Sony has produced some lame ducks in its time though. It annoys me no end that many devices were intentionally hobbled to support Sony proprietary tech. An example would be all those cameras that only take memory stick, or ATRAC3 music players, or even UMD / MS in the PSP. Fortunately Sony seeming to be gaining a clue that consumers prefer industry standards, especially in the PS3 which is remarkably open for a Sony device.
I think there is also the possibility of ripping HD DVD movies via the 360 add-on and preserving the content on a computer. 15+Gb is a lot of storage but it could probably be shrunk down to 9 or 4.5Gb which would be sufficiently viewable and could even be burnt to BD9.
HD DVD was only cheaper for players because Toshiba massively subsidized players. So yeah they were "cheaper" but in reality Toshiba was taking the hit. I think Toshiba's plan was to subsidize the early adopters and hope that technology and economies of scale caught up by the time they had already won. The BDA's plan was to sell stuff at the price it cost with prices dropping as technology and sales increased. In the end Toshiba's strategy failed - Blu Ray players were still outselling HD DVD players 2 to 1 even at their true price.
As for movies, I see no difference whatsoever in the retail prices of either format. I doubt there's much difference at the production cost level either.
The issue is Samsung released a busted Blu Ray player that doesn't even play current Blu Ray discs properly. This has nothing to do with the standard, as much as it has to do with Samsung's own shoddy QA testing and development.
Anyway, Samsung didn't just screw up with Blu Ray, their BD / HD DVD player also has problems with disks in both formats.
Meanwhile virtually every other manufacturer of Blu Ray kit appears to be doing fine. So I think we can blame Samsung for the screw-up, rather than the standard.
D-Bus is an interprocess communication layer. It doesn't do you any good if you want to embed one visual component inside another, or save a compound document etc. So while it might be great and all, it's only part of the puzzle.
Anyway, COM isn't hard to learn - it's actually incredibly simple. It's all the OLE2 related stuff that makes a mess of programming visual components. Steer clear of automation, OLE and it's pretty easy to knock up stuff in COM.
SOM, COM, CORBA are all much of a muchness. They let you define APIs to objects and interfaces in language neutral IDL, generate stubs that you implement and let you call those objects from other libraries, processes or even machines.
If Linux really wants language neutral interface bindings, it already has it. There are numerous CORBA implementations, idl compilers and so on. For example GNOME offers ORBit (a Corba implementation) for embedding UI components via Bonobo. Bonbo appears deprecated and is being replaced by another language neutral offering called D-Bus. KDE also appears to be moving from DCOP which is yet another IPC model to D-Bus. I don't know what either platform's plans are for components since D-Bus is for IPC, not embedding components, maybe Bonobo and KParts will live on for a bit yet. Firefox is also built on top of a language neutral object model - XPCOM is similar to MS COM but cross-platform and has bindings for several languages.
I do think OS/2 should get something like WINE - an emulator / runtime that lets OS/2 apps run on Linux. Part of that could of course be SOM & WPS support. I'm less sure why Linux would need native SOM since there are already so many choices. Another one ported from 90s codebase isn't going to offer much.
I think they could halve the heat dissipation requirements with smaller chips. Power consumption would drop significantly. The original PS3 uses something like 190W when running, the 65nm uses 135W, so I imagine that a slim would only use 100W. That would be pretty dramatic. They could even stick the PSU in a power brick removing it from the case entirely. A brick would probably be no larger than an average laptop charger. There was a recent announcement about a smaller blu ray reader head that was something like 9mm thinner.
I think a slim is eminently possible. I believe they'll release a 120Gb around the existing 40Gb model and then launch a slim at the bottom end.
No, I'm just able to make observations on Sony's intent by looking at their recent announcements. Sony are aggressively working on making the PS3 smaller and cheaper to make. That means further price drops and benefits to consumers such as smaller, quieter and less power hungry models. Moving from 65nm to 45nm, cheaper Blu Ray reader heads (another recent announcement) and a slew of other changes may mean they can knock another $50-100 off the price. A repackaged slim model would sell extremely well in Japan and elsewhere.
