Apple will keep on doing what they're doing, and even if they end up with 10% marketshare at the end of the day, it'll likely be the most profitable 10% of the mobile market, and they'll happily keep making truckloads of money.
Right, they'll be cashing checks all the way to irrelevance. Arguably one of the most profitable software markets is the gaming market. How come PCs dominate gaming more than Macs? It's because developers don't see much of a return in spending a lot of money to port their product to a platform with ~5% market share. Yeah, Apple may make a lot of money in the short term selling hardware, but over time they are again going to find themselves in the position of being the little guy that no one bothers to support because of a lack of market share. Granted, that's going to take a while with mobile devices, if it happens at all, but the trend for Android is certainly upward, and the trend for Apple is decidedly downward. 6 months ago the share for Android was 4%, with 6% of new purchases being Android devices. For Apple, 6 months ago the share was 27%, with 34% of new purchases. Today Android has 13% (+9) total share, with 27% (+21) of new purchases, and Apple has 28% (+1) share with 23% (-11) of new purchases. The graphs clearly show that all other players either started declining or leveled out when Android started gaining. Android is taking from everyone else. If Apple doesn't watch out they're going to follow Windows Mobile all the way down to Palm and Symbian, and RIM won't be far behind. In a few years time I expect the market share for mobile devices to be shaped very similarly to the market share for search engines or desktop OSs, one dominant player and a lot of others trying to gain any ground.
So, keep touting openness as a virtue. But 99% of the mobile phone buying population doesn't care. And as you can see, it's not necessarily better.
You missed the point. I'm not talking about openness as far as users are concerned, it's about vendors. If a new company wants to bring a new phone to market, which OS are they going to choose to run the device? As we've seen before with PCs, they are going to choose the OS that lets them, not the buyer, customize the software to run on their platform. The end result is a market where you have players like Apple and Blackberry, with their proprietary stuff that only they use, and then it's saturated with tons of other devices from many different vendors all running on the same OS. That means Apple and RIM lose market share by not having an open platform which other vendors can use to build their own devices with. This is why Android is growing in share and RIM and iOS are falling.
That's where openness counts, in getting the products to the marketplace. You're right, consumers don't care about openness. But developers definitely do.
Droid handsets are a mish-mosh of different hardware features and operating system versions, which is *not* good for development.
Is that sort of like how the mish-mosh of PCs running Windows have contributed to a software environment where it's difficult to find good Windows software and people who know how to write Windows applications? Or is it the opposite, how you can find virtually anything to run on Windows, but not really so with the Mac? Hasn't the fact that the Windows OS can run on virtually any hardware platform actually contributed to its market penetration? It's the same with Linux and web servers.
The developers have to take into account the features that may or may not be available on each handset and the possible hardware limitations and program accordingly.
Developers have been used to this since the IBM-compatible PC came out. It's not a big deal. This is why software ships with a "system requirements" box.
Another issue with Android is that the handset manufacturers are exploiting the openness of Android to pre-install apps on users's phones that cannot be removed.
The same openness does in fact allow people to remove those apps. If you don't believe me, wait a few months.
And lastly, like it or not, iTunes Store is the easiest and most effective application distribution for end users and developers. No one even comes close yet.
Having never used iTunes Store I can't vouch for that, but I can definitely say there's not a single thing that's difficult or ineffective about the Android Marketplace.
I'm an Android guy myself, I was just referring to public perception. Through marketing Apple has tried to define their products as safer, easier, "just works", etc.
How does that change anything? An aerial photo of a city is still public information, right? They already do fly-overs with helicopters looking for building footprints that don't match the zoning.
But the swarm of Android devices reminds me a little of the horde of Wintel PCs that swamped Apple's desktop offerings.
A little? The parallels are many. Apple has a platform that is considered the superior platform by many people. The problems with their platform are all based on how closed it is, either that they can't install what they want, or they can't use it how they want, or they have to use AT&T, etc. Other than the antenna issues, criticism for the iPhone isn't very technical, it's all usability issues related to the closed Apple system.
