iTunes isn't a piece of consumer electronics. This isn't about compatibility with the iPod, it's about compatibility with iTunes.
It could be argued that Apple are illegally leveraging their monopoly on pre-installed apps on OSX to bolster their near monopoly in the (hardware) MP3 player market.
The only problem with this is that the market share that Apple has in computers is pretty small. Yes, in regards to their Macs this argument could be made (but then again, most Mac users are going to buy iPods and everything else Apple). Then you have the ninety-ish percent of computers that are not running OSX and your argument no longer applies. It's important to remember that Apple's market dominance is really only in regards to their iPods.
So many people seem to assume that monopolies are illegal[...]
in the USA it they can be. IANAL but its called antitrust law and its something that has been protecting us for almost a century now.
The point is that a monopoly can be illegal but it is not by default illegal. If a company uses their market dominance to subvert competition then antitrust claims can be made. As of now I'm not quite seeing Apple abusing their market share to subvert competition (other than really good marketing and product design causing exorbitant amounts of people to buy iPods).
Until Ipod holds a 90% or larger share and they use that to illegally force people out of ANOTHER marketplace, you really dont know what you are talking about.
Um, the iPod has been hovering above and below that number for a while. Kinda Legitimate Proof.
Do you actually have to observe someone hitting you on the head with a hammer before you can notice that your head hurts? That might be a pretty rigorous form of hypothesis testing, but like the case of study of global warming, your approach is going to be both far more expensive and painful than it needs to be.
I'm not trying to dispute your argument about global warming but all signs seem to point to a need to be smashed on the head to know it hurts. Maybe it wasn't a hammer, but when you (the universal one) were a wee lad you might have smacked your head on something and it hurt. Then something else smacked you in the face and you were able to figure out that things hitting your head hurt and that you shouldn't let that happen anymore.
I see where you're coming from but nonetheless it kind of does matter. If it's caused by us then we need to change our ways in order to make this place a nice place to live. How are you going to justify to people that they need to change if you cannot prove that they're doing something wrong?
The whole point of this argument is that regardless of whether global climate change is happening there is no doubt that human activity (eg. coal fired power plants) produce a lot of pollution. And if there was a way (I mean, if we were willing) to reduce our pollution level not too many people would argue with that.
You know, some of us youngsters were brought up on the idea that calculators should only be used to multiply large numbers together and nothing else. I know that I've benefited greatly by having restricted calculators / computer use on exams that require a more fundamental understanding of physics than simply plugging numbers into equations.
And if you can't intuit physics then you probably shouldn't mess with it. I remember when my first physics teacher told me that calculus was nothing more than mathematics for the purpose of physics and all of a sudden calculus made so much more sense, taking mathematics and equating it to physics and the real world just seemed to simplify the whole thing.
It's hard being #1. But seriously, when you take how big a game Texans talk you don't even come close to what Californian actually have. I love my state.
Why presume they have a function? Evolution weeds out costly features. If fingerprints have little cost, it is wrong to assume they necessarily exist to serve some specific purpose.
Yet there's no reason to assume that they didn't hold a purpose. There's really no way to prove that they held no purpose, but it is possible to test with some certainty whether they had a particular purpose (such as improved grip). Maybe when there's no more hypotheses for what fingerprints could be useful for scientists will assign them to the barrel of "useless anomalies that have no purpose other than to keep scientists employed."
Speed limits are not law, the signs are mere recommendations of speed. What is being enforced is the traffic officer's opinion that you are going over the safe speed for that area. It's a tricky thing, because even obeying all the signs on the road can still net you a speeding ticket.
They probably ought to be forbidden at this point from selling the phones at all. If people want to finance their phones that should be their own business.
I'm not going to go as far as you and say that they shouldn't be allowed to sell phones, but, like in the past when AT&T got the smack down from the FCC, they should be forbidden from keeping outside phones from competing in the market. This means no special deals on third party phones, no restrictions beyond requiring proper compatibility with the cell network. Is this going to happen? No. None of the carriers have enough market dominance to get the big stick, but they probably all deserve it.
Because saving a hundred bucks off the ~$1700 total is such a bargain?
Because every other phone costs nothing for two years. This is on par to news reporters bitching and moaning so much about bailed out companies wasting millions of dollars when they received tens of billions of dollars. You know when you take a bare minimum nationwide plan at AT&T and get a free phone it doesn't cost you nothing, it costs you $960. So that $1700 dollars is less than double the base plan for much more features. And $100 off of $1700 is a nice ~7%, not a bad discount.
