But by all means keep believing that because Android is given away freely by the AOSP that it costs nothing to use. It gives the rest of us quite a chuckle.
Not nothing just significantly less then doing ALL of it. Just like running a company like Ubuntu is cheaper than running Microsoft. Sure, both do a non-trivial amount of work but only one does the whole thing from the ground up.
Someone, anyone and soon I hope. Seriously, Youtube is a hellhole. HTML5 support is crappy and seems to be getting worse, video not loading or sound out of sync,etc. That's when Youtube has deigned to actually create a h264 version. The flash isn't much better, I even get "plugin errors" on Chrome while loading video. Then there's the fact anyone can just send a threat to Youtube and they'll roll over and delete a video, or mute it or block it in countries seemingly at random. I'm really getting sick of the "blocked in your country" message, I'd use a proxy but the site is slow enough as it is. Speaking of random, the "safe mode" (forced ON by my employer, thank you Youtube for allowing them to do that) is a joke, weird shit like Puddin' gets through while completely innocuous videos get blocked. The only reason that site is still top of the heap is because taking it on means taking on Google.
Because protectionism worked out so well in the past ? How about you just tax the hell out of the assholes profiting from sending all the manufacturing oversees until they get with the program instead of giving them tax breaks ?
None of the other phone or tablet makers have this kind of profit margin, yet their products easily match the iOS products in quality and ease of use.
1) "match the iOS products in quality and ease of use." We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Most Android phones I've seen (with some very few exceptions) feel cheap, they feel much cheaper than they are in fact. 2) Android makers get the OS for free, remember Apple does more than just sell the hardware. There's R&D, software development, patents to be bought, etc. 3) Even with a free OS, show me the phones and tablets significantly undercutting iOS devices while providing the same quality. And the "going out of business, please buy our inventory" sales don't count.
If apple cut their prices the "cool factor" would be diminished, and the fanbois would move onto something else. If they aren't over paying top dollar its just obviously not the best thing ever.
To me calling people "fanbois" and looking down on them because they think "the mainstream is so cool but they don't know what's cool, I know what's cool" just makes you another hipster. Just accept there are people who like something different from you, is that so difficult ? I can see why people like Android or Windows Phone, that doesn't make them idiots or "fanbois" just people with other needs.
Exactly, maybe a zoomable diagram of the human body with cutaways as you zoom into certain organs or a 3D movable model of the heart ? A trackable 360 degree picture of the Acropolis might be nice in a history textbook. And a moving model of an atom in a physics book, or an animated version of the double slit experiment to show the properties of light. I could think of a million uses for animation in textbooks.
This is just another attempt by Apple to become a middleman, extract money from creators, and lock more people onto their platform.
No they are taking out the current middle-men who are fucking up the business and replacing them with themselves which potentially could mean higher payout for creators because it'll be easier to self-publish and get access to an audience and because the whole process becomes more streamlined. People are already locked in to the incumbents in the publishing industry, and often locked in to their format too (paper or DRM'ed pdf files.)
So, these textbooks will most likely be for primary (elementary) and high school students. Single books, at this level of education, are reused for many years before needing to be repurchased. Even if textbooks were $100US, they would still be a better cost proposition than $15/student/year.
But the students get to keep them. So you get to keep the book for revision/reference. I can see that being handy. And $15 for a book is pretty low, that's like the price of a CD.
BS. In the past the pharaoh could just issue an edict saying someone was now a non-person, have a few names chipped out of monuments and he'd be done. Changing history now is practically impossible, even in your worst DRM nightmare. Unless of course you create a cult of people willing to live in their own manufactured reality (see the Tea Party for example.) That was the whole point of 1984, yet people focus on the tele-screens and become technophobic.
It does make a perverse sort of sense: you can use the software for free if you sell your work through us. Its not a bad deal but it sounds completely unenforceable and maybe it's not even valid under the law if someone wants to test it in court. I mean it's not without precedent, there's plenty of software companies that offer their software for free use if used non-commercially but if you do break the license I don't think Apple could come after you for the proceeds of your produced work, only for the license fee of the iBooks Author software. Of course IANAL.
