And this is where getting VPN services through a regional carrier comes in. While most people may think of a VPN as a layer on top of the normal Internet, many smaller carriers who don't own their own fiber actually get their network via a network that really shares the fiber from carriers such as AT&T. It is far more secure than VPN over the normal Internet, and is pretty damned secure. Going national, a corporation might have to stitch together their own network that spans multiple fiber providers, but it DOES do the trick overall. This idea of cloud storage also rubs me the wrong way, because if your link goes down for whatever reason, such as a big tropical storm, even with a backup generator, you may not have access to data for days or even weeks.
The only thing that would be cheating is if the manufacturer claims it will run properly at a given speed and then when a customer does it, it does not. Every company will ALWAYS provide some extra room for overclocking, but what level of it is safe? AMD does not CLAIM that a retail part will run at those speeds, but the fact that it can be done with extreme cooling shows the design is stable.
There is a difference between playing a game where there is some generally reasonable reason for what you are doing, and just running around like a maniac causing harm to others. Most people are NOT sick sadistic freaks, so games should NOT encourage people to think that playing a sick sadistic freak is fun. Now, there are cases where there can be acts of violence and depravity in games without making the game revolve around those acts, and that is a HUGE difference in these games.
Going back to the previous post, Leisure Suit Larry was a game that revolved around a real loser of a guy who just couldn't get laid, and the whole purpose of the games were to help him find a woman who would willingly have sex with him. Yes, there were a lot of really lame attempts in each game, but there was really very little to the game that would make the character seem like he should be locked away in jail or given the death penalty as punishment for his acts.
Even other games where you end up killing people, but do it in self defense can be seen as somewhat acceptable, where violence is more of a self defense response rather than the goal the character is there for. And that's the real argument, games that encourage the "if it moves, shoot it" mindset are generally more primitive than games that have violence as a last resort.
So, being prepared to fight does not mean that fighting should be seen as the goal, and does not make people primitive in a violent society. Games SHOULD reflect that sense that you don't WANT to encourage people to be violent, so why not put in penalties in games for those who go around looking for trouble?
SmallFurryCreature has a point there. It is one thing to talk about violence, and another that encourages the idea that beating up on hookers and other innocent people, with no chance at there being any real punishment for your actions. At least in the real world, there are very real downsides to being a complete scumbag, and these games have removed all of those. The real problem that I see is that the more realistic you try to make the game world seem, the more realistic the consequences should be in that game world. You kill one person out of sight of others, you might get away with it, but the more trouble you cause SHOULD inspire more in-game problems, such as not just having the police out looking for your character, but also SWAT teams that may show up and that WILL be able to easily kick your ass and end your game if you can't escape.
If you allow for more realistic violence, it will only draw those who really get into the violence beyond a certain point. If you take a lot of the realism out of things, or limit interaction with the world in games like Carmageddon, then you have mayhem that is far enough removed from reality where you don't expect people to emulate that sort of behavior. There is also the point where almost no one is going to be a 100 percent scumbag like some of the characters you see in these games. If there is a storyline, make the characters have SOME sort of moral code or sense of ethics where there is a purpose to what is going on.
Could be, could be, but there is no information out there how production Bulldozer processors will perform once they start pumping out consumer chips. AMD may have been forced to wait this long to release Bulldozer just to deal with those 32nm process issues. I am not saying that Bulldozer will beat SB, but on the flip side, AMD machines have been selling well in that $500 and under range to this point, so Bulldozer SHOULD help.
The average consumer doesn't need a LOT of processing power, so if the Athlon 2 and Phenom 2 has been enough for THEM, then Bulldozer will be better yet. You also have to look at how far behind AMD has been to this point, and how much of an improvement Bulldozer is. In a Marathon, if Intel was 3 miles ahead, and the release of Bulldozer closes the gap to Intel being only 1 mile ahead, Intel is still in the lead, but AMD is looking better in comparison.
You really need to check what is included on those motherboards. Since when have the Intel based motherboards in a $500 desktop tower used supporting chips that are the same quality as the ones you see in an AMD based system?
