Why doesn't a publisher have a right to choose not to sell somewhere/to someone?
So it's OK to steal it, because you can't buy it? So what if the publisher sells it to one person in South America? It was available, so now it's not OK?
This car is a plug in car - it doesn't generate it's own electricity.
I guess that's for some kind of efficiency or to make the manufacture of the gearbox / differentials. It's kind of too bad. With an engine that large, it should have some spare capacity under normal driving to keep the battery charged. If there was someone I expected to make a car that really used the electric motors to make the car really take off and be able to recharge that ability, it's someone like Porche. I wonder if they at least use something like regenerative braking to help lighten the load a little on the brake discs.
Their customers are willing to pay the premium and understand the idea of a hybrid that doesn't get incredible mileage, but uses that ability to boost performance. That's not really a strategy I'd ever expect to see from Toyota/Honda/Ford/GM.
The iPad is large though; I can easily surf on my MacBook Pro for an hour or two without too much problem. Even then, it's usually from bending my wrist, not the finger movement. Since you'd just let you hand sit there and only move you fingers a little, I think it could work pretty well.
The higher your typing:mouse ratio, the better it would be. If you had to do a lot of mousing throughout the day, I'd image a real mouse would work better.
The gestures would be a serious plus. Being able to scroll with the two fingers, zoom in, out, trigger expose, etc would all be quite nice. Also, if you had wrist problems, not having to move the mouse around would probably help.
The gestures become second nature on a MacBook(Pro).
I could see it. I'm not sure for me. For my work desktop it might be nice. But at home, if I still had a desktop, a big part of it's reason for being would be gaming, and you need a real mouse for shooters and many other games.
Why can't that data be stored in a little SQLite database (or some such) in the PDF file? Why does it need to be able to write other files on my filesystem? Why does it need to be able to write to My Documents?
I'm on OS X, so I use Preview (built in), and it's amazing. It looks great, and it's fast as heck. Because of this I was able to go a long time without having to use Adobe Reader.
Then I ran into a PDF at work (Windows boxes) and suddenly remember the word of pain and slowness that Reader caused. I now use FoxIt on Windows. It's not perfect (the experience of using Preview is much smoother), but it doesn't act like it owns my computer.
I recently discovered that not only do PDFs on Snow Leopard have icons that look like their first pages, but when you mouse over them two little buttons pop up and you can turn pages on the icon so you can easily see if a small PDF contains a specific chart without having to open preview or quicklook.
Some Mac blogger wrote a little while ago that if it wasn't for Preview, Mac users would have abandoned PDFs years ago as slow and bloated (the impression Reader leaves on both Mac and PC). Between Preview and the built in Print to PDF support, you forget how obnoxious PDFs can be on other platforms. MS should make a PDF reader and embed it into 7 SP2. It has to be better than Reader, and 95%+ of users don't use the fancy form-filling auto calculation Javascript magic stuff.
Heh. Because watching Mike sitting in front of a monitor all day, with his brand of narration/commentary, on a bunch of stuff that Discovery can't show or even possibly talk about given the subject matter and their audience would be great to watch.
That wouldn't make for very good TV.
I'm sure it's a dirty job (I certainly wouldn't want to do it), but I'd imagine there are quite a few dirty jobs that Discovery just wouldn't be willing to air. Heck, they've aired some stuff (like the episode where he castrates goats) that I couldn't believe they aired.
for instance, has anybody else ever wondered what would happen if one were to crop-dust a heavily populated area with a suitably light-stabilized LSD solution?
That's why I put "authentication" in there. It's not an ideal choice of words, I wasn't sure what else to call it. All three bricks have been from Dell, the official brick for that laptop. But they get mad (for some reason) and decide to stop reporting that they can meet the wattage requirements after running for a few minutes and the computer shuts down because of it. He's been through a motherboard replacement to try to fix this problem as well. It's been good for a while, but it has a habit of running for a few months before conking out again.
But any validation that gets put in can easily mean pulling the ink cartridge bit where non-genuine OEM parts can be locked out, even when they may be perfectly fine. So 3rd parties have to license the chip from the OEM, so the OEM can still keep prices artificially high.
