I understand. From the point of view of other smartphone users it make sense. From my point of view (potential iPhone customer), they just gave me a $20 a month price hike.
If they dropped the price of the existing plans I could understand. I'm not going to complain about $65 a month instead of $60. Maybe even $70.
But they took the incredibly simple iPhone plans (pick you number of minutes, you're all set, you get SMS and everything) and switched them back to the pick your option mess while raising the price at the same time.
I don't intend to buy an iPhone now because of this. I'm not paying $80 a month. I'm seriously hoping AT&T gets some kind of brain and cuts rates on their plans before the iPhone goes on sale, or has a special sale (buy in the first month and get $20 off a month... forever). That would get me back.
If I'm going to be locked into a contract either way, I'd much rather have my phone subsidized (new plan) than not (old plan).
I was all set to buy one of the new iPhones until more data started leaking out. You know that nice iPhone plan they had? 450 minutes, unlimited data, 200 SMS for $60 a month?
Gone
In what can only be described as "easier", you now have to use the standard AT&T model. Their lowest plan is 450 minutes which is $45. You have to add $5 to get 200 SMS messages (note: this seems to include MMS and other things too, which is different). Then there is the iPhone data plan that you are required to buy: $30 a month.
So instead of a simple little $60 plan, they now expect me to pay... $80.
So let's see... $20 difference per month X 24 months = $480. Take out the cut they were paying to Apple (wasn't it like $5?) and that's another $120.
So AT&T's revenue goes up $600 per two year 3G contract.
I'm not so sure I want to pay $80 a month for an iPhone. I was hesitant with $60 but this makes me question things much more.
Congratulations again AT&T. You took the must buy product of the year for me and managed to screw it up.
Right. MySQL, at least under Linux, just starts to fall flat on it's face if it's given more than 4 cores. That's the case for 5.0.x, and I think it is still true of 5.1.x (but that's still beta anyway). I seem to remember the situation being better under Solaris, but it's not fixed entirely.
Oracle, DBII, and (probably to a lesser extent) PostgreSQL can handle many more processors.
Just like any other software, multithreading is hard. But where there are times in some programs (say games) where stale data may be OK (i.e. for drawing a frame) or a double update may be tolerable (setting something to be dead twice is probably pretty harmless) when you are running a multi-billion dollar system those kind of errors are absolutely unacceptable. You just have to be far far more careful.
You're right that in some circumstances this isn't that bad. In some cases each processor could almost "own" a table and that might work. But when you have one giant table and a couple of small ones, you just have to share the giant table and lock on individual rows, sections, partitions, whatever.
I have, through subverted and purely fictional means, managed to get a copy of the short pitch for the game after a developer cleaned it up. This was quickly sent to the marketing department where is was cleaned up then pared down a little.
It's going to be a First Person Shooter (or F.P.S.) which is both trendy and cool. We will be aiming for the great success the Bond license had during Goldeneye, but with all the quality of our recent hits like Agent Under Fire, From Russia With Love, and Rogue Agent.
The game will feature a cover system, which our game-review reading manager says is "in", and when you use the system you will get a jarring transformation where you pop out of the back of your own head into a 3rd person view. When switching back out of cover mode, you will get to be jammed back into your head.
The other third person sequences (expected to include vehicle chases, helicopter shooting sequences, and an ice/lava level) with have the fantastic control scheme from Rogue Squadron III. This piece of code was given to us for free as long as we don't mention where it came from. This should allow us to expand the game by 5-10 hours as we include the time test players walk into walls and have to repeat levels due to poor controls.
Since this will be tied into movies, we get a free marketing budget and can steal all the scenes from the film. Since that's not long enough, we'll make it up with scenes from a different film, and pre-rendered cutscenes that bring the uncanney valley to life with new fervor; coupled with the amazing line reading of Hollywood's best studio's production crew's janitor's uncle's roommate's nephew's wooden dialog readings.
We expect great sales, but due to poor reviews and an average Metacric score pushing 65%, none of us will get paid.
I agree. What I've always thought is that they essentially got their market share because they were the first with a keyboard.
I see ads for Blackberry phones and they amaze me. Their interface is so good they've had to resort to install a scroll wheel or a tiny trackball to make it possible to use them. Now that is a well designed menu system.
The iPhone isn't everything. The camera is average, it lacks voice-dial, there is the MMS problem, blah blah blah.
But let us look at it this way. I like Apple. I like their interfaces. I hate the interface on my Razr. If the phone can play video but can't receive an SMS without freezing for 1+ seconds, the interface is terrible. I don't use MMS because it costs too much. I can tap a screen a few times to dial someone instead of voice dial; the only reason I use that it takes so long to find people through the menu on my Razr. My phone has no 3rd party applications (easily, unless I'm willing to pay some stupid monthly fee or something to download an official one). The software keyboard is miles ahead of T9, considering how bad the keypad on the Razr is.
For me, an iPhone is giant step up in every way. When the 3G version comes out, there is a very strong chance I'll buy one. I almost did it last year.
