Apple has always dressed up average, underpowered personal computer components, slapped a white case around them, dropped a proprietary OS on them and sold them at three times the price to people who'll gladly pay three times the price for a computer because it's from Apple and it's "Blueberry" or whatever fruit flavour is popular.
Proprietary OS? (I guess this technically had a proprietary OS, but I don't think it really fits with what you mean.)
Man, I love this slashdot attitude. Apparently women are incapable of any rational thought, and their willingness to participate in sex is directly proportional to how close your gift came to being exactly what they asked for.
Do any of you have anything more than theoretical knowledge on this subject?
I've averaged one or two round-trip international flights a year for the past five years or so, and I have never been asked anything like this by the airline except for the one trip on El Al. I have been asked this by customs agents, but that's not what happened here.
I am sure you would feel the same way when I go visit you.
I don't. As far as I'm concerned, the "free" in "it's a free country" applies to citizens and visitors alike. Your ideas are way too draconian for my tastes.
Funny, this is actually one of the most effective (actually likely to catch people who are up to no good) and least intrusive (nothing gets written down and saved for later) airline security techniques out there. If I could trade in all of the stupid bullshit that I have to go through now and replace it with a simple fifteen-minute interrogation, I'd be all for that.
Restrict every person to a single child. Since it takes two people to make a child, this ends up producing a single child for every two existing people. If every single person has their allotted child, and "pop" is the current population, you get an infinite series like this:
pop + pop/2 + pop/4 + pop/8 +......
Which as everybody knows works out to exactly 2pop. This way, everybody can have a kid and you don't get incredible overpopulation.
This kind of control would require strict enforcement and a fairly totalitarian state, and so it may not be desirable, but you don't need to end or limit reproduction to the extent that you suggest.
I take it you are one of them. Can you explain to me the difference between pirating an MP3 and pirating a piece of software and how it applies to this discussion?
I really hope it's the fabled PBG5. I'm going to get a Mac for my girl in a few months. Right now the plan is to get her a nice little iBook, but if a PBG5 becomes available, I might just trade up and let her have my PBG4.... I kind of doubt it, though. We just got G5 iMacs, and I imagine a G5 PowerBook would be a zillion times harder still.
It's a computer the size of a smallish CD case that you can take home, plug in, turn on, and be surfing the web two minutes later, with no fear of viruses or spyware. It's a half-toaster computer that Just Works. That's revolutionary to me.
The iBook is indeed a good deal, but there's still room for PowerBooks. I bought one last summer, and it was fully worth the premium. The screen alone makes it worth it to me. Toss in more ports, a significantly better video card, a larger hard drive, a PC card slot (which I'll probably never use) and the ability to upgrade the RAM to 2GB and you have a winner. The fact that the PowerBook comes with Airport and Bluetooth "for free" also reduces the premium and makes the PB more attractive.
Still, I agree that they do seem to be lagging. I was kind of surprised that they didn't get speedbumped at MWSF.
While companies put the "warranty void if this sticker is broken," such stickers would be easy to successfully challenge in court.
This will be cold comfort to the guy when Evil Computers refuses warranty service because he opens the case, and his only recourse is to take it to court.
Just because it's legally mandated doesn't mean a company will actually do it. There are surely some shady PC companies that will try, and try very hard, to snow you with this kind of thing. The point of the original post is that Apple is not one of these.
Jeez, read the rest of my message. I am the programmer who lost the sale of a program. If you don't consider that to be equivalent, then I don't know what else to tell you, but it sure seems the same to me.
When somebody posts pirated serial numbers or cracks for my software, I am annoyed. When somebody stole my wallet, I was extremely pissed off. Taking money from somebody's bank account isn't on the same level as downloading an MP3, and I say this as somebody who makes a living writing software.
If I'm getting tips on business strategy, you're damned right I'll listen to Microsoft. You'd have to be insane to ignore the richest company on the planet.
Look, I'm not saying that Apple is good or right or wonderful, I'm simply saying that they're successful and this generally means that they know what they're doing. Would you say that Microsoft is incompetent or that they don't know what their customers want?
Thanks for the pictures link, those are the first decent shots of the plane that I've seen.
Unfortunately, I get the impression that this Airbus will live up to its name. I fear that any pretense of it being a "liner" will be completely gone, and that its mission will simply be that of a bus, shuttling people from one place to another, and about as enjoyable to ride. I would love to be wrong, and I hope I am.
If I read this correctly, the direct route from NYC to Bombay would fly over Pakistan, over or close to Afghanistan, and over a bunch of other 'Stans before reaching Russia. I would not be surprised if one or more of these countries wasn't very happy with the idea of overflight, or if the airlines were simply wary about same. Avoiding them would add a great deal of distance to the flight.
Compare this with US security policy, where in an airport you will get wanded and patted down simply because you refused their "recommendation" to remove your shoes.
Yes, this behavior is completely insane, but it's also very appropriate to the modern-day United States.
