The thing that the author just doesn't get is that Apple fans will buy or at least hype anything that Apple releases(I know because I'm one of them). Steve Jobs could shit in a box, Jonathan Ives will shape it into a cube, they will sell several million units and get a ton of attention. Time would have the iShit on the cover and Walt Mossberg will say that it is the ultimate in human excrement.
This isn't like the PC market where Dell == HP == Gateway == Lenovo and you are buying purely on price or half-baked feature x. Apple has a dedicated fanbase with a common respect for clean design and seamless integration and they know that any product coming out of Cupertino will offer that as a base, plus something that is at once totaly obvious, and completely new (or at least implemented in a sane way).
I guarantee that if Apple announces the iPhone at MacWorld 2007, there will be at least half a million people with their credit-cards out before the next slide in Steve's presentation.
I'm sure that everyone got paid for the time they put in, just like anyone else with a normal job. This boils down to residuals, or a share of the profits from distribution. Imagine that you are a programmer working on some application. You get paid for the time you put in, but 99% of the time, it doesn't matter wether the company sells 1 copy or 1 million, you don't see a cut of the profits. The entertainment industry is different, since most of the jobs are short term contract work, the actors/writers/directors etc get paid x amount specified in their contract and they rely on residuals to get them thru the times when they don't have work.
In some ways it is hard to feel for either side, The networks are the typical bloated-big-company-screw-the-little-guy types and the creatives whine about not getting more money beyond what they were already paid.(I'd love to see the Photoshop team decide that they aren't going to deliver CS3 unless Adobe gives them a cut of each sale...)
Ultimately this is going to come to a head and the creatives will figure out that they don't need the networks to distribute their content
These rules apply even in cases where one entity does something, and then the other entity does the exact same thing two weeks later.
A corollary to this is that if the evil side does something similar to the good side, then they are obviously copying, even if both have been working on the same problem for several months(years, decades, whatever).
You also forgot The US is always evil, no matter what we do ( or say, eat, drink, drive, think, etc) Conservatives are always evil no matter what they do. Liberals are almost always good no matter what they do.
To me, it sounds like getting Zelda 04, and then a year later getting Zelda 05 with two extra dungeons, new outfits and a new item.
Wow, you just described the MMORPG market, except for the fact that they get away with charging ~$150 a year. Something about slow-boiling frogs comes to mind...
The original Star Trek series, for example, wasn't all that popular. Years after it ended, the 'space race' happened, and suddenly there was interest again.
<nerd mode="anal-retentive">
Actually The original series ran from 1966-1969, during the final 3 years of the "Space Race"
10.0 was Puma and 10.1 was Cheetah, IIRC they have already Trademarked Mac OS X 'Lion', 'Cougar', 'Lynx' and 'Leopard'. So we are good up until OS 10.9. Chances are by then cat names will be passé and they will have moved on to the next big thing.
z: Bug fixes y: New features x: Backwards compatibility break
Does that mean Windows XP should really be called Windows 3.15.8734?
You probably want to drop the z value a bit:-)
Re:Captain Obvious Strikes Again
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The mini isn't even a contender - it's $500 price tag gets a more powerful workstation complete with monitor & periphals from a PC vendor.
Have you ever actually looked at the specs of a Dell or HP $500-$600 machine? Dell Dimension 3000 $596 Looks something like: 2.4 Ghz Celeron D 256MB RAM 80GB HDD 48x CD ROM or a 48x CD-RW or a 16x DVD-ROM Integrated Intel Graphics Only USB2 ports Case: Standard ATX case OS WinXP Home Apps: Wordperfect 2005, some craptastic re-badged Ulead stuff, Trial versions of Quicken, McAfee, etc
The periphrials: A 17in standard CRT A basic Keyboard/Mouse set
Mac Mini: $599 1.42Ghz G4 256MB RAM 80GB HDD Radeon 9200 32MB Combo DVD-ROM CD-RW USB2 and Firewire ports Custom Case, basically a Small Mini ITX case OS: Mac OS X (10.3 now, 10.4 whenever it comes out) Apps: iLife 2005, Appleworks, Quicken 2005
Now I'm not going to argue that a G4 would hold it's own against a P4 clocked at 2.4 Ghz in most cases, but the Celeron is a different beast, built for economy instead of power. I'd imagine that performance-wise we are at a draw, with a bit of a lean towards the G4 given the OS and Apps are built to exploit it's abilities.
