Apple had better be careful about pissing off tech savvy people. We are the market leaders. We set the trends.
I think the wild success of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, etc, and how they've redefined their respective markets has proven that the/. demographic are no longer the trendsetters for consumer electronics.
On the other hand, I don't see many people lamenting anymore that TVs no longer have user-serviceable parts.
People's expectations for technology changes over time. As it becomes more commonplace, the features change. Apple has made overall device size a driving factor for their product line. This means they compromise upgradeability... even with complaints like yours, that's been a winning decision for them. The other route they could have gone would be to sacrifice features to meet the space.... but then they would have ended up with the same under-powered netbook that was a fad in the market.
You are not the target audience for this new product. That's fine. The other MacBook Pro models sound like a better fit for your wants. Or, since you're considering Linux, a different brand might be better.
As for me however, I've gotten really tired of dealing with hardware over the years. Diagnosing, swapping, rebuilding, testing components has gotten tiresome for my own equipment, let alone the support I've been giving friends and family. I'm fine buying a maxed-out machine, forgetting about the hardware, and focusing on simply using it for the kind of work I enjoy.
Today, most people do not make hardware upgrades to existing machines, as the costs compared to a new machine don't make sense. This is especially true for laptops which have far fewer user-serviceable components. It's much like rebuilding the transmission and steering on a 10 year old car. Sure, you can, but when that costs more than the car is worth, does it make sense?
All of those 20 machines (well, some of them are only a year old) have lived a full lifespan of active use for at least 4-5 years.
One of the battery replacements was for the battery bulge after almost 3 years of use. I'm still using that particular machine as my primary computer and it hits the 5 year mark this month. I will be replacing it with the new MacBook Pro because it's difficult to run Eclipse, Chrome, and any 3rd application simultaneously on this aging machine. Although the swap-space improvements in OSX Mountain Lion might breath some new life into it, and it looks like this is the cuttoff as the oldest Apple laptop that will run 10.8.
I have managed over 20 Macbooks over the last 7 years and have had to replace only 3 batteries, all of which were covered as warranty replacements and so wouldn't have mattered if they were user-replaceable or not.
Sure, my Gateway shipped in 97 with USB ports... well before Win98 or Apple shipped the iMac.
But it was useless until Win98 added support. And there were almost no USB devices available on the market until Apple shook things up with their candy designs.
I meant that I was surprised to find out about the messaging app. I only knew about them because of the horrendous ad-serving package some of my clients had installed. I assume that service is being merged into DoubleClick and Adwords campaigns.
No, it's not people installing the Meebo bar on their browser... website owners can use Meebo to run advertising on their sites (much like adwords but incredibly more obnoxious).
As a web developer, I was surprised to find out they actually offered a useful service for end-user.
The Meebo Bar is a major revenue-generating ad platform. Google most likely bought out Meebo for the ad market (like doubleclick) not the chat functionality.
And they're crappy build quality, break, have bad connections, and sacrifice horizontal depth space to save vertical space.
If you have one port that can do everything, why wouldn't you want to maximize that port type and rely on dongles instead? Do you also want dedicated keyboard and mouse ports back on your laptop instead of using USB?
Apple dropped Classic 3-4 years ago? And Rosetta 2+ years ago? And everyone knew that this day was coming since OSX first shipped over 10 years ago?
If you're just now worrying about legacy transition plans, I suggest you prepare your resume because you're about to get fired. You should have been doing this work incrementally. Now you're screwed because you won't be able to legally acquire the intermediary software and hardware.
And I speak from experience, I forced the issue and managed a project to finally get a $250,000 transition plan through a year ago for a primarily Mac office. It only cost so much because the previous admin thought the way you do and let us get into such a state of arrears. If it had been done incrementally over time, it would have been a lot less expensive, AND we would had all the productivity gains over the past 5 years that new hardware and software would have given. That lost opportunity is an enormous cost if you actually sit down to calculate it.
The physical parts may cost less to put the NIC on the motherboard, but in something as space-tight as the MacBook Pro, the space savings probably outweigh it.
Bill started giving away large sums well before he retired. He "retired" so that he could focus more of his time on philanthropy.
Bill has given more in real dollars than Rockefeller.
