When you license in volume, one copy of MS Office will be under $100. A simple secretary with $40K/yr salary costs the company about $38/hr (52 work weeks, 100% overhead, as it is typical.) This means that the tool costs only about two hours of her time. This is totally irrelevant when people are employed for years - not even counting loss of time on issues with OpenOffice and on training. Battling MS Office on cost is a losing proposition; just a chair for that secretary probably costs more; and her Polycom phone; and her computer. MS Office is on the level of staples and white-out.
I tried to use OpenOffice to run a business, and I gave up. I simply couldn't afford the free software - it ate my time hour after hour after hour, and I never was sure if what I see is what my customers see. I'm using MS Office 2010 now. It just works.
They are running a local government. They do not need to listen to any private company.
It's easy for a US resident to overlook due to lack of experience, but local governments are supposed to serve the local people. A government of a German town is not like your average Latin American junta. They have to listen to complaints of their constituents - and they did, and we are reading the story about it.
To one man this collection of energetic particles is a bomb that must be defused and destroyed. To another man this collection of particles is a source of energy.
Would it not be cool to have a vehicle that starts the trip with half a tank and ends it with the full tank? The energy can be used on non-FTL vehicles or permanent installations.
Why tie yourself to a platform, or two, when you could develop for pretty much everything with webapps and webservices? The web has become the device agnostic medium, it may not be the most efficient but it gets the job done and more and more things are SAAS.
Latency and functionality. You cannot easily do in a browser what any apprentice coder will easily do in WPF, for example. The task becomes even harder if you have to support many browsers (and you can never support all of them.) Google has several modes for their JS applications, even though Google has thrown a lot of talent at the problem.
Performance. You can't expect good performance if your code runs on a FSM knows what interpreter, in FSM knows what browser. You cannot use native methods that make sense. Security constraints may limit your access to data (this is what happens with Metro applications on Win8.)
I don't want to provide links to my own Web site where a representative product may be found. However it is blazing fast, and I'm using it every day myself (that's why I wrote it.) The tool needs the MS SQL Server; free Express is OK. Super fast, and no cloud-related security issues (until you rent your SQL server from a cloud.) The code is C# (WPF) and it has no external dependencies besides.NET. The software is responsive, doing table lookups as you type, is multithreaded, and it all feels natural. Compare to many Web applications that are forced to use unnatural controls just because that's what the toolkit has. I prefer to write software once, and not once for the server and once for each browser. Even if all browsers behave identically, this still doubles the work. Client-server models are expensive to code, lest you trust what you receive from the other side...
Isn't it fun feeling a design improving?
When it's time to do code review it's too late to improve on the design. The guy has to check 10,000 LOC in before going home - and you are going to review this m[ae]ss before he can check it in. In my experience rarely a code review finds a bug, unless the coder is fresh from school and has no experience. The developer spent a month writing the code, every line of it, how can you expect to find an unobvious bug? The worst bugs are not typos; the worst bugs are race conditions, deadlocks, and misunderstanding of how the controlled object behaves. I have seen some serious hardware damaged by a programmer who wasn't entirely sure what he is doing. The best way to have bug-free code is to not insert bugs into it in the first place:-)
So they didn't need to hire anyone or develop any new processes, or any new systems to bring these features online?
I'd need to ask someone who saw the difference between ITMS and Apple Store. Since I'm not using Apple products I can't say for certain. But my guess is that the difference is not that large. Android store (Google Play) didn't strike me as overly complex. There are many online stores out there that are fancier.
It's not done this way since you must supply source code. If you developed anything for iOS you'd be aware of this fact
The source code??? Hmm. I'm amazed that so many commercial enterprises agreed to bend over for Apple. The source code is all they have, it's their most valuable treasure, aside from brains of the developers. I will have a look at those links later, thanks! Not that Apple should be expecting me any time soon, clutching the $99 in my hand:-)
In part it's probably because I'm not planning on releasing commercial software for smartphones and tablets. If I want to put together a free application, though, I'd do it on Android. Piracy wouldn't be a problem then. Most Apple developers do not profit from their work anyway - not so much that this becomes their full time job. (Same as in the PC world, though.)
Does that hurt or harm its reputation among users?
No, IMO. Android phones are cheaper, and as such they are sold to people of all walks of life. Some of them, being engineers and coders, will worry about that. Other will be blissfully unaware - and chances are they will never see a virus. If the phone stops working they will have it fixed, or get a new one (maybe even at zero cost to them.) We have the same problem in the PC world; even visiting a compromised Web site may be enough to infect your computer and steal your personal information. Still we do not reject PCs, for some reason... because we manage this threat just as we manage all other threats - by being careful.