Apple has been selling headphones with built-in microphones that can be squeezed to answer calls for a while now. Unlike the new shuffle, there's still that nifty screen so you can still use your own cans. I'm saying this under the assumption that Apple hasn't shut down the on screen answer button when you have headphones connected.
If everyones name was attached to their vote there would be a way to verify the election outcome. Are people really that ashamed of who they vote for? No one is getting executed or persecuted based on their vote.
Follow history much? How about your up for a promotion and your boss doesn't like the person you voted for so he gives the promotion to somebody else. How about the mob threatens to harass/beat up/kill your family if you don't vote for the right person. There's a reason voting is secret and that secrecy is essential to democracy. Without secrecy intimidation and coercion has, can and will occur in voting.
we'd have to acknowledge that even these complex systems sometimes require a few attempts before either being scrapped (as unworkable or too expensive) or before they are successful.
But are those attempts found out in the wild or in a testing phase (I'm honestly not sure, don't follow military history well enough)? If they are done in the wild then it's similar to electronic voting (though you're right, the voting machines' mistakes are pretty horrendous for the task) but if they're done in testing then so should electronic voting and they should keep testing them until they get it right.
With war machines, it's easy enough to determine that they aren't working: they don't fly, weapons don't detonate, etc.
And the chance that there's a remote kill switch in it that would disable all of your war machines. The government does/should check for those in their weapons and there's no excuse why they don't take the effort to do the same with electronic voting. And this lack of effort, combined with the simplicity and effectiveness of paper ballots (not punch ballots like in Florida and other states, just simple fill in the bubble ballots), means that there should be no electronic voting until people step up and make sure they are working correctly.
What it seems to me is that your saying you didn't enjoy your last phone as much because you had to read a manual that has a index.
I can't think of the last time I RTFM. My parents used to get so mad at me when we bought new TVs because I would just plug the yellow cable into the yellow hole. They always wanted to check the manual. If you're good at design you won't need a manual to use something that's intended for the user. This doesn't mean that you won't need a manual for fixing a car, but the guts of a car are not intended for the user. And the interface of a phone is intended for the user and my last blackberry was mostly intuitive, but there were still some features I never ended up using because I couldn't figure them out intuitively. I've never had that problem with my iPhone. Some people value features over intuitive ease of use, others have the exact opposite feeling, and plenty fall somewhere in the middle.
no sane person thinks $100 a month is a reasonable price for phone service, but they buy iPhones anyway.
Maybe that's because I only spend $75 a month. Considering what data plans used to cost the iPhone really isn't that expensive. Now, as competition increases the unlimited date rates aren't nearly as impressive as they were 2-3 years ago.
I don't think anyone's predicting the fall of Apple, but rather just stating the obvious.
People have been predicting the fall of Apple since at least the late '80s. Apple: Proudly going out of business for over 25 years. (or is it 30 years by now) Eventually the pundits will be right and then they can say, "I told you so"
There was a little bit in the 90's where most of those pundits probably felt pretty snarky.
And nobody is saying lets Yahoo that. Yahoo and MS might be around but Google dominates that market and has for a long time. They don't have an impenetrable product but until somebody steps up they'll maintain their market dominance beyond that MBA profs magical 2 year limit. The same goes with the iPod, despite all the howling from the/. crowd about product inferiority Apple has managed to maintain it's dominance of the market for quite a long time and it doesn't seem that anyone is coming in to take that from them. Again, they're not invincible, but they keep updating and making enough tweaks to their product that people keep coming back for more and nobody is really catching up. The fact is nobody can accurately predict the market, it's all just more and more educated guesses that can be trumped by somebody coming up with something truly fantastic.
Where's the "iPod killer"? Who's displacing Skype? Where's the auction site competing with eBay? Who's coming up to challenge Google, Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook? Some of these companies have been at the top of the heap for over a decade, with no serious competitor in sight.
I would say you're right on all of those except for Skype. And Skype is facing competition from Google which you already had on your list, so no biggie. I would say that the GP is missing the fact that Apple has the possibility to innovate beyond cutting costs. Nobody had thought of (or at least producing) a phone like the iPhone until Apple did it. Innovations are innovative because nobody thought of them beforehand and I'm hoping to see something spectacular (beyond cut & paste, for the love of God I've been waiting on that long enough) from Apple, but you never know, it might just be a dud of a WWDC.
why do they have to be held to a higher standard than everyone else?