It is a bit convoluted, though. It'd just be easier to list everything in the library and grey out what you don't actually have downloaded like Steam does.
That's the way iTunes Match does it too. To be honest iTunes itself is showing its age (11 years old now), I think Apple has a hard time rebuilding it each to keep up with the times.
I, too, have posted things critical of Google in the past and had this same anonymous person track all my posts.
This is a real problem. Slashdot should be limiting the number of downvotes someone can give another user's posts within a time period. There's clearly assholes who just go through someone's history downvoting everything because of some perceived affront to their delicate sensibilities.
The labels have lost that revenue anyway, convincing people to "legitimize" pirate content is an uphill struggle (most people can't afford to anyway.) At least this way they get some revenue out of it. And they can still come after you for that content since there's no record of it being officially bought. So they lose nothing but gain revenue.
That's not a monopoly. Monopoly = 1 seller, many buyers. Owners of an iPod could buy music from anywhere + the iTunes store, owners of other devices could buy music from anywhere except the iTunes store (for DRM'ed music, other players could play non-DRM AAC files.) It's more like an exclusivity agreement.
"To download previously purchased apps, books, music or TV Shows to your computer
Open iTunes 10.4 or later on your computer. (You can download the latest version of iTunes here.) If you're not already signed in, click Sign In and enter your Apple ID and password. After you've signed in, click Purchased on the right side in the iTunes Store under the QUICK LINKS the section. From your Purchased page, click the tab for the content type you're looking for (Music, TV Shows, Apps, or Books). Click Songs or Albums to change the page view and All or "Not in My Library" to view your purchased content that currently is not downloaded on your computer. Click the download icon to the right of each item to download that item."
People talk a lot of smack about Apple too. Often based on poor information.
Leverage. You don't just say no to your biggest retailer. It also makes business sense because the labels get some of that iTunes Match money, all without any effort from their part. Just goes to show what we could have had by now if someone had stood up to these guys before Apple came along.
It also matched many songs that come straight from LPs. But that is a bit hit and miss; I think the song length must be right, and a separated them by hand. If you are lazy and just record one LP side as one 20 minute song, you obviously won't get any match.
Song matching definitely isn't perfect. I have one album for which one half of the files matched and the others didn't. But overall only 15% of my library didn't match which is pretty good considering a big part of that is local bands and demo's that wouldn't be on iTunes anyway (also AC/DC apparently isn't sold through iTunes at least in my part of the world.)
They stopped selling DRM'ed files a while ago now. If you still have DRM'ed files you can upgrade them through iTunes to non-DRM files for a small fee per song (something like 10 cents, I forget the exact amount) or if you have match you can delete the song and redownload the non-DRM version after it matches.
No there's other services. I also have access to my entire music library from my iPad, because it downloads songs directly from Apple if you want to hear it, rather than just the songs that I could fit on the iPad manually. And I have also "upgraded" a lot of my music from crappy mp3's (with bitrates like 128kbit and below) to shiny new 256 AAC files through Match. Overall I'm pretty happy with the service though I'm waiting to see how often I end up downloading songs to my devices over the course of year to see if I'll justify renewing the subscription next year.
It's not all restaurants, just the ones that otherwise would have lots of people passing through just to use the toilet. I don't think it's so strange, it annoys paying customers when there's a lot of people breezing through and the facilities aren't free to operate either (water, electricity, cleaning, etc.)
Is a two-year guarantee the same as tech support? To use the mandatory car analogy, is saying "You've got to fix Bob's car if it breaks for two years" the same as "You've got to teach Bob how to drive and walk him through changing his oil"?
No the 2 year term is for failures due to manufacturing defects present at the time of sale only. Applecare generally does provide much more coverage and is valid for 3 years, so the 2 are not equal. That said I applaud the Italian government for making sure companies correctly inform customers.
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But by all means keep believing that because Android is given away freely by the AOSP that it costs nothing to use. It gives the rest of us quite a chuckle.
Not nothing just significantly less then doing ALL of it. Just like running a company like Ubuntu is cheaper than running Microsoft. Sure, both do a non-trivial amount of work but only one does the whole thing from the ground up.
