions from your GPS the radio volume fades down first, just like iPhone will fade out music whenever you get a call. It also offers cellphone integration which probably works in a similar way, although the option was not installed in my car. (I bought it used about a year ago.) Like any modern navigation system, it offers the usual range of onscreen maps, driving directions and so on. Of course the screen in 2000 was considerably lower resolution than we have today; I think my iPhone's resolution is higher than the in-dash display even though the display is about twice as large.
I quickly checked out the latest S-Class and it has a much improved COMND system with a much higher quality LCD, better maps and the use of a DVD instead of CDs, making it possible to get national maps on a single DVD instead of (if my memory serves) about six CDs for the whole USA in COMND.
So as you have said, COMND is already similar to a small computer or cellphone and so using cellphone software to enhance it is certainly far from unrealistic. It would be really nice, in fact, to just pop iPhone in a slot somewhere and for the big navigation display to be used to manage calls and maps in the same way iPhone does, tied in to the already existing in-car GPS. Perhaps that's something Apple is working on too.
D
Actually, road trips are usually made with your kids and spouse, so you could have one family member own a large vehicle and the other own an electric and still be perfectly cost effective as long as the electric was not prohibitively expensive.
Incidentally, if you look at the advertised specs of the Tesla, it's quite a bit cheaper to run than gas cars because the electric drivetrain is super-efficient. If we take the Tesla's claim of 150mpg equivalent, and compare that to a typical Porsche at 20mpg equivalent, we find that the gas car gets about $ 0.15 per mile (at 20mpg) while the electric gets $ 0.02 per mile (assuming $3 a gallon gas). If we drive 20,000 miles a year, Porsche costs $ 3,000 and Tesla costs $ 400 per year. Over a 200,000 mile lifespan, Porsche will cost $30,000 and Tesla $4,000. So the costs are interesting:
Porsche Boxster - $40,000 + $30,000 = $70,000
Tesla = $90,000 + $4,000 = $94,000
So if you look at the pure costs Tesla costs 225% of the Boxster, but over its lifespan it will cost you only about 34% more.
If we consider Tesla equivalent to the 911, of course, the Tesla is much cheaper because the price is $90k for both models. But the Lotus Elise, on which the Tesla was based, costs about the same as a Boxster, so that seemed like a more reasonable comparison.
Of course this assumes Tesla's batteries will last that long. Porsche has much higher maintenance costs but they would be overwhelmed in the end by battery replacement if it was needed.
Interesting food for thought there.
D
I agree with you. I would at least like to see some sort of demonstration of what the product will be like. The description of the minimum spec, as I recall, made it sound pretty bare bones.
I respect the guy who's in the middle of gPhone because the Sidekick/Danger/HipTop device was really a great gadget for its time. It stagnated after he left the company and that makes it pretty clear that he can design a phone.
I find using my iPhone as an Internet device indespensible and I truly have not left home without it since I purchased it, something that's quite remarkable given my absent-minded nature.
To compete with iPhone, it needs a big display and fast processor, and neither of them appear to be required by this spec. If this mainly creates devices with Blackjack and Blackberry like form factors, I doubt iPhone will be affected at all.
Finally, an interesting question about this project is what the point of it is. Google already leads search in the mobile phone space. It doesn't seem to me that it needs to create its own phone just to expand search to mobiles.
Apple/AT&T (with iPhone) and T-Mobile (with Sidekick) have probably done more for Google on mobile phones than anyone else, by introducing flat rate data plans at fair prices for their phones.
D
I suspect you represent only about 1% of drivers, though, and the gasoline system isn't going to go away overnight, so you can still buy what you need. If the USA could even go 50% electric, it would be a huge achievement and do a world of good to us. We're not (hopefully!) trying to force anyone into a means of transport that doesn't suit their needs.
The Tesla Roadster gets a shade under 250 miles per charge and I think that's good enough for almost everyone. Unfortunately, the $100k price of the Tesla is not good enough for almost everyone, but they think they can get the cost down over time.
I'd certainly rather have a $91k Tesla than a $70k Scion. Who the heck thought of that one?
I really like Tesla's model: Build an electric car that's not a penalty box, but rather a vehicle you'll love to drive. Their site [teslamotors.com] is well worth checking out.
D
On the other hand, iPhone is by far the best phone I've ever tried, bar none. If you want to use your phone primarily for web browsing and email (that's not super time-sensitive), as I do, it is completely unmatched by anything else in the universe.
... and that's not an easy job at all.
...
I would wait until the February iPhone SDK announcement before writing off the device.
On the other hand, Steve Ballmer is, much as I hate to admit it, right about the press release angle. Engadget went to the Android press conference, and I felt positively queazy as I read the extracts from the various announcements. The various telcos and handset makers there were all talking about how wonderful the open world was, in that typically hideous corporate language that telegraphs insincerity in every word. My reaction was that these people are lying, or at least understating their real commitment. In short, my initial reaction was exactly the same as Steve Ballmer's: This is unlikely to do well.
The fellow who developed the T-Mobile Sidekick is undeniably a fine, brilliant man. I owned one myself, and for the time it was fantastic. If it's up to him, I'm sure he would come up with a good iPhone competitor. But with this split between hardware and software, and all these people with differing agendas, I honestly don't know if it will work.
A good example is what happened between the Sidekick and the Sidekick II (I don't remember the exact model in which this change happened, just that it did.) The old Sidekick had a menu where you could spin the wheel all the way to the top and get the web browser. The new one replaced that with Download Fun, where you could buy stuff. I was annoyed since I had gotten used to spinning the ball quickly to get all the way up to the web browser and then hitting it. In the new model, I would have to look at each option and stop the ball when the web browser showed up.