Also, a standardized connector would let third parties come in and start making accessories and replacement bricks for a lot less than the highway robbery prices that the brand names charge.
That's exactly why I don't think it will happen on name brand PCs (Dell/HP/Lenovo). It's a great way to increase margins when someone wants an extra power brick and has to pay $80 for it. The fact you can't rely on your ability to buy a 3rd party brick that will work only helps that fact.
In fact, my friend in the cubicle next to me has a very nice Dell desktop replacement laptop. He's been through 2 powerbricks (now on his 3rd) because the DRM/authentication in the bricks would fail and thus the laptop would refuse to draw full power, preventing it from playing games and running at a decent speed. So even if the connector is standardized... you still might not be able to use a 3rd party adapter.
As for MagSafe, I love it. It's fantastic and I've tripped over the cord at least a dozen times in the last few years and it always pops off safely. I'd also assume Apple has some kind of patent and so no one else can use it.
Eleanor is justifying her own behavior, clearly. I enjoyed the "I'm not saying you're not right but you're totally wrong" line. I actually though his "photocopy my book" argument was quite compelling.
I will say, I understand Eleanor a bit. Sheet music seems amazingly expensive to me. Why does it cost $4 to download and print sheet music?
I can buy a large orchestration of a song, made with 100 musicians and a 50 person choir, for $1. But the sheet music, which is reduced to be played on one or two instruments, costs $4? That just seems off. The only good argument I could see would be to make up for people performing the music, but that requires a separate license payment (doesn't it?), so that can't be it. Actually, a song for Rock Band often costs ~$3. That's a full, high quality 5.1 sound, in 5 tracks, translated into 4 note custom note charts in 4 difficulty levels. That's a ton more work than went into the sheet music, but it's still 25% less money.
Then there's the fact that the sheet music is a byproduct of the process of making music. To make the "easy piano" version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" takes extra work, but the full version of the guitar part was already written for the song. By the same token, do you think Elton John never would have produced sheet music for "Candle in the Wind" if he didn't want to sell the sheet music? He would have made it either way.
I like tinkering around on my keyboard, and playing simple songs. But sheet music is expensive, when you can find it. Can you even find piano arrangements of video game themes/music in stores?
He certainly deserves to be paid, I'm just not sure the price is in line with the relative value... which is why I don't buy much sheet music (and when I do, it's usually large collections).
It does work very well. I have an iPhone 4 (got it on launch day) and I can replicate the "signal loss" by bridging those pieces of metal. I do lose bars (so my signal wasn't fantastic to begin with).
I've been watching this whole thing with interest. I've seen a ton of reports that the 4 is better at keeping calls when in a low signal area, at that seems to match my experience. It's a flaw, but really it's not that big. I've learned to keep my left hand (which I usually hold my phone with) about 1/2cm higher, and I don't have problems. A bumper would almost completely fix it.
Mostly, this is a huge black eye on Apple's part. The phone works very well, and I'd imagine the problem will only really effect you if you live in an area with poor reception (which I don't seem to). If there wasn't such a simple physical action people could do to trigger this (say you had to hold you hand over the back in a certain way), I don't think we'd hear nearly so much about this. It' just so easy for people to trigger and associate with an action, it seems much worse than with other phones that drop your calls where you can't be sure why your signal is being lowered.
I like my phone. I won't return it, it works fine for me. It's kind of sad to watch. Consumer Reports says there is no reason not to buy. I'll admit if I didn't have one launch day, I would probably wait a little longer to see what happened. But I'm in love with my retina display.
Basically: much ado about something that's not that bad. See chart.
Also, for a good humorous take on all this, I highly recommend John Gruber's hilarious translation of Apple's "apology" letter.
He was right that the government basically telling BP "Start coughing up without a being found guilty because we said so or we'll might start fining you/killing your licenses" should be illegal. Due process exists, and it should be followed. That's extortion.
He was an idiot for phrasing it as an apology to BP.
