AMD had a better architecture at the times of Athlon and Intel made "netburst" architecture, the name makes users believe that it bursts internet surfing. It was 30 stages pipeline, because it could go up with MHz and so it was good to make users think "more MHz, better cpu" (like when people buys stereos, more Watts=better sound. Yuck.)
AMD was the first to release dual core desktop processors, but Intel preceded AMD with dual core Pentium 4: two single-core dies on one package. AMD was the first to release quad core desktop processors, but Intel preceded AMD with quad cores: two dual-core dies on one package. Now it is the same story with CPU+GPU. The bad thing here is that all this is done with the complicity of magazines and hardware review websites around the world.
A console is made to play games, you can run whatever game you want on it, as long as it is compatible.
A smartphone is made to surf the web, and you SHOULD be able to access every website you want, as long as it is compatible (and Flash websites ARE, because Flash support is ready).
Every game console has its own game market, but a smartphone not only has its own market (iTunes Store here), but also stands in the "web market".
If Apple said: you can't see any website with the iPhone, that would be ok. But Apple says "no" to Flash websites, "yes" to the others. It's different.
But hey, the slogan says "Think Different", doesn't it?;-)
It's wrong to compare iPhones, iPads, iWhatevers to gaming consoles at this time.
Any of those devices is made for the sole purpose of running games which software houses make for it. Nothing more.
Every console has a rigid software platform, and online games are played only through the console producer's network. You know it when you buy the console, you know it when you produce a game for it.
That's how the console market works and that's well known and accepted by console producers, game producers, and users.
Smartphones do surf the web. The web is full of standards, some open and some closed, and on those standards with corresponding API layers there are lots of software houses and other companies that run their businesses.
Since applications and services running on the web are distributed applications, devices accessing the web run the client side of those applications, and should be able of running software that respects the actually common standards on the web.
That's how the PC and smartphones market works and that's well known and accepted by users, hardware producers and software producers: except for Apple it seems.
Ruling which of these technologies should be banned from the user devices means influencing businesses of companies that supply services through the web and means influencing choices users can make (i.e. choosing an online web service or another), so it means influencing the market.
We are not talking about a standard that isn't implemented on Apple's platform: indeed, Flash support is ready. Remember that Microsoft, that just makes software, had been ruled by the EU antitrust to show users a choice screen for browsers, just to be sure that browser other than Internet Explorer do exist.
Apple makes the hardware AND the software, forces consumers to buy hardware with their brand if they want to use Apple software, and now wants to decide that users can't use web services made with a concurrent technology. It's a bit more restricting and destructive compared to MS practices: it's quite normal an inquiry started.
Of course if iPhones were sold as gaming consoles it would be a lot easy for Apple to justify. But they aren't: they are sold as smartphones.
Example no. 1:
"I'm a user, I want to see that website... oh wait, but that's in Flash, I can't see it on my iPhone, because uncle Steve said no."
Example no. 2:
"I run a website, I'd like to make it compatible with smartphones... but wait, it doesn't work on iPhones: that's a pity, I'm loosing a lot of users... damn it's got a lot of Flash in it, I should rewrite it entirely."
All this with the iPhone version of Flash that is ready, but uncle Steve said "no".
Does it smell of unfair business practice? Yes, it does.
All Apple hardware has been invented elsewere.
Nowadays Macs are simply PCs with the Apple brand on them, and the iPhone isn't surely the first smartphone to see the sunlight.
Apple has great merits for improving the user interface over the years: but they pretend their hardware is better and worth much more money, which isn't true.
The only advantage Apple devices have towards other devices is in the software interface, I can understand they ask more money for it, but they just ask too much.
OSX is very nice, but I mean, 2 or 3 months ago I helped a friend of mine choosing a new notebook, he finally bought a Dell, 15,4" fullHD (!!) monitor, core i7 processor, 4GB of ram, etcetera for around 1300€, a MacBookPro with similar hardware costed almost twice as much. It's too much.
This sounds a bit like sci-fi cyberpunk dystopia.