Everyone cares about clock for clock, because no one wants to figure out the relative performance of a Phenom 2 X4 running at 3.6GHz vs. what Intel processor? Yes, price vs. performance ends up being the real key, but if AMD were to release a 2.4GHz chip that could outperform an Intel running at 3.8GHz, that gives AMD a lot of room to increase clock speeds, since you might expect the 2.4GHz chip runs cooler than the 3.8GHz chip(which may or may not be correct).
In the same way that Intel moving from the Core 2 to Core i series did nothing? How about the move from the Pentium to the Core architecture, that did nothing, right? Bulldozer is about a new processor core design that SHOULD bring significant performance improvements per-clock compared to the current K10.5 design from AMD. If Bulldozer can compete well with Sandy Bridge on a per-clock basis, that will still narrow the performance gap between AMD and Intel, even after Ivy Bridge is released.
It depends on the games you are looking at. Most of the first person shooters are highly GPU focused, with very little AI involved. Much of this is due to this idea of releasing the same game for consoles as well as PCs, they go for the lowest common denominator, and that generally means low end CPU and even the graphics tend to avoid being cutting edge to make the PC version almost identical to the console version.
Many people do not associate the improvements in technology with the delay in getting tablets into the mainstream. You had the displays, which you well know have dropped in price by a HUGE amount. You have improvements in chip fab process which allows for far more powerful chips at smaller sizes with less power demand. Batteries, while slow to improve, HAVE gotten a bit better over time. All of these things together have opened the door to the tablets we see today.
One thing that most of the industry does not seem to pay attention to, is that the user interface needs to be more of a focus than it currently is, and even Apple seems to be forgetting about that. Palm had the right idea with WebOS, but didn't have the hardware manufacturing skill or marketing ability to get their products into the spotlight. Then you have HP, who clearly didn't pay enough attention to the Palm division to make sure the slackers were removed and replaced by people who could get things done quickly.
I maintain that the gesture area on the WebOS phones is a very elegant solution, and the overall UI works a bit better as a design than what you see from most other devices. Ideas like Touch to Share, and making induction charging with the Touchstone really are great concepts that really deserve to become mainstream.
The iDevices don't have an instant-on, but they have a very very fast wake-up. If you have any of these iDevices and it is fully turned off, it's not instant to have it turn on.
And is far less capable than a $500 notebook computer. This is really the key problem, $500 is the price point of a decent laptop, yet tablets cost the same and do far less. This is why the Touchpad clearance was so crazy, because for $100, people had NO question about the value of the product vs. how much use they would get out of it.
There is a lot to be said about people who buy a device they just don't understand how to use and have no use for. People who buy into a fad, rather than buying a product because they have a use for it are the ones who draw most of these negative posts about tablets or anything else. When you have people who can't handle the idea of a smartphone because it is too complicated for them, those are the same people who should NOT be buying a tablet just because it is popular.
Yes, the tablet has uses, but is NOT for everyone. Laptops are the same way, they are popular, but should not replace a desktop computer in many situations and for many people. Every device out there may have some very practical purposes, and I agree that too many people are blinded by the feeling that just because THEY do not need something means that no one else should either.
What you fail to understand is that there are and have been, four tiers of mobile computing devices. At the bottom you have smartphones, both with and without physical keyboards. You have your netbook/tablet machine, which is really only useful for viewing content and for long battery life. The Kindle also counts in this category. Laptops/notebooks are next up as being your "mobile productivity" type of device for those who want to do more while on the go than a tablet. Laptops in general can NOT beat the power of a desktop machine, just because the more powerful chips need better cooling than a laptop can effectively offer. While a laptop CAN do just about everything a desktop machine can do, the limitations of the small size of a laptop when it comes to processor heat generation will always leave room for desktop machines in the overall market.