The idea that the government is setting a precedent that it can interfere with a business like that worries me. The BP case is really clear cut. Even if it was the contractor that messed up, BP was supposed to keep tabs on them and owned the well. But what happens when some large company gets accused of something else (say the Vioxx lawsuits) and the government starts pressuring them to pay out before any legal decision? What happens if it turns out, like power line cancer and thimerosol autism, that the company isn't at fault? How do they get all that money back?
I understand getting people money faster instead of the 20 year Exxon-Valdeeze thing, but this seemed so close to coercion.
Re:The iPhone and finally walk and chew gum!
on
iOS 4 Releases Today
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Has the lack of multi-tasking annoyed many iPhone users?
I've had my 3G for 2 years, but there have only been a handful of times when I would have liked multitasking, mostly for switching between a webpage and something else (like SMS). When I use my phone, I'm often playing a game that I want to focus on.
Outside of Skype and last.fm type things, has this been a big frustration for many iPhone owners?
I'll be glad to get the feature when I get a iPhone 4, but it hasn't been a deal breaker by any means.
That's the boat I'm in. I tend to jump on Apple updates, I like playing early adopter. But with my 3G I can't get Multitasking since I don't have enough RAM.
That leave me with only a few features. Combined mailboxes is nice, but I only have one account so that doesn't matter. Faces in Pictures is cute, but not a big deal. Folders is kind of nice, but I only have about 2.5 full pages worth of apps, so it's not necessary for me. Background images? Cute, but unnecessary.
Updated apps using new iOS4 APIs would be the main reason to get this update for me, but since I've got an iPhone 4 on order, that issue will soon me moot. If I had a 3GS (like my parents and many of my friends), I'd jump on it. For a 3G... it's kind of 'eh'.
And all this ignores that in the last two years, there have only been a tiny handful of times when not having multitasking has annoyed me.
I don't mind Apple's policies at all. If they don't want to sell certain kinds of things, that's fine. I would actually prefer they get rid of more of the ultra-juvenile stuff, like the fart apps.
The biggest problem Apple has is how arbitrary this stuff feels. An app was OK for 3 revisions, but the new bug fix, which doesn't change content, is suddenly bad because of something that's been there for quite a while. There is no good checklist that you can look through and be reasonably certain that your app will be OK. Once your app is approved, that's no proof that it won't suddenly be found to be running afoul of some rule later.
For some apps, this isn't as much of a problem. If you make a little top-down racing game (like Super Off Road), or a simple utility like a sextant, it's unlikely someone will complain later about some small bit of content. But Apple isn't going to read every app submitted with content the size of a large novel (actually, iBooks should help with that, that's where these should be going now). But if your app isn't clear cut, you never really know if you're OK.
"The Official 10 Page Checklist With 200 Questions for App Approval" being published would be a big improvement. I don't think there is anything like that internally in Apple, which is how this stuff happens.
Yes, they are the old franchises, but that doesn't bother me with Nintendo. They change each game. The Kirby game looks different from previous Kirby games. It has the same characters, but it looks different gameplay wise. The 3DS Paper Mario may be a new Paper Mario game, but it's a new story. Kid Icarus may be an old franchise, but this is the first game since the GB game a long time ago.
Still, I like seeing 5-10 games that seem like real games, as opposed to seeing a handful of things that look a bit like tech demos made into games.
That was not my intent. My intent was "Microsoft is releasing a copy of what Nintendo did 4 years ago, Nintendo is releasing new games (based on old friends)."
It was meant to imply a lack of innovation and big exclusive releases. I don't mind that Nintendo uses the same characters over and over, because they tend to make each game it's own, special. They don't do a ton of "add a new map, +1 the number, sell a ton." They add some innovation and do it once a console cycle.
As a 360 owner, I'm not excited by Natal/Kinetic. I don't have a ton of space for dancing around on camera, and I'm not interested in paying $150 for the ability to do so. If there was one or two big games that really showed what it could do, then I might be interested. As it is, they seem more like the EyeToy demo "games" that were released. It's fine if MS can prove me wrong, but I would have wanted to see that at the press conference. Basically, they don't seem to have shown much more than they did a few months ago.
