Content creators do not want another iTunes/App Store situation. They lose what, 30% of every sale due to the Apple tax?
It's better for them to roll their own store, control the content completely (DRM, where it shows up on the store, removing bad reviews, etc.), and take the entire pie.
And how big of a slice of the final ad revenue do you think networks get?
How big of a profit margin does Comcast get against the networks? They networks get pennies compared to what you pay them per channel.
Networks dont care for Apples cut. What they fear is losing control, not having to pay the guy in the middle 30% of the final income.
How about forcing manufacturers of faulty GPS equipment to replace the units? It was THEM selling units they know were defective because "no one" used the neighboring spectrum.
Hey, if you are happy being either restricted by a lame antenna or tied up to a greedy powerhungry cable company, more power to you. I want my smart TV with a-la-carta programming and on demand shows without restrictive itineraries, and I will gladly pay a bit extra for it (as long as the advantages pay for themselves in a 2 year span.)
The computing power difference between the 4 and 4s is huge. It has "only" 2x the cpu power and 7x the graphic power. Try to upgrade a computer to that degree with "just" 100 bucks more.
If rumors are true, the iPad 3's jump may be just as significant.
I have a friend that is a raging Apple fan, but only recently was he able to afford an iPad due to being unemployed until recently. He just got his iPad 2 a few weeks ago. I kept telling him to hold on and wait, but he was not able to resist the temptation to spend his first paycheck on the thing.
Was there not an article about an update making it harder or impossible to unlock Kindles? Or is the unlocking considered a hack? Because as you say, the same goes for the ipad if it is.
Re:I expect the iPad2 to lose at most $50 per tier
on
What the iPad 3 Looks Like
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
To be fair, Apple has slashed the price of iPhones by $100 every time they retain a previous generation in the market. That is why I say $399. It's not blind faith or a gut feeling. It's just being based off Apple year to year habits.
Besides, a $100 reduction may be enough to bring the iPad2 into "budget" range. At the same time it's not so much that anyone that bought an iPad2 a month earlier would be annoyed at the insanely lower price.
Slash the price to $200 and even the most rabid Apple fan will knock at Apple's door with torches and pitchforks if they bought a full price iPad 2 one month earlier.
To be honest, I have not been able to pocket handheld gaming devices... ever. They always been too big and look like tumors in my tight. Handhelds always have been things I keep in the car or by the bed.
Also look at the WiiU, it almost looks like the missing link. Its a tablet used to control a big screen experience. Not too different from mixing up currently an iPad with an AppleTV (although in that case the entire game processing happens in the tablet and just gets streamed to the TV.)
Samsung is also adding similar tech to their TVs, built in, to allow any android device (even tablets) to stream into the TV.
The true tablet market right now is composed of iPads, Kindle Fires and Nooks. All have similar lockins. Microsoft's ARM Win8 has already been stated will be similar. True Android Tables (non branched like the Nook or Kindle) are the exception but to be honest, they are not selling well relatively speaking.
People in this site have also vocally criticized those two tablets for the same points.
Ads can remain relevant for sites where demographic data is redundant. For instance, if you are looking at a Video Game Review site for mobile apps, it's a no-brainer what kind of reader is there.
With TV it's similar and to a point unfortunate. We tend to have too many generic TV shows that are obviously designed to cater to a very specific audience. The reason is precisely because they need to target specific demographics so they can sell ads for that demographic.
The problem is with websites that cover basically everything. "News" sites that will publish tech news nearly side by side with politics and celebrity gossip. Those constitute the bulk of the big media on the web. Since they don’t specialize their news and attempt to just bring everyone to their sites, they are forced to rely on targeted advertisement.
Sites like Facebook and other photo hosting sites are similar. Everyone with any set of backgrounds or preferences may use the services, and the only way to sell ads that may attract income is by targeting the user based on intrusive tracking.
If you ask me, I rather have a way for targeted ads in TV, so I can get more unique TV shows, and less on the web, so we can find sites that actually care and focus on themes of interest.