I agree about the hardware chips, I took that into account. The CPU probably isn't fast enough to encode the video. The problem is that that little embedded chip still needs power that isn't being used during a normal phone call. Combine that with the extra radio work (3G instead of GSM) and the other work, I doubt you could get much battery life.
I wasn't aware that videoconferencing was used in other countries on cell phones. I really don't see the usefulness myself (where as the touch compared to the horrid interfaces most phones have made sense to me).
The critical mass problem you mention is definitely true. Something like the iPhone I would think would be enough to get that rolling (as opposed to some random little phone that only Sprint carries).
That's the kind of thing I'm thinking. They've only sold 600,000 of them a month. Only?.
That's a great sales pace for anything, especially when it costs $400+ and needs a big monthly contract. I mean, are comparing this to the iPod? The iPod was new and had a great interface. Cell phones are already insanely common, and available free (with contract). That contract also keeps you from switching. That's quite a bit to overcome for sales.
How many of any given model of blackberry do the carriers sell a month? Is it 600,000? Not for all carries, just one (AT&T would make a great comparison for obvious reasons).
Then there is the rest of the world. Many people seemed to snub it due to lack of 3G. This was supposed to be an especially big problem in Europe. Right now there are only a handful of countries where you can get an iPhone legally (i.e. from a carrier that is supposed to carry the thing). Many countries don't have them.
Heck, I'd bet their sales would jump a ton if they did nothing but sell the iPhone to every major country.
..the iPhone has settled down to a less-than-spectacular [sales] pace: roughly 600,000 units a month, according to the company.
Yes. Only $24 million a month, gross, from the phones. That doesn't include plans, accessories, kickbacks, etc.
Poor Apple. They can only sell a little more than 1/2 a Rhode Island's Population of units per month. Awww.
Does this really matter? I know this has been "the next big thing" with telephones since at least the 80s, but let's be logical.
People don't care.
If they did, we'd have it on our land lines and such already. The customer has spoken, they much prefer the ability to roam around the house with a cordless phone than to have a video chat.
It's a cell phone.
People want to walk around with them. They want to drive while using them. They want to eat at restaurants, use restrooms, and anything else you can think of. They don't want to have to stand still and stare at something for the duration of a phone call.
Battery life.
You think the talk time on an iPhone is nice? How about with 3G where they may, through some feat of engineering, manage to get 1/2 to 2/3s that? Now engage the CPU to manage things, and video encoders and decoders (since the CPU won't be able to keep up with encoding it), and run the camera all the time. Guess how long your video chat will last. I'd say 15-30 min would be an impressive feat.
Other Stuff.
You'll need a camera on the front of the phone. That means either it's in a bad spot to take pictures, it needs to be turnable, or you need to have two. Of course I can already video conference using iChat if I'm near my computer. I often don't want people to see me when I'm talking to them (often doesn't add anything to the conversation, just takes away my attention to other things around me).
I'm pretty sure we'd have something by now (at least 1 FPS video or 15 FPS postage stamp video) on most phones if people cared. I think my phone supports voice and video SMS. Anyone actually use those?
Video conferencing is one of that those amazing technologies that seems to make a great demo but almost no one seems to care about for an actual product.
No kidding. My 2.4GHz MacBook Pro gets 2.5-3.5 hours of battery life when surfing with WiFi on and possibly listening to music and doing other activities. Why would I want a crippled little laptop that gets the same battery life?
Don't get me wrong. I see real appeal in little laptops. If there were 12" MacBook Pros, I would have considered one. But if I'm going to get a small laptop where I have to compromise on things like CPU power, I want something out of that compromise: I want battery life.
For such a relatively slow laptop (someone said CNet puts it at the speed of a 900MHz P3) I would think you could build a system to get at least 5 hours. But if I have to haul around a power adapter and such, I might as well haul around a better notebook too.
There are lots of replies to this thread and I just noticed it now, so I guess I'm late the the party. Let me offer my take. I've been out of college doing a programming job for 2 years now.
Is it normal? It all depends on the person. I've done things I thought were relatively simple or not with a lot of praise that my boss has promoted to others/superiors as great work by me. This is both things I thought up and implemented, and things that I was requested to do. I have done other things that I thought were great (including big/obvious things system users noticed) that nothing was said about. The pattern is the same with other people who are above me but not my boss. That's just the way things are.
But there are some people who are like that. We have one in our company, and as the size of the company you work for grows over 1 person, the probability of running into one starts to approach a sure thing.
Good ideas mismanaged, bad ideas implemented when much simpler ideas would have worked better, boldly taking credit for other people's work while they are standing there, covering up their mistakes as someone else's fault (bonus points for lying and saying they caught the error and fixed it when it was their fault).
You'll see it all. It's mostly a personality thing. Depending on tons of things this happens. Your boss may have deserved credit over you in one circumstance for thinking of the idea or great management. You may have deserved the credit. It could be neither of you. You just have to learn to accept this kind of stuff. If you think it's being done on purpose and to take advantage of you... just learn to accept it. We (at my office) except that kind of behavior out of various people (both internal and external) so it doesn't bother us. If someone does it, it's par for the course. If they DONT'T do it, it's a bonus. Also remember that there are two possibilities for your boss when they take credit for your idea. Either they know it was your work and you become more indispensable, or they are blind how important you were to the project and lacking the ability to see that may come back to bight them later.