If I was making the "Microsoft is just releasing old games again" thing, I would have made a comment like "What, no Halo 14?".
Nintendo is going their own way. Sony and MS seem to be aiming at where Nintendo was 2+ years ago.
There's a reason Nintendo is still in the video game industry 25 years after releasing the NES.
Microsoft: We have a camera, like the EyeToy, but newer! And a quieter console! And a copy of WiiSports and some other games.
Nintendo: New system! New DonkyKong! Pilotwings! Metroid! Kid Icarus! Nintendogs! GoldenEye! Massive 3rd party support! Zelda! Mario Sports! Kirby!
As I type this, Sony is just getting their conference started. If they had any hopes of getting some thunder, they're in deep trouble. Short of announcing some really compelling games for the Move and an introductory bundle price of $40 (not going to happen), they won't top Nintendo.
PS: That PSP Sony keeps claiming isn't dead? The one the PSP Go was supposed to show was "still in the game"? If the 3DS isn't the final nail in it's coffin, nothing will be.
I watched the ArsTechnica live coverage. Just about everything they announced, I wanted. The one exception was WiiParty, but I'm sure there are tons of people who will buy it.
The Netflix DVD thing is because of a special deal MS has with Netflix for exclusivity. It will expire in a year or so. That's why the 360 doesn't need a disc, but the Wii and PS3 do.
It's an OK Blu-Ray player. It supports the full latest spec, and has enough power to be upgraded to future specs, which is a plus. The interface is better than the old PS2 DVD interface, but not by much. My guess is it wouldn't be that bad if I shelled out for the remote control.
But Blu-Ray isn't compelling enough for me to spend the extra $5 a month or whatever to enable it on my NetFlix account.
Slashdot Mirror
Why doesn't a publisher have a right to choose not to sell somewhere/to someone?
So it's OK to steal it, because you can't buy it? So what if the publisher sells it to one person in South America? It was available, so now it's not OK?
That argument doesn't seem to hold up.
I guess that's for some kind of efficiency or to make the manufacture of the gearbox / differentials. It's kind of too bad. With an engine that large, it should have some spare capacity under normal driving to keep the battery charged. If there was someone I expected to make a car that really used the electric motors to make the car really take off and be able to recharge that ability, it's someone like Porche. I wonder if they at least use something like regenerative braking to help lighten the load a little on the brake discs.
Their customers are willing to pay the premium and understand the idea of a hybrid that doesn't get incredible mileage, but uses that ability to boost performance. That's not really a strategy I'd ever expect to see from Toyota/Honda/Ford/GM.
The iPad is large though; I can easily surf on my MacBook Pro for an hour or two without too much problem. Even then, it's usually from bending my wrist, not the finger movement. Since you'd just let you hand sit there and only move you fingers a little, I think it could work pretty well.
The higher your typing:mouse ratio, the better it would be. If you had to do a lot of mousing throughout the day, I'd image a real mouse would work better.
I don't know, it was no Where In The World And Where In Time Is Stephen Colbert Going To Be In The Persian Gulf?.
I just loved the intro to that segment.
The gestures would be a serious plus. Being able to scroll with the two fingers, zoom in, out, trigger expose, etc would all be quite nice. Also, if you had wrist problems, not having to move the mouse around would probably help.
The gestures become second nature on a MacBook(Pro).
I could see it. I'm not sure for me. For my work desktop it might be nice. But at home, if I still had a desktop, a big part of it's reason for being would be gaming, and you need a real mouse for shooters and many other games.
Why can't that data be stored in a little SQLite database (or some such) in the PDF file? Why does it need to be able to write other files on my filesystem? Why does it need to be able to write to My Documents?
I'm on OS X, so I use Preview (built in), and it's amazing. It looks great, and it's fast as heck. Because of this I was able to go a long time without having to use Adobe Reader.
Then I ran into a PDF at work (Windows boxes) and suddenly remember the word of pain and slowness that Reader caused. I now use FoxIt on Windows. It's not perfect (the experience of using Preview is much smoother), but it doesn't act like it owns my computer.