Contrast that with Android, which is designed to run on many different platforms with varying hardware. It might not be as shiny as the offering from Apple, but it's more flexible. This is exactly the scenario that allowed Microsoft to crush Apple with Windows, and if Apple isn't careful they're going to end up getting crushed again, this time by Google. Apple is just one company, they don't allow anyone else to sell their products. Anyone can license Android and build and sell a device that runs it. This is the same as the PC scenario, where it turned out to be Apple versus everyone else, where everyone else was selling the same competing product.
You'd think they would learn that more openness translates to more market penetration, but their mindset is so stuck on controlling the user experience that it seems like they're doomed to keep repeating history until consumers and businesses "evolve" to desire a more controlled experience. Even just licensing iOS to other vendors to allow them to create other devices powered by it would level the playing field, and I truly have no idea why they refuse to do that. It's all about control, and Apple refuses to relinquish any of it, even if they keep control all the way into the ground.
More than you'd think. The week I got my Evo I was in a meeting with a bunch of non-technical people, and one guy commented that I was "playing with my Android". I had my pants on, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't a euphemism. Another of my non-technical friends asked me if it was "a droid phone". Non-technical consumers do know the difference between an iPhone and an Android device, but they still have no clue or care that it's powered by Linux.
Cocaine is a local anesthetic, so it should be stored in doctor's offices and clinics.
Heroin is an analgesic and pain killer, so it's fine if you want to keep a couple bricks at home.
This is a fun game.
How about meth as an example. It is legitimately used to treat ADHD and obesity. If you have a prescription for the commercial brand of meth, then it's legal for you to own it. If you don't have a legitimate use for it, even though other people might, it's not legal for you to own.
I think Doom is boring. Most FPSes are boring - pointless button mashers. The person who survives is the guy who sprays the most bullets. If they have some kind of compelling story, like Goldeneye and the first Red Faction had, it makes it worthwhile but for the most part I get bored after ten hours.
I realize I'm not going to get someone with a name like yours to agree with me that any C64 game is inferior to anything else, but the combination of lighting and sound made for an immersive and engaging environment in Doom 3 that you just aren't going to get with anything that displays at 320x200 while shrieking saw waves at you.
Not that there aren't a lot of great games from the past 30 years, but it's pretty ridiculous to assume that somehow the art of game development peaked at a point when technology was so relatively limited. There are still plenty of talented game developers making interesting games, the only difference is that the technology makes for a better experience. That makes it a better game. Portal is a perfect example.
I don't think some modernday cinema + asdf experience can replace getting 50,000 points in International Karate+.
I'm pretty sure they can, and I'm pretty sure that the peak of video game creation was not reached 23 years ago with International Karate+... have you sat in a dark room and played Doom 3 on a large screen with surround sound? Granted, it's not exactly pixelated karate fighting, but it's still a pretty impressive experience.
I'm sure you can understand the technology involved, but do you really want an explanation of how the trackpad works in the product name?
I realize that "Apple 6-inch Multitouch Trackpad" doesn't roll of the tongue like "Magic Trackpad", but it definitely sounds a lot less pretentious. I don't know how large the actual device is, but it sounds a lot like a Wacom tablet, except you use your fingers instead of a pen. This isn't exactly "magic", is it?
Yeah I was sort of considering that also.. maybe the issue is that the people in Apple's marketing department are in fact too stupid to understand what their products are and how they work. Definitely a possibility.
People buy android based devices because it is considered "hip" amongst geeks as much as "selfish elites" do it with apple products.
I don't really know if that's fair to say. The reason I got an android-powered phone has nothing to do with my perceived social standing and everything to do with the fact that I'm not buying an Apple device. Boycotting Apple also isn't about social standing, it's about refusing to support a company that I dislike more than any other company.
Honestly, I find this "magic" marketing strategy to be a complete turnoff.
Agreed. I use the term magic when someone asks me how or why something I did worked, and it's complicated enough that I don't want to explain it. I say it's magic, we smile at each other, and each of us knows that it's complicated enough to avoid an explanation (if they say they really want to know, of course I'll explain it).