Gates has, or has published plans to give away a larger percentage (read almost everything) of his fortune than Rockefeller did.
I agree he was a ruthless businessman, much like Rockefeller. But compared to other people of great wealth, he leads a relatively modest lifestyle and seems to genuinely care about making sure his fortunes are eventually used towards change for the common good. Compare him to Larry Ellison for example.
The ultra elite like Bill Gates can't hide huge sums on the order of the billions he's given away. There are too many people (governments and others looking for which way the tide goes) watching their every investment and restructuring move.
No, I was merely pointing out that the Auto Industry is not a good example of job growth, and in particular pointing out that states are stealing jobs from one another in that sector.
I'm glad you brought up automotive plants because there's a perfect example going on right now in that sector.
Chrysler is trying to close down plants in the steel belt and build new ones in South Carolina. South Carolina doesn't put them in a better position for acquiring materials, and it doesn't put them in a better place for delivering their product to the consumer. The reasons for the move are simple: 1) lower business taxes, fees, etc. 2) it lets GM break out of existing labor contracts with expensive tenured employees, replacing them with cheaper new-hires.
Another problem with your choice of example: those overseas manufacturers creating plants here for the US market are actually just brining back jobs we lost to them in the past as Americans started favoring foreign cars over domestic.
(speaking as an American with a 2-German-car household)
Add to that, that Jobs did give money to charity, except Jobs didn't advertise it, while gates apparently did it because it was 'expected' for the billionaires club.
Gates has gone way above and beyond the billionaires club expectations. He has given away more than any other person in history, both in current or real dollar measurements.
He also has setup his will so that his family gets a paltry percentage of his wealth.
Pickup Forbe's 500 richest people list. No-one on it has given nearly the kinds of sums away as he has.
The fineness of detail that can be distinguished in an image, as on a video display terminal.
Total screen display area in pixels is a layman's misunderstanding of the term that's been populated, and is driven partly by the fact that the computer itself didn't know the physical display size of the monitor.
Why do we even still call it DPI in our software when rendering for on-screen use? It has nothing to do with actual physical space.
I can think of a few examples why I'd want this in addition to simply watching.
My wife and I are working our way through all the Star Trek series right now on Netflix, we're in Voyager now. I can't count the number of times we've said "hey, is that the actor from such and such episode or other sci-fi series?" and pulled up IMDB while letting the show continue to play. Having that info auto-linked would speed up the time it takes to find and get us back into the episode that much faster.
Similarly, in a series like Game of Thrones, imagine if you had the full index from the books at your disposal. You could look up who a forgotten character is to remind you of the plotlines. The intro segment on an episode is usually insufficient if you don't watch them back to back.
But inevitably, what the building offers will lag behind in quality, cost, and speed, compared to what individual unit owners can contract directly with ISPs.
A lot of HOAs already have this problem with CableTV. They're stuck with an old, restricted, expensive service package, and individual homeowners go out and get their own DirecTV or similar.
My recommendation (as a member of my own HOA's board) is to stay out of this. Draft rules for what homeowners can do individually for visible wiring, antennas, etc, but don't try for building-wide internet access.
This is the exact reason why in a corporate building, you'll see scattered utility rooms with conduits between. This way, tenants can run their own network needs, and simply contract individually with ISPs for installation.
yet companies are moving away from the web based solution to this, which in my mind is plug-ins: Java applets, Flash, & Silverlight.
I do UI dev for a big agency, and you're wrong, wrong, wrong. Flash is dying primarily because of the iPhone and iPad, Silverlight is dead with the exception of Netfilx, and Java applets haven't been in the wild for years.
They're moving to mobile/desktop HTML5/AJAX solutions, using common frameworks like JQuery Mobile. You probably wouldn't believe this, but most of your online-service-apps for iOS and Android (the ones from your banks, phone companies, etc) are all really just in-app browser views to dedicated HTML5/JQuery Mobile powered websites.
That's a value proposition. Which costs more, the up front costs for virtualization, or the loss of business during downtime, and cost of emergency hardware migrations?
Clustering is a great solution, but most things that can be solved with clustering are probably not solved by virtualization. They're two different solutions for different kinds of reliability risks.
