The iPad 1 is indeed underpowered, but as the one that launched it all, it was great.
The iPad 3 is indeed fine, but once you've used a 4, you'll notice it. The 4 is about double the performance of the 3 and it shows when you put them side-by-side (which I have, since I own both).
I've tried the Air (5), it is indeed much lighter than the 4, but not enough in any other regard to make it a new purchase.
The iPad 2 was lighter and thinner, it also had more memory and could keep more stuff loaded at once, the iPad 1 could have multiple tabs for web sites, but all too often had to reload them every time you switched between them.
The iPad 3 brought Retina, which does make a nice difference in use.
The changes from iPad 1 to iPad 2 were enough to go go out and buy one.
The changes from iPad 2 to iPad 3 were enough to go out and buy one.
The changes from iPad 3 to iPad 4... Were just barely enough to go out and buy one, we were on the fence.
As it stands now, we own a 3 and a 4, the kids use the 3, the adults use the 4.
I have not bought an iPad Air and I likely won't for another year or two, it is indeed lighter than the 4, but overall it isn't enough of a change to make it worth the bother.
The primary issue is that the price for storage has come way, way down, apps are MUCH larger than they were in 2010, 16GB as a base size needs to go away.
Make it $499 and include 64GB of memory and I'll upgrade.
The whole, "you have to reinstall windows often" thing is now out of date.
Windows 7 does not have this problem, I have several machines running 4 year old installs of Windows 7 without a problem, I expect they'll last to end of support without a reinstall.
Your arguments are all fair and reasonable, for slightly older cars.
There are cars built in the last five years for which you can't do all that.
Sure, the hardware such as wires and oil are easy enough to mess with, but try reprogramming the new enhanced security system on a 2015 Suburban. It has a lift and level detector to sense if it is being picked up or if one wheel is off the ground. Calibrating that system requires special hardware and software, you have to take it to the dealer.
It also has features like adaptive cruise control, crash braking, 360 degree parking sensors, magnetic shocks, etc. that are also run by computer and need to be calibrated.
Cars are becoming rolling black boxes, self driving cars are coming in the next few years, you think you can fix that with a shop manual?
I always laugh when I see a statement like this, in an open forum read by hundreds of thousands of people. If the government is controlling what people see, why aren't you modded "-1 Unpatriotic"?
Because the people reading this forum already don't trust the media and government.
They don't have to get everyone, just most people. Then we become the fringe.
The government and wealthy have wisely figured out that allowing those who are unhappy to vent online is best left alone, if they try and stop us, they'll give us power... Left alone, we'll be ignored.
The wealthy, who actually control the government, also control the mainstream news, and that is where the real power is.
You will, however, find it very much harder to do today than it was 230 years ago...
It isn't just that the US military has tanks and stealth bombers (they help of course), it is that they more or less control the media, thus control what people see, read, and think...
To this day, the average person continues to believe the news, as if everything they say is a "fact"...
The other truth is... the American Revolution wasn't started by a bunch of serfs, it was started by rich land owners who didn't like their deal...
Just keep in mind that if a law came out tomorrow that banned over subscription, you wouldn't be happy with the price of your internet connection.:)
When I installed Verizon FIOS, the guy installing it said that I could have up to 500 megabit. I asked why that speed, and he said that is what was connected to the neighborhood, so it was the fastest connection they could offer.
I asked what happened if 10 people bought that and he said, "well, they won't all be using it at full speed all the time".
That is a stupid policy, it actually encourages you to waste water during the winter to get your winter average bill up to save money during the summer.
The GDDR5 indeed does help... much more memory bandwith...
That being said, the PS4 also has 50% more shaders than the XB1, so it is faster all the way around.
In general, the XB1 can run at 720p while the PS4 can run at 900p, given all the same graphics factors. It isn't fast enough to run the same games at 1080p, but it is close.
Why should Apple care what you think or what names you call them? Your view that they "lack humanity" is of course your opinion and you're welcome to it, but what reason can you think of that Apple should share in that opinion?
How many people actually have 4K TVs at this point?
Not many, but that will change. Within 3 years the price difference of a 4K and a 1080P TV will be pretty close.
Last year they were $10K plus, today you can get one for about $1K, give or take, and a big huge 65" one for $3K.
The prices are dropping fast, simply because they don't really cost that much more to make than current TVs.
The switch from tube TVs to LCD TVs did indeed have a MASSIVE cost, whole factories had to be thrown out and completely new factories produced.
But a 84" 4K TV is really just 4 42" panels, which really can be made today just fine and stitched together.
A 64" 4K panel is just 4 32" panels, and so on...
The same existing factories can make 4K panels and the cost will be similar very soon.
Netflix is gearing up to support 4K, Amazon won't be far behind.
Do we need another optical disc format for 4K? No, not really, streaming video will probably be enough and frankly BR has enough room that if they want to do it with H.265, they could.
Yes, and when the PS2 came out, it also wasn't that much more than a DVD player, and you got a console for free.:)
The PS3 was an easy choice, we bought ours at launch in 2006 because it indeed was the cheapest BR player out there. For $600 we got the best BR player on the market, a next-gen console that was clearly better than the PS2, AND it played ALL our PS2 and PS1 games.