I also use it when I have enough contempt for the person that I don't think they would understand even if I tried to explain it.
So yeah, it's definitely a turn off when I see a company like Apple using it as a marketing strategy. It's like they assume we're stupid, and that's the only thing we can understand. But like someone else mentioned, I guess technical people are not Apple's target market. Sort of strange, but there it is.
Can I get more performance out of mouse/keyboard? Sure. But I have less fun when I do so!
How does that work? Is not being good at something fun for you? Do you enjoy that you have difficulty doing exactly what you're trying to do? Isn't the point of a good controller to allow you to make your character do exactly what you're trying to? I remember when I was playing F.E.A.R. on a 360 that I had more success strafing because I couldn't aim worth a damn. I guess I didn't really consider that "fun", which is probably why the 360 hasn't been turned on in months.
Take the best PC gamers and the best console gamers and put them on consoles and PCs respectively, and you'll still see the PC destroy the console.
TFA claims they took the "best" console players and "mediocre" PC players, and the PC players still won every time.
They don't even need to market a different controller to consoles. The main thing they can do to help balance the field is to cap the PC version's mouse sensitivity to at or lower than that of the console's turn rate, and only use a few keyboard keys to do everything.
Even so, I'm sure PC players would still win. The mouse is simply a far superior pointing device to anything controlled by my thumbs.
No, it's first person view that's completely unusable for any game. If I could do 1 thing to improve gaming, it would be to go back in time and murder the guy who created FPS before he was born. Gaming for the past decade would be orders of magnitude better.
Absolutely, I completely agree. The problem is that a first-person view has no connection with how I perceive things in reality.
See, I was born with no eyes, and at a very young age I was fitted with a shoulder-harness camera that sits about 30 feet over my head, as well as slightly behind (about 30 degrees) and to the right. This makes it virtually impossible for me to play a first-person game because I have never perceived the world this way, and it just looks strange and alien. I feel right at home playing a top-down isometric game, as I watch myself play the game from a top-down isometric view.
That's because embedded software has the equivalent of drivers packaged with it, because they only need to work on a single known platform. Firefox isn't going to ship drivers for all known video and audio hardware in order to avoid needing to use the OS, which already has those drivers.
I'm not buying your assertion that open source developers are more attentive or more dedicated than non-open source developers.
It may even go the other way, it may foster complacency. A programmer working on an open source project may be more likely to assume that someone else has already looked at the code and therefore that they don't need to do it themselves. In an organization there would be someone who's specific job is to audit everything, but if that's left as a community task with no one person taking responsibility for it then it might breed complacent developers.
One of the key phrases in the GPL is "derivative work". The GPL has a lot to do with describing derivative works and the rights which apply to them. The author of WordPress is arguing that themes are derivative works, and as such are covered by the GPL.
If I sell a product that doesn't contain *any* of your copyrighted code (and API calls certainly can't be copyrighted), you have no basis to sue me for copyright.
Who's suing over copyright? This looks like a license issue to me, not a copyright issue.
It's one thing to raise an animal for consumption, and quite another to shoot and stuff a squirrel in order to use it as packaging.
Why are those different? Does the animal know the difference? If the animal did know the difference, would it really give a shit why someone is killing it?
Also, lighten up Francis, the total number of animals killed here is 12 (7 stoats, 4 squirrels, and a rabbit), for the 12 bottles of beer they produced from this batch.
A 1 tonne slug of lead dropped from 50,000ft at Mach 3 would have enough energy to sink an aircraft carrier, and there's nothing even these lasers could do about it
Other than shoot down the aircraft necessary to carry a 2000lb chunk of lead.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple will keep on doing what they're doing, and even if they end up with 10% marketshare at the end of the day, it'll likely be the most profitable 10% of the mobile market, and they'll happily keep making truckloads of money.