I made no such claims other than one platform has virus scanners on it. If there weren't a demand they wouldn't exist.
Correct. The thought about impossibility of getting rid of viruses is entirely mine. But as you have seen recently, viruses changed from being pranks of scr1pt k1dd1es to being weapons of war. Those script kiddies grew up and realized that there are billions of dollars ready for taking. Now instead of a virus that erases your data and taunts you we have a virus that doesn't harm your PC at all - but instead it spies on you, logs your passwords and c/c numbers and then the mastermind uses that data for nefarious purposes. You may never know where the leak occurred.
The source code may be not enough to prevent those things. I did my share of code review - and believe me, when someone shows up with a stack of paper, freshly printed and still hot, no sane person will snatch it from the hands of the guy and ravenously start reviewing it. Nobody in the world can review all the code that is churned up by all software at the Apple store. It's too much work, and the work is insanely difficult. Just imagine what caliber of reviewers do you need to hire to review code written by good coders? I'm sure Linus does not moonlight at Apple - and I don't think even Linus's talent would be enough. There is even a contest for the most obfuscated code that invisibly leaks data! (in that link that I gave you about the dictionary app that twittered lies.) If a piece of software can talk to the Internet, in any way imaginable, it can leak whatever it can lay its hands on - and nobody will find it ahead of time.
To make matters worse, does Apple review the entire source after a minor edit? If they do that it would multiply their workload tenfold. If they do not (meaning they only review deltas) then you can sneak a huge vulnerability in one or several patches, bit by bit. I don't know because App Store Review Guidelines require an Apple sign-in.
Having people to deal with customers and vendors isn't trivial or that whole cost involved with handling money.
That would be a very valid point, except that Apple is involved with customers and vendors and money for many decades now. They already have the system in place and they are already compliant. There is no additional money to spend - they are not a startup.
Apple does have a curated system. But I do not think they are spending a lot of human labor on it. As I understand, most of the checks are automated. Perhaps an examiner will run the "ldd" equivalent against the binary; then will start the software and try a couple things... lacking the source code, there is no way to know what the software is really doing. As matter of fact, just a few days ago there was a discussion on Slashdot about an app that intentionally, maliciously hurt its users on mere suspicion (and a wrong one at that) of piracy. Apple cannot guarantee absence of viruses, and they don't even try. All they can use is a threat of ejecting the bad developer from the store *after* the violation is noticed.
For a company of Apple's size running a bunch of servers is about the same as for me to run a LAMP. You just buy what you need, and add what is unique to your product (the store.) Aside from fancy graphics, the store is nothing but a central database of a very reasonable size. 500,000 rows, mostly for SELECT, is child's play.
Note that most of that money is a one-time investment. Servers last a long time, and software development adds value to the product. This is markedly different from HTC and Samsung who have to do real work to manufacture every new smartphone. Profit from reselling the same bits is what elevated Microsoft; Apple tasted the same with the music store in iPod days, and they loved the idea.
If the sales guys needs to show the site then that sales guys sucks.
Not necessarily. The sales guy may approach the customer with one project in mind, but the customer suddenly asks about some other project - that he was just called about a minute ago. If you can deliver what he needs, rejoice - this is your golden opportunity, you are the first to offer your services. The last thing you want to do here is hem and haw and say "I will call you later about that." A good sales guy will immediately access the network, fetch the appropriate presentation, and run with it.
This is not a contrived scenario. I had hundreds of sales reps visit me as I was working for various large companies. They always come prepared for a generic scenario that they think you will be interested in. But they never know what I need right here and right now. They were pretty good in delivering what I wanted to know. Some had the materials on their notebooks, some downloaded them over the "guest" WiFi, and others... well, they had to call me back.
In today's world you cannot expect to just talk and win a deal. Talk is cheap, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Not even mentioning videos. Sales guys want access to the materials (over HTTPS, of course) - and if some stupid ActiveX or Flash stands in the way they will be very, very unhappy. Always remember, sales people have far better relations with the CEO than you and your IT boss do - just because it's in their job qualifications:-)
It's true, of course, that a 3-minute pitch cannot be enough to sign a $100M deal. However it can motivate the decision maker to look into it. If he is not interested then none of the "between those golf games a lot of people were looking into things" will happen. You have to quickly and clearly explain to the decision maker why it is in his interests to keep listening. What would do the trick better, you telling him that you have an antigravity machine, or a video of you in that machine flying around a well known building?
Sale of an iPhone is just a downpayment on the wealth of applications and data services that you are going to buy from now on. Apple does not run the store at loss. Apple collects the $99/yr flat fee from developers, and it takes its cut from sales. It's money for nothing, unless you call running an HTTP server a tough work.