It's all in the attitude. In my time in the work world it's crushing/mismanaging of good ideas that seems to bother me more.
If things are REALLY bad enough, you can call the boss on it. You can try and use it as leverage. You can even just quit. The question is do you care enough to risk all that? Any of those could easily make it harder to get hired somewhere else. But like I (and many others) have said: this will happen everywhere.
The articles (and the FAQ on the box) say that it is capable and ready of showing HD content, but right now nothing in Netflix's instant viewing catalog is in HD. That's why I put "all ready for HD". The CNet article doesn't seem to mention that.
From Wired's article:
"Higher quality streams are available, and over time, HD streams will show up, which the box can handle."
I think you're looking at this box as more that it is. This is not a media center extender. I don't think of it as competing with Windows MCE, a 360 connecting to something, or your little box.
To me this is nothing more than a DVD player that has an infinite supply of things from my Netflix queue in it (with slightly limited selection). For that purpose, it's a great little box at a fantastic price. I'm surprised they are only charging $100 for it and not $200 or so.
Really? The article I read (along with others not linked above) say that it can stream HD over a network, there just isn't any HD content in the Netflix Instant catalog at the moment.
I'm with the GP. Besides my interest of this little box for it's intended use, I find it to be a cheap and probably silent little HD capable Linux box. This is if someone figures out how to put Linux on it (some think it is Linux based), and it can be done by end users/hackers (i.e. no crypto-signed kernel images and such).
An interesting little box. I wouldn't mind having one. I have Netflix (which I love) but don't use their streaming service since I'm a Mac guy. I like that they have it all ready for HD.
If I had no decent boxes, I'd buy one.
But I have a TiVo Series 3. It's a fantastic box. It can handle this kind of stuff. I really don't want another box at this point that can do this kind of stuff, that I have to switch between. I've already got my TiVo, my DVD player, and my 360. I don't need another single use box.
Netflix said they were in chats with other people to make more boxes. Having this integrated into a DVD/Blu-Ray player would be nice. I think they were thinking of letting the PS3 or 360 do this.
I'll gladly use it should it become available for my TiVo.
But again kudos to them for getting it out so fast after the announcement, charging so little ($100? No monthly fee above my current 3 disc subscription level?), and having it all ready for when they have an HD catalog.
WinAmp 2.95 was perfect. Small, wicked fast, just about perfect.
WinAmp 3 was an unnecessary rewrite, and I didn't like it much. Felt slower for no real benefit to me. It was about this time I went over to iTunes (mostly due to iPod).
Then they later released 5 because of all the complaints. 2 (the good version) + 3 (the recent version) = 5 (the new version). Never tried it, WinAmp had lost all mindshare by that point.
So much good software just bloats past what it needed and into death. Reader used to be pretty good. Norton wasn't the amazingly bad program it is now, it was once the best.
I've been using FoxIt recently which is quite nice. That said, Reading is an amazing piece of software.
It's slow. Really slow. Amazingly slow. It uses tons of memory. It's just atrocious. But I was used to it on Windows (before a friend pointed out FoxIt which I switched to immediately).
Then I switched to OS X and got to use Preview. It's wicked fast. It's like opening a 1kb text file in Notepad on Windows. It's almost instant. It's easy to use, no crazy interface, not 6 updates to the updater each time I open it.
Then I installed CS 2.
Soon I tried to open a PDF and thought my computer locked up because the file didn't pop open. After a bit the loading screen popped up and loaded. Then the program, then the document. It was terrible.
So I went and changed the file association and now Preview handles them again and my system works.
I remember when I had a full copy of Acrobat (not reader, Acrobat) and it opened about 10x faster than Reader does on the relatively high-end (multi-core, 2GB+ RAM) machines I've been forced to use it on.
Almost everything on the list was good at one time or another. RealPlayer, while not perfect, was small and fast. Norton (the first version for 95) was quite good, even on my slow 386 (yes... 386). Outlook used to be WAY faster than it is now. On my nice desktop it feels like I'm running it through VirtualWindows on a 500MHz G4.
Flash it's self isn't bad. But so many people seem to not use delay loops and let it run at 600 FPS and suck up all the CPU. Combine that with the terrible and slow interfaces people use it for and it gets a bad rap. Flashblock is your friend here.
If done correctly they can perform quite well. Things are improving, but they still have a way to go.
On the face, they can do very well because OpenGL is standardized and you can just pass the calls outside the emulator into the real OS. All you have to do is adjust for window co-ords and such (not that bad).
The big problem (as I seem to remember hearing it) is all the extensions. Since much of it isn't standardized (pixel shaders and such) nVidia and AMD have done their own thing and you have to support both. They are both tuned to their architecture so you have to make both, or translate one into the other. Since games push the envelope and use these kind of things, it's not nearly as easy as if you tried to run something like Quake 2 which OpenGL has all the facilities built-in for. OpenGL 2 is supposed to help but who knows when that will come around.