Social networking sites can survive on the data that is directly provided to them, they should not need outside track data to target ads.
I seriously doubt they will shoot so low. At best I expect a price drop to $350 (but most likely $399) for the iPad 2 (and only available Wi-Fi 16 GB without cell data options.)
As for the PC market vs. Tablets... I got to ponder... Many people are defensive saying that tablets can't or should never take over and that PCs must live for us to keep our computing freedom... but what if we are looking at it wrong? What if we look at tablets not as downgraded computers but as the next evolutionary step for consoles and handheld entertainment units?
Id say it has a lot more to do with their brick stores not stamping a premium price over the online price.
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
OK imagine you buy, or somehow acquire for pennies, some stock today. Magically, that stock skyrockets because DoodleSoft releases the true one iPhone and Android killer quantum computer.
Your stock is now worth a billion dollars. You don’t sell them, but now there is a wealth tax, you are forced to pay taxes for the true value of the stock.
No trouble, to pay for it you sell some of the stock, only the incredible has happened! Since year end, the company turned out to be just another Enron and went bankrupt! The stock is worth nothing! You can’t sell it!!! But it does not matter, last year ended with you possessing the wealth of a billionaire and you must be now taxed accordingly. And this year’s loss won’t help you because there is no reverse tax for negative wealth. The government won’t be giving you money back the same way they taxed money away from your "wealth"
This is an exaggeration but it is one of the reasons you can’t tax income until it is truly materialized. Is it exploitable? Yes, but it's preferable than defaulting poor people that happened to temporarily possess spiking stock.
I don't think you read my post... "Utility" oriented wireless data pipe will end up existing, but they will just not be the same guys that now dominate because they are too cluttered to survive the change.
I personally only saw lots of coverage the day of the Wikipedia blackout, but I had my mother, who does not use the interent at all, call me to "warn me" about the sopa thing she had seen covered on local news.
Thats odd... didnt know Comcast offered contracts. I'm with them and can quit any time. I also had them upgrade my box out of their own initiative. I dont even watch TV, have the thing for visitors and the box in the guest room.
But as I noted to another reply, with wireless carriers it would be a tad different since they would have more competition as the barrier of entry may be lower than with cable tossing.
Don’t think that’s what he meant. He did say the old media had not used its power to push a Pro SOPA mentality, said they didn’t because of editorial integrity. If that was the reason, then when these old media supported anti-sopa movements, then they did it due to their integrity, therefore he is blind, stupid or hypocrite.
Not really. They don’t change often, but in the past years I had the cable company contact me 3 times to make sure I have compatible hardware and upgrade my equipment at no charge (since they can’t sell me VOD through their new system without doing that, of course.)
But the case with the carriers also would be a bit different. Cable companies, due to their comfortable position thanks to the expense of installing cabling, don’t have that much incentive to innovate. Wireless carriers, though, would be in a position where they are forced to compete and keep hardware updated, at least to a higher degree than cable companies are now.
Even as dumb-pipes they will want to keep you hooked. You don't buy your Cable Company DVR box, do you? You usually rent it. Dump pipes wireless ISPs may still either subsidize your smartphone for the exchange of a contract, or rent it at very high profit margin.
Actually... a rental model may be a very good one for all. It would be higher profit for the ISP for one. For you, you would never have to give the up-front cost, you may not ever own the device BUT the carrier will have more encouragement to update your firmware with the latest OS.
And hey, depending on how greedy or generous they are, they may grant ownership of the device if you rent it for 2 years.
Would having wireless carriers be dumb pipes really be so bad? Regardless of who's "goodness permeates"?
For us? No. For them? Yes.
I really think they will die if they have to become dumb pipes.
They are running an insanely high profit margin scheme right now. The dumb pipe business is very low profit, relatively speaking. A company can certainly live off doing this, but not a company that is setup to depend on such a high profit scheme.
