The clue is in the word "Retina".
And, yes, you can get 16GB of RAM.
I don't know about the graphics card, I stopped playing video games when I left school.
I love Linux but the Retina is probably the best laptop ever sold precisely because of the unusually high level of harmony between the top-notch hardware and the OS it was designed to run.
That is the whole point of Macs - complete focus on the best possible user experience, and complete disregard of the opinions of zealots who call the lack of support for an entirely diffferent OS to be a "snafu".
The rear trackpad is wonderful.
Before the iPad was introduced, I suspected that Apple would use two rear trackpads to allow users to type while gripping the pad, I thought that was what the rumors about a "surprising" input method meant.
Whether for cursor movement or the more advanced idea of text entry, using the back of a pad - where our fingers will be most of the time anyway - if such an obviously good idea. When you have a small screen, why obscure it with your hands?
I had also hoped that the iPad would use the Pixel Qi screen.
Apple decided to build upon their previous iPhone innovation rather than introduce new innovation - Apple are remorselessly focused upon creating a mainstream, "appliance" product and, to be fair, that makes a lot more business sense than trying to delight techies like us.
Congratulations, though, to Notion Ink for creating a truly innovative tablet.
Automattic are doing some of the most interesting stuff in Open Source these days and have some serious nerve backing up their vision, reportedly turning down a $100m cash + $100 stock deal a couple of years ago, I think possibly from Facebook. Smart move, they are worth a lot more today and no owner would let them do game-changing stuff like this.
Sure it did. It showed they were "cool" and knew what was popular. Remember, there are people who choose what to wear, drive, eat, etc based on whatever everyone else is doing, independent of the inherent value (or lack of value) the device has.
Wow, you completely missed his point.
He is saying that increased ownership adds inherent value to the app store because a larger market attracts increased developer attention and more apps, some of which will be better or will address previously neglected niche needs. That, by extension, adds inherent value to the device.
It is interesting to observe how many tech enthusiasts are completely missing a major shift occurring right in front of them, because they have developed reflex reactions to certain companies. In the case of Apple, some people can't get past the idea that there might be something more to their products than cool branding and snob appeal.
... or until our two-year wireless contracts run out and there is a new shiny toy from another manufacturer to be had.
Hmmm, I'm not sure that there actually is any way for the other manufacturers to catch up, not within the next 5 years anyway. The iPhone came in at a high end price 2 years ago and, since then, Apple has steadily reduced the price and imporved the technology, just as it did with the iPod.
The iPhone's secret sauce is the app store. The iPhone is the only gadget that becomes more useful, not less, the longer you own it, because you build up a highly personalized collection of apps that you integrate into your daily workflow. The money and, more importantly, the time you invest into those apps cannot be transferred to another type of smartphone.
To draw users away from the iPhone, a competitor would have to produce a significantly better phone AND a selection of apps as diverse as those available on the app store. Apple's monopoly boils down to the fact that there is almost no way to persuade a massive number of independent developers to drop all the time they've already invested into learning how to create iPhone apps and move to a market with far fewer customers than the combined iPhone + iPod Touch market.
I can't think of one single bit of technology, other than a phone and television, that I have used consistently for decades.
You've been using Windows for decades, right?
Another example of a technology that has been dominant for decades would be gas pumps - you drive a car, right?
Steve Jobs was in a perfect position to see how Microsoft created a monopoly, he learned a painful lesson.
Now, almost three decades later, he is putting that hard-earned knowledge to good use and could very well end up with a far bigger monopoly than MS ever had. It seems likely that billions of humans will have their first experience of being connected to the Internet not via desktop or laptop computers, but via cheaper smartphones. In this case, the hype is right: the world is clearly shifting to mobile computing.
Microsoft never controlled or received a percentage of third-party applications on the Windows platform, Apple does. Microsoft never really managed to establish a widespread subscription model, Apple has achieved precisely that via the telcos. Looking at it from any angle, Apple is set to dominate computing for quite a while.
Although Japan is an important market in it's own right, success in Japan is more important for the ripples in creates in the rest of Asia. Trends in Japan remain an important influencer in the region, with Asians generally paying far more attention to Japanese fashion, pop stars, gadgets and movies than American equivalents.