A bit like Gattaca.
One wonders why decisions on matters that affect democracy are always taken outside parliaments at first.
Here in Italy we had the same problem.
There were a lot of cases of fined people complaining that the yellow was too short, then many criminal investigations started around the country and they found out that in a lot of places traffic lights were purposely set with too short yellow, to fine as many people as possible, because at that time companies that installed red-light cameras earned a percentage of the fines.
Of course, investigations also found out corruption cases linked to the cameras business.
After these scandals, a couple of years ago they changed the law: no more percentages of fines for companies that install cameras.
What you say is true, but there is a difference between putting a not-so-powerful software into an embedded device's firmware and putting a powerful-but-pinioned software inside it.
The former can be annoying but is understandable, because software R&D is expensive and has to be paid with the money earned from the product's sales. The latter is hardly jusitifiable from a consumer/free market point of view, because you artificially keep alive the high-end market by mutilating low-end products.
That's also what caused criticism of Tivo and led to GPLv3.
Most people, even inside the FLOSS community, see FSF and GPLv3 promoters as zealots/integralists/commies, but sooner or later everybody will see that it's just about free market: FSF was right, they just seen the problem years before most people will do.
Ok thanks, I'll give it a try ASAP, but still I see a big difference between nVidia and ATI drivers on linux.
For example, XBMC that in my opinion is the top for building up an HTPC, only supports hardware accelerated video decoding on nVidia, using VDPAU.
That's an intresting feature if wou want to see 1080p video.
It's a shame that in the 21st century you buy a device like that and then you have to ask permission to the company that made it for doing something obvious.
The iPad can do that, but they prevent you from doing it via software, just because if you want to do something like that, they want you to spend even more money on another of their devices. So actually they don't make money on what they give you, but on what they take away from you.
The EU has much more articulated antitrust laws than US (see MS Windows browser case), let's hope they'll do something, sooner or later.
BTW, I'm a Linux and GNU and FLOSS supporter, so from my point of view Microsoft is nothing more than a company that tries to do its business, but before MS came along all kinds of computers where closed like Apples. Microsoft opened up the market and spurred strong competition between hardware producers so that now we have better tecnology at lower prices, now with Apple we can see again what the closed world was like.
Will the apple hype ever deflate in front of such things?
A few months ago I bought a new pc after years, and it has an AMD cpu but an nVidia gpu (it's assembled by myself). For hardware compatibility reasons it would appear obvious to buy an AMD/ATI gpu, but the problem is, I use Linux. And AMD graphic drivers on linux still suck compared to nVidia's. Why don't they shut up and strive to make decent drivers? They would get new customers, including me.
You can connect a usb key or external hard drive to the workstation, then create a physical partition on it, than mount the partition normally, copy the files in there, and then remount the partition in the directory where the remote user looks for the files, so that when he opens the files, he will be actually working on the external drive partition, in a completely transparent manner, but the external drive will be physically accessed, thus freeing the workstation's hard disk from the load.
Of course it would be better to put the external partition in the fstab configuration file, so that it will get automatically mounted in case of reboot, and ensure that the external drive will be *ALWAYS* connected to the workstation.
Hope this can help you.:-D
For decades big companies used patents to manufacture their products in a regime of monopoly, plus they also patent what could be the possible alternatives to their products and hold those patents in a drawer, just to prevent somebody else from manufacturing something alternative to their products.
Of course, patents are affordable only by those big companies, because of patenting costs but most importatly because of R&D costs.
Thus, patents destroy competition by preventing new companies from acquiring a considerable market share; patents perpetuate the predominance of big companies over the years.
All this happens at te expenses of us consumers, and when I say "expenses" I mean real money.
So it seems patents are against free market.
Maybe the patent law should be changed in a manner that it allows the holder to get a share of the profits others do with his invention, but DOESN'T allow the holder to stop others from producing his invention.
It could be a big boost to competition, which is good, expecially in these times of crisis.:-)
My mother is 56 and not so technology-friendly. When 10 years ago she first bought a cell phone, it took some time for her to understand how to send text messages.