You cannot have any of that with the iPoor phone. It's a one-time sale, with no strings attached. Anyone can make those phones - and they do; I own one of LG phones of that type (no applications, no data connection, no nothing.)
Apple cannot compete among the cheapest phones. They can't make one, and the sales won't bring enough profit to even bother. Apple traditionally focuses on the high margin, luxury market. Their 25% of smartphone market give them 10x more profit than the other 75% brings to HTC and Samsung (who sell barely above cost.)
Re:Innovative companies fail a lot, MSFT included
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I already have a similar device - Samsung Q1 Ultra. It is not very useful, except for reading books. I do not expect Surface to be much better. PC software is too detailed, has too many fine controls. It is hard to operate on Q1 even with a stylus. Forget about fingers.
But I'm willing to listen to your advice and wait a few months. Perhaps there is indeed some unsatisfied demand for Surface.
Why the Windows 8 look and feel on a Windows 7 piece of software?
Because you vill love our Windows that are made with a table saw and painted with colors from a kindergarten! Nice borders, avast! The new fashion is crude and straight and ugly, just like most of our cities are.
It matters because we have to deliver content to several hundred sites via Web/Intranet, and we can't dictate the end user's infrastructure.
But many end users will be glad to dictate their infrastructure to you. Starting from President/CEO and his VPs, and going down to program managers, and then to senior engineers... when your (IT) interests and their interests collide the IT will not be the winner. Those guys are bread winners, and IT is the cost center, with the sole purpose of supporting bread winners. They tell you what they have and you accomodate. Not the other way around.
For example, there may be a frantic phone call from one of your sales guys. He is trying to set up an elevator pitch since he just arranged for three minutes with the Big Customer. But his iPad cannot access your Web site!!! Disaster!!! Can you tell this sales guy that he should bring the customer in front of a company-issued laptop? These three minutes may well be on a golf course or when jogging. Nobody will be on your side (nobody who matters, at least.)
Besides, your Web delivery of materials will be just fine unless you go out of your way to support only this or that version of the browser.
Re:Innovative companies fail a lot, MSFT included
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You can't use regular Windows applications without a mouse and a keyboard. OK, Surface has one as a cover. But why not to splurge on a hinge then and buy a laptop for the same, if not lower, price? A laptop is more functional, has more connectors, there are many models to choose from... why the x86 Surface, all of a sudden? It's not a lightweight tablet like a Nexus 7, it's a big and heavy thing, more in the "portable" class than "pocket."
A walled garden is a garden with walls. Ubuntu's app store has no walls - you can install your software from anywhere you want. Same in Android, actually, if you click on one little checkbox in settings.
make sure the registrant contact information's set for the organization, not one single person within it.
That also means when three buddies decide on a lark to start a project and make some free software they first need to spend a few thousand dollars on setting up a company. I know people who don't mind donating some of their free time for public good, but spending some real money on that is probably beyond all of them.
Nonsense. Someone writing for a living won't be doing it on a portable device like a iThing
I guess you missed the entire "mobile revolution" thing, where it became hip to sit whole day at Starbucks and work (?) on your iDevice. Working at the office is so yesterday...
The proof of that is simple: the guy paid $50 for a dictionary application. Either he is a fool who buys things that he doesn't need, or he is not a fool - and that means that he is using the dictionary, therefore he is writing articles on his iDevice. (However unwise this may seem to be to us, graybeards:-)
Legally, it may very well be that if you have paid for a copy that you are not using, and then install another copy that you haven't paid for, it is copyright infringement
We don't pay for copies. I struggle to recall when was that time when I had to pay $20 for a set of floppies with something... What we pay is a license to use a specific piece of software. That license covers earlier releases that the user was entitled to. Otherwise the license must contain specific words to that effect like "As soon as the next latest release becomes available you have 3 days to download it and upgrade, otherwise your license is null and void." I can't easily remember any such license. They are not used in iOS/Android world - or anywhere else - because the customer can always stay with the previous version and not upgrade in the first place. Even Microsoft doesn't care if you downloaded the bits of their OS off of Pirate Bay. They only care that you buy a license to run those bits. You can install service packs, remove service packs, install patches, remove patches - it all remains licensed forever.
This case also is special because the latest release was broken. It should never have been released; the developer caused harm to his customers by enticing them to upgrade to a nonfunctional product. This happens, and we don't run around and sue ISVs for that - we talk to them and try to find a solution. This guy did the same - he contacted the developer and, after the developer was unable to deliver, obtained the earlier version of the software that he was using just yesterday and downgraded. The developer was aware of the issues here, and that was the best solution for him as well - compared to being sued for breaking the product and not offering a repair procedure. (Even if the iOS developer writes a patch overnight, it still takes about 10-15 days for the Apple review process to complete. You cannot push the updates out faster than that. Emergency fixes? Ha, it's not Apple's problem.)