On the RAM front, it would be nice if everyone was a little less stingy, Neither XP nor OS X runs well with only 256MB. Again though Apple has to get the nod based on the fact that the PC's integrated graphics is going to slice a chunk of main memory off the top, so instead of 256MB you are really only going to get 224MB
HDD we are at a draw, You can open up the Dell and add another HDD internally, or get a USB 2 drive (depending on how many ports you have open) On the Mac Mini, you can't add a drive internally but you can add Firewire or USB 2 drives.
Graphics-wise you have to give the nod to the Mac-mini, the 9200 isn't exactly a powerhouse, but it's nicer than the Intel solution, the fact that it has it's own memory is a big plus as well.
Optical Drives: Mac Mini you get the Combo drive, on the PC you have to choose between the CD-RW and the DVD-ROM.
Ports: Both have USB2.0 ports, the Mac has a Firewire port, if you have a digital video-camera this is certainly a plus. Firewire is also going to give you over-all beter transfer rates for external drives.
Case: The Dell is much larger, but gives you some flexibility with internal expansion (though even that can be limited, many don't have an AGP slot), the Mini is tiny and attractive to those without much desk-space, though you are stuck with only external periphrials.
OS: It's hard to compare WinXP Home and OS X, XP Home is compatible with pretty much every bit of hardware out there, though most hardware makers are supporting OS X now. You can't really talk about software compatibilty since you can get equivalent applications for either platform. In terms of Games, this PC doesn't have the "umph" to run most of the 3D games out there and the ones that it can run have OS X equivalents. Under the hood you simply can't compare the two, you would really have to compare it to XP Professional which is going to cost you an extra $80.
Bundled Apps: iLife simply dominates the competition. You aren't going to find the same quality of software on the PC without spending extra and even then...
Would be nice if Apple included iWork instead of the older Appleworks. Dell probably edges ahead here with WordPerfect.
Nice to get a full version of Quicken rather than a the Trial on the PC.
Obviously for the brand-new computer user it is nice to get the monitor, keyboard and mouse with the Dell, though chances are the user is going to want a better Display especially if they are limited on space. 15in LCD's are fairly cheap and 17-19in LCD's are coming down. The keyboard/mou
Three big reasons I could see: 1) Signal availabilty: If you live in areas with poor or no reception you're out of luck. Also in larger-scale emergency situations cells have been known to be overloaded.
2) Reliability: Something like this needs to run 24/7 without a problem. Home networks can be hardened with good hardware and backup power sources. Accidentally breaking the phone goes from being a temporary nuisance to a possibly fatal mistake.
3) Cost: Even if it only takes 10 seconds to transmit the data most cellphone plans count that as a minute. Lets be conservative and say that there only needs to be a transmission every 5 minutes or so, thats 12 minutes an hour, or 288 a day. Depending on your cellphone contract it might be cheaper to hire a nurse to follow you around:-)
I would think a way to go would be to use some low-grade form of encryption using random keys that aren't known to the end-user. Something that would be trivial to break on a user's home system, but would be impractical for the ISP to process on a large-scale.
Is this feasable, or would it just turn into an arms-race of "who has the bigger processor"?
Wasn't there a movie based on that? Convicted criminals fighting for their lives and the whole thing televised? TV execs in charge of the world kind of thing? That would be The Running Man staring the Governator.