This is the kind of marketing think that makes great products into rotten ones. Amazing how much the simple things matter, no? And I understand Verizon is even worse at this than T-Mobile.
If this is the kind of process by which the Android becomes the HTC Android and the HTC Android becomes the AT&T 7550, I don't think Apple's going to face that much iPhone competition after all.
Not that it really needs it, you know.
You know Steve Jobs is up there on the top floor of his building in Cupertino, and he's thinking about "How the heck can I top this?" and he has some ideas. Love him or hate him, he's really competing with himself nowadays. He has to figure out how to put together a device so compelling that I will sell off my iPhone and buy his iPhone II
But one he's been more than equal to in the past
D
I'll bet most of the people laid off were in some way related to the actual product, though. The product's on life support - thanks in part to the litigation - and the litigation itself goes to the bitter end.
D
I don't see any reason to be vindictive against those who worked on a pioneering version of microcomputer Unix, from way before the time it got cool. For a long time, I'm sure this was a source of great pride, and it's tough to give up on a company that's been handing you your paycheck for eons.
The lawyers, alas, have already gotten rich off this and I don't think destroying them is within our power. Darl McBride and the top executives have probably managed to funnel money out of the company by selling stock. Anyway, they'll be last to be laid off, for sure.
D
Or you could say this was Apple's brilliant plan to eliminate DRM.
If so, it seems to be working.
Steve has actually made fairly consistent anti-DRM statements before the iTunes store was introduced, and after iTunes Plus was introduced. It's not impossible that he planned for this outcome all along.
People may say Steve is a power-mad meglomaniac, and I'm sure he is. But I don't think anyone's ever said he was stupid.
D
Looks like it's time for you to get out while you still can :-).
Seriously - or more seriously - that's an interesting development and we'll see how it works out for them.
Cellphone service, of course, is subject to about a million taxes already. The real difference between the US and UK is that in the UK, the taxes are included in the quoted price, while they are unloved additions to the bill in the US.
When I ran a bulletin board system years ago, I wrote a detailed explanation of my phone bill and every item on it. This was in the old days when people using BBSs would have incredibly high phone bills from calling other computers long distance, so it was a really hot issue at the time. I remember being amazed at how a nominal $30 or so bill would turn out close to $50 by the time the government and others got their hungrey paws on it.
In the end, the more I look at the US versus UK question, the more I think the two bills are really at parity - the terms and conditions in the UK cause you to use fewer minutes on average and the price net of the real benefit of the WiFi is almost exactly the same. Might even be a bit lower in the UK.
D
Thanks for the correction. I had forgotten about incoming calls and texts at no cost, which makes the plans roughly equivalent.
Also, I didn't know VAT was applied to services - in the US, services don't get charged sales tax, only tangible goods do. So all purchases get charged VAT in the UK? That definitely makes it a pricey place to live overall.
I will note that I doubt that life in the UK is a ripoff if prices are uniformly higher than elsewhere. It sounds to me that simply mirrors the cost of doing business there and the level of competition.
D
The Cloud is free as part of the iPhone plan in the UK. That 7 pounds (about $14) goes a long way towards explaining why the plan is so expensive in the UK.
In fact, the plan is UKP35, which means it would be UKP 28 if The Cloud's fee was excluded. 28 UKP = about $56 USD, which is actually a little less than the US iPhone plan of $59 USD.
However, the US plan has more than double the minutes and double the text messages, so you're still not getting that good a deal - but it's not as bad as it sounds at first.
D
You know, that's just too funny. My first Linux distribution was Yggsdrasil too, and about all I remember about it is that it took forever to get to work, and I could finally use a real emacs after years of settling for alternatives.
Now, we're both Mac users.
As for why, in my case, Apple's best in the biz for both hardware application design. Not to mention integration with my iPhone, which truly is the most amazing device I've ever used.
I must admit to a love of origniality and a hatred of imitatiors. Linux seems to be designed to look and work as much like Windows as possible. It's not inventive, at least not on the design side. I call my Mac the designer computer, because someone really thought about how it should work and implemented a coherent vision.
That's why Mac software is better, too. They took a fresh look at how things are, as with Pages and Numbers. I really love the fact that they do that, and that's why in the end I plead guilty for being an Apple fanboy.
In this business, you have to drink someone's Kool-Aid. You have to spend so much time with products that they become part of you. So in the end, you have to drink the Microsoft drink, the Linux drink or the Apple drink. The best tasting drink happens to be Steve's. It's a bit more expensive, and not everyone can drink it, but it is the fullest and tastiest.
D
I've never really understood the point of bluetooth.
If you're near enough to your computer to use Bluetooth for syncing, shouldn't you have your phone in its charging cradle so that you can fill up its battery? And wouldn't the wired connection used by the iPhone for that purpose work both faster and more reliably than Bluetooth?
I'd agree that it might be nice to use a Bluetooth keyboard but I'm not sure what the great appeal of Bluetooth synching is.
Your keyboard point is reasonable, but I've been surprised at how fast I can type on the iPhone keyboard, and of course text legibility and screen quality is miles ahead of any other device.
D
Maybe it's just me, but I'll take something great over something mediocre any day. I suppose that's why I'm a fanboy - I appreciate that Steve Jobs, while a flawed human being like the rest of us, at least tries to achieve greatness.
Microsoft achieves acceptable mediocrity in all its products, and I find it sad that's what the world seems to want.
All I need as a phone application is ssh, so I can get to my web server in case of emergencies or just to tinker. ssh appears to have finally been introduced, so it's about time for me to finally get my iPhone.
I'm looking forward to it.
D