It may also be that paying for an app on the App Store gives you a license to install the app on several devices that you own, but not on a jailbroken device.
If so, this journalist is in a world of hurt, since he has so many applications installed (he is reviewing them!) Probably Apple can sue him for a billion dollars or something:-) I don't know the licensing terms either, since I don't have iDevices, but any court would look at the facts of the case - and the facts are that the user paid for use of his software. Limiting licensing to non-jailbroken devices may be even illegal in itself (constraint on trade?) If you license my software I cannot put in the license that you may use it only while listening to Metallica; and I cannot tell you that you may run my software only on computers made by Dell. Copyright violation is illegal; but if you jailbreak your device to sideload an application that I compiled and gave you bypassing the Apple store, then the government has nothing to say here - it is legal. Apple may not like that, but their likes and dislikes are not the law; at best they are a contract, and Apple can ban jailbroken devices from Apple store. Go ahead, Apple, do that and see the feathers fly.
As I see it, the only defence for the app's author would be to prove that the user did illegally copy software.
It wouldn't be even nearly enough. For example, an ISV cannot set fire to your house upon detection of unauthorized use. There is a specific limit to what software developers may do when they have a good reason to suspect piracy. Have a look at Microsoft's solution - MS had enough lawyers thrown at the problem, so what MS did is basically the maximum of what is legal and safe.
In this case the software developer committed several crimes. And those crimes do not even PREVENT the piracy! What would prevent it? Simple: just don't run the software! Or run it in demo mode. Good solutions are numerous.
One good advice that got overlooked here is this: always maintain good communication. Talk to the user. Let the user always know what is happening. Let the user make his decisions. In this case the software bypassed the communication phase and decided to become not only the detective, but also the judge, the jury and the executioner. Note that only a judge can order a convicted offender to publicly humiliate themselves. This rarely happens, but such sentencing does occur now and then - usually as an offer that can be refused (if you like the inside of a prison more, for example.) This software took upon itself the right that rare a human is entrusted with.
Considering a dictionary is available online, $50 for a dictionary app seems to be kind of silly.
Perhaps not to a journalist who earns his daily bread by reviewing applications for portable devices. It's one of his tools of trade.
The Web site approach that you talk about may work if you need one word in a month. However the browser is not a perfect interface. You need to scroll around, to zoom in, to zoom out... even a simple application that has only one input field and one output area will be a huge timesaver. This is important for journalists who routinely write articles, especially when those articles are in a foreign language (Norsk != English.)
How do we know it is falsely claiming that the users are pirates?
Because at least one instance of a false positive is known. The guy has the receipt. Nothing else matters; the guy is not a pirate.
The guy in the link admits to using Installus which is an application specifically crafted for piracy.
How does that change the fact that the guy has paid his dues with regard to the dictionary? Even if he pirated all other applications - which he denies - this doesn't give the dictionary a right to accuse the owner of anything. Besides, the guy claims that he needed Installus for a legitimate purpose: " you can use it to go back to an older version of an app you legally own. This is otherwise impossible in iOS."
When most people think "robot" they're actually thinking of the stereotypical sci-fi Android, which is an automaton with human characteristics.
This is equivalent to a primitive self-operating machine plus the operator, a tech who programs the machine.
This means that our cars are already assembled by humanoid robots, for all practical purposes. One tech for ten robots is enough. The rest of the population of Detroit is unemployed. What would a simple worker do in the modern world? Learn C# and DirectX? Objective C? Triple Ha. One out of a thousand, maybe. Those guys were workers and not programmers for a reason, not just because they loved to do repetitive work and suffer from back pain.
will likely mean that a lot more manufacturing will move back to being domestic (the cost of running a robot locally is hardly different than the cost of running a robot off-shore).
The IRS would like to have a word with you.
The primary reason to continue manufacturing offshore is to be able to escape the US taxation system that is, I think, unique on this planet in taxing foreign income. On top of that, the USA is the home of NIMBY, CARB, OSHA and their friends. The only connection to the USA you want to have is through the bank where you receive money for your foreign-made products. The political system of the USA is also unstable, dangerously tilting toward "rob the rich" mentality of the crowd, with the President fully approving that message. The USA is in its post-capitalist phase. There are no advantages in opening a factory in the USA, and plenty of disadvantages.
People will have a comfortable life with plenty of time to do creative work not when we have machines working for us, but only if there is a fair distribution of wealth.
The only snag here is the endless wars over the exact meaning of the word "fair."
