Yes, these disks pretty much make DivX obsolete, but fortunately there's other codecs.
My understanding is that Blu-Ray is more DRM-heavy, with both AACS (shared with HDDVD) and other super-hardcore layer called BD+. The irony is that with much better DRM than DVD, these new disks *might* allow some limited home copying, legally.
OK, so originally Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were going to be very different technologies. HD-DVD was supposed to be a quick and cheap evolution of the existing DVD spec -- small capacity red-laser disks that used advanced codecs such as H.264 to store HD video. Blu-Ray on the other hand was super high-tech high-capacity blue laser disks but still depended on MPEG-2.
But since the war of words has started, each format adopted each other's features. Now they *both* have Blue lasers, both have all the same advanced codecs, and even both have the same copy-protection system, all adding engineering and patent license costs. To top it off, HDDVD didn't get to market early, and thy are both likely to be on shelves this holiday consumption season. In short the differences are now pointless from the consumer's standpoint -- it doesn't really matter which one wins.
It's been speculated that Microsoft is trying to up-the-ante by backing HD-DVD heavily. Either to force a merger between the formats (and patent pools), or to stall the market until computer-based VOD can take over.
Not really. The problem with cases like this is that there's one party involved (SCO, in this case) that is not actually interested in a quick resolution - or any resolution at all
The truth is that other party, IBM, also wants to strech this out even longer than SCO does, in order to bankrupt them. That's why IBM has loaded up the case with stupid patent claims, investigations into Microsoft, fights over old AIX source code and a bunch of other stuff which prevents a quick resolution.
IBM is representing IBM here, not concerned Linux users who want SCO FUD dismissed quickly. The reality is that the case will go on forever because neither party really wants it to end.
This is basically VA/Slashdot's wet dream -- "If we kiss Google's ass everyday, there's a small chance they'll buy us out and give us high paying jobs somewhere other than Michigan"
Just to be a nitpicky slashdot bozo, the Atari 2600 Pacman commercials showed actual gameplay, even though it looked like flickery crap (even by Atari standards).
> You need to get the notion out of your head that the OS and the hardware are two separate products. > They are one single product... a platform unto itself
Yeah, I remember when Apple used to say this back in the 1980s, and when you look at the architecture of those old Macs, it was sort of true.
But the mid-90s, Apple has branded and marketed their OS as a seperate product, and divorced the hardware design -- largely to drive upgrade revenues. If you think people are confused, blame Apple, not the people, because the idea that OS X is independant is 100% the result of their own messaging and technical design decisions.
>#2) Microsoft confused the issue a long
You are totally being ridiclous by claiming some mythical software-hardware integration that, in reality, does not exist and then accusing everyone else of being "confused". The Intel/PC architecture (98% marketshare) defeated Apple's technologies through economies of scale -- and now Apple writes the exact same drivers for the exact same hardware that Microsoft does.
You are the one is is confused, not the rest of us.
[And as for MP3 players etc, let's give it 5 years. In 1988 Apple's revenues were 100x those of Microsoft. If you stopped time then, you could easily declare victory for the proprietary model. But we all know how that turned out.]
Let me ask you something. Do you ever wonder why Apple keeps their OS node-locked to a small handful of carefully positioned computer models? Do you ever wonder why they barely advertise OS X or Mac hardware?
Don't kid yourself, Apple knows full well what I am saying is 100% correct, and their entire sales strategy is based around it -- there's just very little broader appeal for Macs, so the name of the game is optimizing revenue from the installed base. Steve Jobs even spelled out this strategy in an interview years before he came back to Apple.
Macs are nice systems, I own them, I use them. But as time goes on, they become more and more oriented towards brainwashed cultists (see all the wierd ACs and their jibberish replys to my posts), and less and less relevant to mainstream computing. Joe Average doesn't want a Mac because Apple simply doesn't want to make Macs relevant to Joe Average.
They selected the same Intel chipset that runs over 50% of PCs, including every Dell. The leaked developer builds did support a "big selection of hardware" -- most new PCs had no problem running it.
You could argue that OS X turned Apple's reputation around among techies (including myself). But did it change their marketshare, profitablity, or anything substantial? No, take away the iPod and those metrics are all pretty much the same as they were with OS 9.
You and I can believe that Unix and an IDE are "compelling", but where the rubber hits the road, those sorts of things haven't sold many (more) Macs... probably because the overall package really isn't that much more compelling than a new Winbox. (Or at least not to the same level the True Believers think it is.) And if Joe Average ever got his hands on OSX, he would likely say so.
then they'll be one of the vocal minority of people who have problems, and post on every message board they can find that "Apple sux", etc., etc., and generally do a bad thing to Apple's image.