If the PS4 was $499 instead of $399 and it included full PS3 compatibility, I'd buy one, as it stands, I'm not interested in another box in front of my TV, since the PS3 units have to stay for the kids.
There's an awful lot of people out there that can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 when it comes what they're seeing on a 40-something inch TV screen, which is what most people seem to have.
Brings up a great point that too many times gets left off.
What people consider "great" or "good enough" depends largely on what they have to look at.
My primary TV is a 70" Sony LED, 1080P is ok, but frankly it would be well served being 4K, but that is just too expensive right now and the content isn't there.
At 40", as you say, 4K may well be overkill unless you're right in front of it.
I sit 8' in front of the 70" TV and I can see the grain, further away it would be ok... it works for now, but when 4K comes down in price and the content arrives, I can see going to a 84" for our home theater.
But... I also get that I'm an edge case, "most" people don't have home theaters... For the average 40" TV, yea, I'll admit that 1080P is "good enough" for most uses.
In which case, the PS4 and XBox One are "fine", except that they are a bit expensive for the hardware you get, in years past consoles were sold at a loss, this time around they are making a profit on each one. So to copy the former model, each one should be $100 or so less.
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The iPad 1 is indeed underpowered, but as the one that launched it all, it was great.
The iPad 3 is indeed fine, but once you've used a 4, you'll notice it. The 4 is about double the performance of the 3 and it shows when you put them side-by-side (which I have, since I own both).
I've tried the Air (5), it is indeed much lighter than the 4, but not enough in any other regard to make it a new purchase.
Nothing wrong with an iPad 1...
The iPad 2 was lighter and thinner, it also had more memory and could keep more stuff loaded at once, the iPad 1 could have multiple tabs for web sites, but all too often had to reload them every time you switched between them.
The iPad 3 brought Retina, which does make a nice difference in use.
Meh, the apps are fine, even if I tend to agree with you.
PvZ 1 you purchased, PvZ 2 was "free" and then had a bunch of micro transactions.
I prefer just buying and getting the whole game, but that is me.
That being said, we use our iPads for two main reasons. The kids watch Amazon Videos on theirs and we check email and surf the web on ours.
Neither of those tasks requires a new iPad.
The changes from iPad 1 to iPad 2 were enough to go go out and buy one.
The changes from iPad 2 to iPad 3 were enough to go out and buy one.
The changes from iPad 3 to iPad 4... Were just barely enough to go out and buy one, we were on the fence.
As it stands now, we own a 3 and a 4, the kids use the 3, the adults use the 4.
I have not bought an iPad Air and I likely won't for another year or two, it is indeed lighter than the 4, but overall it isn't enough of a change to make it worth the bother.
The primary issue is that the price for storage has come way, way down, apps are MUCH larger than they were in 2010, 16GB as a base size needs to go away.
Make it $499 and include 64GB of memory and I'll upgrade.
In the world of Half Life where there is an emergency and aliens are invading and I have a gun, I can open more or less any door, one way or another.
Normally shooting open doors is frowned on in polite socity, but that same socity understands when shooting open doors during an alien invasion.
What is REALLY stupid is to give me a rocket launcher that can't destroy glass walls.
Just to toss out...
The whole, "you have to reinstall windows often" thing is now out of date.
Windows 7 does not have this problem, I have several machines running 4 year old installs of Windows 7 without a problem, I expect they'll last to end of support without a reinstall.
That was true once, but the world moved on.
Your arguments are all fair and reasonable, for slightly older cars.
There are cars built in the last five years for which you can't do all that.
Sure, the hardware such as wires and oil are easy enough to mess with, but try reprogramming the new enhanced security system on a 2015 Suburban. It has a lift and level detector to sense if it is being picked up or if one wheel is off the ground. Calibrating that system requires special hardware and software, you have to take it to the dealer.
It also has features like adaptive cruise control, crash braking, 360 degree parking sensors, magnetic shocks, etc. that are also run by computer and need to be calibrated.
Cars are becoming rolling black boxes, self driving cars are coming in the next few years, you think you can fix that with a shop manual?
If you are still using XP and don't want to upgrade, then you really aren't a customer of Microsoft anyway.
MS wants to be paid, if you don't want to pay them, then why should they care about you?
Are you suggesting that you won't spend thousands of dollars upgrading your hardware, but would spend thousands of dollars paying MS for support?
That sounds nice, if Windows was dead outright. But it isn't, or have you forgotten about Vista, 7, and 8?
Those share a lot of code with XP, releasing that code is not that simple.
In addition, it isn't all Microsoft's code.
Yes, and they generally are. There are exceptions, but the general rule is 10 years for auto recalls.
No, the US isn't perfect. But we are far from a totalitarian hellhole compared to the real totalitarians out there.
Maybe, but it isn't the bastion of freedom that we claim it is either.
The US government controls the media very little here.
No, the wealthy do, and the wealthy also control the government, so really they are one and the same.
I always laugh when I see a statement like this, in an open forum read by hundreds of thousands of people. If the government is controlling what people see, why aren't you modded "-1 Unpatriotic"?