Other than entertainment value, gambling has no product.
Yeah, and other than physical goods, agriculture has no product either. Entertainment value is the product. Do you look at movies, music, books, computer games, and magazines in the same way?
Given the fact that a pyramid scheme is guaranteed to leave the vast majority of the people who get sucked into it with absolutely nothing, do you actually expect you have a good chance to get your free stuff? What makes you luckier than the next guy?
But back on point, Apple needs to stop these lock-in practices, they tried to do it in the early days of the desktop computer, and now they are again trying to do it now. And like the late 80's and early 90's Apple started out real strong, because they had an amazing product, but soon people realized that there is nothing out there for them when choosing Apple. I beleive you will see that in the next couple years with iPod.
If I have to decide between listening to you, and listening to the company that owns three quarters of the online music market and three quarters of the portable music player market, I think I'll listen to the company.
Your history is kind of wacky. Apple's heydey in the computer market was the early 80s with the Apple II line. The Apple II was always a very open platform. The Mac, on the other hand, never owned a huge part of the market. The late 80s and early 90s were decent for Apple, but they never had anything like the kind of position that the iPod has. They never started out strong with a closed platform and got stomped, so I don't see how the iPod would mirror anything else they've done.
Maybe you're right and people want "open" hardware. Two things come to mind, though. The first is, how are any of the competitors any more "open" than the iPod? They all let you play raw MP3s that you can get from anywhere. The iPod lets you buy from iTMS and nowhere else that has DRM, the others let you buy from other places but not iTMS. Is being locked in to a handful of minor players less grievous than being locked in to a single major player? They all have DRM, they all restrict what you can do, and none of them will work with an arbitrary music player.
The second thing that comes to mind is this: 400,000 people a week would seem to disagree with your assertion. Maybe you're right and they'll change their minds, but so far I don't see any evidence.
I love that kind of oxymoron. In one sentence, he says he doesn't care. In the very next sentence, he calls them narrow-minded and says that he pities them. Which is it? They're kind of mutually exclusive.
From what I've seen, anybody who loudly pronounces that they don't care is usually trying to cover up the fact that they do. Piling on insults and "pity" just clinches it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, because all women are irrational, inflexible bitches who don't understand the value of money and will use any thriftiness as grounds for divorce.
Apple has always dressed up average, underpowered personal computer components, slapped a white case around them, dropped a proprietary OS on them and sold them at three times the price to people who'll gladly pay three times the price for a computer because it's from Apple and it's "Blueberry" or whatever fruit flavour is popular.
Proprietary OS? (I guess this technically had a proprietary OS, but I don't think it really fits with what you mean.)
Average?
Underpowered?
Three times the price?
Man, I love this slashdot attitude. Apparently women are incapable of any rational thought, and their willingness to participate in sex is directly proportional to how close your gift came to being exactly what they asked for.
Do any of you have anything more than theoretical knowledge on this subject?
I've averaged one or two round-trip international flights a year for the past five years or so, and I have never been asked anything like this by the airline except for the one trip on El Al. I have been asked this by customs agents, but that's not what happened here.
Can I get the source code for whatever program you used to generate that post? It was brilliant!
I am sure you would feel the same way when I go visit you.
I don't. As far as I'm concerned, the "free" in "it's a free country" applies to citizens and visitors alike. Your ideas are way too draconian for my tastes.
Funny, this is actually one of the most effective (actually likely to catch people who are up to no good) and least intrusive (nothing gets written down and saved for later) airline security techniques out there. If I could trade in all of the stupid bullshit that I have to go through now and replace it with a simple fifteen-minute interrogation, I'd be all for that.
Come on, do you really think anybody is going to click a link to a .jpg hosted in a .cx domain? I thought everybody knew better than that by now.
That's not true. The solution is pretty simple.
......
Restrict every person to a single child. Since it takes two people to make a child, this ends up producing a single child for every two existing people. If every single person has their allotted child, and "pop" is the current population, you get an infinite series like this:
pop + pop/2 + pop/4 + pop/8 +
Which as everybody knows works out to exactly 2pop. This way, everybody can have a kid and you don't get incredible overpopulation.
This kind of control would require strict enforcement and a fairly totalitarian state, and so it may not be desirable, but you don't need to end or limit reproduction to the extent that you suggest.
I take it you are one of them. Can you explain to me the difference between pirating an MP3 and pirating a piece of software and how it applies to this discussion?
I really hope it's the fabled PBG5. I'm going to get a Mac for my girl in a few months. Right now the plan is to get her a nice little iBook, but if a PBG5 becomes available, I might just trade up and let her have my PBG4.... I kind of doubt it, though. We just got G5 iMacs, and I imagine a G5 PowerBook would be a zillion times harder still.
There hasn't been a difference between "PC RAM" and "Mac RAM" for decades now. The Mac Mini takes standard PC2700 333MHz DDR SRAM.