Right, they'll be cashing checks all the way to irrelevance. Arguably one of the most profitable software markets is the gaming market. How come PCs dominate gaming more than Macs? It's because developers don't see much of a return in spending a lot of money to port their product to a platform with ~5% market share. Yeah, Apple may make a lot of money in the short term selling hardware, but over time they are again going to find themselves in the position of being the little guy that no one bothers to support because of a lack of market share. Granted, that's going to take a while with mobile devices, if it happens at all, but the trend for Android is certainly upward, and the trend for Apple is decidedly downward. 6 months ago the share for Android was 4%, with 6% of new purchases being Android devices. For Apple, 6 months ago the share was 27%, with 34% of new purchases. Today Android has 13% (+9) total share, with 27% (+21) of new purchases, and Apple has 28% (+1) share with 23% (-11) of new purchases. The graphs clearly show that all other players either started declining or leveled out when Android started gaining. Android is taking from everyone else. If Apple doesn't watch out they're going to follow Windows Mobile all the way down to Palm and Symbian, and RIM won't be far behind. In a few years time I expect the market share for mobile devices to be shaped very similarly to the market share for search engines or desktop OSs, one dominant player and a lot of others trying to gain any ground.
So, keep touting openness as a virtue. But 99% of the mobile phone buying population doesn't care. And as you can see, it's not necessarily better.
You missed the point. I'm not talking about openness as far as users are concerned, it's about vendors. If a new company wants to bring a new phone to market, which OS are they going to choose to run the device? As we've seen before with PCs, they are going to choose the OS that lets them, not the buyer, customize the software to run on their platform. The end result is a market where you have players like Apple and Blackberry, with their proprietary stuff that only they use, and then it's saturated with tons of other devices from many different vendors all running on the same OS. That means Apple and RIM lose market share by not having an open platform which other vendors can use to build their own devices with. This is why Android is growing in share and RIM and iOS are falling.
That's where openness counts, in getting the products to the marketplace. You're right, consumers don't care about openness. But developers definitely do.
Droid handsets are a mish-mosh of different hardware features and operating system versions, which is *not* good for development.
Is that sort of like how the mish-mosh of PCs running Windows have contributed to a software environment where it's difficult to find good Windows software and people who know how to write Windows applications? Or is it the opposite, how you can find virtually anything to run on Windows, but not really so with the Mac? Hasn't the fact that the Windows OS can run on virtually any hardware platform actually contributed to its market penetration? It's the same with Linux and web servers.
The developers have to take into account the features that may or may not be available on each handset and the possible hardware limitations and program accordingly.
Developers have been used to this since the IBM-compatible PC came out. It's not a big deal. This is why software ships with a "system requirements" box.
Another issue with Android is that the handset manufacturers are exploiting the openness of Android to pre-install apps on users's phones that cannot be removed.
The same openness does in fact allow people to remove those apps. If you don't believe me, wait a few months.
And lastly, like it or not, iTunes Store is the easiest and most effective application distribution for end users and developers. No one even comes close yet.
Having never used iTunes Store I can't vouch for that, but I can definitely say there's not a single thing that's difficult or ineffective about the Android Marketplace.
I would not call iOS really superior
I'm an Android guy myself, I was just referring to public perception. Through marketing Apple has tried to define their products as safer, easier, "just works", etc.
How does that change anything? An aerial photo of a city is still public information, right? They already do fly-overs with helicopters looking for building footprints that don't match the zoning.
But the swarm of Android devices reminds me a little of the horde of Wintel PCs that swamped Apple's desktop offerings.
A little? The parallels are many. Apple has a platform that is considered the superior platform by many people. The problems with their platform are all based on how closed it is, either that they can't install what they want, or they can't use it how they want, or they have to use AT&T, etc. Other than the antenna issues, criticism for the iPhone isn't very technical, it's all usability issues related to the closed Apple system.
Contrast that with Android, which is designed to run on many different platforms with varying hardware. It might not be as shiny as the offering from Apple, but it's more flexible. This is exactly the scenario that allowed Microsoft to crush Apple with Windows, and if Apple isn't careful they're going to end up getting crushed again, this time by Google. Apple is just one company, they don't allow anyone else to sell their products. Anyone can license Android and build and sell a device that runs it. This is the same as the PC scenario, where it turned out to be Apple versus everyone else, where everyone else was selling the same competing product.