One reason Apple has such a positive image and "brand value" is not just because of the design of their products, but because of the price/exclusivity factors. The Mac world is something one have to Buy Into, and once someone has made a commitment they are far less likely to start complaining about it.
That's the main reason Apple products have good reputations even whey they suck. (Early slow/crashy versions of OSX were herlded; People had to fight Apple over the iBook motherboard issues and still are true blue customers, etc) People have a huge $$$ incentive to not talk down their own 'investment'.
On top of that, consider that most computer users have *heard* of Macs, 90% of them have never sat down in front of one and used it. So you have a product with a huge word-of-mouth reputation, but only the true-blue loyalists have any hands-on experience with them.
Now, you lower the cost of entry to $120 or $0, and the Mac is exposed to the masses. What happens? Do they all become Mac Believers? Or do they look at it soberly and come to a very different conclusion?
When you get right down to it, what exactly is so great about the Mac? The herlded UI is flashy, but mainly just different than Windows, not really significantly better or worse. The included software is nothing all that special. A lot of people are going to (rationally) say "I tried the Mac, it's really not all that special." This attitude starts to percalate back to the loyal Mac purchsers, who start asking the same questions. (This happened in the Win95 era, when many loyal Mac buyers just changed their mind and walked.) The mystique is gone.
Do you realize how many people would drop Apple like a hot potato if that were to happen, and never buy Apple again?
Those people have probably already dropped Apple due to their long standing attitude toward backwards compatibility. If you know anyone who relies on 4 year old Mac software, they're either going to pay for an upgrade (if it exists), or they won't be Mac users for long.
The majority of the userbase ate the OSX upgrade without complaint. They'll eat the Intel transition in the same way.
Yes, but Apple kept their EDU dominance well past the DOS/Apple ][ days -- they had something like a 70% marketshare in the mid-90s. Their collapse in the US educational market was relatively recent (Jobs II era).
Plus, now it sounds like the Mac holdouts in K-12 EDU land are shitting because virtually all of the software is Classic-mode "abandonware" that won't run on the Intel models.
This is a "PRO" model, by name it implies it will provide me everything I could use that is reasonable.
Well, PRO is debatable. A big market for PowerBooks has always been those stereotypical beret-wearing coffeshop Mac guys, especially among the early adopters that would be willing to purchase an early Intel model. I suspect Apple knows their customer base very well, and they're sure that doodad features like a webcam and a remote will be more popular than FW800 and a modem.
The memory and I/O bandwidth found in RISC "PCs" (Macs for example) wasn't really any better than what was in Pentium Pro PCs.
That was always the generic rip on "peecees", but at some point around 2000, with RAMBUS and 400Mhz buses and fast/wide PCI, PCs lapped the architecture of any RISC workstation. SGI's special 'crossbar' architecture Intel workstations was getting blowaway by Compaqs within six months of release.
Hmm, I might have been off by a year or two. But the 386 certainly wasn't discontinued by 1991. Here's a list of IBM models for example: http://www.seds.org/~spider/ps2/ps2hist.html
None of the RISC CPUs were binary compatible with the CPUs previously used by their sponsors.
As for PowerPC, 970 wasn't that competitive with Intel's process, the chips were low-volume and ran very hot. But mainly Apple did it to themselves by creating a low-growth businss model that wasn't attractive to CPU vendors.
> Would the joining of all the other vendors have changed that?
No probably not, because Intel largely caught up. But it might have kept the RISC workstation/lowend server market alive.
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Yes, these disks pretty much make DivX obsolete, but fortunately there's other codecs.
My understanding is that Blu-Ray is more DRM-heavy, with both AACS (shared with HDDVD) and other super-hardcore layer called BD+. The irony is that with much better DRM than DVD, these new disks *might* allow some limited home copying, legally.
We've always supspected that Bill Gates was building a doomsday weapon, now we know how. Thanks for uncovering his nefarious plots.
I'm not sure how advanced codecs make it more difficult to pirate. The tools to deal with H.264 and VC-9 are built-into Windows/Mac.
Also, I don't think the MPAA itself really has a position, most (but not all) of the studios seem to be supporting Blu-Ray.