Apple has negotiated an initial sale of 5 million iPhones to Unicom in China, the news that it is now the No. 1 phone in Japan (and ripple affects such as more Japanese pop stars and actors using them) will make that first 5 million sell even faster.
With North America, Europe and, now, key parts of Asia on board, the rest of the world will follow. What we are looking at here is the emergence of a global computing standard that will be with us for decades.
Look, I'm not trying to get at your personally, just as I couldn't give a damn if the corporate entity known as Apple exploded into a million pieces. What I'm observing is that they have somehow integrated existing technologies into a package that becomes more useful to ordinary users over time, more useful than they thought it would be when they made the original decision to purchase. That is a pretty special achievement for any gadget and what it means is that it is changing it's users' habits. That is why it was worthy of a specific mention - not because it is a mainstream device yet, but because it is the only such device which, today, is making headway into the mainstream and is evidently changing the habits of it's users, and changes of that type will affect the future.
Twitter and Facebook are good examples, I know tons of people to who would never have used either if the iPhone didn't make it so simple and convenient. On the desktop, they always seemed like a waste of time but, as something you can quickly check while out and about, they make sense.
Games are also a good example: I stopped buying games ten years ago and stopped playing them about five years ago. I assumed that they were something I had grown out of and I was plenty busy with other stuff. When I bought the iPhone, games were the last thing on my mind and, anyway, I presumed that it would not be a very capable gaming platform. Somehow, the app store lured me back into gaming, first with free games, then a couple of dollar games and, now, I'm playing often enough to justify buying the occasional five dollar game, such as Peggle.
That sort of spending may not seem like much when the gaming industry deals in billions but, you have to remember, I am just one of hundreds of millions of people who had left gaming behind and who certainly would never have considered buying a handheld gaming device. Yes, so far, Apple have only sold 24 million iPhones, so, those hundreds of millions of people have not yet been drawn back into gaming but, just as with the iPod, Apple will ruthlessly pursue market share. Yes, there will be other phones but, think about it: a key part of value for the consumer is the app store, and no other manufacturer is going to be able to catch up with the momentum it has already generated. Developers are making far more than they originally anticipated, certainly more than they've made on any other mobile platform, and that windfall will only grow as the price of the base iPhone model drops and it enters more territories. The Palm Pre might be an amazing phone but, as a developer, am I going to invest my time into it when I've already got million of potential customers on iTunes? As a customer, am I going to buy a Pre if it can't run my favorite apps? We've already seen how this plays out with Windows, what's the point of denying reality?
No, the iPhone reference was important: the keynote was about "Extrapolating the Near Future of Gaming". When you extrapolate, you pull from what is happening today. The iPhone has shown that many normal, non-techie folks will use technology in unexpected way, and to an unexpected extent, if you make it easy enough for them.
It doesn't matter if hardcore techies think that the iPhone is "childish" or if they think it is a badge of honor to continue using their Motorola V980, it really doesn't matter at all.
What matters is what the mass of ordinary consumers move towards and, right now, today, Apple are creating a mobile platform and eco-system that could very well remain dominant for the next couple of decades, just as MS did on the desktop.
But the key point is that the iPhone shows that good design can pull mainstream users towards technologies that were previously adopted only by relatively small niche groups, such as/. readers - our use of technology in twenty years will depend not only upon what is possible but, also, upon the good design and implementation that packages the possible and persuades the mainstream to integrate it into their lives.
I should probably ignore this Anonymous Troll but it's worth pointing out that this "Irish" airline is Europe's largest airline, with a presence in more European countries than any other carrier.
The "if you must fly with an Irish airline" comment makes it pretty clear that this troll is English, immersed in a culture in which "Irish" is code for "laughable, insignificant" and other illusions comforting to a people who managed to blow an Empire and now have a per capita income way lower than Ireland's.
I'm no fan of RyanAir but largely because they have the ruthless attitudes necessary to prosper in a free market, inspired by the American example of SouthWest airlines. Without exception, the other European airlines have copied RyanAir's cost-cutting measures but have generally been generally far less efficient at stuff like turn-around times.
I live in the UK and the level of self-delusion here regarding other countries and nationalities is extraordinary.
I'm sorry but the problem is YOU or YOUR system not firefox in general. Maybe it's a mac problem but thats a minor user base so it's far from a major bug.
Spoken like a true idiot.