I recently discovered that not only do PDFs on Snow Leopard have icons that look like their first pages, but when you mouse over them two little buttons pop up and you can turn pages on the icon so you can easily see if a small PDF contains a specific chart without having to open preview or quicklook.
Some Mac blogger wrote a little while ago that if it wasn't for Preview, Mac users would have abandoned PDFs years ago as slow and bloated (the impression Reader leaves on both Mac and PC). Between Preview and the built in Print to PDF support, you forget how obnoxious PDFs can be on other platforms. MS should make a PDF reader and embed it into 7 SP2. It has to be better than Reader, and 95%+ of users don't use the fancy form-filling auto calculation Javascript magic stuff.
Heh. Because watching Mike sitting in front of a monitor all day, with his brand of narration/commentary, on a bunch of stuff that Discovery can't show or even possibly talk about given the subject matter and their audience would be great to watch.
That wouldn't make for very good TV.
I'm sure it's a dirty job (I certainly wouldn't want to do it), but I'd imagine there are quite a few dirty jobs that Discovery just wouldn't be willing to air. Heck, they've aired some stuff (like the episode where he castrates goats) that I couldn't believe they aired.
That has basically happened in France, thanks to the CIA.
That's why I put "authentication" in there. It's not an ideal choice of words, I wasn't sure what else to call it. All three bricks have been from Dell, the official brick for that laptop. But they get mad (for some reason) and decide to stop reporting that they can meet the wattage requirements after running for a few minutes and the computer shuts down because of it. He's been through a motherboard replacement to try to fix this problem as well. It's been good for a while, but it has a habit of running for a few months before conking out again.
But any validation that gets put in can easily mean pulling the ink cartridge bit where non-genuine OEM parts can be locked out, even when they may be perfectly fine. So 3rd parties have to license the chip from the OEM, so the OEM can still keep prices artificially high.
That's exactly why I don't think it will happen on name brand PCs (Dell/HP/Lenovo). It's a great way to increase margins when someone wants an extra power brick and has to pay $80 for it. The fact you can't rely on your ability to buy a 3rd party brick that will work only helps that fact.
In fact, my friend in the cubicle next to me has a very nice Dell desktop replacement laptop. He's been through 2 powerbricks (now on his 3rd) because the DRM/authentication in the bricks would fail and thus the laptop would refuse to draw full power, preventing it from playing games and running at a decent speed. So even if the connector is standardized... you still might not be able to use a 3rd party adapter.
As for MagSafe, I love it. It's fantastic and I've tripped over the cord at least a dozen times in the last few years and it always pops off safely. I'd also assume Apple has some kind of patent and so no one else can use it.
Your MacBook isn't an ATX desktop.
Isn't Nokia moving to MeeGo for their premier phones? Even the guy who runs a big Symbian fan site has given up.
Eleanor is justifying her own behavior, clearly. I enjoyed the "I'm not saying you're not right but you're totally wrong" line. I actually though his "photocopy my book" argument was quite compelling.
I will say, I understand Eleanor a bit. Sheet music seems amazingly expensive to me. Why does it cost $4 to download and print sheet music?
I can buy a large orchestration of a song, made with 100 musicians and a 50 person choir, for $1. But the sheet music, which is reduced to be played on one or two instruments, costs $4? That just seems off. The only good argument I could see would be to make up for people performing the music, but that requires a separate license payment (doesn't it?), so that can't be it. Actually, a song for Rock Band often costs ~$3. That's a full, high quality 5.1 sound, in 5 tracks, translated into 4 note custom note charts in 4 difficulty levels. That's a ton more work than went into the sheet music, but it's still 25% less money.
Then there's the fact that the sheet music is a byproduct of the process of making music. To make the "easy piano" version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" takes extra work, but the full version of the guitar part was already written for the song. By the same token, do you think Elton John never would have produced sheet music for "Candle in the Wind" if he didn't want to sell the sheet music? He would have made it either way.