Apple's entire marketing and business model are based on their products being better. Some companies base their businesses on having good products at cheap prices. Apple doesn't do that and if consumers don't have the opinion that Apple has far superior products then Apple will have to redesign their entire business model. Mercedes Benz had this problem when they decided to over expand their product portfolio. They were known for producing high quality "german engineered" cars that were significantly better than other manufacturers. Then they tripled their product line and quality fell and so did a lot of their market. They're now working on regaining that old allure. You can't sell your product for premium prices unless people view it as a premium product.
Yet I've NEVER heard a single self-described feminist clambering for the right to be drafted into military service.
Why would they? A feminist is someone who strives for the betterment of women and signing up for the draft doesn't appear to fall into that category. What you search for is the equalicist. They're terribly few and far between but if you ever see one confront a feminist it's well worth the watch.
I've never been to med school (can't deal with the dead bodies and insides and stuff) but yeah, the person who graduates with the lowest grades (or last in line, if you were being literal) is a doctor just the same as the one with the highest grades. Now, the better the student the better the residency but still, a doctor none the less. Make sure to keep that in your mind the next time you go in for surgery (or when the eye doctor puts that light ever so close to your eyes).
I would suggest taking philosophy courses for social science electives if they allow you.... Philosophy and a sense of direction, often errant is all you got at the borders of any field.
I agree with you that delving into a philosophy course or two is not a bad thing for any of us but I always found it amusing comparing myself (an engineer) to the philosophy majors. It was a knowledge and mind course, essentially, how can we be sure that what we know is true and justified. They would spend whole lectures debating over whether or not our physical senses were lying to us and I'm sitting there thinking, that's not important, it's what I can do with those sense that's important. It's just like in my field, science isn't what I concern myself with, but what I can do with what others have found in science is what matters to me. Not that science isn't important but taking that philosophy course really showed me that deep down I really am an engineer.
Slashdot Mirror
iTunes isn't a piece of consumer electronics. This isn't about compatibility with the iPod, it's about compatibility with iTunes.
It could be argued that Apple are illegally leveraging their monopoly on pre-installed apps on OSX to bolster their near monopoly in the (hardware) MP3 player market.
The only problem with this is that the market share that Apple has in computers is pretty small. Yes, in regards to their Macs this argument could be made (but then again, most Mac users are going to buy iPods and everything else Apple). Then you have the ninety-ish percent of computers that are not running OSX and your argument no longer applies. It's important to remember that Apple's market dominance is really only in regards to their iPods.
So many people seem to assume that monopolies are illegal[...]
in the USA it they can be. IANAL but its called antitrust law and its something that has been protecting us for almost a century now.
The point is that a monopoly can be illegal but it is not by default illegal. If a company uses their market dominance to subvert competition then antitrust claims can be made. As of now I'm not quite seeing Apple abusing their market share to subvert competition (other than really good marketing and product design causing exorbitant amounts of people to buy iPods).
Until Ipod holds a 90% or larger share and they use that to illegally force people out of ANOTHER marketplace, you really dont know what you are talking about.
Um, the iPod has been hovering above and below that number for a while. Kinda Legitimate Proof.
Do you actually have to observe someone hitting you on the head with a hammer before you can notice that your head hurts? That might be a pretty rigorous form of hypothesis testing, but like the case of study of global warming, your approach is going to be both far more expensive and painful than it needs to be.
I'm not trying to dispute your argument about global warming but all signs seem to point to a need to be smashed on the head to know it hurts. Maybe it wasn't a hammer, but when you (the universal one) were a wee lad you might have smacked your head on something and it hurt. Then something else smacked you in the face and you were able to figure out that things hitting your head hurt and that you shouldn't let that happen anymore.
I see where you're coming from but nonetheless it kind of does matter. If it's caused by us then we need to change our ways in order to make this place a nice place to live. How are you going to justify to people that they need to change if you cannot prove that they're doing something wrong?
The whole point of this argument is that regardless of whether global climate change is happening there is no doubt that human activity (eg. coal fired power plants) produce a lot of pollution. And if there was a way (I mean, if we were willing) to reduce our pollution level not too many people would argue with that.