DirectX is the real problem. It runs like a dog because it has to be translated into OpenGL with all the problems inherent in that (extra calls, switching from clockwise poly-winding to counter-clockwise poly-winding, etc). Add in that no one but MS can see the insides (which means you can only implement a driver, so you code goes game->DirectX->driver layer->virtual machine barrier->OpenGL->driver layer->hardware) and things aren't fast.
The vitualization thing could be interesting in providing a simple environment to program in (thus giving you "bare metal" except for some functions to access the disk/etc) but Windows has filled in that void and the ship has passed. Since most people won't reboot to use that environment without the memory overhead of Windows (I hate rebooting my Mac to play TF2)... people won't use it.
He he he. The 3DO Blaster. Haven't thought about that thing in a long time.
The best solution we'll get is what you suggested: get Intel to finally put out a half-competent GPU. They say their next one will be, but they have said similar things before.
Bingo. But MPC was too slow, so they added MPC 2. Then 3. I think that's when they gave up. As another commenter pointed out this is how the RSX got started in Japan.
Computers move too fast. The only thing this is good for is smaller games (think PopCap) and with those it's a pretty safe bet you can play them if your computer was purchased in the last 4 years.
If you want this to work for FarCry or some such, you're dead.
Then there is the "playable" problem. Is 60 FPS at 1024 playable? I'd say yes. I'll accept 30 FPS at 1280. Many people here (and on other forums) will say "It must be at least 90 at 1600" to be playable. 3D graphics just made defining anything like this much much harder. MPC included CPU, colors, CD-ROM speed, and sound card. Now you have to deal with can the GPU render X number of Ys at Z resolution with Q pixel shaders at over L FPS.
Can't be done unless you can get some huge share of the market with ONE computer. The iMac (first gen, colorful) worked for something like that on the Mac side, but then again you can often just list the Mac models on the box because there are so few these days.
Actually that didn't occur to me at all. If that's the case... then the poster needs to stop trying to break up a marriage. How to remove a keylogger is far besides the point.
As I said. If she is being beaten or abused, that's one thing. Help her out. But if that's the case, she needs out NOW, not to play little games like "Is there a keylogger on my computer".
If it's just a normal "I'm not happy"/"I don't like you"/"why did you sleep with my sister" type thing, just stay out. Don't get involved in the petty details. It may just be a big fight they could work through if they didn't have all sorts of people supporting them breaking up and making it easier. The same people who didn't provide pro-marriage support when things weren't that bad.
I agree. My first thought was "don't get involved."
Even if you think the husband is a spouse-abusing homicidal maniac, don't do this. If there is evidence, turn him into the police. Otherwise stay out.
She can google it. She can take it somewhere (like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc). I know their terrible, but hey. If they work things out, you are the guy who tried to help her get out of the marriage. That won't ender you to him. If things go farther, how do you think you'll be treated if there was a key-logger and your solution didn't work? If there is no key-logger and she is just reaching and scared and overwhelmed, then playing into that could make things worse (in the harder for them to get together and fix their marriage if possible sense).
She can use another computer, reinstall Windows, whatever. Don't get in the middle of someone else's fight (unless it is to save their life or some such, in which case, again, call the police). I seriously doubt doing this will make your life easier in any way.
Tell her to go to a private eye. Talk to a (better) divorce attorney. But tell her you don't want to get involved in this.
I agree. The iPhone interface is just so amazing. The other day I was in a big box store and we looked at the GPS units they had. The only thought I had about any of them are "these touch screens are so hard to use."
I realized that was because none of them supported multi-touch. To zoom in you had to go press a little software button, and it would zoom in one level. The levels are all arbitrary. Dragging the map was often relatively unresponsive, if you were even allowed to do it. Compared to the small amount of time I've messed with iPhones (I don't own one) it was just annoying. The interface on the iPhone is just so much better for the map.
It's the same thing at my local Borders. They've always had customer terminals around the store to look up books and such, as long as I've lived here. But a few years ago they replaced some with touch screen devices. Now I think they all are.
Before they just had a mouse and a keyboard. I could what I want in fast, and browse easily using the mouse.
Now they are touchscreen devices. Half the time they don't even seem to respond to my finger touch. I've never been able to decide if I'm touching too fast or slow, hard or soft. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The keyboard buttons (which are at least 1-1.5" on each side) are hard to hit with any accuracy. Sure my finger tip is smaller than the button, but I can't seem to press them accurately. Note that this isn't a calibration problem. Once I've figured out how off the individual machine is, it's still hard to hit the right button. The lack of any kind of tactile feedback (the auditory and visual feedback, if there, is often 100-200ms late and thus useless).
Basically, it's a pain to use. They took an easy interface everyone knew how to use, dumbed it down and made it far more useless, and spent a bunch of money in the process.