Slashdot Mirror
When you license in volume, one copy of MS Office will be under $100. A simple secretary with $40K/yr salary costs the company about $38/hr (52 work weeks, 100% overhead, as it is typical.) This means that the tool costs only about two hours of her time. This is totally irrelevant when people are employed for years - not even counting loss of time on issues with OpenOffice and on training. Battling MS Office on cost is a losing proposition; just a chair for that secretary probably costs more; and her Polycom phone; and her computer. MS Office is on the level of staples and white-out.
I tried to use OpenOffice to run a business, and I gave up. I simply couldn't afford the free software - it ate my time hour after hour after hour, and I never was sure if what I see is what my customers see. I'm using MS Office 2010 now. It just works.
They are running a local government. They do not need to listen to any private company.
It's easy for a US resident to overlook due to lack of experience, but local governments are supposed to serve the local people. A government of a German town is not like your average Latin American junta. They have to listen to complaints of their constituents - and they did, and we are reading the story about it.
To one man this collection of energetic particles is a bomb that must be defused and destroyed. To another man this collection of particles is a source of energy.
Would it not be cool to have a vehicle that starts the trip with half a tank and ends it with the full tank? The energy can be used on non-FTL vehicles or permanent installations.
Why tie yourself to a platform, or two, when you could develop for pretty much everything with webapps and webservices? The web has become the device agnostic medium, it may not be the most efficient but it gets the job done and more and more things are SAAS.
Latency and functionality. You cannot easily do in a browser what any apprentice coder will easily do in WPF, for example. The task becomes even harder if you have to support many browsers (and you can never support all of them.) Google has several modes for their JS applications, even though Google has thrown a lot of talent at the problem.
Performance. You can't expect good performance if your code runs on a FSM knows what interpreter, in FSM knows what browser. You cannot use native methods that make sense. Security constraints may limit your access to data (this is what happens with Metro applications on Win8.)
I don't want to provide links to my own Web site where a representative product may be found. However it is blazing fast, and I'm using it every day myself (that's why I wrote it.) The tool needs the MS SQL Server; free Express is OK. Super fast, and no cloud-related security issues (until you rent your SQL server from a cloud.) The code is C# (WPF) and it has no external dependencies besides .NET. The software is responsive, doing table lookups as you type, is multithreaded, and it all feels natural. Compare to many Web applications that are forced to use unnatural controls just because that's what the toolkit has. I prefer to write software once, and not once for the server and once for each browser. Even if all browsers behave identically, this still doubles the work. Client-server models are expensive to code, lest you trust what you receive from the other side...
Isn't it fun feeling a design improving?
When it's time to do code review it's too late to improve on the design. The guy has to check 10,000 LOC in before going home - and you are going to review this m[ae]ss before he can check it in. In my experience rarely a code review finds a bug, unless the coder is fresh from school and has no experience. The developer spent a month writing the code, every line of it, how can you expect to find an unobvious bug? The worst bugs are not typos; the worst bugs are race conditions, deadlocks, and misunderstanding of how the controlled object behaves. I have seen some serious hardware damaged by a programmer who wasn't entirely sure what he is doing. The best way to have bug-free code is to not insert bugs into it in the first place :-)
Understood, thanks. Please disregard then what I say about the source code in the reply below.
So they didn't need to hire anyone or develop any new processes, or any new systems to bring these features online?
I'd need to ask someone who saw the difference between ITMS and Apple Store. Since I'm not using Apple products I can't say for certain. But my guess is that the difference is not that large. Android store (Google Play) didn't strike me as overly complex. There are many online stores out there that are fancier.
It's not done this way since you must supply source code. If you developed anything for iOS you'd be aware of this fact
The source code??? Hmm. I'm amazed that so many commercial enterprises agreed to bend over for Apple. The source code is all they have, it's their most valuable treasure, aside from brains of the developers. I will have a look at those links later, thanks! Not that Apple should be expecting me any time soon, clutching the $99 in my hand :-)
In part it's probably because I'm not planning on releasing commercial software for smartphones and tablets. If I want to put together a free application, though, I'd do it on Android. Piracy wouldn't be a problem then. Most Apple developers do not profit from their work anyway - not so much that this becomes their full time job. (Same as in the PC world, though.)
Does that hurt or harm its reputation among users?
No, IMO. Android phones are cheaper, and as such they are sold to people of all walks of life. Some of them, being engineers and coders, will worry about that. Other will be blissfully unaware - and chances are they will never see a virus. If the phone stops working they will have it fixed, or get a new one (maybe even at zero cost to them.) We have the same problem in the PC world; even visiting a compromised Web site may be enough to infect your computer and steal your personal information. Still we do not reject PCs, for some reason... because we manage this threat just as we manage all other threats - by being careful.