You know, some of us youngsters were brought up on the idea that calculators should only be used to multiply large numbers together and nothing else. I know that I've benefited greatly by having restricted calculators / computer use on exams that require a more fundamental understanding of physics than simply plugging numbers into equations.
And if you can't intuit physics then you probably shouldn't mess with it. I remember when my first physics teacher told me that calculus was nothing more than mathematics for the purpose of physics and all of a sudden calculus made so much more sense, taking mathematics and equating it to physics and the real world just seemed to simplify the whole thing.
It's hard being #1. But seriously, when you take how big a game Texans talk you don't even come close to what Californian actually have. I love my state.
Why presume they have a function? Evolution weeds out costly features. If fingerprints have little cost, it is wrong to assume they necessarily exist to serve some specific purpose.
Yet there's no reason to assume that they didn't hold a purpose. There's really no way to prove that they held no purpose, but it is possible to test with some certainty whether they had a particular purpose (such as improved grip). Maybe when there's no more hypotheses for what fingerprints could be useful for scientists will assign them to the barrel of "useless anomalies that have no purpose other than to keep scientists employed."
Speed limits are not law, the signs are mere recommendations of speed. What is being enforced is the traffic officer's opinion that you are going over the safe speed for that area. It's a tricky thing, because even obeying all the signs on the road can still net you a speeding ticket.
They probably ought to be forbidden at this point from selling the phones at all. If people want to finance their phones that should be their own business.
I'm not going to go as far as you and say that they shouldn't be allowed to sell phones, but, like in the past when AT&T got the smack down from the FCC, they should be forbidden from keeping outside phones from competing in the market. This means no special deals on third party phones, no restrictions beyond requiring proper compatibility with the cell network. Is this going to happen? No. None of the carriers have enough market dominance to get the big stick, but they probably all deserve it.
Because saving a hundred bucks off the ~$1700 total is such a bargain?
Because every other phone costs nothing for two years. This is on par to news reporters bitching and moaning so much about bailed out companies wasting millions of dollars when they received tens of billions of dollars. You know when you take a bare minimum nationwide plan at AT&T and get a free phone it doesn't cost you nothing, it costs you $960. So that $1700 dollars is less than double the base plan for much more features. And $100 off of $1700 is a nice ~7%, not a bad discount.
Apple has been selling headphones with built-in microphones that can be squeezed to answer calls for a while now. Unlike the new shuffle, there's still that nifty screen so you can still use your own cans. I'm saying this under the assumption that Apple hasn't shut down the on screen answer button when you have headphones connected.
You can't discriminate against homos or minorities because its a crime. Why would discriminating based on voting be allowed or any different?
And that stops it from happening? Just because something's illegal doesn't mean it won't happen.
If everyones name was attached to their vote there would be a way to verify the election outcome. Are people really that ashamed of who they vote for? No one is getting executed or persecuted based on their vote.
Follow history much? How about your up for a promotion and your boss doesn't like the person you voted for so he gives the promotion to somebody else. How about the mob threatens to harass/beat up/kill your family if you don't vote for the right person. There's a reason voting is secret and that secrecy is essential to democracy. Without secrecy intimidation and coercion has, can and will occur in voting.
we'd have to acknowledge that even these complex systems sometimes require a few attempts before either being scrapped (as unworkable or too expensive) or before they are successful.
But are those attempts found out in the wild or in a testing phase (I'm honestly not sure, don't follow military history well enough)? If they are done in the wild then it's similar to electronic voting (though you're right, the voting machines' mistakes are pretty horrendous for the task) but if they're done in testing then so should electronic voting and they should keep testing them until they get it right.
With war machines, it's easy enough to determine that they aren't working: they don't fly, weapons don't detonate, etc.
And the chance that there's a remote kill switch in it that would disable all of your war machines. The government does/should check for those in their weapons and there's no excuse why they don't take the effort to do the same with electronic voting. And this lack of effort, combined with the simplicity and effectiveness of paper ballots (not punch ballots like in Florida and other states, just simple fill in the bubble ballots), means that there should be no electronic voting until people step up and make sure they are working correctly.
What it seems to me is that your saying you didn't enjoy your last phone as much because you had to read a manual that has a index.