Yet I could type on the little tiny iPhone keyboard pretty well within seconds of trying. Clearly it was well written, with touch screens in mind. Compare that to the Borders system which, from what I can tell, is just a fancy website with the touchscreen operating as a mouse, distilling whatever you do into a standard mouse click. This removes all subtle differences that could be used to help figure out what you're trying to do.
This is with relatively powerful computers (1GHz plus). Imagine how well touch interfaces could have been done 15 years ago with a 25 to 100MHz processor. Thing how useful touch interfaces were 20+ years ago when most people only had character based displays and were using DOS.
I'd only now that we are getting the necessary precision, processing power, and experience to start making good (multi)touch interfaces.
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I understand. From the point of view of other smartphone users it make sense. From my point of view (potential iPhone customer), they just gave me a $20 a month price hike.
If they dropped the price of the existing plans I could understand. I'm not going to complain about $65 a month instead of $60. Maybe even $70.
But they took the incredibly simple iPhone plans (pick you number of minutes, you're all set, you get SMS and everything) and switched them back to the pick your option mess while raising the price at the same time.
I don't intend to buy an iPhone now because of this. I'm not paying $80 a month. I'm seriously hoping AT&T gets some kind of brain and cuts rates on their plans before the iPhone goes on sale, or has a special sale (buy in the first month and get $20 off a month... forever). That would get me back.
If I'm going to be locked into a contract either way, I'd much rather have my phone subsidized (new plan) than not (old plan).
I was all set to buy one of the new iPhones until more data started leaking out. You know that nice iPhone plan they had? 450 minutes, unlimited data, 200 SMS for $60 a month?
Gone
In what can only be described as "easier", you now have to use the standard AT&T model. Their lowest plan is 450 minutes which is $45. You have to add $5 to get 200 SMS messages (note: this seems to include MMS and other things too, which is different). Then there is the iPhone data plan that you are required to buy: $30 a month.
So instead of a simple little $60 plan, they now expect me to pay... $80.
So let's see... $20 difference per month X 24 months = $480. Take out the cut they were paying to Apple (wasn't it like $5?) and that's another $120.
So AT&T's revenue goes up $600 per two year 3G contract.
I'm not so sure I want to pay $80 a month for an iPhone. I was hesitant with $60 but this makes me question things much more.
Congratulations again AT&T. You took the must buy product of the year for me and managed to screw it up.
It's either music notation software, or the Governor of Kansas.
I'm guessing the first one.
Right. MySQL, at least under Linux, just starts to fall flat on it's face if it's given more than 4 cores. That's the case for 5.0.x, and I think it is still true of 5.1.x (but that's still beta anyway). I seem to remember the situation being better under Solaris, but it's not fixed entirely.
Oracle, DBII, and (probably to a lesser extent) PostgreSQL can handle many more processors.
Just like any other software, multithreading is hard. But where there are times in some programs (say games) where stale data may be OK (i.e. for drawing a frame) or a double update may be tolerable (setting something to be dead twice is probably pretty harmless) when you are running a multi-billion dollar system those kind of errors are absolutely unacceptable. You just have to be far far more careful.
You're right that in some circumstances this isn't that bad. In some cases each processor could almost "own" a table and that might work. But when you have one giant table and a couple of small ones, you just have to share the giant table and lock on individual rows, sections, partitions, whatever.
I have, through subverted and purely fictional means, managed to get a copy of the short pitch for the game after a developer cleaned it up. This was quickly sent to the marketing department where is was cleaned up then pared down a little.
I agree. What I've always thought is that they essentially got their market share because they were the first with a keyboard.
I see ads for Blackberry phones and they amaze me. Their interface is so good they've had to resort to install a scroll wheel or a tiny trackball to make it possible to use them. Now that is a well designed menu system.
The iPhone isn't everything. The camera is average, it lacks voice-dial, there is the MMS problem, blah blah blah.
But let us look at it this way. I like Apple. I like their interfaces. I hate the interface on my Razr. If the phone can play video but can't receive an SMS without freezing for 1+ seconds, the interface is terrible. I don't use MMS because it costs too much. I can tap a screen a few times to dial someone instead of voice dial; the only reason I use that it takes so long to find people through the menu on my Razr. My phone has no 3rd party applications (easily, unless I'm willing to pay some stupid monthly fee or something to download an official one). The software keyboard is miles ahead of T9, considering how bad the keypad on the Razr is.
For me, an iPhone is giant step up in every way. When the 3G version comes out, there is a very strong chance I'll buy one. I almost did it last year.
I agree about the hardware chips, I took that into account. The CPU probably isn't fast enough to encode the video. The problem is that that little embedded chip still needs power that isn't being used during a normal phone call. Combine that with the extra radio work (3G instead of GSM) and the other work, I doubt you could get much battery life.
I wasn't aware that videoconferencing was used in other countries on cell phones. I really don't see the usefulness myself (where as the touch compared to the horrid interfaces most phones have made sense to me).
The critical mass problem you mention is definitely true. Something like the iPhone I would think would be enough to get that rolling (as opposed to some random little phone that only Sprint carries).
The iPhone was not the best in every class of every feature. I know there are camera phones with 5MP cameras in them.