I made no such claims other than one platform has virus scanners on it. If there weren't a demand they wouldn't exist.
Correct. The thought about impossibility of getting rid of viruses is entirely mine. But as you have seen recently, viruses changed from being pranks of scr1pt k1dd1es to being weapons of war. Those script kiddies grew up and realized that there are billions of dollars ready for taking. Now instead of a virus that erases your data and taunts you we have a virus that doesn't harm your PC at all - but instead it spies on you, logs your passwords and c/c numbers and then the mastermind uses that data for nefarious purposes. You may never know where the leak occurred.
The source code may be not enough to prevent those things. I did my share of code review - and believe me, when someone shows up with a stack of paper, freshly printed and still hot, no sane person will snatch it from the hands of the guy and ravenously start reviewing it. Nobody in the world can review all the code that is churned up by all software at the Apple store. It's too much work, and the work is insanely difficult. Just imagine what caliber of reviewers do you need to hire to review code written by good coders? I'm sure Linus does not moonlight at Apple - and I don't think even Linus's talent would be enough. There is even a contest for the most obfuscated code that invisibly leaks data! (in that link that I gave you about the dictionary app that twittered lies.) If a piece of software can talk to the Internet, in any way imaginable, it can leak whatever it can lay its hands on - and nobody will find it ahead of time.
To make matters worse, does Apple review the entire source after a minor edit? If they do that it would multiply their workload tenfold. If they do not (meaning they only review deltas) then you can sneak a huge vulnerability in one or several patches, bit by bit. I don't know because App Store Review Guidelines require an Apple sign-in.
Having people to deal with customers and vendors isn't trivial or that whole cost involved with handling money.
That would be a very valid point, except that Apple is involved with customers and vendors and money for many decades now. They already have the system in place and they are already compliant. There is no additional money to spend - they are not a startup.
Apple does have a curated system. But I do not think they are spending a lot of human labor on it. As I understand, most of the checks are automated. Perhaps an examiner will run the "ldd" equivalent against the binary; then will start the software and try a couple things... lacking the source code, there is no way to know what the software is really doing. As matter of fact, just a few days ago there was a discussion on Slashdot about an app that intentionally, maliciously hurt its users on mere suspicion (and a wrong one at that) of piracy. Apple cannot guarantee absence of viruses, and they don't even try. All they can use is a threat of ejecting the bad developer from the store *after* the violation is noticed.
For a company of Apple's size running a bunch of servers is about the same as for me to run a LAMP. You just buy what you need, and add what is unique to your product (the store.) Aside from fancy graphics, the store is nothing but a central database of a very reasonable size. 500,000 rows, mostly for SELECT, is child's play.
Note that most of that money is a one-time investment. Servers last a long time, and software development adds value to the product. This is markedly different from HTC and Samsung who have to do real work to manufacture every new smartphone. Profit from reselling the same bits is what elevated Microsoft; Apple tasted the same with the music store in iPod days, and they loved the idea.
If the sales guys needs to show the site then that sales guys sucks.
Not necessarily. The sales guy may approach the customer with one project in mind, but the customer suddenly asks about some other project - that he was just called about a minute ago. If you can deliver what he needs, rejoice - this is your golden opportunity, you are the first to offer your services. The last thing you want to do here is hem and haw and say "I will call you later about that." A good sales guy will immediately access the network, fetch the appropriate presentation, and run with it.
This is not a contrived scenario. I had hundreds of sales reps visit me as I was working for various large companies. They always come prepared for a generic scenario that they think you will be interested in. But they never know what I need right here and right now. They were pretty good in delivering what I wanted to know. Some had the materials on their notebooks, some downloaded them over the "guest" WiFi, and others... well, they had to call me back.
In today's world you cannot expect to just talk and win a deal. Talk is cheap, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Not even mentioning videos. Sales guys want access to the materials (over HTTPS, of course) - and if some stupid ActiveX or Flash stands in the way they will be very, very unhappy. Always remember, sales people have far better relations with the CEO than you and your IT boss do - just because it's in their job qualifications :-)
It's true, of course, that a 3-minute pitch cannot be enough to sign a $100M deal. However it can motivate the decision maker to look into it. If he is not interested then none of the "between those golf games a lot of people were looking into things" will happen. You have to quickly and clearly explain to the decision maker why it is in his interests to keep listening. What would do the trick better, you telling him that you have an antigravity machine, or a video of you in that machine flying around a well known building?
Sale of an iPhone is just a downpayment on the wealth of applications and data services that you are going to buy from now on. Apple does not run the store at loss. Apple collects the $99/yr flat fee from developers, and it takes its cut from sales. It's money for nothing, unless you call running an HTTP server a tough work.