You'd think they would learn that more openness translates to more market penetration, but their mindset is so stuck on controlling the user experience that it seems like they're doomed to keep repeating history until consumers and businesses "evolve" to desire a more controlled experience. Even just licensing iOS to other vendors to allow them to create other devices powered by it would level the playing field, and I truly have no idea why they refuse to do that. It's all about control, and Apple refuses to relinquish any of it, even if they keep control all the way into the ground.
How many people tell you (who are not geeks)
More than you'd think. The week I got my Evo I was in a meeting with a bunch of non-technical people, and one guy commented that I was "playing with my Android". I had my pants on, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't a euphemism. Another of my non-technical friends asked me if it was "a droid phone". Non-technical consumers do know the difference between an iPhone and an Android device, but they still have no clue or care that it's powered by Linux.
Indeed, we can apply that logic to many things.
Cocaine is a local anesthetic, so it should be stored in doctor's offices and clinics.
Heroin is an analgesic and pain killer, so it's fine if you want to keep a couple bricks at home.
This is a fun game.
How about meth as an example. It is legitimately used to treat ADHD and obesity. If you have a prescription for the commercial brand of meth, then it's legal for you to own it. If you don't have a legitimate use for it, even though other people might, it's not legal for you to own.
I think Doom is boring. Most FPSes are boring - pointless button mashers. The person who survives is the guy who sprays the most bullets. If they have some kind of compelling story, like Goldeneye and the first Red Faction had, it makes it worthwhile but for the most part I get bored after ten hours.
I realize I'm not going to get someone with a name like yours to agree with me that any C64 game is inferior to anything else, but the combination of lighting and sound made for an immersive and engaging environment in Doom 3 that you just aren't going to get with anything that displays at 320x200 while shrieking saw waves at you.
Not that there aren't a lot of great games from the past 30 years, but it's pretty ridiculous to assume that somehow the art of game development peaked at a point when technology was so relatively limited. There are still plenty of talented game developers making interesting games, the only difference is that the technology makes for a better experience. That makes it a better game. Portal is a perfect example.
I don't think some modernday cinema + asdf experience can replace getting 50,000 points in International Karate+.
I'm pretty sure they can, and I'm pretty sure that the peak of video game creation was not reached 23 years ago with International Karate+. .. have you sat in a dark room and played Doom 3 on a large screen with surround sound? Granted, it's not exactly pixelated karate fighting, but it's still a pretty impressive experience.
I'm sure you can understand the technology involved, but do you really want an explanation of how the trackpad works in the product name?
I realize that "Apple 6-inch Multitouch Trackpad" doesn't roll of the tongue like "Magic Trackpad", but it definitely sounds a lot less pretentious. I don't know how large the actual device is, but it sounds a lot like a Wacom tablet, except you use your fingers instead of a pen. This isn't exactly "magic", is it?
Yeah I was sort of considering that also.. maybe the issue is that the people in Apple's marketing department are in fact too stupid to understand what their products are and how they work. Definitely a possibility.
People buy android based devices because it is considered "hip" amongst geeks as much as "selfish elites" do it with apple products.
I don't really know if that's fair to say. The reason I got an android-powered phone has nothing to do with my perceived social standing and everything to do with the fact that I'm not buying an Apple device. Boycotting Apple also isn't about social standing, it's about refusing to support a company that I dislike more than any other company.
Honestly, I find this "magic" marketing strategy to be a complete turnoff.
Agreed. I use the term magic when someone asks me how or why something I did worked, and it's complicated enough that I don't want to explain it. I say it's magic, we smile at each other, and each of us knows that it's complicated enough to avoid an explanation (if they say they really want to know, of course I'll explain it).
I also use it when I have enough contempt for the person that I don't think they would understand even if I tried to explain it.