Call it the Kodak scenario. Kodak is not dying because of relevance, or refusal to adapt. They are dying because their entire structure was setup around extreme profit margins and it is nearly impossible to scale back without dying. Keep in mind scaling back usually means selling factories and real estate (if you find someone to buy them) and firing insane number of employees, all while restructuring your workflow to manage everything with drastically less manpower.
The same will happen to carriers once they are forced into becoming wireless ISPs. They will start struggling to survive, and new companies built from the ground up with a more streamlined structure will become the dominant dogs.
A gem: "As it happens, the television networks that actively supported SOPA and PIPA didn’t take advantage of their broadcast credibility to press their case. That’s partly because 'old media' draws a line between 'news' and 'editorial.' Apparently, Wikipedia and Google don’t recognize the ethical boundary between the neutral reporting of information and the presentation of editorial opinion as fact."
I am not sure what retcon he is trying to inflict. I saw a lot of news broadcasts, tv shows, entertainment programs, some owned by "Pro SOPA" organizations, actually supporting the frigging anti SOPA movement! If "old media" is so right, then... SOPA is indeed bad!!! But no. He just relies on the old "lets tell them no one talked about it and hope they don’t remember that 'old media' did speak about it."
You realize government senators dont have a clue, they just know that these android smartphones are loaded with that Karreir AI QUE thingy that invades their privacy, right? Thats my point. "Lawmakers" are blinded now about their potential love affair or illegal lobbying actions being keylogged and stored in CIQ servers, and they think all phones have them, plus and Apple clarified to them the tiny bit of data they used for CIQ, while Android Manufacturers were all over the place leaving their paranoid and simple minds even more confused.
And yes, iPhone had CIQ, only used to send usage data back to Apple if you agreed to the clear question "do you want to send usage data to apple?" uppon first use (or after any restore.)
But again, thats not the point, the point is what lawmakers sear and what they get scrambled over.
Slashdot Mirror
Content creators do not want another iTunes/App Store situation.
They lose what, 30% of every sale due to the Apple tax?
It's better for them to roll their own store, control the content completely (DRM, where it shows up on the store, removing bad reviews, etc.), and take the entire pie.
And how big of a slice of the final ad revenue do you think networks get?
How big of a profit margin does Comcast get against the networks? They networks get pennies compared to what you pay them per channel.
Networks dont care for Apples cut. What they fear is losing control, not having to pay the guy in the middle 30% of the final income.
TVs with youtube are not smart TVs. They are dumb browsers.
I want my content exactly how I've always got it, and I'm willing to pay for it.
Restricted to schedules and overpriced? Or you mean stolen?
How about forcing manufacturers of faulty GPS equipment to replace the units? It was THEM selling units they know were defective because "no one" used the neighboring spectrum.
Hey, if you are happy being either restricted by a lame antenna or tied up to a greedy powerhungry cable company, more power to you. I want my smart TV with a-la-carta programming and on demand shows without restrictive itineraries, and I will gladly pay a bit extra for it (as long as the advantages pay for themselves in a 2 year span.)
The computing power difference between the 4 and 4s is huge. It has "only" 2x the cpu power and 7x the graphic power. Try to upgrade a computer to that degree with "just" 100 bucks more.
If rumors are true, the iPad 3's jump may be just as significant.
I have a friend that is a raging Apple fan, but only recently was he able to afford an iPad due to being unemployed until recently. He just got his iPad 2 a few weeks ago. I kept telling him to hold on and wait, but he was not able to resist the temptation to spend his first paycheck on the thing.
Was there not an article about an update making it harder or impossible to unlock Kindles? Or is the unlocking considered a hack? Because as you say, the same goes for the ipad if it is.
To be fair, Apple has slashed the price of iPhones by $100 every time they retain a previous generation in the market. That is why I say $399. It's not blind faith or a gut feeling. It's just being based off Apple year to year habits.
Besides, a $100 reduction may be enough to bring the iPad2 into "budget" range. At the same time it's not so much that anyone that bought an iPad2 a month earlier would be annoyed at the insanely lower price.