Not to mention some of the really nifty UI features their Javascript wizards could cook up, stuff like Auctions that update in real-time. Then there are all of the other Google products that could interoperate... Add a (paid)feature of auction listings where they will show up on adsense. Add some kind of integration with Froogle to suggest prices based on similar items(or point ppl who lost an auction to a similar item), Integrate with Google Local to show only auctions from a particular city/region/state (great for very large items or automobiles)
[begin office supply whoring] Manila folders did that back in the 50's-80's. And it Worked, and it was Good too. [end office supply whoring]
You had manilla folders that automatically updated themselves based on changes to other folders in the filing cabinet? In our office we had to get a third-party app called "Administrative Assistant" with a periphrial called "Photocopier"... and then it only updated when you told it to, or if you built a "office procedure" that would get run once or twice a day.
20-30 minutes to install and configure a piece of hardware is pretty good on any platform (Unless you have a Mac and your hardware is supported natively:-)).
It would take just as long(probably longer) in Windows to: 1)Check for and possibly download updates for the firmware/drivers/applications, 2)Install the firmware/drivers/applications, 3)Reboot(possibly a few times for the drivers), 4)Disable the inevitable system tray app/startup item, 5)Remove the various marketing shortcuts from the desktop, 6)Open the app for the first time and turn off the various wizards, and 7)Possibly troubleshoot any one of those steps if you have a hardware incompatibility.
I think his point was that XCode only works with OS X 10.3 which costs $129. This is a moot point of course considering you would have to buy Windows to use Visual Studio.*
* I suppose you could putz with WINE to get it working under Linux, but why?
For those that don't get the reference... Grover Cleveland was the only president to be elected into office(1885-1889, fail at his first re-election* then run again 4 years later and win a second term(1893-1897), making him both the 22nd and 24th president.
*Interestingly enough he lost under the same scenario that Al Gore fell victim to in 2000, namely that he got more popular votes, but lost in the Electoral votes.
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The thing that the author just doesn't get is that Apple fans will buy or at least hype anything that Apple releases(I know because I'm one of them). Steve Jobs could shit in a box, Jonathan Ives will shape it into a cube, they will sell several million units and get a ton of attention. Time would have the iShit on the cover and Walt Mossberg will say that it is the ultimate in human excrement.
This isn't like the PC market where Dell == HP == Gateway == Lenovo and you are buying purely on price or half-baked feature x. Apple has a dedicated fanbase with a common respect for clean design and seamless integration and they know that any product coming out of Cupertino will offer that as a base, plus something that is at once totaly obvious, and completely new (or at least implemented in a sane way).
I guarantee that if Apple announces the iPhone at MacWorld 2007, there will be at least half a million people with their credit-cards out before the next slide in Steve's presentation.
I'm sure that everyone got paid for the time they put in, just like anyone else with a normal job. This boils down to residuals, or a share of the profits from distribution. Imagine that you are a programmer working on some application. You get paid for the time you put in, but 99% of the time, it doesn't matter wether the company sells 1 copy or 1 million, you don't see a cut of the profits. The entertainment industry is different, since most of the jobs are short term contract work, the actors/writers/directors etc get paid x amount specified in their contract and they rely on residuals to get them thru the times when they don't have work.
In some ways it is hard to feel for either side, The networks are the typical bloated-big-company-screw-the-little-guy types and the creatives whine about not getting more money beyond what they were already paid.(I'd love to see the Photoshop team decide that they aren't going to deliver CS3 unless Adobe gives them a cut of each sale...)
Ultimately this is going to come to a head and the creatives will figure out that they don't need the networks to distribute their content
7680 / 1920 = 4 times as wide
4320 / 1080 = 4 times as tall
4 screens wide * 4 screens tall = 16 times the size
According to the article, this would be used in Theater environments, 16x HDTV res is reasonable on a 8 meter screen...
These rules apply even in cases where one entity does something, and then the other entity does the exact same thing two weeks later.
A corollary to this is that if the evil side does something similar to the good side, then they are obviously copying, even if both have been working on the same problem for several months(years, decades, whatever).
You also forgot
The US is always evil, no matter what we do ( or say, eat, drink, drive, think, etc)
Conservatives are always evil no matter what they do.
Liberals are almost always good no matter what they do.