3 months ago she had her first personal computer, a 300€ Toshiba netbook, with Windows 7 starter.
It's just a little netbook like another, nothing special, but a few days ago she was watching "Who wants to be a millionaire?" and was able to google the correct answer in a few seconds, while the contestant used the phone-a-friend option and the friend couldn't find the answer despite of the 30 seconds available.
My mother was laughing at the situation: I mean... it's nothing special, but why do you people say netbooks aren't usable? That's not true...
I believe Jobs' marketing ability is exceptional, he starts from "normal" conditions, from something that is technically valid but not so different from everything else, and builds enormous popularity and profit over it, he's able to capitalize every single aspect of the product in a never-seen-before manner.
But sooner or later, comes a time when something new has to be made, or this strategy begins to jump the shark.
ipad is too expensive to be just an oversized ipod touch.
And OSX is good stuff but it seen the light 12 years ago, in 1998 (Rhapsody), and had no major new features in the operating systems world, and reborn in 2001 as we know it today, as "Cheetah", featuring its "magic" interface, so different, so new for its time.
But 9 years passed from 2001.
The question is: are the improvements made to the good (but) old OSX worth so much money, also considering that on the hardware side Macs are just Apple-branded PCs?
In my opinion it's all about marketing. And the same applies for iphones and ipad.
All good products in my opinion, but still too expensive: still, people continues to spend so much money to buy them, because Steve is a genius of marketing. Honour to him.
But can all this continue forever?
It's a lot of time that I believe the reason that pushes most users towards Mac/iPhone/anythingapple is the "coolness" of the interface, that is so funny, maybe also because it's in a certain manner different from everything else, but doesn't necessarily mean that is better, or anyway, not SO better as most mac fans claim.
But every time I express such an opinon, a religion war begins.
Now an Apple man tells us quite explicitly what's their marketing strategy.
Maybe some people will begin to open their eyes? I'm a bit hopeless anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
AMD had a better architecture at the times of Athlon and Intel made "netburst" architecture, the name makes users believe that it bursts internet surfing. It was 30 stages pipeline, because it could go up with MHz and so it was good to make users think "more MHz, better cpu" (like when people buys stereos, more Watts=better sound. Yuck.) AMD was the first to release dual core desktop processors, but Intel preceded AMD with dual core Pentium 4: two single-core dies on one package. AMD was the first to release quad core desktop processors, but Intel preceded AMD with quad cores: two dual-core dies on one package. Now it is the same story with CPU+GPU. The bad thing here is that all this is done with the complicity of magazines and hardware review websites around the world.
wow! :-)
A console is made to play games, you can run whatever game you want on it, as long as it is compatible. A smartphone is made to surf the web, and you SHOULD be able to access every website you want, as long as it is compatible (and Flash websites ARE, because Flash support is ready). Every game console has its own game market, but a smartphone not only has its own market (iTunes Store here), but also stands in the "web market". If Apple said: you can't see any website with the iPhone, that would be ok. But Apple says "no" to Flash websites, "yes" to the others. It's different. But hey, the slogan says "Think Different", doesn't it? ;-)
It's wrong to compare iPhones, iPads, iWhatevers to gaming consoles at this time. Any of those devices is made for the sole purpose of running games which software houses make for it. Nothing more. Every console has a rigid software platform, and online games are played only through the console producer's network. You know it when you buy the console, you know it when you produce a game for it. That's how the console market works and that's well known and accepted by console producers, game producers, and users. Smartphones do surf the web. The web is full of standards, some open and some closed, and on those standards with corresponding API layers there are lots of software houses and other companies that run their businesses. Since applications and services running on the web are distributed applications, devices accessing the web run the client side of those applications, and should be able of running software that respects the actually common standards on the web. That's how the PC and smartphones market works and that's well known and accepted by users, hardware producers and software producers: except for Apple it seems. Ruling which of these technologies should be banned from the user devices means influencing businesses of companies that supply services through the web and means influencing choices users can make (i.e. choosing an online web service or another), so it means influencing the market. We are not talking about a standard that isn't implemented on Apple's platform: indeed, Flash support is ready. Remember that Microsoft, that just makes software, had been ruled by the EU antitrust to show users a choice screen for browsers, just to be sure that browser other than Internet Explorer do exist. Apple makes the hardware AND the software, forces consumers to buy hardware with their brand if they want to use Apple software, and now wants to decide that users can't use web services made with a concurrent technology. It's a bit more restricting and destructive compared to MS practices: it's quite normal an inquiry started. Of course if iPhones were sold as gaming consoles it would be a lot easy for Apple to justify. But they aren't: they are sold as smartphones.