Slash the price to $200 and even the most rabid Apple fan will knock at Apple's door with torches and pitchforks if they bought a full price iPad 2 one month earlier.
To be honest, I have not been able to pocket handheld gaming devices... ever. They always been too big and look like tumors in my tight. Handhelds always have been things I keep in the car or by the bed.
Also look at the WiiU, it almost looks like the missing link. Its a tablet used to control a big screen experience. Not too different from mixing up currently an iPad with an AppleTV (although in that case the entire game processing happens in the tablet and just gets streamed to the TV.)
Samsung is also adding similar tech to their TVs, built in, to allow any android device (even tablets) to stream into the TV.
I’d say there is an evolutionary pattern there.
The true tablet market right now is composed of iPads, Kindle Fires and Nooks. All have similar lockins. Microsoft's ARM Win8 has already been stated will be similar. True Android Tables (non branched like the Nook or Kindle) are the exception but to be honest, they are not selling well relatively speaking.
People in this site have also vocally criticized those two tablets for the same points.
That's why I don't single out Apple's iPad.
Ads can remain relevant for sites where demographic data is redundant. For instance, if you are looking at a Video Game Review site for mobile apps, it's a no-brainer what kind of reader is there.
With TV it's similar and to a point unfortunate. We tend to have too many generic TV shows that are obviously designed to cater to a very specific audience. The reason is precisely because they need to target specific demographics so they can sell ads for that demographic.
The problem is with websites that cover basically everything. "News" sites that will publish tech news nearly side by side with politics and celebrity gossip. Those constitute the bulk of the big media on the web. Since they don’t specialize their news and attempt to just bring everyone to their sites, they are forced to rely on targeted advertisement.
Sites like Facebook and other photo hosting sites are similar. Everyone with any set of backgrounds or preferences may use the services, and the only way to sell ads that may attract income is by targeting the user based on intrusive tracking.
If you ask me, I rather have a way for targeted ads in TV, so I can get more unique TV shows, and less on the web, so we can find sites that actually care and focus on themes of interest.
Social networking sites can survive on the data that is directly provided to them, they should not need outside track data to target ads.
I seriously doubt they will shoot so low. At best I expect a price drop to $350 (but most likely $399) for the iPad 2 (and only available Wi-Fi 16 GB without cell data options.)
As for the PC market vs. Tablets... I got to ponder... Many people are defensive saying that tablets can't or should never take over and that PCs must live for us to keep our computing freedom... but what if we are looking at it wrong? What if we look at tablets not as downgraded computers but as the next evolutionary step for consoles and handheld entertainment units?
It's naive to think that having most prosecutions convicted means most occurrences even get prosecuted.
Most crimes of this type never get caught. Heck, no one even finds out they happened in the first place.
Id say it has a lot more to do with their brick stores not stamping a premium price over the online price.
OK imagine you buy, or somehow acquire for pennies, some stock today. Magically, that stock skyrockets because DoodleSoft releases the true one iPhone and Android killer quantum computer.
Your stock is now worth a billion dollars. You don’t sell them, but now there is a wealth tax, you are forced to pay taxes for the true value of the stock.
No trouble, to pay for it you sell some of the stock, only the incredible has happened! Since year end, the company turned out to be just another Enron and went bankrupt! The stock is worth nothing! You can’t sell it!!! But it does not matter, last year ended with you possessing the wealth of a billionaire and you must be now taxed accordingly. And this year’s loss won’t help you because there is no reverse tax for negative wealth. The government won’t be giving you money back the same way they taxed money away from your "wealth"
This is an exaggeration but it is one of the reasons you can’t tax income until it is truly materialized. Is it exploitable? Yes, but it's preferable than defaulting poor people that happened to temporarily possess spiking stock.
I don't think you read my post... "Utility" oriented wireless data pipe will end up existing, but they will just not be the same guys that now dominate because they are too cluttered to survive the change.
I personally only saw lots of coverage the day of the Wikipedia blackout, but I had my mother, who does not use the interent at all, call me to "warn me" about the sopa thing she had seen covered on local news.
