I think this whole situation has been blown out of proportion. How will this code, that allows loading a 3rd party DRM plugin, be conceptually different than the bit of code that allows loading other closed source plugins (Flash, Silverlight, etc)?
It doesn't.
I raised this point months ago when this whole DRM thing started and no one had a good explanation. I think the best explanation was "Yes, but it's encouraging it more." Not that I understand how an arbitrary plugin architecture encourages DRM any less. Cause that's what we have today.
And finally, this DRM is as futile as all the other DRM technologies - it's going to be broken sooner or later (rather sooner), and there are other ways to pirate movies.
What PCIe cards are you plugging in again? Graphics cards? You still have yet to demonstrate that it is not a novelty. I have never seen a CAD setup like that. Nor have I heard of a gaming rig that uses a laptop CPU but has an external graphics box. Maybe you're right and it will be all the rage in CAD houses.
I could go on but really the answer is "Every single PCI-E card that exists." Or "Every single PCI-E card that is important to professional users that just because you don't know about doesn't mean it doesn't exist."
Is there a real use case for connecting a PCI-E card to a system via an external port? The link you showed was basically an enthusiast/hobbyist novelty. If I actually need that sort of graphics power (gamers or CAD), I'm probably using a gaming rig or a workstation, which both have PCI-E slots in the case. I can't imagine what other sort of PCI-E cards I'd be carrying around with my laptop.
The point isn't to make PCI-E cards portable. It's to make it so you only need one machine. Why buy a desktop when you can simply plug the PCI-E cards straight into your laptop? You COULD buy a desktop with a bunch of PCI-E slots, but you don't need to now. Why buy a redundant CPU with a redundant motherboard just to drive a few PCI-E cards?
And if you're a pro with a desktop, and you run out of PCI-E slots, do you simply buy a whole new machine? Thunderbolt can drive six PCI-E devices per bus (http://www.macworld.com/article/2146360/lab-tested-the-mac-pro-daisy-chain-challenge.html). Most desktops don't have six PCI-E slots total.
A lot of pros are adopting Thunderbolt because it allows them to use the devices that used to require a desktop quickly and easily with a laptop, and they can reduce their machine count by one. Thunderbolt doesn't need to displace USB because it has a niche that USB effectively can't replace.
Thunderbolt isn't going to replace USB in all cases, but Thunderbolt isn't about the speed. It's about the protocol. Thunderbolt is basically PCI-E over a wire. Can you connect a GTX 780 Ti (http://techreport.com/news/26426/thunderbolt-box-mates-macbook-pro-with-geforce-gtx-780-ti) with USB 3.1? No? Not really a replacement then. Same goes for any other device that has traditionally been a PCI-E card. Or, you know, you can get an adaptor (http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpressiii.html) and directly connect a PCI-E card.
Speed wise Thunderbolt is evolving too. At this rate there isn't much of a chance of USB 3.1 catching Thunderbolt. As the OP mentioned, Thunderbolt is still ahead of USB 3.1 and 40 Gbps Thunderbolt is coming soon (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/181099-next-gen-thunderbolt-details-40gbps-pcie-3-0-hdmi-2-0-and-100w-power-delivery-for-single-cable-pcs). But again, even is USB catches Thunderbolt, or both become fast enough, the protocols and designs of the connections makes them entirely unsuitable for each other's uses (you wouldn't connect a mouse and keyboard to your PCI-E bus directly via Thunderbolt.)
The article seems to mention Windows/Linux (or Linux/Window). What about OpenGL/GLES drivers on other platforms, such as Mac OS X, Android, iOS, ?
OS X and iOS well, the drivers I believe work, but can be slow. The reason is, well, Apple pretty much wrote the drivers for AMD, nVidia, Intel and Imagination Technologies. There probably was a lot of cooperation with the respective companies, but Apple pretty much wrote it themselves as the others do not have the time, money or resources to write drivers for Apple.
Apple is not writing the drivers for AMD and nVidia. I'm not sure about Intel. At one time Apple wrote the Nvidia drivers (over a decade ago), but they never wrote the AMD drivers. AMD and nVidia definitely have internal teams writing their drivers these days.
Apple is responsible for the OpenGL stack and driver ABI, which is where they work closely with the GPU vendors. But they're taking drops of the drivers and pre-bundling them with the OS. It can make submitting bugs a problem because Apple are the ones supplying the drivers, so you file bugs with them, but they're just forwarding the bugs on to teams at Nvidia or AMD.
There is a lot of finger pointing over the slowness issues. Sometime's it's clearly Nvidia or AMD. Sometimes it's clearly Apple. Because Apple controls the OpenGL ABI and public interface, OpenGL version update issues are definitely Apple's problem, which could be the result of some performance issues.
A lot of the issues are just around Apple's history. Apple was big into games and gaming performance back around 2000. There usually was an OpenGL game tech demo every conference. A big driver of this was Apple's support of Bungie. When Microsoft bought Bungie I think Jobs held a bit of a grudge against the gaming community. Apple tried to counter Microsoft's offer but came in too late. Ever since then, Apple's interest in games has gone away.
So a lot of the slowness issues are commonly thought to be Apple optimizing their drivers towards pro applications like Final Cut, and not spending much time optimizing for games.
Egad, what terrible advice. Yes freshman year is the lightest workload if you came from a good HS but it can be hard for people that come from crappy school systems.
But there is something more important and that's having fun. Collage is the last real time in your life you can goof off and have a good time without severe repercussions. Studies need to be important and good grades a must but with the lighter work load freshman year you should be having fun. That means making friends, dating and having a good time. Once you graduate are looking at almost 50 years of continuous 40+ hour workweeks with 2 weeks of time off a year.
Enjoy collage, its your last chance to act like a kid.
Well, I didn't mention dating or having fun, but that's not bad advice either.:)
Seriously OP, this is going to be one of the best dating pools you will have in your whole life.