You cannot have any of that with the iPoor phone. It's a one-time sale, with no strings attached. Anyone can make those phones - and they do; I own one of LG phones of that type (no applications, no data connection, no nothing.)
Apple cannot compete among the cheapest phones. They can't make one, and the sales won't bring enough profit to even bother. Apple traditionally focuses on the high margin, luxury market. Their 25% of smartphone market give them 10x more profit than the other 75% brings to HTC and Samsung (who sell barely above cost.)
I already have a similar device - Samsung Q1 Ultra. It is not very useful, except for reading books. I do not expect Surface to be much better. PC software is too detailed, has too many fine controls. It is hard to operate on Q1 even with a stylus. Forget about fingers.
But I'm willing to listen to your advice and wait a few months. Perhaps there is indeed some unsatisfied demand for Surface.
Why the Windows 8 look and feel on a Windows 7 piece of software?
Because you vill love our Windows that are made with a table saw and painted with colors from a kindergarten! Nice borders, avast! The new fashion is crude and straight and ugly, just like most of our cities are.
It matters because we have to deliver content to several hundred sites via Web/Intranet, and we can't dictate the end user's infrastructure.
But many end users will be glad to dictate their infrastructure to you. Starting from President/CEO and his VPs, and going down to program managers, and then to senior engineers... when your (IT) interests and their interests collide the IT will not be the winner. Those guys are bread winners, and IT is the cost center, with the sole purpose of supporting bread winners. They tell you what they have and you accomodate. Not the other way around.
For example, there may be a frantic phone call from one of your sales guys. He is trying to set up an elevator pitch since he just arranged for three minutes with the Big Customer. But his iPad cannot access your Web site!!! Disaster!!! Can you tell this sales guy that he should bring the customer in front of a company-issued laptop? These three minutes may well be on a golf course or when jogging. Nobody will be on your side (nobody who matters, at least.)
Besides, your Web delivery of materials will be just fine unless you go out of your way to support only this or that version of the browser.
You can't use regular Windows applications without a mouse and a keyboard. OK, Surface has one as a cover. But why not to splurge on a hinge then and buy a laptop for the same, if not lower, price? A laptop is more functional, has more connectors, there are many models to choose from... why the x86 Surface, all of a sudden? It's not a lightweight tablet like a Nexus 7, it's a big and heavy thing, more in the "portable" class than "pocket."
A walled garden is a garden with walls. Ubuntu's app store has no walls - you can install your software from anywhere you want. Same in Android, actually, if you click on one little checkbox in settings.
make sure the registrant contact information's set for the organization, not one single person within it.
That also means when three buddies decide on a lark to start a project and make some free software they first need to spend a few thousand dollars on setting up a company. I know people who don't mind donating some of their free time for public good, but spending some real money on that is probably beyond all of them.
Nonsense. Someone writing for a living won't be doing it on a portable device like a iThing
I guess you missed the entire "mobile revolution" thing, where it became hip to sit whole day at Starbucks and work (?) on your iDevice. Working at the office is so yesterday...
The proof of that is simple: the guy paid $50 for a dictionary application. Either he is a fool who buys things that he doesn't need, or he is not a fool - and that means that he is using the dictionary, therefore he is writing articles on his iDevice. (However unwise this may seem to be to us, graybeards :-)
Legally, it may very well be that if you have paid for a copy that you are not using, and then install another copy that you haven't paid for, it is copyright infringement
We don't pay for copies. I struggle to recall when was that time when I had to pay $20 for a set of floppies with something... What we pay is a license to use a specific piece of software. That license covers earlier releases that the user was entitled to. Otherwise the license must contain specific words to that effect like "As soon as the next latest release becomes available you have 3 days to download it and upgrade, otherwise your license is null and void." I can't easily remember any such license. They are not used in iOS/Android world - or anywhere else - because the customer can always stay with the previous version and not upgrade in the first place. Even Microsoft doesn't care if you downloaded the bits of their OS off of Pirate Bay. They only care that you buy a license to run those bits. You can install service packs, remove service packs, install patches, remove patches - it all remains licensed forever.
This case also is special because the latest release was broken. It should never have been released; the developer caused harm to his customers by enticing them to upgrade to a nonfunctional product. This happens, and we don't run around and sue ISVs for that - we talk to them and try to find a solution. This guy did the same - he contacted the developer and, after the developer was unable to deliver, obtained the earlier version of the software that he was using just yesterday and downgraded. The developer was aware of the issues here, and that was the best solution for him as well - compared to being sued for breaking the product and not offering a repair procedure. (Even if the iOS developer writes a patch overnight, it still takes about 10-15 days for the Apple review process to complete. You cannot push the updates out faster than that. Emergency fixes? Ha, it's not Apple's problem.)