Wii STILL hard to get, it sells out everywhere even NOW! this has happend for over a year now.
Xbox360 has a crapload more games and a crapload of $19.95 games now. Same as Wii.
You assume the world == USA. It doesn't. The Wii is selling very well but the 360 is selling terribly outside of the US. The worst region is Japan where it is selling miserably. And in Europe the PS3 is outselling the 360 and will exceed LTD sales this year. It is even possible that the PS3 will match or come close to 360 LTD sales worldwide this year. With Blu Ray emerging as the HD winner, it may even match or exceed YTD sales of the 360 in the US. We'll have to wait on that last one but the simple fact is the 360 is having a terrible time of it. The 360 desperately needs a redesign which is why I openly wondered if they'd get one. They'd better do because a slim PS3 is going to beat it to death otherwise.
As for the Wii, we'll have to wait and see. It is selling well and outpacing the 360 and PS3. But I could easily walk into a store here in Europe and buy one so it's not the hot item you might think everywhere. I also think sales will flag a bit as more HD sets appear and its shortcomings become obvious. Will it maintain its lead? Possibly, but PS3 and 360 are vastly superior consoles with a far better selection of quality games (i.e. not shovelware) and do a lot more besides so we'll have to see what effect HD and price cuts have on it.
PS3, crappy game selection, overpriced, overpriced games!
Utter nonsense. The 360 had a 1 year lead so naturally it has more games. But there are hundreds of games for the PS3 with most titles appearing on 360 and PS3 simultaneously at the same price. Game studios seem to have caught up with cross-platform development so most titles look and play the same too. No, the games for neither platform are as cheap as the Wii, but then again, the Wii has a pile of shovelware and bad PS2 ports that don't justify their prices either.
I can't wait for Nintendo to make a low-cost slim version of the Wii as well. I'm tired of that overpriced, behemoth of a console!
The 360 and PS3 are considerably more powerful than the Wii. It's no surprise that it can fit in a smaller form factor than the other consoles simply because it is little more advanced than the previous generation of consoles. I doubt that any slim PS3 would get as small as the Wii but there is no denying it is bulky - a new model that was say 2/3 the size would be a very attractive side considering everything it does and would sell extremely well.
A price drop would be nice (though the PS3 is now competitive), but the more interesting bit is when is the PS3 slim going to appear. All the pieces are in place for a slim. Sony have been aggressively shrinking the motherboard in the PS3, and the chip size has dropped from 90nm, to 65nm and now 45nm. All that means less power (smaller PSU) and less heat (less fans & heatsinks). There have been other announcements such as thinner blu ray reader headers. It can only be a matter of time before a slim and I think it will hit before the holidays this year. I think it will sell by the shitload too when it does appear. The question is will we see a slim 360 to compete with it? I think there must be a lot of empty space in the 360 too.
OK, so how do you explain that on the Amazon site best selling DVD players including traditional DVD players, HD-DVD, and Blu Ray the three versions of HD-DVD player hold 1st, 3rd, and 5th place and have been holding there ever since Toshiba slashed prices?
I explain it as Amazon enormously discounting HD DVD players. As you said, Toshiba slashed prices and tossed in some more movies. This no longer even qualifies as subsidizing a format so much as trying to get rid of it. A firesale in other words.
Now, you can either claim that there are a lot of dumb people out there buying a dying technology or look at it from the opposite perspective: that there is a growing number of people out there who do not believe the PR hype of media or the Internet any more, which would make them, well, quite smart, no?
Either or? Actually I have another answer. It's so good a sale that I expect many buyers rationalize their purchases thusly - hey I'm getting 7 movies and a player for $150 so even if the format tanks I'm still left with a reasonable upscaling DVD player. Which is fair enough but it doesn't mean the format is winning. And it isn't winning, not by a long shot.
Now I have no idea if Amazon is included in NPD data - it probably isn't. But this sale that you refer to is just what I mentioned in my original post. I do expect a minor recovery, but only due to the enormous discounting going on to get rid of stock in the retail channels.