To me, it sounds like getting Zelda 04, and then a year later getting Zelda 05 with two extra dungeons, new outfits and a new item.
Wow, you just described the MMORPG market, except for the fact that they get away with charging ~$150 a year. Something about slow-boiling frogs comes to mind...
...You can thank the iPod for getting us here.
"It's all about where you put your finger."
I thought women got us there long ago...
This may help you understand him
That's balls-to-the-wall.
So you're Into BDSM eh?
10.0 was Puma and 10.1 was Cheetah, IIRC they have already Trademarked Mac OS X 'Lion', 'Cougar', 'Lynx' and 'Leopard'. So we are good up until OS 10.9. Chances are by then cat names will be passé and they will have moved on to the next big thing.
z: Bug fixes
y: New features
x: Backwards compatibility break
Does that mean Windows XP should really be called Windows 3.15.8734?
You probably want to drop the z value a bit
The mini isn't even a contender - it's $500 price tag gets a more powerful workstation complete with monitor & periphals from a PC vendor.
Have you ever actually looked at the specs of a Dell or HP $500-$600 machine?
Dell Dimension 3000 $596
Looks something like:
2.4 Ghz Celeron D
256MB RAM
80GB HDD
48x CD ROM or a 48x CD-RW or a 16x DVD-ROM
Integrated Intel Graphics
Only USB2 ports
Case: Standard ATX case
OS WinXP Home
Apps: Wordperfect 2005, some craptastic re-badged Ulead stuff, Trial versions of Quicken, McAfee, etc
The periphrials:
A 17in standard CRT
A basic Keyboard/Mouse set
Mac Mini: $599
1.42Ghz G4
256MB RAM
80GB HDD
Radeon 9200 32MB
Combo DVD-ROM CD-RW
USB2 and Firewire ports
Custom Case, basically a Small Mini ITX case
OS: Mac OS X (10.3 now, 10.4 whenever it comes out)
Apps: iLife 2005, Appleworks, Quicken 2005
Now I'm not going to argue that a G4 would hold it's own against a P4 clocked at 2.4 Ghz in most cases, but the Celeron is a different beast, built for economy instead of power. I'd imagine that performance-wise we are at a draw, with a bit of a lean towards the G4 given the OS and Apps are built to exploit it's abilities.
On the RAM front, it would be nice if everyone was a little less stingy, Neither XP nor OS X runs well with only 256MB. Again though Apple has to get the nod based on the fact that the PC's integrated graphics is going to slice a chunk of main memory off the top, so instead of 256MB you are really only going to get 224MB
HDD we are at a draw, You can open up the Dell and add another HDD internally, or get a USB 2 drive (depending on how many ports you have open) On the Mac Mini, you can't add a drive internally but you can add Firewire or USB 2 drives.
Graphics-wise you have to give the nod to the Mac-mini, the 9200 isn't exactly a powerhouse, but it's nicer than the Intel solution, the fact that it has it's own memory is a big plus as well.
Optical Drives: Mac Mini you get the Combo drive, on the PC you have to choose between the CD-RW and the DVD-ROM.
Ports: Both have USB2.0 ports, the Mac has a Firewire port, if you have a digital video-camera this is certainly a plus. Firewire is also going to give you over-all beter transfer rates for external drives.
Case: The Dell is much larger, but gives you some flexibility with internal expansion (though even that can be limited, many don't have an AGP slot), the Mini is tiny and attractive to those without much desk-space, though you are stuck with only external periphrials.
OS: It's hard to compare WinXP Home and OS X, XP Home is compatible with pretty much every bit of hardware out there, though most hardware makers are supporting OS X now. You can't really talk about software compatibilty since you can get equivalent applications for either platform. In terms of Games, this PC doesn't have the "umph" to run most of the 3D games out there and the ones that it can run have OS X equivalents. Under the hood you simply can't compare the two, you would really have to compare it to XP Professional which is going to cost you an extra $80.
Bundled Apps: iLife simply dominates the competition. You aren't going to find the same quality of software on the PC without spending extra and even then...