If the OP is looking for things to do with his/her time, I was kind of assuming the whole social thing had been considered and rejected, but if your school is being paid for and you've got the time, it is one of the best time's in your life to live a little.
Keep in mind: Freshman year you're going to have the most free time out of any other year. By senior year your workload is going to be double or tripled.
With that in mind: I'd focus on your studies. If you have spare time, focus on getting other classes out of the way so you won't have to take them later. Or take other classes that could develop your degree and help you learn things you didn't know before. Take a network security class, or a graphics class. Something outside your wheelhouse.
If you're already at 18 credits and finding yourself bored: Work on your own outside project, contribute to open source project, etc. Whatever you do, do not commit yourself to a regular job with expected hours.
For reference: I worked while I was getting my degree (had to, I paid my own way) and it delayed my graduation about a year to a year and a half. So I'd only recommend doing it if you need the money.
An existing very well recognized brand, existing supply chains and contracts for producing "premium" headphones, and existing streaming service with deals with all major record labels and many independent labels.
Could Apple have reached the same point cheaper if they did it all themselves? Probably. Would it have been as fast? No.
I think (and from all the up voted comments, I think a lot of people here don't really get this deal) Apple doesn't care about the headphones.
Beats has a subscription audio service, and a bunch of engineers who are good at making those services work. They have existing contracts for that service, which saves Apple a lot of time they could have spent negotiating and dealing with music labels who want to see Apple brought down a peg.
The headphones are a nice added bonus for Apple (think of the profit margin on those things), and they probably inflated the buyout price, but they really have nothing to do with the big reasons for this deal.
Pandora would have been a reasonable alternative as well, but Pandora is a much more expensive buyout than Beats.
Encrypted by the hardware encryption key that's physically on the device.
Some data is encrypted by hardware encryption and pass code.
Some data is encrypted by just the hardware.
That's why Apple requires the entire phone. Just an image of the device is not enough. They've got to lift the actual encryption key off of the hardware.
Still a little double speak, but not too much. They're saying everything is encrypted, but not necessarily by the PIN.
Most IT departments see this as reasonable encryption, as getting the key back out of the encryption chip is not simple.
Microsoft has it's supporters. Smart people who are big fans of the company and want to see them win.
And I say that as an Apple supporter. Maybe that's how I know these people exist.
It's not necessarily the rule, but I know a lot of people raised during the tail end of the 90s who are huge Microsoft fans. In those days Apple was dying and Linux was non existent. Microsoft was helping create cell phones, computers, cars, pocket computers, and watches.
To quite a few in that generation, they remember Microsoft as the true innovator behind the PC revolution. To the rest of us? Not so much.
Russia is sending in their own military. They are the ones fighting this counter-revolution - not the people they claim to be helping. This is by and large a Russian military intervention.
I would be interested in a citation. The last I saw, this claim was based on some photos that have been thoroughly debunked.
The only US involvement was in the legitimization of the leader of the new government, which was the subject of the leaked wiretap by the FSB, where the American Ambassador says "f* the EU".
Except that was well before there was a new government... So a US "diplomat" trying to help organize a new government in Kiev while the old one is still in power is actually pretty clear evidence of US government involvement.
It was before the new government had formed, but a month after the unrest had started and the old government had last control, and at that time it was pretty clear a new government was going to form. Which is the sort of thing an ambassador would understandably have an opinion about.
It's not really proof of anything, besides the US at least watching what was going on, but certainly of no active involvement besides musing on if the EU might add sanctions.
3) The EU/US fomented an overthrow of the government in Ukraine probably facilitated by covert operations in order to prevent the Eurasian Union from coming together with Ukraine as its economic crossroad to Europe.
Needs citation...
There was previously a lot of support for a Ukraine/EU relationship from the voters, and the government was previous moving ahead on one. Those are facts. Also, if the US had any interest in this sort of scheme, they likely would have tried to enroll Ukraine in NATO, which was a process that was no where near actually happening.
Which is why this needs to be backed up with some sort of proof.
Russia is seeing a country that is essentially on the brink of civil war right next to its borders.
A civil war that started as a limited domestic disturbance until Russia themselves escalated it.
On top of that, that country happens to control many of the major resource pipelines into and out of Russia. They have a vested interest in keeping Ukraine stable. Do you expect that the US would do any differently if Juarez or Tijuana truly became a Narco-stronghold?
Funny how that works. Russia destabilizes a country, and gosh... now they have to go in and take it over. It's unstable after all!
Don't rush so quickly to judge. The media on both sides of the pond spins the story to make their respective side look good.
Uh huh.
There's a reason Germany has basically decided Russia is entirely disconnected from reality or not being honest.
If Russia was so interested in Ukraine being stable, they could have stabilized Crimea and left it in Ukrainian hands.
HD-DVD allowed DRM free creation (which meant no licensing fees) and could even be burned onto existing DVD media. The HD-DVD format was even web stream able.
It was a reason I was a big fan of HD-DVD. Unfortunately everyone just saw the capacity and totally missed the horrible, awful DRM side.
Yes, because the ability to burn on 100s of CDs for cheap is what people want the most when they want to watch a movie quickly and easily.
You know why Bluray is dying? I don't have to drive to some store, stand in line, and buy something for an outrageous sum of money. If I want to watch a movie with streaming, all I have to do is sit down on my couch and watch it.
Physical media is dying because of the constraints of it being a physical object.
Apple did not cause China to be how it is, but they are profiting from it. It is not illegal, but it is still bad. It is not beneficial to American society.
Ok. So now we're down from criminal and un-capitalistic to "I don't like it."
That's fair. And that falls in the realm of ethics. Not Apple committing criminal acts or subverting capitalism. If anything, the situation in China is a result of the ugly side of capitalism. Corporations will always seek out the best deal for production.