Clearly, you think it makes sense to blow massive amounts on evangelizing Firefox with full-page ads in the national press while, at the same time, writing off the entire Mac platform rather than address a technical problem.
Perhaps this is the core of the problem: any commercial application would be desperate to grow rather than reduce their marketshare. Instead, we have a grossly overpaid layer of bureaucrats who know little and care less about the technical enthusiasm and volunteered time that made Firefox a success in the first place.
This might be fine if it wasn't for the fact that sharper, hungrier competitors have their eyes on the same prize. Anyone who writes off millions of their existing users as "a minor user base" simply no longer gets it, especially when you consider that members of that "minor user base" are proportionately far more likely than Windows users to also be contributing developers.
My main fear is that this idiot's may all too accurately reflect the Foundation's own short-sightedness, arrogance and complacency.
Everyone I know using Firefox on the Mac has the same problem. Reproducible? Perhaps the foundation could just buy a Mac for testing.
In the six months since I switched, the system has been rock solid and every other application has been fine, only Firefox needs to be repeatedly restarted due to ballooning memory use.
Right now, after just two hours of light usage since Firefox last slowed my entire system to such a crawl that it had to be restart, one window and three tabs open (Gmail, Google reader, slashdot), Activity Monitor shows Firefox at 322MB real memory, 824MB virtual and growing. I don't actually know how high it goes before becoming completely unusable (haven't bothered looking) but it must be pretty high - I have 4GB of memory installed in this laptop and, usually, no other apps running.
That is with the most recent FF, 2.0.0.9 - there is, absolutely, a problem; perhaps if the foundation were not in such a rosy financial situation they would have an incentive to fix problems that affect a significantly large minority of their users.
So, Jason, I read your website pretty thoroughly but couldn't find any prices - what sort of cost are we talking about for hosting fairly straightforward LAMP apps on your system?
Because I'm sure a lot of people here on/. would be interested and, Hell, if you want those economies of scale, it wouldn't hurt for your customer base to get slashdotted.
If you are into playing games, rendering video, editing really hi-res photos, or doing music editing...need a REALLY powerful machine, with a LOT of ram (actually if you are doing any of these as your job, you should probably be using a mac)
No comment.
Well, I have a comment: Games are what Bootcamp is for.
For everything else on the list - video rendering, high-res photo-editing, music production - you want to boot right back into OS X.
The Slashdot modding system is ridiculously broken, handing mod points to a tiny number of readers but not insisting that those few understand HOW to mod.
I am no Apple fanboy, been around/. for enough years to be pretty cynical about all corporations and technology cheerleaders but I bought a MacBook Pro about two months ago and am surprised to have come to the conclusion that it's the best piece of hardware I've ever owned.
I don't mean that in a fevered, evangelical way because, really, I don't care what the rest of the world uses but for me, personally, switching has made a big difference to my productivity and enjoyment of computers - I'd kind of forgotten the excitement I used to feel back in the day.
Over the past couple of years, Apple seem to be have been slowly but steadily getting it right in a sustained manner that I suspect will come more clearly to fruition when Leopard is released in October. I was kind of slow to notice this build-up, kind of resistant to the idea of buying into the cult of Apple and probably should have made the switch sooner, could have used this productivity boost a year ago, but, whatever, I'm glad that I eventually cottoned on.
Again, I don't much care what the rest of the world does as long as my experience and working environment keep improving. Some enjoy treating this as a spectator sport, like a never-ending baseball match between Apple and Microsoft, enjoying each play that seems to bring victory that little bit nearer. Bollox.
Sure, Apple probably will see quite a jump by the holiday season but Microsoft have simply dominated the market for too long to be pushed aside - the vast majority of people don't know and don't care to know much about computers and will happily "upgrade" to Vista when their existing machines die. What we will see, however, is a fairly fast and comprehensive migration towards Mac by programmers and other people who need to be creative and productive with computers. That probably represents just 15% of the market but it's an important 15% and giving those people better tools to do what they do is going to be beneficial for everyone.
In the meantime, I certainly recommend giving the whole Mac proposition a closer look, you might find yourself as surprised as I have been.
Slashdot Mirror
The clue is in the word "Retina". And, yes, you can get 16GB of RAM. I don't know about the graphics card, I stopped playing video games when I left school.