OK, so originally Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were going to be very different technologies. HD-DVD was supposed to be a quick and cheap evolution of the existing DVD spec -- small capacity red-laser disks that used advanced codecs such as H.264 to store HD video. Blu-Ray on the other hand was super high-tech high-capacity blue laser disks but still depended on MPEG-2.
But since the war of words has started, each format adopted each other's features. Now they *both* have Blue lasers, both have all the same advanced codecs, and even both have the same copy-protection system, all adding engineering and patent license costs. To top it off, HDDVD didn't get to market early, and thy are both likely to be on shelves this holiday consumption season. In short the differences are now pointless from the consumer's standpoint -- it doesn't really matter which one wins.
It's been speculated that Microsoft is trying to up-the-ante by backing HD-DVD heavily. Either to force a merger between the formats (and patent pools), or to stall the market until computer-based VOD can take over.
Thanks for the correction ... But I do think IBM was dragging it out for the first year or so (and then I got bored and stopped paying attention).
Also, apparently IBM did not ask for a summary judgement right away, which is a reason why the Judge is allowing SCO so much slack.
Not really. The problem with cases like this is that there's one party involved (SCO, in this case) that is not actually interested in a quick resolution - or any resolution at all
The truth is that other party, IBM, also wants to strech this out even longer than SCO does, in order to bankrupt them. That's why IBM has loaded up the case with stupid patent claims, investigations into Microsoft, fights over old AIX source code and a bunch of other stuff which prevents a quick resolution.
IBM is representing IBM here, not concerned Linux users who want SCO FUD dismissed quickly. The reality is that the case will go on forever because neither party really wants it to end.
This is basically VA/Slashdot's wet dream -- "If we kiss Google's ass everyday, there's a small chance they'll buy us out and give us high paying jobs somewhere other than Michigan"
I liked the Colecovision controller :) Unlike the 5200 & Intellivsion controllers, the fire buttons were large and easy to push.
The obvious miss was the Atari 7800 Controller -- After about 10 minutes of use, your hand will cramp up and you would be in extreme physical pain.
Just to be a nitpicky slashdot bozo, the Atari 2600 Pacman commercials showed actual gameplay, even though it looked like flickery crap (even by Atari standards).
> You need to get the notion out of your head that the OS and the hardware are two separate products.
> They are one single product... a platform unto itself
Yeah, I remember when Apple used to say this back in the 1980s, and when you look at the architecture of those old Macs, it was sort of true.
But the mid-90s, Apple has branded and marketed their OS as a seperate product, and divorced the hardware design -- largely to drive upgrade revenues. If you think people are confused, blame Apple, not the people, because the idea that OS X is independant is 100% the result of their own messaging and technical design decisions.
>#2) Microsoft confused the issue a long
You are totally being ridiclous by claiming some mythical software-hardware integration that, in reality, does not exist and then accusing everyone else of being "confused". The Intel/PC architecture (98% marketshare) defeated Apple's technologies through economies of scale -- and now Apple writes the exact same drivers for the exact same hardware that Microsoft does.
You are the one is is confused, not the rest of us.
[And as for MP3 players etc, let's give it 5 years. In 1988 Apple's revenues were 100x those of Microsoft. If you stopped time then, you could easily declare victory for the proprietary model. But we all know how that turned out.]
Let me ask you something. Do you ever wonder why Apple keeps their OS node-locked to a small handful of carefully positioned computer models? Do you ever wonder why they barely advertise OS X or Mac hardware?
Don't kid yourself, Apple knows full well what I am saying is 100% correct, and their entire sales strategy is based around it -- there's just very little broader appeal for Macs, so the name of the game is optimizing revenue from the installed base. Steve Jobs even spelled out this strategy in an interview years before he came back to Apple.
Macs are nice systems, I own them, I use them. But as time goes on, they become more and more oriented towards brainwashed cultists (see all the wierd ACs and their jibberish replys to my posts), and less and less relevant to mainstream computing. Joe Average doesn't want a Mac because Apple simply doesn't want to make Macs relevant to Joe Average.
> It's standard hardware, but they selected it.
They selected the same Intel chipset that runs over 50% of PCs, including every Dell. The leaked developer builds did support a "big selection of hardware" -- most new PCs had no problem running it.
OS X turned the company around.
... probably because the overall package really isn't that much more compelling than a new Winbox. (Or at least not to the same level the True Believers think it is.) And if Joe Average ever got his hands on OSX, he would likely say so.
You could argue that OS X turned Apple's reputation around among techies (including myself). But did it change their marketshare, profitablity, or anything substantial? No, take away the iPod and those metrics are all pretty much the same as they were with OS 9.