Example no. 1: "I'm a user, I want to see that website... oh wait, but that's in Flash, I can't see it on my iPhone, because uncle Steve said no." Example no. 2: "I run a website, I'd like to make it compatible with smartphones... but wait, it doesn't work on iPhones: that's a pity, I'm loosing a lot of users... damn it's got a lot of Flash in it, I should rewrite it entirely." All this with the iPhone version of Flash that is ready, but uncle Steve said "no". Does it smell of unfair business practice? Yes, it does.
All Apple hardware has been invented elsewere. Nowadays Macs are simply PCs with the Apple brand on them, and the iPhone isn't surely the first smartphone to see the sunlight. Apple has great merits for improving the user interface over the years: but they pretend their hardware is better and worth much more money, which isn't true. The only advantage Apple devices have towards other devices is in the software interface, I can understand they ask more money for it, but they just ask too much. OSX is very nice, but I mean, 2 or 3 months ago I helped a friend of mine choosing a new notebook, he finally bought a Dell, 15,4" fullHD (!!) monitor, core i7 processor, 4GB of ram, etcetera for around 1300€, a MacBookPro with similar hardware costed almost twice as much. It's too much.
This sounds a bit like sci-fi cyberpunk dystopia. A bit like Gattaca. One wonders why decisions on matters that affect democracy are always taken outside parliaments at first.
Here in Italy we had the same problem. There were a lot of cases of fined people complaining that the yellow was too short, then many criminal investigations started around the country and they found out that in a lot of places traffic lights were purposely set with too short yellow, to fine as many people as possible, because at that time companies that installed red-light cameras earned a percentage of the fines. Of course, investigations also found out corruption cases linked to the cameras business. After these scandals, a couple of years ago they changed the law: no more percentages of fines for companies that install cameras.
What you say is true, but there is a difference between putting a not-so-powerful software into an embedded device's firmware and putting a powerful-but-pinioned software inside it. The former can be annoying but is understandable, because software R&D is expensive and has to be paid with the money earned from the product's sales. The latter is hardly jusitifiable from a consumer/free market point of view, because you artificially keep alive the high-end market by mutilating low-end products. That's also what caused criticism of Tivo and led to GPLv3. Most people, even inside the FLOSS community, see FSF and GPLv3 promoters as zealots/integralists/commies, but sooner or later everybody will see that it's just about free market: FSF was right, they just seen the problem years before most people will do.
Ok thanks, I'll give it a try ASAP, but still I see a big difference between nVidia and ATI drivers on linux. For example, XBMC that in my opinion is the top for building up an HTPC, only supports hardware accelerated video decoding on nVidia, using VDPAU. That's an intresting feature if wou want to see 1080p video.
I think I'd better tell my friends that iPad is off limits in terms of calling me for support
:-D
It's a shame that in the 21st century you buy a device like that and then you have to ask permission to the company that made it for doing something obvious. The iPad can do that, but they prevent you from doing it via software, just because if you want to do something like that, they want you to spend even more money on another of their devices. So actually they don't make money on what they give you, but on what they take away from you. The EU has much more articulated antitrust laws than US (see MS Windows browser case), let's hope they'll do something, sooner or later. BTW, I'm a Linux and GNU and FLOSS supporter, so from my point of view Microsoft is nothing more than a company that tries to do its business, but before MS came along all kinds of computers where closed like Apples. Microsoft opened up the market and spurred strong competition between hardware producers so that now we have better tecnology at lower prices, now with Apple we can see again what the closed world was like. Will the apple hype ever deflate in front of such things?