The competition they forced out business or into the arms of another owner were paying 1st world wages, competing with America in a proper, fair, free market way. Companies like Sony, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung. Apple started the race to the bottom on the supply side.
You're joking, right?
Nokia, Sony, Motorola, and Samsung all had production under Foxconn that predates Apple.
THEY started the race to the bottom. Apple had all their production in the US for quite some time until they followed. I've still got machines made less than 10 years ago from Apple that were entirely US made.
C'mon. Learn your basic history here. How old are you? Since the 90s Foxconn has been making PCs and many Wintel companies were infamous for Chinese built goods. Apple used to run "Made in the USA" ad campaigns for a reason.
Are you like 12? Do you not remember these things? Foxconn has been around since 1974 and Apple only started using them in the last decade.
This not the strength. The strength is that is in inexpensive to do business in these places. The reason it is inexpensive are complex, but come down to: (a) no due process. Business needs that land/water/power? No problem; (b) low wages, caused by a huge peasant population, (c) cost shifting to the future or other payors, namely, those same peasants; (d) currency manipulation; (e) cost shifting on the consumer side (i.e., consumers in the US do not pay the true cost of the goods, the costs are shifted to other payers).
Sorry. It is.
Apple has repeatedly commented this is the primary factor. And it's been proven out by their actual supply chain. The entire iPhone supply chain in reality is in a small geographic area.
You can hand wave around it. The locality of the supply chain is a huge factor for any company.
Wages? Not so much. Most estimates are that moving production back to the US would only raise phone prices by $10-$20. The supply chain being messed up? Much more damaging.
Apple actively fixes prices. They maintain minimum and maximum retail prices, which is usually illegal, but is carved out of exceptions thanks to various telecommunications and other exceptions. They fix prices of digital goods actively and extensively, as seen in music, video, and electronic books. They fix salaries and benefits.
They maintain dodgy tax avoidance schemes which have routinely come up against scrutiny. They back date options to avoid paying appropriate taxes and duties on benefits ac rued to executives. This is all what we know about in the last 8 years - are suggesting that this is the entire extent of their illegal activity?
And as I recall they paid a penalty on the stock back dating.
They aggressively use patent protections to extract unfair payments from competitors, while at the same time infringing on others patents' rights.
As their competitors use patent protections to extract payments from them...
I'm not sure you know what the word unfair means. Unfair means Apple has an advantage that no one else can use against them. Given the number of active patent lawsuits against Apple I don't think it meets the unfair standard.
These are all ill-gotten benefits and are all well understood.
Apple uniquely exploited a fascist relationship with a communist, worker hostile government, and did so with the explicit goal of exterminating companies who had workers in first world and developed nations. It pushed out good, quality jobs and replaced them with near slave labor, that is facilitated by a corporate-government mix that is only possible by disregarding human rights, American values, and decency.
Did they? As far as I understand, China's minimum wage laws were low before Apple showed up. Foxcon's existence predated Apple's involvement in China.
You could possibly make the argument that Apple is reenforcing this behavior, but I'm not sure they are. If Apple pulled out of China entirely today (really, if they pulled out of Foxcon entirely), would China's minimum wage go up? Probably not. Would working conditions become better? Probably not. Would Foxcon go away? Definitely not.
With the amount of money Apple is putting into China you could even make a pretty good argument China would be worse off as a whole without that money.
If you're talking about it from a "those jobs have left the US" perspective, it's even debatable if fair wage would change that behavior. The strengths of China and Taiwan are that you have all the production lines you need within a very small area. Apple has repeatedly claimed that this is their primary block to moving production back to the US, not wages. And it's an entirely believable explanation when you look at production of things like the Mac Pro (which is US based, and has to source components from all over the country) vs the iPhone (which probably has all it's parts sourced from a mile radius down to the screws.) There's been a few exceptions like CPUs and glass, but that at least can be flown over in bulk a little easier than a bunch of screws.
What Apple is doing is using a friendly government - communist China - to do things which it otherwise could not do...
See above. Communism is not a primary driver, nor does Apple necessarily cause the conditions or using the Chinese (rather, it's more arguable the Chinese government created the conditions before Apple's involvement.)
They are not competing on price. They are using an ill-gotten market power to maintain margins. In the end the market always wins, which is why, absent their criminal mastermind boss, the margins are starting recede and their market power is dimming.
Claim made with no citation. Ok, the hiring practices are one thing. But for the gains to be ill-gotten the benefits have to be available to no one else. Not only is Chinese production available to everyone else, it's actively used by everyone else. In fact, out of all the companies, Apple has the most facilities in the US (as few as they do.)
Criminal allegations have a higher bar. Again, beyond the hiring practices, and an extremely questionable antitrust suit vs. Amazon, there has been no illegal activity. Their activity in China is definitely not illegal, and it's not unique.
Society is supposed to benefit from the privileges we extend corporations. That is the basis and history of the entire idea of corporations. In a proper capitalist society, they have no place or role. You should read up on why corporations exist.
I have done a lot of reading on corporations. Trust me.
Corporations exist to allow business risks to be taken without personal risks being taken. For example, they allow one to set up a pet store without worry that they may go personally bankrupt.
Society gets several benefits from this. As a whole, it allows individuals to drive their own businesses easier (and I myself have an LLC to protect myself for this very reason.) It also allows the government to tax the corporation differently than an individual (take a look at my taxes sometimes, they're higher than my personal taxes. Not that I'm complaining but I'm hardly able to form an LLC
1. Preventing employees from sharing in the wealth generated by the company is a monumentally criminal undertaking. Only a very few employees are ever the subject of a bidding war amoung competitors. It's the Holy Grail of being an employee. It creates positive ripple effects throughout the entire economic system. Increased wages and pay also creates incentives to avoid geographic concentration (like in Silicon Valley). Stifling those natural market forces is alone enough to justify having a corporate character cancelled.