Would be nice if Apple included iWork instead of the older Appleworks. Dell probably edges ahead here with WordPerfect.
Nice to get a full version of Quicken rather than a the Trial on the PC.
Obviously for the brand-new computer user it is nice to get the monitor, keyboard and mouse with the Dell, though chances are the user is going to want a better Display especially if they are limited on space. 15in LCD's are fairly cheap and 17-19in LCD's are coming down. The keyboard/mou
Don't forget, most cab drivers speak more than one language ...and none of them seem to be English!
You forgot:
10. In Korea, only the old make Hobbit movies.
Three big reasons I could see:
:-)
1) Signal availabilty: If you live in areas with poor or no reception you're out of luck. Also in larger-scale emergency situations cells have been known to be overloaded.
2) Reliability: Something like this needs to run 24/7 without a problem. Home networks can be hardened with good hardware and backup power sources. Accidentally breaking the phone goes from being a temporary nuisance to a possibly fatal mistake.
3) Cost: Even if it only takes 10 seconds to transmit the data most cellphone plans count that as a minute. Lets be conservative and say that there only needs to be a transmission every 5 minutes or so, thats 12 minutes an hour, or 288 a day. Depending on your cellphone contract it might be cheaper to hire a nurse to follow you around
I would think a way to go would be to use some low-grade form of encryption using random keys that aren't known to the end-user. Something that would be trivial to break on a user's home system, but would be impractical for the ISP to process on a large-scale.
Is this feasable, or would it just turn into an arms-race of "who has the bigger processor"?
Wasn't there a movie based on that? Convicted criminals fighting for their lives and the whole thing televised? TV execs in charge of the world kind of thing?
That would be The Running Man staring the Governator.
Not to mention some of the really nifty UI features their Javascript wizards could cook up, stuff like Auctions that update in real-time.
Then there are all of the other Google products that could interoperate...
Add a (paid)feature of auction listings where they will show up on adsense.
Add some kind of integration with Froogle to suggest prices based on similar items(or point ppl who lost an auction to a similar item),
Integrate with Google Local to show only auctions from a particular city/region/state (great for very large items or automobiles)
They could practically erase eBay from existence.
I think he just wants to spend more time with her and sees the constant tech support as an "in". :-)
I don't think the fighter pilots will be interested in fragging some noobs in RTCW
Nah, they probably prefer Desert Combat...
[begin office supply whoring]
Manila folders did that back in the 50's-80's. And it Worked, and it was Good too.
[end office supply whoring]
You had manilla folders that automatically updated themselves based on changes to other folders in the filing cabinet? In our office we had to get a third-party app called "Administrative Assistant" with a periphrial called "Photocopier"... and then it only updated when you told it to, or if you built a "office procedure" that would get run once or twice a day.
You guys had it good...
20-30 minutes to install and configure a piece of hardware is pretty good on any platform (Unless you have a Mac and your hardware is supported natively :-)).
It would take just as long(probably longer) in Windows to:
1)Check for and possibly download updates for the firmware/drivers/applications,
2)Install the firmware/drivers/applications,
3)Reboot(possibly a few times for the drivers),
4)Disable the inevitable system tray app/startup item,
5)Remove the various marketing shortcuts from the desktop,
6)Open the app for the first time and turn off the various wizards,
and
7)Possibly troubleshoot any one of those steps if you have a hardware incompatibility.
Ahem...
They mentioned the sub-$500 last week...
I think his point was that XCode only works with OS X 10.3 which costs $129. This is a moot point of course considering you would have to buy Windows to use Visual Studio.*
* I suppose you could putz with WINE to get it working under Linux, but why?
For those that don't get the reference...
Grover Cleveland was the only president to be elected into office(1885-1889, fail at his first re-election* then run again 4 years later and win a second term(1893-1897), making him both the 22nd and 24th president.
*Interestingly enough he lost under the same scenario that Al Gore fell victim to in 2000, namely that he got more popular votes, but lost in the Electoral votes.