You and I can believe that Unix and an IDE are "compelling", but where the rubber hits the road, those sorts of things haven't sold many (more) Macs
> Need I go on?
Since you totally failed to understand my point, please don't. Nobody likes an AC talking to himself.
then they'll be one of the vocal minority of people who have problems, and post on every message board they can find that "Apple sux", etc., etc., and generally do a bad thing to Apple's image.
One reason Apple has such a positive image and "brand value" is not just because of the design of their products, but because of the price/exclusivity factors. The Mac world is something one have to Buy Into, and once someone has made a commitment they are far less likely to start complaining about it.
That's the main reason Apple products have good reputations even whey they suck. (Early slow/crashy versions of OSX were herlded; People had to fight Apple over the iBook motherboard issues and still are true blue customers, etc) People have a huge $$$ incentive to not talk down their own 'investment'.
On top of that, consider that most computer users have *heard* of Macs, 90% of them have never sat down in front of one and used it. So you have a product with a huge word-of-mouth reputation, but only the true-blue loyalists have any hands-on experience with them.
Now, you lower the cost of entry to $120 or $0, and the Mac is exposed to the masses. What happens? Do they all become Mac Believers? Or do they look at it soberly and come to a very different conclusion?
When you get right down to it, what exactly is so great about the Mac? The herlded UI is flashy, but mainly just different than Windows, not really significantly better or worse. The included software is nothing all that special. A lot of people are going to (rationally) say "I tried the Mac, it's really not all that special." This attitude starts to percalate back to the loyal Mac purchsers, who start asking the same questions. (This happened in the Win95 era, when many loyal Mac buyers just changed their mind and walked.) The mystique is gone.
Warner bought Atari in 1976. Almost everything people remember about the classic Atari era was from Warner.
Ralph Baer invented Pong in his basement years before Atari even started.
That was true, but ultimately Marketing is just a bunch of made-up words irrespective of the actual product.
And IBM has announced that "PowerPC" as a brandname will be going away to be going away, and future chips will just become part of the "POWER Family".
They have POWER chips in them, which is something (almost) completely different.
Nah, according to IBM, they are the same things nowdays. The 970 was the last "PowerPC" chip they were planning to make.
Do you realize how many people would drop Apple like a hot potato if that were to happen, and never buy Apple again?
Those people have probably already dropped Apple due to their long standing attitude toward backwards compatibility. If you know anyone who relies on 4 year old Mac software, they're either going to pay for an upgrade (if it exists), or they won't be Mac users for long.
The majority of the userbase ate the OSX upgrade without complaint. They'll eat the Intel transition in the same way.
Yes, but Apple kept their EDU dominance well past the DOS/Apple ][ days -- they had something like a 70% marketshare in the mid-90s. Their collapse in the US educational market was relatively recent (Jobs II era).
Plus, now it sounds like the Mac holdouts in K-12 EDU land are shitting because virtually all of the software is Classic-mode "abandonware" that won't run on the Intel models.
This is a "PRO" model, by name it implies it will provide me everything I could use that is reasonable.
Well, PRO is debatable. A big market for PowerBooks has always been those stereotypical beret-wearing coffeshop Mac guys, especially among the early adopters that would be willing to purchase an early Intel model. I suspect Apple knows their customer base very well, and they're sure that doodad features like a webcam and a remote will be more popular than FW800 and a modem.
The memory and I/O bandwidth found in RISC "PCs" (Macs for example) wasn't really any better than what was in Pentium Pro PCs.
That was always the generic rip on "peecees", but at some point around 2000, with RAMBUS and 400Mhz buses and fast/wide PCI, PCs lapped the architecture of any RISC workstation. SGI's special 'crossbar' architecture Intel workstations was getting blowaway by Compaqs within six months of release.
Hmm, I might have been off by a year or two. But the 386 certainly wasn't discontinued by 1991. Here's a list of IBM models for example:
http://www.seds.org/~spider/ps2/ps2hist.html
None of the RISC CPUs were binary compatible with the CPUs previously used by their sponsors.
As for PowerPC, 970 wasn't that competitive with Intel's process, the chips were low-volume and ran very hot. But mainly Apple did it to themselves by creating a low-growth businss model that wasn't attractive to CPU vendors.
> Would the joining of all the other vendors have changed that?
No probably not, because Intel largely caught up. But it might have kept the RISC workstation/lowend server market alive.