Huh? I'm not sure what you mean by "share the wealth." Apple employees get profit sharing options. If you're referring to the no-compete, many companies were co-conspirators in that, Google included. If anything, Google deserves the "death penalty" just as much as Apple. Somehow I feel as if you might hypocritically draw a line in the sand there.
2. Apple has effectively, and evilly, cost-shifted the burdens of it's product production pipeline to anyone who has pockets deep enough to pay (other than themselves). From using outsourced labor in China, subsidized by the ruling Community party and the brazenly inhuman economic system in China,to their offshore subsidiary tax-scheming, to their perpetuation of the corporate copyright cartel, Apple has done everything in it's power, legally and extra-legally, to benefit from the investments of others, to exploit loopholes, and to exploit developing nation's labor supplies.
None of which is remotely illegal or uncommon in the industry.
Again, your thesis is Apple is uniquely guilty of crimes that justify their dismemberment, yet your citing something every company in the US that manufactures hardware or software does. Google, again, included.
3. Apple has, and continues to, extract massive wealth from the economy, and put it to use in non-productive ways. The late Mr. Jobs was a huge driver to this end. By using a combination of mythology, lies, and a deeply held anti-freedom ethos, Apple has done all it can to leverage it's cultural and political power, plus it's product line, to the extraction of middle class wealth. In itself, this is fine, but combined with price fixing, labor exploitation, and fascist integration into government, Apple is a classic economic rent-seeker. Between now and when the product is totally saturated and must compete on price, Apple will have extracted trillions of dollars of economic rent, while providing very little genuine economic benefit. The wealth they have shared outside of the top leadership and shareholders, trickled down to app developers or employees, has not gone towards generating additional economic activity, but instead, to pumping up a lavish, ridiculous, obscene real-estate and consumption bubble isolated into a tiny nexus of the country. The benefits that have accrued, as minimal as they are, are far less positive than would be more productive, honest, and transparent economic activity that they have deprived of oxygen.
I think your faux righteous attitude went off the rails here...
It seems to boil down to: 1. Steve Jobs made people like Apple. I think people are stupid because of that. Oh no! 2. Facist integration into government! I don't know what that means or have any examples or proof, but it makes me sound smarter than I actually am! Here's a tip on facism: Real facism looks like the Nazis. Get back to me when Apple is rounding up people who don't buy their products and shoving them into ovens, ok? 3. Apple isn't competing on price! No, they are competing on price. Cheapest product doesn't always win or lose. Take an economics class or two. 4. People outside of Apple or people who don't have Apple shares haven't made money from Apple! Huh? I tell you what, how about you start sending me a few bucks from your paycheck every month. I'm some random guy on the internet to you? Great! You're some random guy on the internet to Apple. 5. They advertise and
"They're not convincingly replacing PCs on one end or phones on the other."
I really don't get this line of reasoning.
I don't think the tablet was ever entirely meant to replace the PC. Apple has said so themselves. There are people (like a lot of people here at Slashdot) who will always need a PC. Apple hasn't said that the PC is going away, rather that for a lot of customers that previously had no choice, tablets may cannibalize a lot of PC sales. People who just need to check email and shop online no longer have to buy a PC.
On the other end... tablets replacing phones? Do I even need to deal with that one? That's just... if a tablet can be carried around in my pocket it's probably not a tablet anymore. Do I need to go any further with that?
I think the way Apple sees the future, all three categories will continue to exist, and Apple, at least for now, will continue to sell to all three categories. Individual users may choose to only buy from one or two of those categories, or maybe all three.
On the original topic: iPad sales could be down because Apple is about to release a new iPad, and consumers are waiting. There usually is a similar drop in phone sales (and indeed, this quarters sales data has shown a sudden spike in Android's share of sales for the quarter, indicating iPhone users aren't upgrading as they usually are, probably because the iPhone 6 is almost here.)
Pundits like to read way way too much into quarter by quarter data. Android's quarterly marketshare in tablets spiked this quarter as well, which again, may point to iOS users holding off tablet purchases for the quarter, as opposed to consumers abandoning tablets. It could possibly point to the iPad losing popularity, but again, that's way too much to read into over a single quarter's worth of data right before a revision. I myself am holding out on buying a new iPad (I'm several revs behind) until the new one ships. Otherwise I'd buy today.
Any video switching equipment for HDMI/DVI will often use a small device such as Gefen's HDMI Detective to store the EDID of the screen and convince the video source that it is always connected. It would be trivial to store a "fake" EDID in such a device that reports a smaller screen.
It would not be trivial to upsample the low resolution content that would be streamed in response, however.
If you want to watch low res content on a large TV? I doubt anyone is going to care.
Except more and more phones are higher resolution then most HDTVs already. A lot of people will have a 55 inch TV at 1080p but a smartphone with 1440p at least in just a few years. So paying per pixel or per size is pointless as neither tells you anything...
I'm not sure that matters.
Ideal resolution of video is judged by how big the screen is to your eye. If a tv screen and a phone are viewed at the same relative size, they both have the same ideal resolution. I.E. if I hold my phone at a distance so it seems to my eye to be the same size as my TV (which is further away, but larger), you're still dealing with the same maximum optical resolution.
So unless you're holding the phone directly up to your face, you are very unlikely to be able to tell the difference (or benefit from) 1440p video on a phone. More than likely, you won't benefit from 720p either.
On a phone, text is what really benefits from a high resolution display anyway, not video.
In short, the system still works because you would stream 720p or 1080p to a phone regardless of the pixels, which would look excellent to viewers. If you're a picky user who wants more? Great! Buy the TV stream at the TV price for your phone.
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I think this whole situation has been blown out of proportion.
How will this code, that allows loading a 3rd party DRM plugin, be conceptually different than the bit of code that allows loading other closed source plugins (Flash, Silverlight, etc)?
It doesn't.