A few months ago I bought a new pc after years, and it has an AMD cpu but an nVidia gpu (it's assembled by myself). For hardware compatibility reasons it would appear obvious to buy an AMD/ATI gpu, but the problem is, I use Linux. And AMD graphic drivers on linux still suck compared to nVidia's. Why don't they shut up and strive to make decent drivers? They would get new customers, including me.
You can connect a usb key or external hard drive to the workstation, then create a physical partition on it, than mount the partition normally, copy the files in there, and then remount the partition in the directory where the remote user looks for the files, so that when he opens the files, he will be actually working on the external drive partition, in a completely transparent manner, but the external drive will be physically accessed, thus freeing the workstation's hard disk from the load. Of course it would be better to put the external partition in the fstab configuration file, so that it will get automatically mounted in case of reboot, and ensure that the external drive will be *ALWAYS* connected to the workstation. Hope this can help you. :-D
For decades big companies used patents to manufacture their products in a regime of monopoly, plus they also patent what could be the possible alternatives to their products and hold those patents in a drawer, just to prevent somebody else from manufacturing something alternative to their products. Of course, patents are affordable only by those big companies, because of patenting costs but most importatly because of R&D costs. Thus, patents destroy competition by preventing new companies from acquiring a considerable market share; patents perpetuate the predominance of big companies over the years. All this happens at te expenses of us consumers, and when I say "expenses" I mean real money. So it seems patents are against free market. Maybe the patent law should be changed in a manner that it allows the holder to get a share of the profits others do with his invention, but DOESN'T allow the holder to stop others from producing his invention. It could be a big boost to competition, which is good, expecially in these times of crisis. :-)
I like you english people! :-)
My mother is 56 and not so technology-friendly. When 10 years ago she first bought a cell phone, it took some time for her to understand how to send text messages. 3 months ago she had her first personal computer, a 300€ Toshiba netbook, with Windows 7 starter. It's just a little netbook like another, nothing special, but a few days ago she was watching "Who wants to be a millionaire?" and was able to google the correct answer in a few seconds, while the contestant used the phone-a-friend option and the friend couldn't find the answer despite of the 30 seconds available. My mother was laughing at the situation: I mean... it's nothing special, but why do you people say netbooks aren't usable? That's not true...
I believe Jobs' marketing ability is exceptional, he starts from "normal" conditions, from something that is technically valid but not so different from everything else, and builds enormous popularity and profit over it, he's able to capitalize every single aspect of the product in a never-seen-before manner. But sooner or later, comes a time when something new has to be made, or this strategy begins to jump the shark. ipad is too expensive to be just an oversized ipod touch. And OSX is good stuff but it seen the light 12 years ago, in 1998 (Rhapsody), and had no major new features in the operating systems world, and reborn in 2001 as we know it today, as "Cheetah", featuring its "magic" interface, so different, so new for its time. But 9 years passed from 2001. The question is: are the improvements made to the good (but) old OSX worth so much money, also considering that on the hardware side Macs are just Apple-branded PCs? In my opinion it's all about marketing. And the same applies for iphones and ipad. All good products in my opinion, but still too expensive: still, people continues to spend so much money to buy them, because Steve is a genius of marketing. Honour to him. But can all this continue forever?
It's a lot of time that I believe the reason that pushes most users towards Mac/iPhone/anythingapple is the "coolness" of the interface, that is so funny, maybe also because it's in a certain manner different from everything else, but doesn't necessarily mean that is better, or anyway, not SO better as most mac fans claim. But every time I express such an opinon, a religion war begins. Now an Apple man tells us quite explicitly what's their marketing strategy. Maybe some people will begin to open their eyes? I'm a bit hopeless anyway.