Someone, anyone and soon I hope. Seriously, Youtube is a hellhole. HTML5 support is crappy and seems to be getting worse, video not loading or sound out of sync,etc. That's when Youtube has deigned to actually create a h264 version. The flash isn't much better, I even get "plugin errors" on Chrome while loading video. Then there's the fact anyone can just send a threat to Youtube and they'll roll over and delete a video, or mute it or block it in countries seemingly at random. I'm really getting sick of the "blocked in your country" message, I'd use a proxy but the site is slow enough as it is. Speaking of random, the "safe mode" (forced ON by my employer, thank you Youtube for allowing them to do that) is a joke, weird shit like Puddin' gets through while completely innocuous videos get blocked. The only reason that site is still top of the heap is because taking it on means taking on Google.
Because protectionism worked out so well in the past ? How about you just tax the hell out of the assholes profiting from sending all the manufacturing oversees until they get with the program instead of giving them tax breaks ?
None of the other phone or tablet makers have this kind of profit margin, yet their products easily match the iOS products
in quality and ease of use.
1) "match the iOS products in quality and ease of use." We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Most Android phones I've seen (with some very few exceptions) feel cheap, they feel much cheaper than they are in fact.
2) Android makers get the OS for free, remember Apple does more than just sell the hardware. There's R&D, software development, patents to be bought, etc.
3) Even with a free OS, show me the phones and tablets significantly undercutting iOS devices while providing the same quality. And the "going out of business, please buy our inventory" sales don't count.
If apple cut their prices the "cool factor" would be diminished, and the fanbois would move onto something else. If they aren't over paying top dollar its just obviously not the best thing ever.
To me calling people "fanbois" and looking down on them because they think "the mainstream is so cool but they don't know what's cool, I know what's cool" just makes you another hipster. Just accept there are people who like something different from you, is that so difficult ? I can see why people like Android or Windows Phone, that doesn't make them idiots or "fanbois" just people with other needs.
I'll have to disagree ...it's tech worthy news. The more money Apple gets, the more money they have to influence the shape of things to come.
It's good to be aware of the shifts in power and the current status quo regardless of whether you are a fanboi or not.
Speaking of which :
@fmanjoo : "Apple's profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google's entire revenue ($10.6 billion)."
Thought that was pretty mind-blowing since we're all used to thinking of Google as some kind of juggernaut.
Exactly, maybe a zoomable diagram of the human body with cutaways as you zoom into certain organs or a 3D movable model of the heart ? A trackable 360 degree picture of the Acropolis might be nice in a history textbook. And a moving model of an atom in a physics book, or an animated version of the double slit experiment to show the properties of light. I could think of a million uses for animation in textbooks.
This is just another attempt by Apple to become a middleman, extract money from creators, and lock more people onto their platform.
No they are taking out the current middle-men who are fucking up the business and replacing them with themselves which potentially could mean higher payout for creators because it'll be easier to self-publish and get access to an audience and because the whole process becomes more streamlined. People are already locked in to the incumbents in the publishing industry, and often locked in to their format too (paper or DRM'ed pdf files.)
Should also make it pretty easy and relatively cheap for a student to check out a competing textbook if they are the curious type.
So, these textbooks will most likely be for primary (elementary) and high school students. Single books, at this level of education, are reused for many years before needing to be repurchased. Even if textbooks were $100US, they would still be a better cost proposition than $15/student/year.
But the students get to keep them. So you get to keep the book for revision/reference. I can see that being handy. And $15 for a book is pretty low, that's like the price of a CD.
BS. In the past the pharaoh could just issue an edict saying someone was now a non-person, have a few names chipped out of monuments and he'd be done. Changing history now is practically impossible, even in your worst DRM nightmare. Unless of course you create a cult of people willing to live in their own manufactured reality (see the Tea Party for example.) That was the whole point of 1984, yet people focus on the tele-screens and become technophobic.
It does make a perverse sort of sense: you can use the software for free if you sell your work through us. Its not a bad deal but it sounds completely unenforceable and maybe it's not even valid under the law if someone wants to test it in court. I mean it's not without precedent, there's plenty of software companies that offer their software for free use if used non-commercially but if you do break the license I don't think Apple could come after you for the proceeds of your produced work, only for the license fee of the iBooks Author software. Of course IANAL.