It may also be that paying for an app on the App Store gives you a license to install the app on several devices that you own, but not on a jailbroken device.
If so, this journalist is in a world of hurt, since he has so many applications installed (he is reviewing them!) Probably Apple can sue him for a billion dollars or something :-) I don't know the licensing terms either, since I don't have iDevices, but any court would look at the facts of the case - and the facts are that the user paid for use of his software. Limiting licensing to non-jailbroken devices may be even illegal in itself (constraint on trade?) If you license my software I cannot put in the license that you may use it only while listening to Metallica; and I cannot tell you that you may run my software only on computers made by Dell. Copyright violation is illegal; but if you jailbreak your device to sideload an application that I compiled and gave you bypassing the Apple store, then the government has nothing to say here - it is legal. Apple may not like that, but their likes and dislikes are not the law; at best they are a contract, and Apple can ban jailbroken devices from Apple store. Go ahead, Apple, do that and see the feathers fly.
As I see it, the only defence for the app's author would be to prove that the user did illegally copy software.
It wouldn't be even nearly enough. For example, an ISV cannot set fire to your house upon detection of unauthorized use. There is a specific limit to what software developers may do when they have a good reason to suspect piracy. Have a look at Microsoft's solution - MS had enough lawyers thrown at the problem, so what MS did is basically the maximum of what is legal and safe.
In this case the software developer committed several crimes. And those crimes do not even PREVENT the piracy! What would prevent it? Simple: just don't run the software! Or run it in demo mode. Good solutions are numerous.
One good advice that got overlooked here is this: always maintain good communication. Talk to the user. Let the user always know what is happening. Let the user make his decisions. In this case the software bypassed the communication phase and decided to become not only the detective, but also the judge, the jury and the executioner. Note that only a judge can order a convicted offender to publicly humiliate themselves. This rarely happens, but such sentencing does occur now and then - usually as an offer that can be refused (if you like the inside of a prison more, for example.) This software took upon itself the right that rare a human is entrusted with.
Considering a dictionary is available online, $50 for a dictionary app seems to be kind of silly.
Perhaps not to a journalist who earns his daily bread by reviewing applications for portable devices. It's one of his tools of trade.
The Web site approach that you talk about may work if you need one word in a month. However the browser is not a perfect interface. You need to scroll around, to zoom in, to zoom out... even a simple application that has only one input field and one output area will be a huge timesaver. This is important for journalists who routinely write articles, especially when those articles are in a foreign language (Norsk != English.)
How do we know it is falsely claiming that the users are pirates?
Because at least one instance of a false positive is known. The guy has the receipt. Nothing else matters; the guy is not a pirate.
The guy in the link admits to using Installus which is an application specifically crafted for piracy.
How does that change the fact that the guy has paid his dues with regard to the dictionary? Even if he pirated all other applications - which he denies - this doesn't give the dictionary a right to accuse the owner of anything. Besides, the guy claims that he needed Installus for a legitimate purpose: " you can use it to go back to an older version of an app you legally own. This is otherwise impossible in iOS."
When most people think "robot" they're actually thinking of the stereotypical sci-fi Android, which is an automaton with human characteristics.
This is equivalent to a primitive self-operating machine plus the operator, a tech who programs the machine.
This means that our cars are already assembled by humanoid robots, for all practical purposes. One tech for ten robots is enough. The rest of the population of Detroit is unemployed. What would a simple worker do in the modern world? Learn C# and DirectX? Objective C? Triple Ha. One out of a thousand, maybe. Those guys were workers and not programmers for a reason, not just because they loved to do repetitive work and suffer from back pain.
will likely mean that a lot more manufacturing will move back to being domestic (the cost of running a robot locally is hardly different than the cost of running a robot off-shore).
The IRS would like to have a word with you.
The primary reason to continue manufacturing offshore is to be able to escape the US taxation system that is, I think, unique on this planet in taxing foreign income. On top of that, the USA is the home of NIMBY, CARB, OSHA and their friends. The only connection to the USA you want to have is through the bank where you receive money for your foreign-made products. The political system of the USA is also unstable, dangerously tilting toward "rob the rich" mentality of the crowd, with the President fully approving that message. The USA is in its post-capitalist phase. There are no advantages in opening a factory in the USA, and plenty of disadvantages.
People will have a comfortable life with plenty of time to do creative work not when we have machines working for us, but only if there is a fair distribution of wealth.
The only snag here is the endless wars over the exact meaning of the word "fair."