Why, exactly, would they regret it? I work in a business that has historically gone with Macs and things are just fine, and they're spreading to other departments. There's very little being done today that couldn't be done on a Mac. (Or Linux box, or thin client for that matter... but we're talking about Macs here.)
Which is why this is such a big story. Apple made a jump like this while having sub-par service and expending absolutely ZERO effort at marketing to corporations. They even quit making the XServe and XServe RAID. So why the jump in sales?
On the main it says "Read our blog post about how we did it and why" and below that is a big blue button takes you to said blog post. Which, admittedly, is short, but there's not much to say: get an ATV, jailbreak it, put on lighttpd. The only thing that could use expanding is the step "Write a plist file in/Library/LaunchDaemons to launch lighttpd on boot."
I HATE any article written by anyone that talks about how "everyone" used something, and used it in a certain way. I've been on the WWW since 1995, just after I finished college, and NO ONE I know just assumed everyone had an AIM handle, or even used IM. When the author says "everyone" he probably means "everyone at my school." I've heard the same thing about kids asking "what's your myspace?" In some circles, yes, but not all.
Thatâ(TM)s enough rock, officials said, to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto. And the cement used to line the tunnel would build a sidewalk stretching from Windsor to Quebec City.
So I guess that's a large volume and a long distance, respectively? Whatever. Could be a strip mall and two neighboring towns for all I know.;-)
That wasn't the point I was making at all. I wasn't setting this up as iPad vs UMPC. I was pointing out that some people thought the iPad was nothing special compared to the iPod, that it was just bigger, but that's not the case. And it works both ways. Making something that's identical to something else, just smaller, does not mean that it's equally good.
Making the iPod bigger didn't make it just bigger, it made new things possible. Making a PC this small doesn't just make it smaller, it makes it worse. DEVICES this size are great. WINDOWS PCs this size suck. And I say that as someone who has used one.
As I said, there are absolutely some cases where a tiny PC would be useful... there just aren't that many cases, and thus, it's a negligible market. I guarantee you this thing will not sell 1% the volume of the iPad. I'm not saying that the number of sales is a foolproof indicator of quality (exhibit 1: McDonald's) but large consumer electronics companies do not say "Let's just make this, and if people like it, great, if not, oh well." Every company wants every device to be POPULAR and PROFITABLE and this thing will absolutely tank. It is nothing more than a slightly faster/smaller/lighter version of its predecessors which have been failing in the market for several years. Minor refinements like this will not turn a turd into a hit.
Many people said "An iPad is just a big iPod touch" and that's technically correct. Also, it is technically correct to say "A swimming pool is just a big bathtub." What some people don't realize is that even if two things are identical in all ways except size, the difference in size alone can make quite a difference in what is possible. You can't swim laps in a bathtub, and you can't deliver the full experience of an app like Pages on a device with a screen that's smaller than a business card.
Similarly, full-blown Windows just does not work all that well on tiny screens. Period. Are there times when it might be useful to have a bog-standard Windows PC in your pocket? Absolutely. Is that a common need? No. Is it a big market? No. It wasn't one a decade ago, and it really isn't one now, not with all the new competition from modern smartphones and touchable tablets.
So, to answer the article's question, No, the UMPC is NOT about to make a comeback. And that title presumes it was ever "here" to begin with.
Article appears to have been wrong and corrected: it now says "$429 for the Wi-Fi version and $499 for the Wi-Fi/3G option." I don't think there's a 3G-only model.
What's to say about a Chromebook like the Samsung Series 5, whose hardware is almost embarrassed to exist?
His review is overall pretty positive w.r.t. the hardware, and he says it's better than the Cr-48.
For now, there's something to like in the Series 5 hardware and software--but oh, that price.
What's wrong with the price? Against a netbook, maybe, but I figure Google is positioning this against iPads.
And why complain about getting 100MB/month free? It has WiFi too, it's not 3G-only. I'd love a device that had free 3G. I can't bring myself to spend money on it because I'd use it so rarely, but those few times I'd want it, it would be really, really useful so I'm always going back and forth on whether or not to get it.
Key word: infant. The kid-screaming-waking-up thing doesn't last very long.* Even if you have a few kids, that's only a few years, and what percentage of the population do you think has multiple infants at any given time?
* though I understand if you're in the middle of it it might seem like forever.:-)
> Most people cannot imagine the distance to > Neptune, so that is a bad visual. >... > If each byte in 9.57ZB was a water molecule. It > would be slightly less than a teaspoon.
Most people can't visualize the size of a water molecule either.;-)
Good HDD analogy though. I agree that the original "stack of books" one is dumb. Though I wouldn't even break it down to hard drives. Just say "it would take X many containers full of laptops* to hold all that data."