I love Linux but the Retina is probably the best laptop ever sold precisely because of the unusually high level of harmony between the top-notch hardware and the OS it was designed to run. That is the whole point of Macs - complete focus on the best possible user experience, and complete disregard of the opinions of zealots who call the lack of support for an entirely diffferent OS to be a "snafu".
Stay classy, Australia!
The rear trackpad is wonderful. Before the iPad was introduced, I suspected that Apple would use two rear trackpads to allow users to type while gripping the pad, I thought that was what the rumors about a "surprising" input method meant. Whether for cursor movement or the more advanced idea of text entry, using the back of a pad - where our fingers will be most of the time anyway - if such an obviously good idea. When you have a small screen, why obscure it with your hands? I had also hoped that the iPad would use the Pixel Qi screen. Apple decided to build upon their previous iPhone innovation rather than introduce new innovation - Apple are remorselessly focused upon creating a mainstream, "appliance" product and, to be fair, that makes a lot more business sense than trying to delight techies like us. Congratulations, though, to Notion Ink for creating a truly innovative tablet.
Automattic are doing some of the most interesting stuff in Open Source these days and have some serious nerve backing up their vision, reportedly turning down a $100m cash + $100 stock deal a couple of years ago, I think possibly from Facebook. Smart move, they are worth a lot more today and no owner would let them do game-changing stuff like this.
Definitely a company to watch.
I have a gene variant linked to tickling policemen and, yet, they throw the book at me every time.
Sure it did. It showed they were "cool" and knew what was popular. Remember, there are people who choose what to wear, drive, eat, etc based on whatever everyone else is doing, independent of the inherent value (or lack of value) the device has.
Wow, you completely missed his point.
He is saying that increased ownership adds inherent value to the app store because a larger market attracts increased developer attention and more apps, some of which will be better or will address previously neglected niche needs. That, by extension, adds inherent value to the device.
It is interesting to observe how many tech enthusiasts are completely missing a major shift occurring right in front of them, because they have developed reflex reactions to certain companies. In the case of Apple, some people can't get past the idea that there might be something more to their products than cool branding and snob appeal.
... or until our two-year wireless contracts run out and there is a new shiny toy from another manufacturer to be had.
Hmmm, I'm not sure that there actually is any way for the other manufacturers to catch up, not within the next 5 years anyway. The iPhone came in at a high end price 2 years ago and, since then, Apple has steadily reduced the price and imporved the technology, just as it did with the iPod.
The iPhone's secret sauce is the app store. The iPhone is the only gadget that becomes more useful, not less, the longer you own it, because you build up a highly personalized collection of apps that you integrate into your daily workflow. The money and, more importantly, the time you invest into those apps cannot be transferred to another type of smartphone.
To draw users away from the iPhone, a competitor would have to produce a significantly better phone AND a selection of apps as diverse as those available on the app store. Apple's monopoly boils down to the fact that there is almost no way to persuade a massive number of independent developers to drop all the time they've already invested into learning how to create iPhone apps and move to a market with far fewer customers than the combined iPhone + iPod Touch market.
I can't think of one single bit of technology, other than a phone and television, that I have used consistently for decades.
You've been using Windows for decades, right?
Another example of a technology that has been dominant for decades would be gas pumps - you drive a car, right?
Steve Jobs was in a perfect position to see how Microsoft created a monopoly, he learned a painful lesson.
Now, almost three decades later, he is putting that hard-earned knowledge to good use and could very well end up with a far bigger monopoly than MS ever had. It seems likely that billions of humans will have their first experience of being connected to the Internet not via desktop or laptop computers, but via cheaper smartphones. In this case, the hype is right: the world is clearly shifting to mobile computing.
Microsoft never controlled or received a percentage of third-party applications on the Windows platform, Apple does. Microsoft never really managed to establish a widespread subscription model, Apple has achieved precisely that via the telcos. Looking at it from any angle, Apple is set to dominate computing for quite a while.
Although Japan is an important market in it's own right, success in Japan is more important for the ripples in creates in the rest of Asia. Trends in Japan remain an important influencer in the region, with Asians generally paying far more attention to Japanese fashion, pop stars, gadgets and movies than American equivalents. Apple has negotiated an initial sale of 5 million iPhones to Unicom in China, the news that it is now the No. 1 phone in Japan (and ripple affects such as more Japanese pop stars and actors using them) will make that first 5 million sell even faster. With North America, Europe and, now, key parts of Asia on board, the rest of the world will follow. What we are looking at here is the emergence of a global computing standard that will be with us for decades.
the new movie will not be related to the recently concluded SyFy Network series.