But in the thing that counts most, the iPhone is miles ahead of any phone I've used: the interface.
Are you really going to stand there and tell me that Windows Mobile has an interface 1/3 as nice as an iPhone? It's no comparison.
You're right about features (which are mostly there thanks to world economics, just disabled thanks to greed).
That's the kind of thing I'm thinking. They've only sold 600,000 of them a month. Only?.
That's a great sales pace for anything, especially when it costs $400+ and needs a big monthly contract. I mean, are comparing this to the iPod? The iPod was new and had a great interface. Cell phones are already insanely common, and available free (with contract). That contract also keeps you from switching. That's quite a bit to overcome for sales.
How many of any given model of blackberry do the carriers sell a month? Is it 600,000? Not for all carries, just one (AT&T would make a great comparison for obvious reasons).
Then there is the rest of the world. Many people seemed to snub it due to lack of 3G. This was supposed to be an especially big problem in Europe. Right now there are only a handful of countries where you can get an iPhone legally (i.e. from a carrier that is supposed to carry the thing). Many countries don't have them.
Heck, I'd bet their sales would jump a ton if they did nothing but sell the iPhone to every major country.
Yes. Only $24 million a month, gross, from the phones. That doesn't include plans, accessories, kickbacks, etc.
Poor Apple. They can only sell a little more than 1/2 a Rhode Island's Population of units per month. Awww.
Does this really matter? I know this has been "the next big thing" with telephones since at least the 80s, but let's be logical.
If they did, we'd have it on our land lines and such already. The customer has spoken, they much prefer the ability to roam around the house with a cordless phone than to have a video chat.
People want to walk around with them. They want to drive while using them. They want to eat at restaurants, use restrooms, and anything else you can think of. They don't want to have to stand still and stare at something for the duration of a phone call.
You think the talk time on an iPhone is nice? How about with 3G where they may, through some feat of engineering, manage to get 1/2 to 2/3s that? Now engage the CPU to manage things, and video encoders and decoders (since the CPU won't be able to keep up with encoding it), and run the camera all the time. Guess how long your video chat will last. I'd say 15-30 min would be an impressive feat.
You'll need a camera on the front of the phone. That means either it's in a bad spot to take pictures, it needs to be turnable, or you need to have two. Of course I can already video conference using iChat if I'm near my computer. I often don't want people to see me when I'm talking to them (often doesn't add anything to the conversation, just takes away my attention to other things around me).
I'm pretty sure we'd have something by now (at least 1 FPS video or 15 FPS postage stamp video) on most phones if people cared. I think my phone supports voice and video SMS. Anyone actually use those?
Video conferencing is one of that those amazing technologies that seems to make a great demo but almost no one seems to care about for an actual product.
No kidding. My 2.4GHz MacBook Pro gets 2.5-3.5 hours of battery life when surfing with WiFi on and possibly listening to music and doing other activities. Why would I want a crippled little laptop that gets the same battery life?
Don't get me wrong. I see real appeal in little laptops. If there were 12" MacBook Pros, I would have considered one. But if I'm going to get a small laptop where I have to compromise on things like CPU power, I want something out of that compromise: I want battery life.
For such a relatively slow laptop (someone said CNet puts it at the speed of a 900MHz P3) I would think you could build a system to get at least 5 hours. But if I have to haul around a power adapter and such, I might as well haul around a better notebook too.
There are lots of replies to this thread and I just noticed it now, so I guess I'm late the the party. Let me offer my take. I've been out of college doing a programming job for 2 years now.
Is it normal? It all depends on the person. I've done things I thought were relatively simple or not with a lot of praise that my boss has promoted to others/superiors as great work by me. This is both things I thought up and implemented, and things that I was requested to do. I have done other things that I thought were great (including big/obvious things system users noticed) that nothing was said about. The pattern is the same with other people who are above me but not my boss. That's just the way things are.
But there are some people who are like that. We have one in our company, and as the size of the company you work for grows over 1 person, the probability of running into one starts to approach a sure thing.
Good ideas mismanaged, bad ideas implemented when much simpler ideas would have worked better, boldly taking credit for other people's work while they are standing there, covering up their mistakes as someone else's fault (bonus points for lying and saying they caught the error and fixed it when it was their fault).
You'll see it all. It's mostly a personality thing. Depending on tons of things this happens. Your boss may have deserved credit over you in one circumstance for thinking of the idea or great management. You may have deserved the credit. It could be neither of you. You just have to learn to accept this kind of stuff. If you think it's being done on purpose and to take advantage of you... just learn to accept it. We (at my office) except that kind of behavior out of various people (both internal and external) so it doesn't bother us. If someone does it, it's par for the course. If they DONT'T do it, it's a bonus. Also remember that there are two possibilities for your boss when they take credit for your idea. Either they know it was your work and you become more indispensable, or they are blind how important you were to the project and lacking the ability to see that may come back to bight them later.
It's all in the attitude. In my time in the work world it's crushing/mismanaging of good ideas that seems to bother me more.