Another thing that comes into mind based on my brief exploration of the Blu Ray and HD-DVD movie libraries (I haven't invested in either yet), I must say that apart from Pixar, currently HD-DVD has a lot more titles that are worth getting (HD or not).
I can't say either format has rocked my boat yet. But if I had to choose which studio I was most interested in titles from it would be Warner / New Line and that's now Blu Ray exclusive.
You might expect some HD TV / Blu Ray promotion to affect sales a little bit, but the truth is that in the week past HD DVD sales didn't just dip, they didn't just sag, they didn't just slump. They COLLAPSED.
Here is a link that provides the raw sales data. HD DVD sales nosedived from 14,558 players sold to 1,758. Sales were just 12% of the week before. 1,758 players sold is simply pathetic and if this continues a few more weeks and the format just isn't viable. It wouldn't surprise me if more HD DVD players were returned than sold last week.
Maybe there was a small affect by the HD TV promotion but its fairly obvious that Warner's announcement followed by the disastrous showing by HD DVD at CES were the main causes.
The next few weeks are going to be interesting. I expect we'll see some minor recovery as stores try to shift remaining stock at bargain prices but this really looks like the end. Maybe Toshiba knows it too and is just saying nothing while the channels are cleared out. And it can't come a moment too soon since this is probably the make or break year for HD storage to go mainstream.
It's cheaper because Toshiba are using about the only weapon they can muster against Blu Ray - subsidizing the cost of the player. They have that luxury since they monopolize the format and the players.
Blu Ray might be predominantly a Sony standard, but the BDA represents virtually the entire electronics industry. Blu Ray players have been selling at their real prices because members of the BDA want to make money. There is no reason Samnsung, Philips etc. is going to sell a player below cost. I suspect even Sony hasn't subsidized its players (except for the PS3) so as not to annoy other BDA members.
Its not hard to see why IBM can't open source it even if they wanted to. OS/2 is infected with IBM / MS co-developed code. How can they release something they don't have full rights to?
OS/2 afficiandos may be better off to implement something akin to WINE (or the Amiga's AROS) but for OS/2. Implement the APIs of OS/2, a WPS-like desktop and a SOM compiler. In some ways it might even be easier to do than WINE since there are less APIs, the OS is simpler and not some moving target.
How's the PS3 doing? I've not heard much in the way of failures there. Just stuff on slow sales due to pricing and the Blue-ray/HD-DVD wars. Any of those PS3 clusters showing signs of over heating?
The PS3 is doing very well. There have been sporadic reports of issues, but consensus overwhelmingly suggests that the PS3 is a quality piece of kit that is reliable, quiet, well designed and of good quality.
After all, the XO is designed to be hackable (unlike most hardware today, unfortunately).
Well not really. The XO is designed to be hacker resistant. The machine has a security system called bitfrost which is meant to prevent the machine from working if it is stolen, and to also prevent programs from obtaining certain combinations of rights, such as video camera & internet functionality at the same time. I suppose it would be possible to hack programs to work within that framework, but certainly not as easily as an Asus EEE PC for example where you can pretty much do anything you like.
Like the iPods, the mechanics (structure) involved to make the battery as easy to remove as say, the macbook, would add a significant amount to the size of the unit. The battery latch on the macbook is roughly the size of a nickel. Would you like your ipod to be 1/8" thicker just to add a latch for the battery?
I don't accept that for a second. Apple is allegedly a company which comes up with clever designs, yet not for batteries it seems. Instead they expect people either to throw away their otherwise fully functioning iPod / Air and buy a new one, or do without an iPod / Air for a week or more while its sent off to some expensive replacement program. And in the case of iPod you're not even guaranteed to get back the iPod you sent out.
I doubt it would add any significant thickness to the Air to add a battery compartment. Who says it even has to be accessed from the underside? It could be slotted in from the side or in some other way that might allow Apple to call it an innovation.
If this were any other company but Apple, people wouldn't be making excuses for them. Sealed in batteries suck and Apple's use of them is a cynical ploy to force people to upgrade a few years down the line when they die.
Those on the iPod aren't, but I would much rather have a small device than a bigger one with a removable battery.