It's a computer the size of a smallish CD case that you can take home, plug in, turn on, and be surfing the web two minutes later, with no fear of viruses or spyware. It's a half-toaster computer that Just Works. That's revolutionary to me.
The iBook is indeed a good deal, but there's still room for PowerBooks. I bought one last summer, and it was fully worth the premium. The screen alone makes it worth it to me. Toss in more ports, a significantly better video card, a larger hard drive, a PC card slot (which I'll probably never use) and the ability to upgrade the RAM to 2GB and you have a winner. The fact that the PowerBook comes with Airport and Bluetooth "for free" also reduces the premium and makes the PB more attractive.
Still, I agree that they do seem to be lagging. I was kind of surprised that they didn't get speedbumped at MWSF.
While companies put the "warranty void if this sticker is broken," such stickers would be easy to successfully challenge in court.
This will be cold comfort to the guy when Evil Computers refuses warranty service because he opens the case, and his only recourse is to take it to court.
Just because it's legally mandated doesn't mean a company will actually do it. There are surely some shady PC companies that will try, and try very hard, to snow you with this kind of thing. The point of the original post is that Apple is not one of these.
Jeez, read the rest of my message. I am the programmer who lost the sale of a program. If you don't consider that to be equivalent, then I don't know what else to tell you, but it sure seems the same to me.
When somebody posts pirated serial numbers or cracks for my software, I am annoyed. When somebody stole my wallet, I was extremely pissed off. Taking money from somebody's bank account isn't on the same level as downloading an MP3, and I say this as somebody who makes a living writing software.
If I'm getting tips on business strategy, you're damned right I'll listen to Microsoft. You'd have to be insane to ignore the richest company on the planet.
Look, I'm not saying that Apple is good or right or wonderful, I'm simply saying that they're successful and this generally means that they know what they're doing. Would you say that Microsoft is incompetent or that they don't know what their customers want?
Thanks for the pictures link, those are the first decent shots of the plane that I've seen.
Unfortunately, I get the impression that this Airbus will live up to its name. I fear that any pretense of it being a "liner" will be completely gone, and that its mission will simply be that of a bus, shuttling people from one place to another, and about as enjoyable to ride. I would love to be wrong, and I hope I am.
If I read this correctly, the direct route from NYC to Bombay would fly over Pakistan, over or close to Afghanistan, and over a bunch of other 'Stans before reaching Russia. I would not be surprised if one or more of these countries wasn't very happy with the idea of overflight, or if the airlines were simply wary about same. Avoiding them would add a great deal of distance to the flight.
Compare this with US security policy, where in an airport you will get wanded and patted down simply because you refused their "recommendation" to remove your shoes.
Yes, this behavior is completely insane, but it's also very appropriate to the modern-day United States.
Other than entertainment value, gambling has no product.
Yeah, and other than physical goods, agriculture has no product either. Entertainment value is the product. Do you look at movies, music, books, computer games, and magazines in the same way?
Given the fact that a pyramid scheme is guaranteed to leave the vast majority of the people who get sucked into it with absolutely nothing, do you actually expect you have a good chance to get your free stuff? What makes you luckier than the next guy?
But back on point, Apple needs to stop these lock-in practices, they tried to do it in the early days of the desktop computer, and now they are again trying to do it now. And like the late 80's and early 90's Apple started out real strong, because they had an amazing product, but soon people realized that there is nothing out there for them when choosing Apple. I beleive you will see that in the next couple years with iPod.
If I have to decide between listening to you, and listening to the company that owns three quarters of the online music market and three quarters of the portable music player market, I think I'll listen to the company.
Your history is kind of wacky. Apple's heydey in the computer market was the early 80s with the Apple II line. The Apple II was always a very open platform. The Mac, on the other hand, never owned a huge part of the market. The late 80s and early 90s were decent for Apple, but they never had anything like the kind of position that the iPod has. They never started out strong with a closed platform and got stomped, so I don't see how the iPod would mirror anything else they've done.
Maybe you're right and people want "open" hardware. Two things come to mind, though. The first is, how are any of the competitors any more "open" than the iPod? They all let you play raw MP3s that you can get from anywhere. The iPod lets you buy from iTMS and nowhere else that has DRM, the others let you buy from other places but not iTMS. Is being locked in to a handful of minor players less grievous than being locked in to a single major player? They all have DRM, they all restrict what you can do, and none of them will work with an arbitrary music player.
The second thing that comes to mind is this: 400,000 people a week would seem to disagree with your assertion. Maybe you're right and they'll change their minds, but so far I don't see any evidence.
I love that kind of oxymoron. In one sentence, he says he doesn't care. In the very next sentence, he calls them narrow-minded and says that he pities them. Which is it? They're kind of mutually exclusive.
From what I've seen, anybody who loudly pronounces that they don't care is usually trying to cover up the fact that they do. Piling on insults and "pity" just clinches it.