I raised this point months ago when this whole DRM thing started and no one had a good explanation. I think the best explanation was "Yes, but it's encouraging it more." Not that I understand how an arbitrary plugin architecture encourages DRM any less. Cause that's what we have today.
And finally, this DRM is as futile as all the other DRM technologies - it's going to be broken sooner or later (rather sooner), and there are other ways to pirate movies.
And yet I bet you still keep locks on your doors.
What PCIe cards are you plugging in again? Graphics cards? You still have yet to demonstrate that it is not a novelty. I have never seen a CAD setup like that. Nor have I heard of a gaming rig that uses a laptop CPU but has an external graphics box. Maybe you're right and it will be all the rage in CAD houses.
What devices are these? Still graphics cards?
http://www.red.com/store/produ...
http://www.blackmagicdesign.co...
http://www.nvidia.com/object/q...
http://eshop.macsales.com/item...
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Du...
I could go on but really the answer is "Every single PCI-E card that exists." Or "Every single PCI-E card that is important to professional users that just because you don't know about doesn't mean it doesn't exist."
Is there a real use case for connecting a PCI-E card to a system via an external port? The link you showed was basically an enthusiast/hobbyist novelty. If I actually need that sort of graphics power (gamers or CAD), I'm probably using a gaming rig or a workstation, which both have PCI-E slots in the case. I can't imagine what other sort of PCI-E cards I'd be carrying around with my laptop.
The point isn't to make PCI-E cards portable. It's to make it so you only need one machine. Why buy a desktop when you can simply plug the PCI-E cards straight into your laptop? You COULD buy a desktop with a bunch of PCI-E slots, but you don't need to now. Why buy a redundant CPU with a redundant motherboard just to drive a few PCI-E cards?
And if you're a pro with a desktop, and you run out of PCI-E slots, do you simply buy a whole new machine? Thunderbolt can drive six PCI-E devices per bus (http://www.macworld.com/article/2146360/lab-tested-the-mac-pro-daisy-chain-challenge.html). Most desktops don't have six PCI-E slots total.
A lot of pros are adopting Thunderbolt because it allows them to use the devices that used to require a desktop quickly and easily with a laptop, and they can reduce their machine count by one. Thunderbolt doesn't need to displace USB because it has a niche that USB effectively can't replace.
Thunderbolt isn't going to replace USB in all cases, but Thunderbolt isn't about the speed. It's about the protocol. Thunderbolt is basically PCI-E over a wire. Can you connect a GTX 780 Ti (http://techreport.com/news/26426/thunderbolt-box-mates-macbook-pro-with-geforce-gtx-780-ti) with USB 3.1? No? Not really a replacement then. Same goes for any other device that has traditionally been a PCI-E card. Or, you know, you can get an adaptor (http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpressiii.html) and directly connect a PCI-E card.
Speed wise Thunderbolt is evolving too. At this rate there isn't much of a chance of USB 3.1 catching Thunderbolt. As the OP mentioned, Thunderbolt is still ahead of USB 3.1 and 40 Gbps Thunderbolt is coming soon (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/181099-next-gen-thunderbolt-details-40gbps-pcie-3-0-hdmi-2-0-and-100w-power-delivery-for-single-cable-pcs). But again, even is USB catches Thunderbolt, or both become fast enough, the protocols and designs of the connections makes them entirely unsuitable for each other's uses (you wouldn't connect a mouse and keyboard to your PCI-E bus directly via Thunderbolt.)
The article seems to mention Windows/Linux (or Linux/Window). What about OpenGL/GLES drivers on other platforms, such as Mac OS X, Android, iOS, ?
OS X and iOS well, the drivers I believe work, but can be slow. The reason is, well, Apple pretty much wrote the drivers for AMD, nVidia, Intel and Imagination Technologies. There probably was a lot of cooperation with the respective companies, but Apple pretty much wrote it themselves as the others do not have the time, money or resources to write drivers for Apple.
Apple is not writing the drivers for AMD and nVidia. I'm not sure about Intel. At one time Apple wrote the Nvidia drivers (over a decade ago), but they never wrote the AMD drivers. AMD and nVidia definitely have internal teams writing their drivers these days.
Apple is responsible for the OpenGL stack and driver ABI, which is where they work closely with the GPU vendors. But they're taking drops of the drivers and pre-bundling them with the OS. It can make submitting bugs a problem because Apple are the ones supplying the drivers, so you file bugs with them, but they're just forwarding the bugs on to teams at Nvidia or AMD.
There is a lot of finger pointing over the slowness issues. Sometime's it's clearly Nvidia or AMD. Sometimes it's clearly Apple. Because Apple controls the OpenGL ABI and public interface, OpenGL version update issues are definitely Apple's problem, which could be the result of some performance issues.
A lot of the issues are just around Apple's history. Apple was big into games and gaming performance back around 2000. There usually was an OpenGL game tech demo every conference. A big driver of this was Apple's support of Bungie. When Microsoft bought Bungie I think Jobs held a bit of a grudge against the gaming community. Apple tried to counter Microsoft's offer but came in too late. Ever since then, Apple's interest in games has gone away.
So a lot of the slowness issues are commonly thought to be Apple optimizing their drivers towards pro applications like Final Cut, and not spending much time optimizing for games.
There is no aftermarket vs. bundled drivers. They're the same drivers.
Apple takes regularly drops and rolls them in to OS X.
Apple does not write the OS X GPU drivers (except possibly the Intel drivers for a bit.)
Egad, what terrible advice. Yes freshman year is the lightest workload if you came from a good HS but it can be hard for people that come from crappy school systems.
But there is something more important and that's having fun. Collage is the last real time in your life you can goof off and have a good time without severe repercussions. Studies need to be important and good grades a must but with the lighter work load freshman year you should be having fun. That means making friends, dating and having a good time. Once you graduate are looking at almost 50 years of continuous 40+ hour workweeks with 2 weeks of time off a year.
Enjoy collage, its your last chance to act like a kid.