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I think the wild success of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, etc, and how they've redefined their respective markets has proven that the /. demographic are no longer the trendsetters for consumer electronics.
On the other hand, I don't see many people lamenting anymore that TVs no longer have user-serviceable parts.
People's expectations for technology changes over time. As it becomes more commonplace, the features change. Apple has made overall device size a driving factor for their product line. This means they compromise upgradeability... even with complaints like yours, that's been a winning decision for them. The other route they could have gone would be to sacrifice features to meet the space.... but then they would have ended up with the same under-powered netbook that was a fad in the market.
You are not the target audience for this new product. That's fine. The other MacBook Pro models sound like a better fit for your wants. Or, since you're considering Linux, a different brand might be better.
As for me however, I've gotten really tired of dealing with hardware over the years. Diagnosing, swapping, rebuilding, testing components has gotten tiresome for my own equipment, let alone the support I've been giving friends and family. I'm fine buying a maxed-out machine, forgetting about the hardware, and focusing on simply using it for the kind of work I enjoy.
Today, most people do not make hardware upgrades to existing machines, as the costs compared to a new machine don't make sense. This is especially true for laptops which have far fewer user-serviceable components. It's much like rebuilding the transmission and steering on a 10 year old car. Sure, you can, but when that costs more than the car is worth, does it make sense?
All of those 20 machines (well, some of them are only a year old) have lived a full lifespan of active use for at least 4-5 years.
One of the battery replacements was for the battery bulge after almost 3 years of use. I'm still using that particular machine as my primary computer and it hits the 5 year mark this month. I will be replacing it with the new MacBook Pro because it's difficult to run Eclipse, Chrome, and any 3rd application simultaneously on this aging machine. Although the swap-space improvements in OSX Mountain Lion might breath some new life into it, and it looks like this is the cuttoff as the oldest Apple laptop that will run 10.8.
Yay, anecdotal evidence time!
I have managed over 20 Macbooks over the last 7 years and have had to replace only 3 batteries, all of which were covered as warranty replacements and so wouldn't have mattered if they were user-replaceable or not.
Sure, my Gateway shipped in 97 with USB ports... well before Win98 or Apple shipped the iMac.
But it was useless until Win98 added support. And there were almost no USB devices available on the market until Apple shook things up with their candy designs.
I meant that I was surprised to find out about the messaging app. I only knew about them because of the horrendous ad-serving package some of my clients had installed. I assume that service is being merged into DoubleClick and Adwords campaigns.
No, it's not people installing the Meebo bar on their browser... website owners can use Meebo to run advertising on their sites (much like adwords but incredibly more obnoxious).
As a web developer, I was surprised to find out they actually offered a useful service for end-user.
The Meebo Bar is a major revenue-generating ad platform. Google most likely bought out Meebo for the ad market (like doubleclick) not the chat functionality.
And they're crappy build quality, break, have bad connections, and sacrifice horizontal depth space to save vertical space.
If you have one port that can do everything, why wouldn't you want to maximize that port type and rely on dongles instead? Do you also want dedicated keyboard and mouse ports back on your laptop instead of using USB?
Apple dropped Classic 3-4 years ago? And Rosetta 2+ years ago? And everyone knew that this day was coming since OSX first shipped over 10 years ago?
If you're just now worrying about legacy transition plans, I suggest you prepare your resume because you're about to get fired. You should have been doing this work incrementally. Now you're screwed because you won't be able to legally acquire the intermediary software and hardware.
And I speak from experience, I forced the issue and managed a project to finally get a $250,000 transition plan through a year ago for a primarily Mac office. It only cost so much because the previous admin thought the way you do and let us get into such a state of arrears. If it had been done incrementally over time, it would have been a lot less expensive, AND we would had all the productivity gains over the past 5 years that new hardware and software would have given. That lost opportunity is an enormous cost if you actually sit down to calculate it.
The physical parts may cost less to put the NIC on the motherboard, but in something as space-tight as the MacBook Pro, the space savings probably outweigh it.
Bill started giving away large sums well before he retired. He "retired" so that he could focus more of his time on philanthropy.
Bill has given more in real dollars than Rockefeller.
Gates has, or has published plans to give away a larger percentage (read almost everything) of his fortune than Rockefeller did.