FAIL.
Look, I'm not trying to get at your personally, just as I couldn't give a damn if the corporate entity known as Apple exploded into a million pieces. What I'm observing is that they have somehow integrated existing technologies into a package that becomes more useful to ordinary users over time, more useful than they thought it would be when they made the original decision to purchase. That is a pretty special achievement for any gadget and what it means is that it is changing it's users' habits. That is why it was worthy of a specific mention - not because it is a mainstream device yet, but because it is the only such device which, today, is making headway into the mainstream and is evidently changing the habits of it's users, and changes of that type will affect the future.
Twitter and Facebook are good examples, I know tons of people to who would never have used either if the iPhone didn't make it so simple and convenient. On the desktop, they always seemed like a waste of time but, as something you can quickly check while out and about, they make sense.
Games are also a good example: I stopped buying games ten years ago and stopped playing them about five years ago. I assumed that they were something I had grown out of and I was plenty busy with other stuff. When I bought the iPhone, games were the last thing on my mind and, anyway, I presumed that it would not be a very capable gaming platform. Somehow, the app store lured me back into gaming, first with free games, then a couple of dollar games and, now, I'm playing often enough to justify buying the occasional five dollar game, such as Peggle.
That sort of spending may not seem like much when the gaming industry deals in billions but, you have to remember, I am just one of hundreds of millions of people who had left gaming behind and who certainly would never have considered buying a handheld gaming device. Yes, so far, Apple have only sold 24 million iPhones, so, those hundreds of millions of people have not yet been drawn back into gaming but, just as with the iPod, Apple will ruthlessly pursue market share. Yes, there will be other phones but, think about it: a key part of value for the consumer is the app store, and no other manufacturer is going to be able to catch up with the momentum it has already generated. Developers are making far more than they originally anticipated, certainly more than they've made on any other mobile platform, and that windfall will only grow as the price of the base iPhone model drops and it enters more territories. The Palm Pre might be an amazing phone but, as a developer, am I going to invest my time into it when I've already got million of potential customers on iTunes? As a customer, am I going to buy a Pre if it can't run my favorite apps? We've already seen how this plays out with Windows, what's the point of denying reality?
No, the iPhone reference was important: the keynote was about "Extrapolating the Near Future of Gaming". When you extrapolate, you pull from what is happening today. The iPhone has shown that many normal, non-techie folks will use technology in unexpected way, and to an unexpected extent, if you make it easy enough for them.
It doesn't matter if hardcore techies think that the iPhone is "childish" or if they think it is a badge of honor to continue using their Motorola V980, it really doesn't matter at all.
What matters is what the mass of ordinary consumers move towards and, right now, today, Apple are creating a mobile platform and eco-system that could very well remain dominant for the next couple of decades, just as MS did on the desktop.
But the key point is that the iPhone shows that good design can pull mainstream users towards technologies that were previously adopted only by relatively small niche groups, such as /. readers - our use of technology in twenty years will depend not only upon what is possible but, also, upon the good design and implementation that packages the possible and persuades the mainstream to integrate it into their lives.
... I hope no worthwhile human beings died in the crash.
I should probably ignore this Anonymous Troll but it's worth pointing out that this "Irish" airline is Europe's largest airline, with a presence in more European countries than any other carrier.
The "if you must fly with an Irish airline" comment makes it pretty clear that this troll is English, immersed in a culture in which "Irish" is code for "laughable, insignificant" and other illusions comforting to a people who managed to blow an Empire and now have a per capita income way lower than Ireland's.
I'm no fan of RyanAir but largely because they have the ruthless attitudes necessary to prosper in a free market, inspired by the American example of SouthWest airlines. Without exception, the other European airlines have copied RyanAir's cost-cutting measures but have generally been generally far less efficient at stuff like turn-around times.
I live in the UK and the level of self-delusion here regarding other countries and nationalities is extraordinary.
Why on Earth has this been modded "Flamebait"?
Mod parent down ;)
Sheer genius, funniest post I've read in ages.
The fact that no-one has modded this hilarious post up only goes to illustrate how broken Slashdot's moderation system is.