It's pretty sweet. I went camping a lot as a kid in northern California and saw it all the time. Now I live in a heavily light polluted area and can barely make out the big dipper anymore. I need to head out to the sticks again. It's definitely worth a trip to the boonies at some point in your life to see what the sky really looks like.
Wrong. When I buy MP3s from Amazon, they automatically show up in iTunes. There's even a folder called ~/Music/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to iTunes/ and... (wait for it) anything that you or any program puts there will wind up in iTunes.
> making fun of it because you can't play games > that require a keyboard is missing the point entirely.
Adobe richly deserves to be derided. Their position is that you can not experience the entire web as it exists today without Flash. They are just refusing to admit that a lot of existing Flash content is completely unusable without a large screen, mouse, and keyboard. I'm glad they are moving forward and gearing Flash to touch but the simple fact is that it will be impossible to deliver what they've been promising all these years.
> And, seriously, how effective of OCR'ing are you really imagining > you're going to get off of a camera phone pic, anyway?
Camera phones are getting quite good. An iPhone 4 takes 5MP images and there are many others out now that are as good or better.
Specifically, the images are 2592x1936 pixels which equates to 225 dpi at 8.5" x 11". That's plenty to OCR a typical page--say, 8.5x11 with clean 12-point type. I've carefully taken photos of documents with my phone and printed them and they're indistinguishable from a photocopy.
Today Microsoft announced its net profit for the first calendar quarter of 2011. That net profit was $5.23 billion, or $760 million dollars less than Apple's $5.99 billion net profit over the same period. For those keeping track, first Apple surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization, next they surpassed Microsoft in quarterly revenue, and now Apple has surpassed Microsoft in quarterly profits. Surpassing Microsoft's net profit is quite an accomplishment given the typical high-margin sales of Microsoft's software and the lower-margin sales of Apple's hardware.
And it's worth noting that Apple now makes the bulk of their money from things other than computers. So, to answer the article's question: no, probably not.
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Why, exactly, would they regret it? I work in a business that has historically gone with Macs and things are just fine, and they're spreading to other departments. There's very little being done today that couldn't be done on a Mac. (Or Linux box, or thin client for that matter... but we're talking about Macs here.)
Which is why this is such a big story. Apple made a jump like this while having sub-par service and expending absolutely ZERO effort at marketing to corporations. They even quit making the XServe and XServe RAID. So why the jump in sales?
Besides, they made that flight to see an eclipse. It's not like those things happen every year...
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
— Google CEO Eric Schmidt to CNBC, December 2009
We are thoroughly in favor of Fair Use rights... as long as it's in our favor. Help a brother out? (Ha! Get it?)
Yours truly,
- Warner Bros. Legal Department
My ports are oriented vertically, shithead.
On the main it says "Read our blog post about how we did it and why" and below that is a big blue button takes you to said blog post. Which, admittedly, is short, but there's not much to say: get an ATV, jailbreak it, put on lighttpd. The only thing that could use expanding is the step "Write a plist file in /Library/LaunchDaemons to launch lighttpd on boot."
I HATE any article written by anyone that talks about how "everyone" used something, and used it in a certain way. I've been on the WWW since 1995, just after I finished college, and NO ONE I know just assumed everyone had an AIM handle, or even used IM. When the author says "everyone" he probably means "everyone at my school." I've heard the same thing about kids asking "what's your myspace?" In some circles, yes, but not all.
Thatâ(TM)s enough rock, officials said, to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto. And the cement used to line the tunnel would build a sidewalk stretching from Windsor to Quebec City.
So I guess that's a large volume and a long distance, respectively? Whatever. Could be a strip mall and two neighboring towns for all I know. ;-)
That wasn't the point I was making at all. I wasn't setting this up as iPad vs UMPC. I was pointing out that some people thought the iPad was nothing special compared to the iPod, that it was just bigger, but that's not the case. And it works both ways. Making something that's identical to something else, just smaller, does not mean that it's equally good.
Making the iPod bigger didn't make it just bigger, it made new things possible. Making a PC this small doesn't just make it smaller, it makes it worse. DEVICES this size are great. WINDOWS PCs this size suck. And I say that as someone who has used one.
As I said, there are absolutely some cases where a tiny PC would be useful... there just aren't that many cases, and thus, it's a negligible market. I guarantee you this thing will not sell 1% the volume of the iPad. I'm not saying that the number of sales is a foolproof indicator of quality (exhibit 1: McDonald's) but large consumer electronics companies do not say "Let's just make this, and if people like it, great, if not, oh well." Every company wants every device to be POPULAR and PROFITABLE and this thing will absolutely tank. It is nothing more than a slightly faster/smaller/lighter version of its predecessors which have been failing in the market for several years. Minor refinements like this will not turn a turd into a hit.
You are so very very WRONG.