It is a bit convoluted, though. It'd just be easier to list everything in the library and grey out what you don't actually have downloaded like Steam does.
That's the way iTunes Match does it too. To be honest iTunes itself is showing its age (11 years old now), I think Apple has a hard time rebuilding it each to keep up with the times.
I, too, have posted things critical of Google in the past and had this same anonymous person track all my posts.
This is a real problem. Slashdot should be limiting the number of downvotes someone can give another user's posts within a time period. There's clearly assholes who just go through someone's history downvoting everything because of some perceived affront to their delicate sensibilities.
The labels have lost that revenue anyway, convincing people to "legitimize" pirate content is an uphill struggle (most people can't afford to anyway.) At least this way they get some revenue out of it. And they can still come after you for that content since there's no record of it being officially bought. So they lose nothing but gain revenue.
That's not a monopoly. Monopoly = 1 seller, many buyers. Owners of an iPod could buy music from anywhere + the iTunes store, owners of other devices could buy music from anywhere except the iTunes store (for DRM'ed music, other players could play non-DRM AAC files.) It's more like an exclusivity agreement.
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
"To download previously purchased apps, books, music or TV Shows to your computer
Open iTunes 10.4 or later on your computer. (You can download the latest version of iTunes here.)
If you're not already signed in, click Sign In and enter your Apple ID and password.
After you've signed in, click Purchased on the right side in the iTunes Store under the QUICK LINKS the section.
From your Purchased page, click the tab for the content type you're looking for (Music, TV Shows, Apps, or Books).
Click Songs or Albums to change the page view and All or "Not in My Library" to view your purchased content that currently is not downloaded on your computer.
Click the download icon to the right of each item to download that item."
People talk a lot of smack about Apple too. Often based on poor information.
Leverage. You don't just say no to your biggest retailer. It also makes business sense because the labels get some of that iTunes Match money, all without any effort from their part. Just goes to show what we could have had by now if someone had stood up to these guys before Apple came along.
It also matched many songs that come straight from LPs. But that is a bit hit and miss; I think the song length must be right, and a separated them by hand. If you are lazy and just record one LP side as one 20 minute song, you obviously won't get any match.
Song matching definitely isn't perfect. I have one album for which one half of the files matched and the others didn't. But overall only 15% of my library didn't match which is pretty good considering a big part of that is local bands and demo's that wouldn't be on iTunes anyway (also AC/DC apparently isn't sold through iTunes at least in my part of the world.)
They stopped selling DRM'ed files a while ago now. If you still have DRM'ed files you can upgrade them through iTunes to non-DRM files for a small fee per song (something like 10 cents, I forget the exact amount) or if you have match you can delete the song and redownload the non-DRM version after it matches.
No there's other services. I also have access to my entire music library from my iPad, because it downloads songs directly from Apple if you want to hear it, rather than just the songs that I could fit on the iPad manually. And I have also "upgraded" a lot of my music from crappy mp3's (with bitrates like 128kbit and below) to shiny new 256 AAC files through Match. Overall I'm pretty happy with the service though I'm waiting to see how often I end up downloading songs to my devices over the course of year to see if I'll justify renewing the subscription next year.
Imgur was created for, and thus heavily used by a little site called Reddit. Godaddy is the McDonalds of domain registration.
It's not all restaurants, just the ones that otherwise would have lots of people passing through just to use the toilet. I don't think it's so strange, it annoys paying customers when there's a lot of people breezing through and the facilities aren't free to operate either (water, electricity, cleaning, etc.)
Pretty standard in Belgium. They also do that in the toilets in shopping mals and stations and the like.
Is a two-year guarantee the same as tech support? To use the mandatory car analogy, is saying "You've got to fix Bob's car if it breaks for two years" the same as "You've got to teach Bob how to drive and walk him through changing his oil"?
No the 2 year term is for failures due to manufacturing defects present at the time of sale only. Applecare generally does provide much more coverage and is valid for 3 years, so the 2 are not equal. That said I applaud the Italian government for making sure companies correctly inform customers.
I've heard good things about RT too.