I like tinkering around on my keyboard, and playing simple songs. But sheet music is expensive, when you can find it. Can you even find piano arrangements of video game themes/music in stores?
He certainly deserves to be paid, I'm just not sure the price is in line with the relative value... which is why I don't buy much sheet music (and when I do, it's usually large collections).
It does work very well. I have an iPhone 4 (got it on launch day) and I can replicate the "signal loss" by bridging those pieces of metal. I do lose bars (so my signal wasn't fantastic to begin with).
I've been watching this whole thing with interest. I've seen a ton of reports that the 4 is better at keeping calls when in a low signal area, at that seems to match my experience. It's a flaw, but really it's not that big. I've learned to keep my left hand (which I usually hold my phone with) about 1/2cm higher, and I don't have problems. A bumper would almost completely fix it.
Mostly, this is a huge black eye on Apple's part. The phone works very well, and I'd imagine the problem will only really effect you if you live in an area with poor reception (which I don't seem to). If there wasn't such a simple physical action people could do to trigger this (say you had to hold you hand over the back in a certain way), I don't think we'd hear nearly so much about this. It' just so easy for people to trigger and associate with an action, it seems much worse than with other phones that drop your calls where you can't be sure why your signal is being lowered.
I like my phone. I won't return it, it works fine for me. It's kind of sad to watch. Consumer Reports says there is no reason not to buy. I'll admit if I didn't have one launch day, I would probably wait a little longer to see what happened. But I'm in love with my retina display.
Basically: much ado about something that's not that bad. See chart.
Also, for a good humorous take on all this, I highly recommend John Gruber's hilarious translation of Apple's "apology" letter.
Compared to the anywhere between $45 and $100 people pay for cable and still get ads?
If Hulu had a few more things, and especially if they integrated with my TiVo Series 3, I'd seriously consider dumping cable.
Full on-demand shows, with ads, for 10-20% of what I pay for non-on demand shows, with ads.
Thanks to the Parker Pen Company.
(3.5G + V/2)/4(H2O)^3 + 3(360deg) = M
Viewable with proper formatting in link above.
He was right that the government basically telling BP "Start coughing up without a being found guilty because we said so or we'll might start fining you/killing your licenses" should be illegal. Due process exists, and it should be followed. That's extortion.
He was an idiot for phrasing it as an apology to BP.
The idea that the government is setting a precedent that it can interfere with a business like that worries me. The BP case is really clear cut. Even if it was the contractor that messed up, BP was supposed to keep tabs on them and owned the well. But what happens when some large company gets accused of something else (say the Vioxx lawsuits) and the government starts pressuring them to pay out before any legal decision? What happens if it turns out, like power line cancer and thimerosol autism, that the company isn't at fault? How do they get all that money back?
I understand getting people money faster instead of the 20 year Exxon-Valdeeze thing, but this seemed so close to coercion.
Has the lack of multi-tasking annoyed many iPhone users?
I've had my 3G for 2 years, but there have only been a handful of times when I would have liked multitasking, mostly for switching between a webpage and something else (like SMS). When I use my phone, I'm often playing a game that I want to focus on.
Outside of Skype and last.fm type things, has this been a big frustration for many iPhone owners?
I'll be glad to get the feature when I get a iPhone 4, but it hasn't been a deal breaker by any means.
That's the boat I'm in. I tend to jump on Apple updates, I like playing early adopter. But with my 3G I can't get Multitasking since I don't have enough RAM.
That leave me with only a few features. Combined mailboxes is nice, but I only have one account so that doesn't matter. Faces in Pictures is cute, but not a big deal. Folders is kind of nice, but I only have about 2.5 full pages worth of apps, so it's not necessary for me. Background images? Cute, but unnecessary.
Updated apps using new iOS4 APIs would be the main reason to get this update for me, but since I've got an iPhone 4 on order, that issue will soon me moot. If I had a 3GS (like my parents and many of my friends), I'd jump on it. For a 3G... it's kind of 'eh'.
And all this ignores that in the last two years, there have only been a tiny handful of times when not having multitasking has annoyed me.