That assumes your device would be noticeably larger. My Nokia 6300 manages to be exactly the same thickness as an iPhone and has a similar metallic backplate. Yet the plate is removable and so is the battery. Nokia managed it with a few clips and a few connectors, hardly things that would noticeably affect the size of a device.
Why is it that Apple, so-called masters of design cannot manage the same feat? Why do they continue to seal in batteries when it is clearly something people do not like?
The reason likely has far more to do with the fact that sealing in batteries encourages people to throw away an otherwise perfectly working device and buy a new one. Apples own battery replacement service is laughable - it's expensive, requires you send away your iPod, doesn't save your songs and doesn't even guarantee you'll get the same iPod back (so its too bad if yours is decorated or engraved). The service too seems to be priced and designed to discourage people from servicing their iPods and just throw them away.
In fact, the brilliance on Apple's part here is the recognition (FINALLY) that there are lots of people with big honkin desktop machines who also need a portable computer for going out to meetings, travel or just reading the web (on something bigger then a 3" screen) at the local coffee shop. For us, the Air is perfect - a minimalist extension of our main work computer.
And why would a regular MacBook not be any of these things?
Most wristwatches don't have a 1.6 GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, an HD screen with backlight, and wifi.
I was making that comparison to the first remark concerning the iPod Nano. But certainly there is zero excuse for sealing the battery into the laptop either. Adding a hatch for a battery would not make any significant space demands on the laptop or on its design. Phones manage to be thinner than this thing and still allow access to the battery. At worst the battery could be accessible via a screwplate on the underside. Or if Apple were half the designers people imagine they were, they could do something clever such as hide it under the keyboard or make it click into place from the side. They just chose the most lucrative way of doing it, knowing full well that the poor saps who buy this laptop will be captives when their battery dies out on them and they need it replaced or end up buying a whole new machine again.
I haven't had any issues firing up email or a web browser at the same time. And if I did, well there's a hatch underneath to double or quadruple the memory. 1Gb would set me back $24. The device also has an SDHC slot so you can take movies on the road with you. I've loaded up an SD card with videos for my toddler to watch while we're on holiday soon. It is certainly space limited, but I can't say it's a big deal in my experience, and if it were, there are lots of USB storage options. As for market interest, Asus sold 350,000 of them in 2007 alone (it launched at the end of October), so I'd say they're proving very popular. It's a cheap, tiny, functional laptop perfect for coffee shops, plane clip trays, trains, lecture halls etc. It cuts straight into the traditional market for small laptops, which includes Apple's.
I'm surprised they didn't produce a rebadged Mac Mini called Apple TV Plus or similar and being a full computer as well as a dumb iTMS client. After all, the Mac Mini would make a passable computer / player running on the TV.
The Apple TV itself seems like a turd of a device. It's amazing its taken them this long to figure that requiring a user to sync an Apple TV to a PC / Mac is a stupid idea. Now they've fixed it the Apple TV is moderately usable, but it still doesn't do anything besides act as a dumb client to iTMS. It doesn't even play games, act as a PVR, DVDs or Blu ray discs. 720p only is pretty crap too. Its competitors have more features for not much more. Asking $229 for an Apple TV (and soon $299 for new model?) is just too much. An XBox 360 offers movie rentals, and happens to be a games console too for not much more. So does the PS3 and is only $100 more which includes full multimedia playback including Blu Ray and probably rentals sometime this year. Or a Tivo that is a PVR and offers Amazon Unbox. It wouldn't surprise me if the PS3 teams up with Amazon Unbox before long.
I think Apple enjoyed being a monopoly for far too long, and they simply don't have the clout they did. It's clear that lots of movie rental services are already up or soon to appear. Apple is entering a crowded market with fairly meh devices and I don't think they're going to get very far.
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Sony has produced some lame ducks in its time though. It annoys me no end that many devices were intentionally hobbled to support Sony proprietary tech. An example would be all those cameras that only take memory stick, or ATRAC3 music players, or even UMD / MS in the PSP. Fortunately Sony seeming to be gaining a clue that consumers prefer industry standards, especially in the PS3 which is remarkably open for a Sony device.