I can't think of the last time I RTFM. My parents used to get so mad at me when we bought new TVs because I would just plug the yellow cable into the yellow hole. They always wanted to check the manual. If you're good at design you won't need a manual to use something that's intended for the user. This doesn't mean that you won't need a manual for fixing a car, but the guts of a car are not intended for the user. And the interface of a phone is intended for the user and my last blackberry was mostly intuitive, but there were still some features I never ended up using because I couldn't figure them out intuitively. I've never had that problem with my iPhone. Some people value features over intuitive ease of use, others have the exact opposite feeling, and plenty fall somewhere in the middle.
no sane person thinks $100 a month is a reasonable price for phone service, but they buy iPhones anyway.
Maybe that's because I only spend $75 a month. Considering what data plans used to cost the iPhone really isn't that expensive. Now, as competition increases the unlimited date rates aren't nearly as impressive as they were 2-3 years ago.
I don't think anyone's predicting the fall of Apple, but rather just stating the obvious.
People have been predicting the fall of Apple since at least the late '80s. Apple: Proudly going out of business for over 25 years. (or is it 30 years by now) Eventually the pundits will be right and then they can say, "I told you so"
There was a little bit in the 90's where most of those pundits probably felt pretty snarky.
Google, Yahoo and MS are direct competitors.
And nobody is saying lets Yahoo that. Yahoo and MS might be around but Google dominates that market and has for a long time. They don't have an impenetrable product but until somebody steps up they'll maintain their market dominance beyond that MBA profs magical 2 year limit. The same goes with the iPod, despite all the howling from the /. crowd about product inferiority Apple has managed to maintain it's dominance of the market for quite a long time and it doesn't seem that anyone is coming in to take that from them. Again, they're not invincible, but they keep updating and making enough tweaks to their product that people keep coming back for more and nobody is really catching up. The fact is nobody can accurately predict the market, it's all just more and more educated guesses that can be trumped by somebody coming up with something truly fantastic.
Where's the "iPod killer"? Who's displacing Skype? Where's the auction site competing with eBay? Who's coming up to challenge Google, Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook? Some of these companies have been at the top of the heap for over a decade, with no serious competitor in sight.
I would say you're right on all of those except for Skype. And Skype is facing competition from Google which you already had on your list, so no biggie. I would say that the GP is missing the fact that Apple has the possibility to innovate beyond cutting costs. Nobody had thought of (or at least producing) a phone like the iPhone until Apple did it. Innovations are innovative because nobody thought of them beforehand and I'm hoping to see something spectacular (beyond cut & paste, for the love of God I've been waiting on that long enough) from Apple, but you never know, it might just be a dud of a WWDC.
why do they have to be held to a higher standard than everyone else?
Apple's entire marketing and business model are based on their products being better. Some companies base their businesses on having good products at cheap prices. Apple doesn't do that and if consumers don't have the opinion that Apple has far superior products then Apple will have to redesign their entire business model. Mercedes Benz had this problem when they decided to over expand their product portfolio. They were known for producing high quality "german engineered" cars that were significantly better than other manufacturers. Then they tripled their product line and quality fell and so did a lot of their market. They're now working on regaining that old allure. You can't sell your product for premium prices unless people view it as a premium product.
Yet I've NEVER heard a single self-described feminist clambering for the right to be drafted into military service.
Why would they? A feminist is someone who strives for the betterment of women and signing up for the draft doesn't appear to fall into that category. What you search for is the equalicist. They're terribly few and far between but if you ever see one confront a feminist it's well worth the watch.
I've never been to med school (can't deal with the dead bodies and insides and stuff) but yeah, the person who graduates with the lowest grades (or last in line, if you were being literal) is a doctor just the same as the one with the highest grades. Now, the better the student the better the residency but still, a doctor none the less. Make sure to keep that in your mind the next time you go in for surgery (or when the eye doctor puts that light ever so close to your eyes).
I would suggest taking philosophy courses for social science electives if they allow you.... Philosophy and a sense of direction, often errant is all you got at the borders of any field.
I agree with you that delving into a philosophy course or two is not a bad thing for any of us but I always found it amusing comparing myself (an engineer) to the philosophy majors. It was a knowledge and mind course, essentially, how can we be sure that what we know is true and justified. They would spend whole lectures debating over whether or not our physical senses were lying to us and I'm sitting there thinking, that's not important, it's what I can do with those sense that's important. It's just like in my field, science isn't what I concern myself with, but what I can do with what others have found in science is what matters to me. Not that science isn't important but taking that philosophy course really showed me that deep down I really am an engineer.