Because the people reading this forum already don't trust the media and government.
They don't have to get everyone, just most people. Then we become the fringe.
The government and wealthy have wisely figured out that allowing those who are unhappy to vent online is best left alone, if they try and stop us, they'll give us power... Left alone, we'll be ignored.
The wealthy, who actually control the government, also control the mainstream news, and that is where the real power is.
Does this give us a free pass to revolt now?
Yes, but you've had that right the whole time...
You will, however, find it very much harder to do today than it was 230 years ago...
It isn't just that the US military has tanks and stealth bombers (they help of course), it is that they more or less control the media, thus control what people see, read, and think...
To this day, the average person continues to believe the news, as if everything they say is a "fact"...
The other truth is... the American Revolution wasn't started by a bunch of serfs, it was started by rich land owners who didn't like their deal...
Yes, and somewhere between one and a zillion, it makes sense to roll your own. I was responding to the one comment.
If you need one, or five... use Amazon...
If you need five hundred... now you have some math to do...
If you need five hundred thousand... probably do it yourself...
Turbo Tax is much nicer this year, no DRM, no serial code, nothing...
So clearly Intuit learned their lesson.
Even if you could smooth out the $2691 over 3 years, that's $86.40+$74.75 per month = $161.15 per month
If $161 per month is a serious cost for your business, then you aren't a real business.
That is chump change.
All true...
Just keep in mind that if a law came out tomorrow that banned over subscription, you wouldn't be happy with the price of your internet connection. :)
When I installed Verizon FIOS, the guy installing it said that I could have up to 500 megabit. I asked why that speed, and he said that is what was connected to the neighborhood, so it was the fastest connection they could offer.
I asked what happened if 10 people bought that and he said, "well, they won't all be using it at full speed all the time".
That is a stupid policy, it actually encourages you to waste water during the winter to get your winter average bill up to save money during the summer.
While I agree with you in principle...
That isn't actually true. What you "pay for" is "internet access UP TO X speed".
It is the "up to" part that everyone ignores when they buy 25mb or 50mb connections.
The irony is that the SNES and the NES have the same CPU in them, just faster...
If Nintendo had wanted to, it would have been easy to make the SNES pay NES games...
The GDDR5 indeed does help... much more memory bandwith...
That being said, the PS4 also has 50% more shaders than the XB1, so it is faster all the way around.
In general, the XB1 can run at 720p while the PS4 can run at 900p, given all the same graphics factors. It isn't fast enough to run the same games at 1080p, but it is close.
You bought an iPad... so serious question here...
Why should Apple care what you think or what names you call them? Your view that they "lack humanity" is of course your opinion and you're welcome to it, but what reason can you think of that Apple should share in that opinion?
How many people actually have 4K TVs at this point?
Not many, but that will change. Within 3 years the price difference of a 4K and a 1080P TV will be pretty close.
Last year they were $10K plus, today you can get one for about $1K, give or take, and a big huge 65" one for $3K.
The prices are dropping fast, simply because they don't really cost that much more to make than current TVs.
The switch from tube TVs to LCD TVs did indeed have a MASSIVE cost, whole factories had to be thrown out and completely new factories produced.
But a 84" 4K TV is really just 4 42" panels, which really can be made today just fine and stitched together.
A 64" 4K panel is just 4 32" panels, and so on...
The same existing factories can make 4K panels and the cost will be similar very soon.
Netflix is gearing up to support 4K, Amazon won't be far behind.
Do we need another optical disc format for 4K? No, not really, streaming video will probably be enough and frankly BR has enough room that if they want to do it with H.265, they could.
Yes, and when the PS2 came out, it also wasn't that much more than a DVD player, and you got a console for free. :)
The PS3 was an easy choice, we bought ours at launch in 2006 because it indeed was the cheapest BR player out there. For $600 we got the best BR player on the market, a next-gen console that was clearly better than the PS2, AND it played ALL our PS2 and PS1 games.
If the PS4 was $499 instead of $399 and it included full PS3 compatibility, I'd buy one, as it stands, I'm not interested in another box in front of my TV, since the PS3 units have to stay for the kids.
Your comment about:
There's an awful lot of people out there that can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 when it comes what they're seeing on a 40-something inch TV screen, which is what most people seem to have.
Brings up a great point that too many times gets left off.
What people consider "great" or "good enough" depends largely on what they have to look at.
My primary TV is a 70" Sony LED, 1080P is ok, but frankly it would be well served being 4K, but that is just too expensive right now and the content isn't there.
At 40", as you say, 4K may well be overkill unless you're right in front of it.
I sit 8' in front of the 70" TV and I can see the grain, further away it would be ok... it works for now, but when 4K comes down in price and the content arrives, I can see going to a 84" for our home theater.
But... I also get that I'm an edge case, "most" people don't have home theaters... For the average 40" TV, yea, I'll admit that 1080P is "good enough" for most uses.
In which case, the PS4 and XBox One are "fine", except that they are a bit expensive for the hardware you get, in years past consoles were sold at a loss, this time around they are making a profit on each one. So to copy the former model, each one should be $100 or so less.
A PS4 at $299 right now would sell like crazy.