I think there is also the possibility of ripping HD DVD movies via the 360 add-on and preserving the content on a computer. 15+Gb is a lot of storage but it could probably be shrunk down to 9 or 4.5Gb which would be sufficiently viewable and could even be burnt to BD9.
As for movies, I see no difference whatsoever in the retail prices of either format. I doubt there's much difference at the production cost level either.
Anyway, Samsung didn't just screw up with Blu Ray, their BD / HD DVD player also has problems with disks in both formats.
Meanwhile virtually every other manufacturer of Blu Ray kit appears to be doing fine. So I think we can blame Samsung for the screw-up, rather than the standard.
If the tree doesn't balance then you must acquit!
Anyway, COM isn't hard to learn - it's actually incredibly simple. It's all the OLE2 related stuff that makes a mess of programming visual components. Steer clear of automation, OLE and it's pretty easy to knock up stuff in COM.
If Linux really wants language neutral interface bindings, it already has it. There are numerous CORBA implementations, idl compilers and so on. For example GNOME offers ORBit (a Corba implementation) for embedding UI components via Bonobo. Bonbo appears deprecated and is being replaced by another language neutral offering called D-Bus. KDE also appears to be moving from DCOP which is yet another IPC model to D-Bus. I don't know what either platform's plans are for components since D-Bus is for IPC, not embedding components, maybe Bonobo and KParts will live on for a bit yet. Firefox is also built on top of a language neutral object model - XPCOM is similar to MS COM but cross-platform and has bindings for several languages.
I do think OS/2 should get something like WINE - an emulator / runtime that lets OS/2 apps run on Linux. Part of that could of course be SOM & WPS support. I'm less sure why Linux would need native SOM since there are already so many choices. Another one ported from 90s codebase isn't going to offer much.
I think a slim is eminently possible. I believe they'll release a 120Gb around the existing 40Gb model and then launch a slim at the bottom end.
No, I'm just able to make observations on Sony's intent by looking at their recent announcements. Sony are aggressively working on making the PS3 smaller and cheaper to make. That means further price drops and benefits to consumers such as smaller, quieter and less power hungry models. Moving from 65nm to 45nm, cheaper Blu Ray reader heads (another recent announcement) and a slew of other changes may mean they can knock another $50-100 off the price. A repackaged slim model would sell extremely well in Japan and elsewhere.
Wii STILL hard to get, it sells out everywhere even NOW! this has happend for over a year now. Xbox360 has a crapload more games and a crapload of $19.95 games now. Same as Wii.
You assume the world == USA. It doesn't. The Wii is selling very well but the 360 is selling terribly outside of the US. The worst region is Japan where it is selling miserably. And in Europe the PS3 is outselling the 360 and will exceed LTD sales this year. It is even possible that the PS3 will match or come close to 360 LTD sales worldwide this year. With Blu Ray emerging as the HD winner, it may even match or exceed YTD sales of the 360 in the US. We'll have to wait on that last one but the simple fact is the 360 is having a terrible time of it. The 360 desperately needs a redesign which is why I openly wondered if they'd get one. They'd better do because a slim PS3 is going to beat it to death otherwise.
As for the Wii, we'll have to wait and see. It is selling well and outpacing the 360 and PS3. But I could easily walk into a store here in Europe and buy one so it's not the hot item you might think everywhere. I also think sales will flag a bit as more HD sets appear and its shortcomings become obvious. Will it maintain its lead? Possibly, but PS3 and 360 are vastly superior consoles with a far better selection of quality games (i.e. not shovelware) and do a lot more besides so we'll have to see what effect HD and price cuts have on it.
PS3, crappy game selection, overpriced, overpriced games!
Utter nonsense. The 360 had a 1 year lead so naturally it has more games. But there are hundreds of games for the PS3 with most titles appearing on 360 and PS3 simultaneously at the same price. Game studios seem to have caught up with cross-platform development so most titles look and play the same too. No, the games for neither platform are as cheap as the Wii, but then again, the Wii has a pile of shovelware and bad PS2 ports that don't justify their prices either.