Awesome reply, thanks, will jump to FF3 as soon as possible.
Thanks to everyone who gave a useful reply.
Donnacha
Spoken like a true idiot.
Clearly, you think it makes sense to blow massive amounts on evangelizing Firefox with full-page ads in the national press while, at the same time, writing off the entire Mac platform rather than address a technical problem.
Perhaps this is the core of the problem: any commercial application would be desperate to grow rather than reduce their marketshare. Instead, we have a grossly overpaid layer of bureaucrats who know little and care less about the technical enthusiasm and volunteered time that made Firefox a success in the first place.
This might be fine if it wasn't for the fact that sharper, hungrier competitors have their eyes on the same prize. Anyone who writes off millions of their existing users as "a minor user base" simply no longer gets it, especially when you consider that members of that "minor user base" are proportionately far more likely than Windows users to also be contributing developers.
My main fear is that this idiot's may all too accurately reflect the Foundation's own short-sightedness, arrogance and complacency.
Does Firefox today = Internet Explorer in 2003?
You're kidding, right?
Everyone I know using Firefox on the Mac has the same problem. Reproducible? Perhaps the foundation could just buy a Mac for testing.
In the six months since I switched, the system has been rock solid and every other application has been fine, only Firefox needs to be repeatedly restarted due to ballooning memory use.
Right now, after just two hours of light usage since Firefox last slowed my entire system to such a crawl that it had to be restart, one window and three tabs open (Gmail, Google reader, slashdot), Activity Monitor shows Firefox at 322MB real memory, 824MB virtual and growing. I don't actually know how high it goes before becoming completely unusable (haven't bothered looking) but it must be pretty high - I have 4GB of memory installed in this laptop and, usually, no other apps running.
That is with the most recent FF, 2.0.0.9 - there is, absolutely, a problem; perhaps if the foundation were not in such a rosy financial situation they would have an incentive to fix problems that affect a significantly large minority of their users.
So, Jason, I read your website pretty thoroughly but couldn't find any prices - what sort of cost are we talking about for hosting fairly straightforward LAMP apps on your system?
/. would be interested and, Hell, if you want those economies of scale, it wouldn't hurt for your customer base to get slashdotted.
Because I'm sure a lot of people here on
Well, I have a comment: Games are what Bootcamp is for.
For everything else on the list - video rendering, high-res photo-editing, music production - you want to boot right back into OS X.
Wow. Yes. Definitely agree.
The Slashdot modding system is ridiculously broken, handing mod points to a tiny number of readers but not insisting that those few understand HOW to mod.
I am no Apple fanboy, been around /. for enough years to be pretty cynical about all corporations and technology cheerleaders but I bought a MacBook Pro about two months ago and am surprised to have come to the conclusion that it's the best piece of hardware I've ever owned.
I don't mean that in a fevered, evangelical way because, really, I don't care what the rest of the world uses but for me, personally, switching has made a big difference to my productivity and enjoyment of computers - I'd kind of forgotten the excitement I used to feel back in the day.
Over the past couple of years, Apple seem to be have been slowly but steadily getting it right in a sustained manner that I suspect will come more clearly to fruition when Leopard is released in October. I was kind of slow to notice this build-up, kind of resistant to the idea of buying into the cult of Apple and probably should have made the switch sooner, could have used this productivity boost a year ago, but, whatever, I'm glad that I eventually cottoned on.
Again, I don't much care what the rest of the world does as long as my experience and working environment keep improving. Some enjoy treating this as a spectator sport, like a never-ending baseball match between Apple and Microsoft, enjoying each play that seems to bring victory that little bit nearer. Bollox.
Sure, Apple probably will see quite a jump by the holiday season but Microsoft have simply dominated the market for too long to be pushed aside - the vast majority of people don't know and don't care to know much about computers and will happily "upgrade" to Vista when their existing machines die. What we will see, however, is a fairly fast and comprehensive migration towards Mac by programmers and other people who need to be creative and productive with computers. That probably represents just 15% of the market but it's an important 15% and giving those people better tools to do what they do is going to be beneficial for everyone.
In the meantime, I certainly recommend giving the whole Mac proposition a closer look, you might find yourself as surprised as I have been.
Well, I don't know about all this philosophical mumbo-jumbo and legal hoo-ha but I can tell you this: their download speeds SUCKED!!