If things are REALLY bad enough, you can call the boss on it. You can try and use it as leverage. You can even just quit. The question is do you care enough to risk all that? Any of those could easily make it harder to get hired somewhere else. But like I (and many others) have said: this will happen everywhere.
The articles (and the FAQ on the box) say that it is capable and ready of showing HD content, but right now nothing in Netflix's instant viewing catalog is in HD. That's why I put "all ready for HD". The CNet article doesn't seem to mention that.
From Wired's article:
I think you're looking at this box as more that it is. This is not a media center extender. I don't think of it as competing with Windows MCE, a 360 connecting to something, or your little box.
To me this is nothing more than a DVD player that has an infinite supply of things from my Netflix queue in it (with slightly limited selection). For that purpose, it's a great little box at a fantastic price. I'm surprised they are only charging $100 for it and not $200 or so.
Really? The article I read (along with others not linked above) say that it can stream HD over a network, there just isn't any HD content in the Netflix Instant catalog at the moment.
I'm with the GP. Besides my interest of this little box for it's intended use, I find it to be a cheap and probably silent little HD capable Linux box. This is if someone figures out how to put Linux on it (some think it is Linux based), and it can be done by end users/hackers (i.e. no crypto-signed kernel images and such).
An interesting little box. I wouldn't mind having one. I have Netflix (which I love) but don't use their streaming service since I'm a Mac guy. I like that they have it all ready for HD.
If I had no decent boxes, I'd buy one.
But I have a TiVo Series 3. It's a fantastic box. It can handle this kind of stuff. I really don't want another box at this point that can do this kind of stuff, that I have to switch between. I've already got my TiVo, my DVD player, and my 360. I don't need another single use box.
Netflix said they were in chats with other people to make more boxes. Having this integrated into a DVD/Blu-Ray player would be nice. I think they were thinking of letting the PS3 or 360 do this.
I'll gladly use it should it become available for my TiVo.
But again kudos to them for getting it out so fast after the announcement, charging so little ($100? No monthly fee above my current 3 disc subscription level?), and having it all ready for when they have an HD catalog.
WinAmp 2.95 was perfect. Small, wicked fast, just about perfect.
WinAmp 3 was an unnecessary rewrite, and I didn't like it much. Felt slower for no real benefit to me. It was about this time I went over to iTunes (mostly due to iPod).
Then they later released 5 because of all the complaints. 2 (the good version) + 3 (the recent version) = 5 (the new version). Never tried it, WinAmp had lost all mindshare by that point.
So much good software just bloats past what it needed and into death. Reader used to be pretty good. Norton wasn't the amazingly bad program it is now, it was once the best.
I've been using FoxIt recently which is quite nice. That said, Reading is an amazing piece of software.
It's slow. Really slow. Amazingly slow. It uses tons of memory. It's just atrocious. But I was used to it on Windows (before a friend pointed out FoxIt which I switched to immediately).
Then I switched to OS X and got to use Preview. It's wicked fast. It's like opening a 1kb text file in Notepad on Windows. It's almost instant. It's easy to use, no crazy interface, not 6 updates to the updater each time I open it.
Then I installed CS 2.
Soon I tried to open a PDF and thought my computer locked up because the file didn't pop open. After a bit the loading screen popped up and loaded. Then the program, then the document. It was terrible.
So I went and changed the file association and now Preview handles them again and my system works.
I remember when I had a full copy of Acrobat (not reader, Acrobat) and it opened about 10x faster than Reader does on the relatively high-end (multi-core, 2GB+ RAM) machines I've been forced to use it on.
Almost everything on the list was good at one time or another. RealPlayer, while not perfect, was small and fast. Norton (the first version for 95) was quite good, even on my slow 386 (yes... 386). Outlook used to be WAY faster than it is now. On my nice desktop it feels like I'm running it through VirtualWindows on a 500MHz G4.
Flash it's self isn't bad. But so many people seem to not use delay loops and let it run at 600 FPS and suck up all the CPU. Combine that with the terrible and slow interfaces people use it for and it gets a bad rap. Flashblock is your friend here.
If done correctly they can perform quite well. Things are improving, but they still have a way to go.
On the face, they can do very well because OpenGL is standardized and you can just pass the calls outside the emulator into the real OS. All you have to do is adjust for window co-ords and such (not that bad).
The big problem (as I seem to remember hearing it) is all the extensions. Since much of it isn't standardized (pixel shaders and such) nVidia and AMD have done their own thing and you have to support both. They are both tuned to their architecture so you have to make both, or translate one into the other. Since games push the envelope and use these kind of things, it's not nearly as easy as if you tried to run something like Quake 2 which OpenGL has all the facilities built-in for. OpenGL 2 is supposed to help but who knows when that will come around.
DirectX is the real problem. It runs like a dog because it has to be translated into OpenGL with all the problems inherent in that (extra calls, switching from clockwise poly-winding to counter-clockwise poly-winding, etc). Add in that no one but MS can see the insides (which means you can only implement a driver, so you code goes game->DirectX->driver layer->virtual machine barrier->OpenGL->driver layer->hardware) and things aren't fast.