The 360 and PS3 are considerably more powerful than the Wii. It's no surprise that it can fit in a smaller form factor than the other consoles simply because it is little more advanced than the previous generation of consoles. I doubt that any slim PS3 would get as small as the Wii but there is no denying it is bulky - a new model that was say 2/3 the size would be a very attractive side considering everything it does and would sell extremely well.
I doubt you'll ever see PS3s with 8 SPUs. They probably mask off one of them in the factory even if all 8 were working to start with.
A price drop would be nice (though the PS3 is now competitive), but the more interesting bit is when is the PS3 slim going to appear. All the pieces are in place for a slim. Sony have been aggressively shrinking the motherboard in the PS3, and the chip size has dropped from 90nm, to 65nm and now 45nm. All that means less power (smaller PSU) and less heat (less fans & heatsinks). There have been other announcements such as thinner blu ray reader headers. It can only be a matter of time before a slim and I think it will hit before the holidays this year. I think it will sell by the shitload too when it does appear. The question is will we see a slim 360 to compete with it? I think there must be a lot of empty space in the 360 too.
I explain it as Amazon enormously discounting HD DVD players. As you said, Toshiba slashed prices and tossed in some more movies. This no longer even qualifies as subsidizing a format so much as trying to get rid of it. A firesale in other words.
Now, you can either claim that there are a lot of dumb people out there buying a dying technology or look at it from the opposite perspective: that there is a growing number of people out there who do not believe the PR hype of media or the Internet any more, which would make them, well, quite smart, no?
Either or? Actually I have another answer. It's so good a sale that I expect many buyers rationalize their purchases thusly - hey I'm getting 7 movies and a player for $150 so even if the format tanks I'm still left with a reasonable upscaling DVD player. Which is fair enough but it doesn't mean the format is winning. And it isn't winning, not by a long shot.
Now I have no idea if Amazon is included in NPD data - it probably isn't. But this sale that you refer to is just what I mentioned in my original post. I do expect a minor recovery, but only due to the enormous discounting going on to get rid of stock in the retail channels.
Another thing that comes into mind based on my brief exploration of the Blu Ray and HD-DVD movie libraries (I haven't invested in either yet), I must say that apart from Pixar, currently HD-DVD has a lot more titles that are worth getting (HD or not).
I can't say either format has rocked my boat yet. But if I had to choose which studio I was most interested in titles from it would be Warner / New Line and that's now Blu Ray exclusive.
Here is a link that provides the raw sales data. HD DVD sales nosedived from 14,558 players sold to 1,758. Sales were just 12% of the week before. 1,758 players sold is simply pathetic and if this continues a few more weeks and the format just isn't viable. It wouldn't surprise me if more HD DVD players were returned than sold last week.
Maybe there was a small affect by the HD TV promotion but its fairly obvious that Warner's announcement followed by the disastrous showing by HD DVD at CES were the main causes.
The next few weeks are going to be interesting. I expect we'll see some minor recovery as stores try to shift remaining stock at bargain prices but this really looks like the end. Maybe Toshiba knows it too and is just saying nothing while the channels are cleared out. And it can't come a moment too soon since this is probably the make or break year for HD storage to go mainstream.
Blu Ray might be predominantly a Sony standard, but the BDA represents virtually the entire electronics industry. Blu Ray players have been selling at their real prices because members of the BDA want to make money. There is no reason Samnsung, Philips etc. is going to sell a player below cost. I suspect even Sony hasn't subsidized its players (except for the PS3) so as not to annoy other BDA members.
OS/2 afficiandos may be better off to implement something akin to WINE (or the Amiga's AROS) but for OS/2. Implement the APIs of OS/2, a WPS-like desktop and a SOM compiler. In some ways it might even be easier to do than WINE since there are less APIs, the OS is simpler and not some moving target.
The PS3 is doing very well. There have been sporadic reports of issues, but consensus overwhelmingly suggests that the PS3 is a quality piece of kit that is reliable, quiet, well designed and of good quality.
Well not really. The XO is designed to be hacker resistant. The machine has a security system called bitfrost which is meant to prevent the machine from working if it is stolen, and to also prevent programs from obtaining certain combinations of rights, such as video camera & internet functionality at the same time. I suppose it would be possible to hack programs to work within that framework, but certainly not as easily as an Asus EEE PC for example where you can pretty much do anything you like.