Well, I didn't mention dating or having fun, but that's not bad advice either. :)
Seriously OP, this is going to be one of the best dating pools you will have in your whole life.
If the OP is looking for things to do with his/her time, I was kind of assuming the whole social thing had been considered and rejected, but if your school is being paid for and you've got the time, it is one of the best time's in your life to live a little.
Keep in mind: Freshman year you're going to have the most free time out of any other year. By senior year your workload is going to be double or tripled.
With that in mind: I'd focus on your studies. If you have spare time, focus on getting other classes out of the way so you won't have to take them later. Or take other classes that could develop your degree and help you learn things you didn't know before. Take a network security class, or a graphics class. Something outside your wheelhouse.
If you're already at 18 credits and finding yourself bored: Work on your own outside project, contribute to open source project, etc. Whatever you do, do not commit yourself to a regular job with expected hours.
For reference: I worked while I was getting my degree (had to, I paid my own way) and it delayed my graduation about a year to a year and a half. So I'd only recommend doing it if you need the money.
An existing very well recognized brand, existing supply chains and contracts for producing "premium" headphones, and existing streaming service with deals with all major record labels and many independent labels.
Could Apple have reached the same point cheaper if they did it all themselves? Probably. Would it have been as fast? No.
I think (and from all the up voted comments, I think a lot of people here don't really get this deal) Apple doesn't care about the headphones.
Beats has a subscription audio service, and a bunch of engineers who are good at making those services work. They have existing contracts for that service, which saves Apple a lot of time they could have spent negotiating and dealing with music labels who want to see Apple brought down a peg.
The headphones are a nice added bonus for Apple (think of the profit margin on those things), and they probably inflated the buyout price, but they really have nothing to do with the big reasons for this deal.
Pandora would have been a reasonable alternative as well, but Pandora is a much more expensive buyout than Beats.
Encrypted by the hardware encryption key that's physically on the device.
Some data is encrypted by hardware encryption and pass code.
Some data is encrypted by just the hardware.
That's why Apple requires the entire phone. Just an image of the device is not enough. They've got to lift the actual encryption key off of the hardware.
Still a little double speak, but not too much. They're saying everything is encrypted, but not necessarily by the PIN.
Most IT departments see this as reasonable encryption, as getting the key back out of the encryption chip is not simple.
Microsoft has it's supporters. Smart people who are big fans of the company and want to see them win.
And I say that as an Apple supporter. Maybe that's how I know these people exist.
It's not necessarily the rule, but I know a lot of people raised during the tail end of the 90s who are huge Microsoft fans. In those days Apple was dying and Linux was non existent. Microsoft was helping create cell phones, computers, cars, pocket computers, and watches.
To quite a few in that generation, they remember Microsoft as the true innovator behind the PC revolution. To the rest of us? Not so much.
Russia is sending in their own military. They are the ones fighting this counter-revolution - not the people they claim to be helping. This is by and large a Russian military intervention.
I would be interested in a citation. The last I saw, this claim was based on some photos that have been thoroughly debunked.
I'll do you one better and give you videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That look like civilians to you?
The only US involvement was in the legitimization of the leader of the new government, which was the subject of the leaked wiretap by the FSB, where the American Ambassador says "f* the EU".
Except that was well before there was a new government... So a US "diplomat" trying to help organize a new government in Kiev while the old one is still in power is actually pretty clear evidence of US government involvement.
It was before the new government had formed, but a month after the unrest had started and the old government had last control, and at that time it was pretty clear a new government was going to form. Which is the sort of thing an ambassador would understandably have an opinion about.
It's not really proof of anything, besides the US at least watching what was going on, but certainly of no active involvement besides musing on if the EU might add sanctions.
3) The EU/US fomented an overthrow of the government in Ukraine probably facilitated by covert operations in order to prevent the Eurasian Union from coming together with Ukraine as its economic crossroad to Europe.
Needs citation...
There was previously a lot of support for a Ukraine/EU relationship from the voters, and the government was previous moving ahead on one. Those are facts. Also, if the US had any interest in this sort of scheme, they likely would have tried to enroll Ukraine in NATO, which was a process that was no where near actually happening.
Which is why this needs to be backed up with some sort of proof.
Russia is seeing a country that is essentially on the brink of civil war right next to its borders.
A civil war that started as a limited domestic disturbance until Russia themselves escalated it.
On top of that, that country happens to control many of the major resource pipelines into and out of Russia. They have a vested interest in keeping Ukraine stable. Do you expect that the US would do any differently if Juarez or Tijuana truly became a Narco-stronghold?
Funny how that works. Russia destabilizes a country, and gosh... now they have to go in and take it over. It's unstable after all!
Don't rush so quickly to judge. The media on both sides of the pond spins the story to make their respective side look good.
Uh huh.
There's a reason Germany has basically decided Russia is entirely disconnected from reality or not being honest.
If Russia was so interested in Ukraine being stable, they could have stabilized Crimea and left it in Ukrainian hands.
HD-DVD allowed DRM free creation (which meant no licensing fees) and could even be burned onto existing DVD media. The HD-DVD format was even web stream able.
It was a reason I was a big fan of HD-DVD. Unfortunately everyone just saw the capacity and totally missed the horrible, awful DRM side.
Yes, because the ability to burn on 100s of CDs for cheap is what people want the most when they want to watch a movie quickly and easily.
You know why Bluray is dying? I don't have to drive to some store, stand in line, and buy something for an outrageous sum of money. If I want to watch a movie with streaming, all I have to do is sit down on my couch and watch it.
Physical media is dying because of the constraints of it being a physical object.
Apple did not cause China to be how it is, but they are profiting from it. It is not illegal, but it is still bad. It is not beneficial to American society.
Ok. So now we're down from criminal and un-capitalistic to "I don't like it."