I don't mind Apple's policies at all. If they don't want to sell certain kinds of things, that's fine. I would actually prefer they get rid of more of the ultra-juvenile stuff, like the fart apps.
The biggest problem Apple has is how arbitrary this stuff feels. An app was OK for 3 revisions, but the new bug fix, which doesn't change content, is suddenly bad because of something that's been there for quite a while. There is no good checklist that you can look through and be reasonably certain that your app will be OK. Once your app is approved, that's no proof that it won't suddenly be found to be running afoul of some rule later.
For some apps, this isn't as much of a problem. If you make a little top-down racing game (like Super Off Road), or a simple utility like a sextant, it's unlikely someone will complain later about some small bit of content. But Apple isn't going to read every app submitted with content the size of a large novel (actually, iBooks should help with that, that's where these should be going now). But if your app isn't clear cut, you never really know if you're OK.
"The Official 10 Page Checklist With 200 Questions for App Approval" being published would be a big improvement. I don't think there is anything like that internally in Apple, which is how this stuff happens.
--Happy iPhone user
Yes, they are the old franchises, but that doesn't bother me with Nintendo. They change each game. The Kirby game looks different from previous Kirby games. It has the same characters, but it looks different gameplay wise. The 3DS Paper Mario may be a new Paper Mario game, but it's a new story. Kid Icarus may be an old franchise, but this is the first game since the GB game a long time ago.
Still, I like seeing 5-10 games that seem like real games, as opposed to seeing a handful of things that look a bit like tech demos made into games.
That was not my intent. My intent was "Microsoft is releasing a copy of what Nintendo did 4 years ago, Nintendo is releasing new games (based on old friends)."
It was meant to imply a lack of innovation and big exclusive releases. I don't mind that Nintendo uses the same characters over and over, because they tend to make each game it's own, special. They don't do a ton of "add a new map, +1 the number, sell a ton." They add some innovation and do it once a console cycle.
As a 360 owner, I'm not excited by Natal/Kinetic. I don't have a ton of space for dancing around on camera, and I'm not interested in paying $150 for the ability to do so. If there was one or two big games that really showed what it could do, then I might be interested. As it is, they seem more like the EyeToy demo "games" that were released. It's fine if MS can prove me wrong, but I would have wanted to see that at the press conference. Basically, they don't seem to have shown much more than they did a few months ago.
If I was making the "Microsoft is just releasing old games again" thing, I would have made a comment like "What, no Halo 14?".
Nintendo is going their own way. Sony and MS seem to be aiming at where Nintendo was 2+ years ago.
There's a reason Nintendo is still in the video game industry 25 years after releasing the NES.
Microsoft: We have a camera, like the EyeToy, but newer! And a quieter console! And a copy of WiiSports and some other games.
Nintendo: New system! New DonkyKong! Pilotwings! Metroid! Kid Icarus! Nintendogs! GoldenEye! Massive 3rd party support! Zelda! Mario Sports! Kirby!
As I type this, Sony is just getting their conference started. If they had any hopes of getting some thunder, they're in deep trouble. Short of announcing some really compelling games for the Move and an introductory bundle price of $40 (not going to happen), they won't top Nintendo.
PS: That PSP Sony keeps claiming isn't dead? The one the PSP Go was supposed to show was "still in the game"? If the 3DS isn't the final nail in it's coffin, nothing will be.
I watched the ArsTechnica live coverage. Just about everything they announced, I wanted. The one exception was WiiParty, but I'm sure there are tons of people who will buy it.
The Netflix DVD thing is because of a special deal MS has with Netflix for exclusivity. It will expire in a year or so. That's why the 360 doesn't need a disc, but the Wii and PS3 do.
It's an OK Blu-Ray player. It supports the full latest spec, and has enough power to be upgraded to future specs, which is a plus. The interface is better than the old PS2 DVD interface, but not by much. My guess is it wouldn't be that bad if I shelled out for the remote control.
But Blu-Ray isn't compelling enough for me to spend the extra $5 a month or whatever to enable it on my NetFlix account.