I don't accept that for a second. Apple is allegedly a company which comes up with clever designs, yet not for batteries it seems. Instead they expect people either to throw away their otherwise fully functioning iPod / Air and buy a new one, or do without an iPod / Air for a week or more while its sent off to some expensive replacement program. And in the case of iPod you're not even guaranteed to get back the iPod you sent out.
I doubt it would add any significant thickness to the Air to add a battery compartment. Who says it even has to be accessed from the underside? It could be slotted in from the side or in some other way that might allow Apple to call it an innovation.
If this were any other company but Apple, people wouldn't be making excuses for them. Sealed in batteries suck and Apple's use of them is a cynical ploy to force people to upgrade a few years down the line when they die.
That assumes your device would be noticeably larger. My Nokia 6300 manages to be exactly the same thickness as an iPhone and has a similar metallic backplate. Yet the plate is removable and so is the battery. Nokia managed it with a few clips and a few connectors, hardly things that would noticeably affect the size of a device.
Why is it that Apple, so-called masters of design cannot manage the same feat? Why do they continue to seal in batteries when it is clearly something people do not like?
The reason likely has far more to do with the fact that sealing in batteries encourages people to throw away an otherwise perfectly working device and buy a new one. Apples own battery replacement service is laughable - it's expensive, requires you send away your iPod, doesn't save your songs and doesn't even guarantee you'll get the same iPod back (so its too bad if yours is decorated or engraved). The service too seems to be priced and designed to discourage people from servicing their iPods and just throw them away.
Let's hope its not called Wolf-Biederman
And why would a regular MacBook not be any of these things?
I was making that comparison to the first remark concerning the iPod Nano. But certainly there is zero excuse for sealing the battery into the laptop either. Adding a hatch for a battery would not make any significant space demands on the laptop or on its design. Phones manage to be thinner than this thing and still allow access to the battery. At worst the battery could be accessible via a screwplate on the underside. Or if Apple were half the designers people imagine they were, they could do something clever such as hide it under the keyboard or make it click into place from the side. They just chose the most lucrative way of doing it, knowing full well that the poor saps who buy this laptop will be captives when their battery dies out on them and they need it replaced or end up buying a whole new machine again.
I haven't had any issues firing up email or a web browser at the same time. And if I did, well there's a hatch underneath to double or quadruple the memory. 1Gb would set me back $24. The device also has an SDHC slot so you can take movies on the road with you. I've loaded up an SD card with videos for my toddler to watch while we're on holiday soon. It is certainly space limited, but I can't say it's a big deal in my experience, and if it were, there are lots of USB storage options. As for market interest, Asus sold 350,000 of them in 2007 alone (it launched at the end of October), so I'd say they're proving very popular. It's a cheap, tiny, functional laptop perfect for coffee shops, plane clip trays, trains, lecture halls etc. It cuts straight into the traditional market for small laptops, which includes Apple's.
The Apple TV itself seems like a turd of a device. It's amazing its taken them this long to figure that requiring a user to sync an Apple TV to a PC / Mac is a stupid idea. Now they've fixed it the Apple TV is moderately usable, but it still doesn't do anything besides act as a dumb client to iTMS. It doesn't even play games, act as a PVR, DVDs or Blu ray discs. 720p only is pretty crap too. Its competitors have more features for not much more. Asking $229 for an Apple TV (and soon $299 for new model?) is just too much. An XBox 360 offers movie rentals, and happens to be a games console too for not much more. So does the PS3 and is only $100 more which includes full multimedia playback including Blu Ray and probably rentals sometime this year. Or a Tivo that is a PVR and offers Amazon Unbox. It wouldn't surprise me if the PS3 teams up with Amazon Unbox before long.
I think Apple enjoyed being a monopoly for far too long, and they simply don't have the clout they did. It's clear that lots of movie rental services are already up or soon to appear. Apple is entering a crowded market with fairly meh devices and I don't think they're going to get very far.