That's fair. And that falls in the realm of ethics. Not Apple committing criminal acts or subverting capitalism. If anything, the situation in China is a result of the ugly side of capitalism. Corporations will always seek out the best deal for production.
The competition they forced out business or into the arms of another owner were paying 1st world wages, competing with America in a proper, fair, free market way. Companies like Sony, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung. Apple started the race to the bottom on the supply side.
You're joking, right?
Nokia, Sony, Motorola, and Samsung all had production under Foxconn that predates Apple.
THEY started the race to the bottom. Apple had all their production in the US for quite some time until they followed. I've still got machines made less than 10 years ago from Apple that were entirely US made.
C'mon. Learn your basic history here. How old are you? Since the 90s Foxconn has been making PCs and many Wintel companies were infamous for Chinese built goods. Apple used to run "Made in the USA" ad campaigns for a reason.
Are you like 12? Do you not remember these things? Foxconn has been around since 1974 and Apple only started using them in the last decade.
This not the strength. The strength is that is in inexpensive to do business in these places. The reason it is inexpensive are complex, but come down to: (a) no due process. Business needs that land/water/power? No problem; (b) low wages, caused by a huge peasant population, (c) cost shifting to the future or other payors, namely, those same peasants; (d) currency manipulation; (e) cost shifting on the consumer side (i.e., consumers in the US do not pay the true cost of the goods, the costs are shifted to other payers).
Sorry. It is.
Apple has repeatedly commented this is the primary factor. And it's been proven out by their actual supply chain. The entire iPhone supply chain in reality is in a small geographic area.
You can hand wave around it. The locality of the supply chain is a huge factor for any company.
Wages? Not so much. Most estimates are that moving production back to the US would only raise phone prices by $10-$20. The supply chain being messed up? Much more damaging.
Apple actively fixes prices. They maintain minimum and maximum retail prices, which is usually illegal, but is carved out of exceptions thanks to various telecommunications and other exceptions. They fix prices of digital goods actively and extensively, as seen in music, video, and electronic books. They fix salaries and benefits.
Citation needed. Citation needed. Citation needed.
They maintain dodgy tax avoidance schemes which have routinely come up against scrutiny. They back date options to avoid paying appropriate taxes and duties on benefits ac rued to executives. This is all what we know about in the last 8 years - are suggesting that this is the entire extent of their illegal activity?
And as I recall they paid a penalty on the stock back dating.
They aggressively use patent protections to extract unfair payments from competitors, while at the same time infringing on others patents' rights.
As their competitors use patent protections to extract payments from them...
I'm not sure you know what the word unfair means. Unfair means Apple has an advantage that no one else can use against them. Given the number of active patent lawsuits against Apple I don't think it meets the unfair standard.
These are all ill-gotten benefits and are all well understood.
Totally legal be
Apple uniquely exploited a fascist relationship with a communist, worker hostile government, and did so with the explicit goal of exterminating companies who had workers in first world and developed nations. It pushed out good, quality jobs and replaced them with near slave labor, that is facilitated by a corporate-government mix that is only possible by disregarding human rights, American values, and decency.
Did they? As far as I understand, China's minimum wage laws were low before Apple showed up. Foxcon's existence predated Apple's involvement in China.
You could possibly make the argument that Apple is reenforcing this behavior, but I'm not sure they are. If Apple pulled out of China entirely today (really, if they pulled out of Foxcon entirely), would China's minimum wage go up? Probably not. Would working conditions become better? Probably not. Would Foxcon go away? Definitely not.
With the amount of money Apple is putting into China you could even make a pretty good argument China would be worse off as a whole without that money.
If you're talking about it from a "those jobs have left the US" perspective, it's even debatable if fair wage would change that behavior. The strengths of China and Taiwan are that you have all the production lines you need within a very small area. Apple has repeatedly claimed that this is their primary block to moving production back to the US, not wages. And it's an entirely believable explanation when you look at production of things like the Mac Pro (which is US based, and has to source components from all over the country) vs the iPhone (which probably has all it's parts sourced from a mile radius down to the screws.) There's been a few exceptions like CPUs and glass, but that at least can be flown over in bulk a little easier than a bunch of screws.
What Apple is doing is using a friendly government - communist China - to do things which it otherwise could not do...
See above. Communism is not a primary driver, nor does Apple necessarily cause the conditions or using the Chinese (rather, it's more arguable the Chinese government created the conditions before Apple's involvement.)
They are not competing on price. They are using an ill-gotten market power to maintain margins. In the end the market always wins, which is why, absent their criminal mastermind boss, the margins are starting recede and their market power is dimming.
Claim made with no citation. Ok, the hiring practices are one thing. But for the gains to be ill-gotten the benefits have to be available to no one else. Not only is Chinese production available to everyone else, it's actively used by everyone else. In fact, out of all the companies, Apple has the most facilities in the US (as few as they do.)
Criminal allegations have a higher bar. Again, beyond the hiring practices, and an extremely questionable antitrust suit vs. Amazon, there has been no illegal activity. Their activity in China is definitely not illegal, and it's not unique.
Society is supposed to benefit from the privileges we extend corporations. That is the basis and history of the entire idea of corporations. In a proper capitalist society, they have no place or role. You should read up on why corporations exist.
I have done a lot of reading on corporations. Trust me.
Corporations exist to allow business risks to be taken without personal risks being taken. For example, they allow one to set up a pet store without worry that they may go personally bankrupt.
Society gets several benefits from this. As a whole, it allows individuals to drive their own businesses easier (and I myself have an LLC to protect myself for this very reason.) It also allows the government to tax the corporation differently than an individual (take a look at my taxes sometimes, they're higher than my personal taxes. Not that I'm complaining but I'm hardly able to form an LLC
1. Preventing employees from sharing in the wealth generated by the company is a monumentally criminal undertaking. Only a very few employees are ever the subject of a bidding war amoung competitors. It's the Holy Grail of being an employee. It creates positive ripple effects throughout the entire economic system. Increased wages and pay also creates incentives to avoid geographic concentration (like in Silicon Valley). Stifling those natural market forces is alone enough to justify having a corporate character cancelled.