The vitualization thing could be interesting in providing a simple environment to program in (thus giving you "bare metal" except for some functions to access the disk/etc) but Windows has filled in that void and the ship has passed. Since most people won't reboot to use that environment without the memory overhead of Windows (I hate rebooting my Mac to play TF2)... people won't use it.
He he he. The 3DO Blaster. Haven't thought about that thing in a long time.
The best solution we'll get is what you suggested: get Intel to finally put out a half-competent GPU. They say their next one will be, but they have said similar things before.
Bingo. But MPC was too slow, so they added MPC 2. Then 3. I think that's when they gave up. As another commenter pointed out this is how the RSX got started in Japan.
Computers move too fast. The only thing this is good for is smaller games (think PopCap) and with those it's a pretty safe bet you can play them if your computer was purchased in the last 4 years.
If you want this to work for FarCry or some such, you're dead.
Then there is the "playable" problem. Is 60 FPS at 1024 playable? I'd say yes. I'll accept 30 FPS at 1280. Many people here (and on other forums) will say "It must be at least 90 at 1600" to be playable. 3D graphics just made defining anything like this much much harder. MPC included CPU, colors, CD-ROM speed, and sound card. Now you have to deal with can the GPU render X number of Ys at Z resolution with Q pixel shaders at over L FPS.
Can't be done unless you can get some huge share of the market with ONE computer. The iMac (first gen, colorful) worked for something like that on the Mac side, but then again you can often just list the Mac models on the box because there are so few these days.
Actually that didn't occur to me at all. If that's the case... then the poster needs to stop trying to break up a marriage. How to remove a keylogger is far besides the point.
As I said. If she is being beaten or abused, that's one thing. Help her out. But if that's the case, she needs out NOW, not to play little games like "Is there a keylogger on my computer".
If it's just a normal "I'm not happy"/"I don't like you"/"why did you sleep with my sister" type thing, just stay out. Don't get involved in the petty details. It may just be a big fight they could work through if they didn't have all sorts of people supporting them breaking up and making it easier. The same people who didn't provide pro-marriage support when things weren't that bad.
I agree. My first thought was "don't get involved."
Even if you think the husband is a spouse-abusing homicidal maniac, don't do this. If there is evidence, turn him into the police. Otherwise stay out.
She can google it. She can take it somewhere (like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc). I know their terrible, but hey. If they work things out, you are the guy who tried to help her get out of the marriage. That won't ender you to him. If things go farther, how do you think you'll be treated if there was a key-logger and your solution didn't work? If there is no key-logger and she is just reaching and scared and overwhelmed, then playing into that could make things worse (in the harder for them to get together and fix their marriage if possible sense).
She can use another computer, reinstall Windows, whatever. Don't get in the middle of someone else's fight (unless it is to save their life or some such, in which case, again, call the police). I seriously doubt doing this will make your life easier in any way.
Tell her to go to a private eye. Talk to a (better) divorce attorney. But tell her you don't want to get involved in this.
I agree. The iPhone interface is just so amazing. The other day I was in a big box store and we looked at the GPS units they had. The only thought I had about any of them are "these touch screens are so hard to use."
I realized that was because none of them supported multi-touch. To zoom in you had to go press a little software button, and it would zoom in one level. The levels are all arbitrary. Dragging the map was often relatively unresponsive, if you were even allowed to do it. Compared to the small amount of time I've messed with iPhones (I don't own one) it was just annoying. The interface on the iPhone is just so much better for the map.
It's the same thing at my local Borders. They've always had customer terminals around the store to look up books and such, as long as I've lived here. But a few years ago they replaced some with touch screen devices. Now I think they all are.
Before they just had a mouse and a keyboard. I could what I want in fast, and browse easily using the mouse.
Now they are touchscreen devices. Half the time they don't even seem to respond to my finger touch. I've never been able to decide if I'm touching too fast or slow, hard or soft. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The keyboard buttons (which are at least 1-1.5" on each side) are hard to hit with any accuracy. Sure my finger tip is smaller than the button, but I can't seem to press them accurately. Note that this isn't a calibration problem. Once I've figured out how off the individual machine is, it's still hard to hit the right button. The lack of any kind of tactile feedback (the auditory and visual feedback, if there, is often 100-200ms late and thus useless).
Basically, it's a pain to use. They took an easy interface everyone knew how to use, dumbed it down and made it far more useless, and spent a bunch of money in the process.
Yet I could type on the little tiny iPhone keyboard pretty well within seconds of trying. Clearly it was well written, with touch screens in mind. Compare that to the Borders system which, from what I can tell, is just a fancy website with the touchscreen operating as a mouse, distilling whatever you do into a standard mouse click. This removes all subtle differences that could be used to help figure out what you're trying to do.
This is with relatively powerful computers (1GHz plus). Imagine how well touch interfaces could have been done 15 years ago with a 25 to 100MHz processor. Thing how useful touch interfaces were 20+ years ago when most people only had character based displays and were using DOS.
I'd only now that we are getting the necessary precision, processing power, and experience to start making good (multi)touch interfaces.