Thats odd... didnt know Comcast offered contracts. I'm with them and can quit any time. I also had them upgrade my box out of their own initiative. I dont even watch TV, have the thing for visitors and the box in the guest room.
But as I noted to another reply, with wireless carriers it would be a tad different since they would have more competition as the barrier of entry may be lower than with cable tossing.
Don’t think that’s what he meant. He did say the old media had not used its power to push a Pro SOPA mentality, said they didn’t because of editorial integrity. If that was the reason, then when these old media supported anti-sopa movements, then they did it due to their integrity, therefore he is blind, stupid or hypocrite.
Not really. They don’t change often, but in the past years I had the cable company contact me 3 times to make sure I have compatible hardware and upgrade my equipment at no charge (since they can’t sell me VOD through their new system without doing that, of course.)
But the case with the carriers also would be a bit different. Cable companies, due to their comfortable position thanks to the expense of installing cabling, don’t have that much incentive to innovate. Wireless carriers, though, would be in a position where they are forced to compete and keep hardware updated, at least to a higher degree than cable companies are now.
Even as dumb-pipes they will want to keep you hooked. You don't buy your Cable Company DVR box, do you? You usually rent it. Dump pipes wireless ISPs may still either subsidize your smartphone for the exchange of a contract, or rent it at very high profit margin.
Actually... a rental model may be a very good one for all. It would be higher profit for the ISP for one. For you, you would never have to give the up-front cost, you may not ever own the device BUT the carrier will have more encouragement to update your firmware with the latest OS.
And hey, depending on how greedy or generous they are, they may grant ownership of the device if you rent it for 2 years.
Would having wireless carriers be dumb pipes really be so bad? Regardless of who's "goodness permeates"?
For us? No.
For them? Yes.
I really think they will die if they have to become dumb pipes.
They are running an insanely high profit margin scheme right now. The dumb pipe business is very low profit, relatively speaking. A company can certainly live off doing this, but not a company that is setup to depend on such a high profit scheme.
Call it the Kodak scenario. Kodak is not dying because of relevance, or refusal to adapt. They are dying because their entire structure was setup around extreme profit margins and it is nearly impossible to scale back without dying. Keep in mind scaling back usually means selling factories and real estate (if you find someone to buy them) and firing insane number of employees, all while restructuring your workflow to manage everything with drastically less manpower.
The same will happen to carriers once they are forced into becoming wireless ISPs. They will start struggling to survive, and new companies built from the ground up with a more streamlined structure will become the dominant dogs.
The part I found the funniest was the "gem"
A gem: "As it happens, the television networks that actively supported SOPA and PIPA didn’t take advantage of their broadcast credibility to press their case. That’s partly because 'old media' draws a line between 'news' and 'editorial.' Apparently, Wikipedia and Google don’t recognize the ethical boundary between the neutral reporting of information and the presentation of editorial opinion as fact."
I am not sure what retcon he is trying to inflict. I saw a lot of news broadcasts, tv shows, entertainment programs, some owned by "Pro SOPA" organizations, actually supporting the frigging anti SOPA movement! If "old media" is so right, then... SOPA is indeed bad!!! But no. He just relies on the old "lets tell them no one talked about it and hope they don’t remember that 'old media' did speak about it."
You realize government senators dont have a clue, they just know that these android smartphones are loaded with that Karreir AI QUE thingy that invades their privacy, right? Thats my point. "Lawmakers" are blinded now about their potential love affair or illegal lobbying actions being keylogged and stored in CIQ servers, and they think all phones have them, plus and Apple clarified to them the tiny bit of data they used for CIQ, while Android Manufacturers were all over the place leaving their paranoid and simple minds even more confused.
And yes, iPhone had CIQ, only used to send usage data back to Apple if you agreed to the clear question "do you want to send usage data to apple?" uppon first use (or after any restore.)
But again, thats not the point, the point is what lawmakers sear and what they get scrambled over.