Huh? I'm not sure what you mean by "share the wealth." Apple employees get profit sharing options. If you're referring to the no-compete, many companies were co-conspirators in that, Google included. If anything, Google deserves the "death penalty" just as much as Apple. Somehow I feel as if you might hypocritically draw a line in the sand there.
2. Apple has effectively, and evilly, cost-shifted the burdens of it's product production pipeline to anyone who has pockets deep enough to pay (other than themselves). From using outsourced labor in China, subsidized by the ruling Community party and the brazenly inhuman economic system in China,to their offshore subsidiary tax-scheming, to their perpetuation of the corporate copyright cartel, Apple has done everything in it's power, legally and extra-legally, to benefit from the investments of others, to exploit loopholes, and to exploit developing nation's labor supplies.
None of which is remotely illegal or uncommon in the industry.
Again, your thesis is Apple is uniquely guilty of crimes that justify their dismemberment, yet your citing something every company in the US that manufactures hardware or software does. Google, again, included.
3. Apple has, and continues to, extract massive wealth from the economy, and put it to use in non-productive ways. The late Mr. Jobs was a huge driver to this end. By using a combination of mythology, lies, and a deeply held anti-freedom ethos, Apple has done all it can to leverage it's cultural and political power, plus it's product line, to the extraction of middle class wealth. In itself, this is fine, but combined with price fixing, labor exploitation, and fascist integration into government, Apple is a classic economic rent-seeker. Between now and when the product is totally saturated and must compete on price, Apple will have extracted trillions of dollars of economic rent, while providing very little genuine economic benefit. The wealth they have shared outside of the top leadership and shareholders, trickled down to app developers or employees, has not gone towards generating additional economic activity, but instead, to pumping up a lavish, ridiculous, obscene real-estate and consumption bubble isolated into a tiny nexus of the country. The benefits that have accrued, as minimal as they are, are far less positive than would be more productive, honest, and transparent economic activity that they have deprived of oxygen.
I think your faux righteous attitude went off the rails here...
It seems to boil down to:
1. Steve Jobs made people like Apple. I think people are stupid because of that. Oh no!
2. Facist integration into government! I don't know what that means or have any examples or proof, but it makes me sound smarter than I actually am! Here's a tip on facism: Real facism looks like the Nazis. Get back to me when Apple is rounding up people who don't buy their products and shoving them into ovens, ok?
3. Apple isn't competing on price! No, they are competing on price. Cheapest product doesn't always win or lose. Take an economics class or two.
4. People outside of Apple or people who don't have Apple shares haven't made money from Apple! Huh? I tell you what, how about you start sending me a few bucks from your paycheck every month. I'm some random guy on the internet to you? Great! You're some random guy on the internet to Apple.
5. They advertise and
"They're not convincingly replacing PCs on one end or phones on the other."
I really don't get this line of reasoning.
I don't think the tablet was ever entirely meant to replace the PC. Apple has said so themselves. There are people (like a lot of people here at Slashdot) who will always need a PC. Apple hasn't said that the PC is going away, rather that for a lot of customers that previously had no choice, tablets may cannibalize a lot of PC sales. People who just need to check email and shop online no longer have to buy a PC.
On the other end... tablets replacing phones? Do I even need to deal with that one? That's just... if a tablet can be carried around in my pocket it's probably not a tablet anymore. Do I need to go any further with that?
I think the way Apple sees the future, all three categories will continue to exist, and Apple, at least for now, will continue to sell to all three categories. Individual users may choose to only buy from one or two of those categories, or maybe all three.
On the original topic: iPad sales could be down because Apple is about to release a new iPad, and consumers are waiting. There usually is a similar drop in phone sales (and indeed, this quarters sales data has shown a sudden spike in Android's share of sales for the quarter, indicating iPhone users aren't upgrading as they usually are, probably because the iPhone 6 is almost here.)
Pundits like to read way way too much into quarter by quarter data. Android's quarterly marketshare in tablets spiked this quarter as well, which again, may point to iOS users holding off tablet purchases for the quarter, as opposed to consumers abandoning tablets. It could possibly point to the iPad losing popularity, but again, that's way too much to read into over a single quarter's worth of data right before a revision. I myself am holding out on buying a new iPad (I'm several revs behind) until the new one ships. Otherwise I'd buy today.
Any video switching equipment for HDMI/DVI will often use a small device such as Gefen's HDMI Detective to store the EDID of the screen and convince the video source that it is always connected. It would be trivial to store a "fake" EDID in such a device that reports a smaller screen.
It would not be trivial to upsample the low resolution content that would be streamed in response, however.
If you want to watch low res content on a large TV? I doubt anyone is going to care.
Except more and more phones are higher resolution then most HDTVs already. A lot of people will have a 55 inch TV at 1080p but a smartphone with 1440p at least in just a few years. So paying per pixel or per size is pointless as neither tells you anything...
I'm not sure that matters.
Ideal resolution of video is judged by how big the screen is to your eye. If a tv screen and a phone are viewed at the same relative size, they both have the same ideal resolution. I.E. if I hold my phone at a distance so it seems to my eye to be the same size as my TV (which is further away, but larger), you're still dealing with the same maximum optical resolution.
So unless you're holding the phone directly up to your face, you are very unlikely to be able to tell the difference (or benefit from) 1440p video on a phone. More than likely, you won't benefit from 720p either.
On a phone, text is what really benefits from a high resolution display anyway, not video.
In short, the system still works because you would stream 720p or 1080p to a phone regardless of the pixels, which would look excellent to viewers. If you're a picky user who wants more? Great! Buy the TV stream at the TV price for your phone.
Nah... Noonian Hutt, Jabba's son.
Ho ho ho.