So yeah, it's definitely a turn off when I see a company like Apple using it as a marketing strategy. It's like they assume we're stupid, and that's the only thing we can understand. But like someone else mentioned, I guess technical people are not Apple's target market. Sort of strange, but there it is.
Can I get more performance out of mouse/keyboard? Sure. But I have less fun when I do so!
How does that work? Is not being good at something fun for you? Do you enjoy that you have difficulty doing exactly what you're trying to do? Isn't the point of a good controller to allow you to make your character do exactly what you're trying to? I remember when I was playing F.E.A.R. on a 360 that I had more success strafing because I couldn't aim worth a damn. I guess I didn't really consider that "fun", which is probably why the 360 hasn't been turned on in months.
Take the best PC gamers and the best console gamers and put them on consoles and PCs respectively, and you'll still see the PC destroy the console.
TFA claims they took the "best" console players and "mediocre" PC players, and the PC players still won every time.
They don't even need to market a different controller to consoles. The main thing they can do to help balance the field is to cap the PC version's mouse sensitivity to at or lower than that of the console's turn rate, and only use a few keyboard keys to do everything.
Even so, I'm sure PC players would still win. The mouse is simply a far superior pointing device to anything controlled by my thumbs.
No, it's first person view that's completely unusable for any game. If I could do 1 thing to improve gaming, it would be to go back in time and murder the guy who created FPS before he was born. Gaming for the past decade would be orders of magnitude better.
Absolutely, I completely agree. The problem is that a first-person view has no connection with how I perceive things in reality.
See, I was born with no eyes, and at a very young age I was fitted with a shoulder-harness camera that sits about 30 feet over my head, as well as slightly behind (about 30 degrees) and to the right. This makes it virtually impossible for me to play a first-person game because I have never perceived the world this way, and it just looks strange and alien. I feel right at home playing a top-down isometric game, as I watch myself play the game from a top-down isometric view.
That's because embedded software has the equivalent of drivers packaged with it, because they only need to work on a single known platform. Firefox isn't going to ship drivers for all known video and audio hardware in order to avoid needing to use the OS, which already has those drivers.
why does this level of interaction have to deal with the os level ?
How exactly does the browser play video and audio without the OS? Should browsers come with their own audio and video drivers now?
I'm not buying your assertion that open source developers are more attentive or more dedicated than non-open source developers.
It may even go the other way, it may foster complacency. A programmer working on an open source project may be more likely to assume that someone else has already looked at the code and therefore that they don't need to do it themselves. In an organization there would be someone who's specific job is to audit everything, but if that's left as a community task with no one person taking responsibility for it then it might breed complacent developers.
Obviously this is pure speculation.
Can you point at the place where GPL provides a clear definition of "derived work"?
That's always been part of the problem. Sort of like determining whether including a Javascript file on a web page counts as distribution.
One of the key phrases in the GPL is "derivative work". The GPL has a lot to do with describing derivative works and the rights which apply to them. The author of WordPress is arguing that themes are derivative works, and as such are covered by the GPL.
If I sell a product that doesn't contain *any* of your copyrighted code (and API calls certainly can't be copyrighted), you have no basis to sue me for copyright.
Who's suing over copyright? This looks like a license issue to me, not a copyright issue.
It's one thing to raise an animal for consumption, and quite another to shoot and stuff a squirrel in order to use it as packaging.
Why are those different? Does the animal know the difference? If the animal did know the difference, would it really give a shit why someone is killing it?
Also, lighten up Francis, the total number of animals killed here is 12 (7 stoats, 4 squirrels, and a rabbit), for the 12 bottles of beer they produced from this batch.
A 1 tonne slug of lead dropped from 50,000ft at Mach 3 would have enough energy to sink an aircraft carrier, and there's nothing even these lasers could do about it
Other than shoot down the aircraft necessary to carry a 2000lb chunk of lead.
Grease isn't going to help reflect the laser, Kent. Remember to check your optics. And stop playing with yourself.
If Google is responding to existing attacks, wouldn't they be going on the defensive?