I agree he was a ruthless businessman, much like Rockefeller. But compared to other people of great wealth, he leads a relatively modest lifestyle and seems to genuinely care about making sure his fortunes are eventually used towards change for the common good. Compare him to Larry Ellison for example.
The ultra elite like Bill Gates can't hide huge sums on the order of the billions he's given away. There are too many people (governments and others looking for which way the tide goes) watching their every investment and restructuring move.
No, I was merely pointing out that the Auto Industry is not a good example of job growth, and in particular pointing out that states are stealing jobs from one another in that sector.
Fire 400 workers, move headquarters, save a few million, hire 10-12 workers, cash out.
I'm glad you brought up automotive plants because there's a perfect example going on right now in that sector.
Chrysler is trying to close down plants in the steel belt and build new ones in South Carolina. South Carolina doesn't put them in a better position for acquiring materials, and it doesn't put them in a better place for delivering their product to the consumer. The reasons for the move are simple: 1) lower business taxes, fees, etc. 2) it lets GM break out of existing labor contracts with expensive tenured employees, replacing them with cheaper new-hires.
Another problem with your choice of example: those overseas manufacturers creating plants here for the US market are actually just brining back jobs we lost to them in the past as Americans started favoring foreign cars over domestic.
(speaking as an American with a 2-German-car household)
Gates has gone way above and beyond the billionaires club expectations. He has given away more than any other person in history, both in current or real dollar measurements.
He also has setup his will so that his family gets a paltry percentage of his wealth.
Pickup Forbe's 500 richest people list. No-one on it has given nearly the kinds of sums away as he has.
And read just a few lines above it...
Total screen display area in pixels is a layman's misunderstanding of the term that's been populated, and is driven partly by the fact that the computer itself didn't know the physical display size of the monitor.
Why do we even still call it DPI in our software when rendering for on-screen use? It has nothing to do with actual physical space.
DPI is resolution.
Dots Per Inch = resolution quality, aka, how refined and precise the display is.
What you care about is the total number of pixels on the screen.
I've never heard of children taunted for being slower than their peers at reading. Normally the situation is reversed.
No kidding. CamelCase is just plain ordinary Title Case with the spaces removed because programming languages expect names to be OneWord.
I can think of a few examples why I'd want this in addition to simply watching.
My wife and I are working our way through all the Star Trek series right now on Netflix, we're in Voyager now. I can't count the number of times we've said "hey, is that the actor from such and such episode or other sci-fi series?" and pulled up IMDB while letting the show continue to play. Having that info auto-linked would speed up the time it takes to find and get us back into the episode that much faster.
Similarly, in a series like Game of Thrones, imagine if you had the full index from the books at your disposal. You could look up who a forgotten character is to remind you of the plotlines. The intro segment on an episode is usually insufficient if you don't watch them back to back.
But inevitably, what the building offers will lag behind in quality, cost, and speed, compared to what individual unit owners can contract directly with ISPs.
A lot of HOAs already have this problem with CableTV. They're stuck with an old, restricted, expensive service package, and individual homeowners go out and get their own DirecTV or similar.
My recommendation (as a member of my own HOA's board) is to stay out of this. Draft rules for what homeowners can do individually for visible wiring, antennas, etc, but don't try for building-wide internet access.
This is the exact reason why in a corporate building, you'll see scattered utility rooms with conduits between. This way, tenants can run their own network needs, and simply contract individually with ISPs for installation.
I do UI dev for a big agency, and you're wrong, wrong, wrong. Flash is dying primarily because of the iPhone and iPad, Silverlight is dead with the exception of Netfilx, and Java applets haven't been in the wild for years.
They're moving to mobile/desktop HTML5/AJAX solutions, using common frameworks like JQuery Mobile. You probably wouldn't believe this, but most of your online-service-apps for iOS and Android (the ones from your banks, phone companies, etc) are all really just in-app browser views to dedicated HTML5/JQuery Mobile powered websites.
That's a value proposition. Which costs more, the up front costs for virtualization, or the loss of business during downtime, and cost of emergency hardware migrations?
Clustering is a great solution, but most things that can be solved with clustering are probably not solved by virtualization. They're two different solutions for different kinds of reliability risks.