Apple has sold 160 million iOS devices and Google reports that there are 100 million Android devices out there. That's over a quarter billion devices running operating systems that a) didn't even exist 4 years ago and b) came to market being compatible with exactly zero existing apps.
Many people said "An iPad is just a big iPod touch" and that's technically correct. Also, it is technically correct to say "A swimming pool is just a big bathtub." What some people don't realize is that even if two things are identical in all ways except size, the difference in size alone can make quite a difference in what is possible. You can't swim laps in a bathtub, and you can't deliver the full experience of an app like Pages on a device with a screen that's smaller than a business card.
Similarly, full-blown Windows just does not work all that well on tiny screens. Period. Are there times when it might be useful to have a bog-standard Windows PC in your pocket? Absolutely. Is that a common need? No. Is it a big market? No. It wasn't one a decade ago, and it really isn't one now, not with all the new competition from modern smartphones and touchable tablets.
So, to answer the article's question, No, the UMPC is NOT about to make a comeback. And that title presumes it was ever "here" to begin with.
1) Nationwide, how many times has the alarm gone off during explosives screening?
2) How many times have explosives been found?
Article appears to have been wrong and corrected: it now says "$429 for the Wi-Fi version and $499 for the Wi-Fi/3G option." I don't think there's a 3G-only model.
What's to say about a Chromebook like the Samsung Series 5, whose hardware is almost embarrassed to exist?
His review is overall pretty positive w.r.t. the hardware, and he says it's better than the Cr-48.
For now, there's something to like in the Series 5 hardware and software--but oh, that price.
What's wrong with the price? Against a netbook, maybe, but I figure Google is positioning this against iPads.
And why complain about getting 100MB/month free? It has WiFi too, it's not 3G-only. I'd love a device that had free 3G. I can't bring myself to spend money on it because I'd use it so rarely, but those few times I'd want it, it would be really, really useful so I'm always going back and forth on whether or not to get it.
Key word: infant. The kid-screaming-waking-up thing doesn't last very long.* Even if you have a few kids, that's only a few years, and what percentage of the population do you think has multiple infants at any given time?
* though I understand if you're in the middle of it it might seem like forever. :-)
You must be a blast at parties.
> Most people cannot imagine the distance to ...
> Neptune, so that is a bad visual.
>
> If each byte in 9.57ZB was a water molecule. It
> would be slightly less than a teaspoon.
Most people can't visualize the size of a water molecule either. ;-)
Good HDD analogy though. I agree that the original "stack of books" one is dumb. Though I wouldn't even break it down to hard drives. Just say "it would take X many containers full of laptops* to hold all that data."
* or iPods.
It's pretty sweet. I went camping a lot as a kid in northern California and saw it all the time. Now I live in a heavily light polluted area and can barely make out the big dipper anymore. I need to head out to the sticks again. It's definitely worth a trip to the boonies at some point in your life to see what the sky really looks like.
The power supply is an $85 option. ;-)
Wrong. When I buy MP3s from Amazon, they automatically show up in iTunes. There's even a folder called ~/Music/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to iTunes/ and... (wait for it) anything that you or any program puts there will wind up in iTunes.
ANY music service can EFFORTLESSLY sync this way.
Not really much of a story. "Predicting the future is hard. Film at 11." Even smart people are wrong all the time.
> making fun of it because you can't play games
> that require a keyboard is missing the point entirely.
Adobe richly deserves to be derided. Their position is that you can not experience the entire web as it exists today without Flash. They are just refusing to admit that a lot of existing Flash content is completely unusable without a large screen, mouse, and keyboard. I'm glad they are moving forward and gearing Flash to touch but the simple fact is that it will be impossible to deliver what they've been promising all these years.
> And, seriously, how effective of OCR'ing are you really imagining
> you're going to get off of a camera phone pic, anyway?
Camera phones are getting quite good. An iPhone 4 takes 5MP images and there are many others out now that are as good or better.
Specifically, the images are 2592x1936 pixels which equates to 225 dpi at 8.5" x 11". That's plenty to OCR a typical page--say, 8.5x11 with clean 12-point type. I've carefully taken photos of documents with my phone and printed them and they're indistinguishable from a photocopy.
From TUAW today:
Today Microsoft announced its net profit for the first calendar quarter of 2011. That net profit was $5.23 billion, or $760 million dollars less than Apple's $5.99 billion net profit over the same period. For those keeping track, first Apple surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization, next they surpassed Microsoft in quarterly revenue, and now Apple has surpassed Microsoft in quarterly profits. Surpassing Microsoft's net profit is quite an accomplishment given the typical high-margin sales of Microsoft's software and the lower-margin sales of Apple's hardware.
And it's worth noting that Apple now makes the bulk of their money from things other than computers. So, to answer the article's question: no, probably not.