In this day and age, casual computer users may only use their computers for web browsing, and as a result, a tablet WOULD be acceptable for that purpose. Now, there have always been surges of interest when a new technology becomes available. The PC industry really exploded when it was new, but is at the point where there are very few first-time computer owners out there, so the sales you see are from people who want to replace their computer. Laptops also had their explosion period, and as time has gone on, they have become more and more useful. Smartphones are the same way, people are still getting their first smartphones, so you see huge growth in that area.
Netbooks....you remember those. Underpowered POS laptops that were only useful for those who needed long battery life. Running a full version of Windows on them wouldn't work because they always were underpowered, and they FELT that way. This is where tablets come in, because they are based on smartphones. Larger screens mean web browsing and e-mail are better on a tablet than on a smartphone, but since smartphones are based on the idea of limited computing power, you don't feel the tablets are underpowered pieces of garbage the way netbooks did.
Now, I agree that there are many people who ran out to buy an iPad, just because all of the hype that surrounds Apple product releases, and that is the sort of thing that WOULD cool after the initial hype fades. There is still room for tablets when it comes to overall productivity that you may not understand though. When you need LONG battery life, nothing beats a tablet at this point. If you work "on the road", a tablet is going to be a far better solution for you than a laptop that only gives you 3-5 hours of effective battery life. If you need FULL laptop power/ability, clearly the tablets will never do the job, but as tablets have become more powerful, they DO handle the job of the very low end computer market well enough.
From a price perspective, people who spend $500 for a tablet vs. $500 for a full laptop becomes a more difficult decision, but a tablet in the $350 range that has a USB port would be something that is very acceptable to most people, as long as it isn't locked down so much you can't do what you want.
There are far more apps available than any of these articles have made it out to be, and that is the sad thing. The apps out there for WebOS were primarily designed for the 3.2 inch screen of the Pre/Pre Plus, and Pre 2. Since the screen resolution was the same, there was no ability to easily scale apps implemented in WebOS 1.x, and even most versions of 2.x. With the Touchpad, the ability to scale apps based on screen size/resolution was added, but there were not a huge number of apps at launch that were updated or re-released for the larger screen of the Touchpad. That is something that would be an ongoing process for developers, but isn't horribly difficult. A number of apps DO get scaled up somewhat, but this is the sort of thing that too many reviews did not explore, which are "native" apps for the Touchpad, vs. how many apps are actually available.
Android had an advantage in being forced to deal with different screen sizes early on. HP really just screwed up royally by not PLANNING to do special sales like this to get the number of devices out to the public, but with the plan to continue selling devices after at more reasonable prices($400 for the 16GB model for example). Right now, if HP wanted to, they COULD make a decent go in the mobile space due to the number of devices now available out there.
Eighty-Five percent of the human species is GENETICALLY stupid, and nothing you do can possibly give these people a clue. There is an additional ten percent that have been corrupted by exposure, so they too became stupid. This leaves us with only five percent of the species even worth knowing!
So, think about that for a moment, since it explains what you have seen.
The key is to get to a certain level of market penetration, which is when you start making good amounts of money from the platform. iOS has it, Android has it, WebOS did not, but now does. Once people see that a certain "type" of product is popular enough, it becomes "cool" to have that product. A big thing is how difficult or easy that device is for other people to pick up and use, and WebOS also has that as a strength, once people know that the gesture area is there on phones.
I think you missed the point. The key is breaking into the market in a big enough way to be seen as a viable alternative. If HP had planned the popularity of the Touchpad, just to get the public using WebOS, it would be seen as a brilliant move since many people who have tried the Touchpad have been surprised at how much they enjoy using it. Picture if HP decided to stay in the device business after this "fire sale", and in another six months released a new and better version. For $300 or $350, people might scoop those up as well due to how well accepted the first generation has been(people who really like it, and not JUST for the price).
Once the perception that WebOS is a platform that people like using, it would go mainstream and sales of other devices WOULD go much better.
Since we don't have a full grasp of the laws of physics, all that is needed is discovery. There are far too many people who assume things based on current knowledge and understanding of physics, which in 100 years may very well seem primitive.
Software is very different from hardware. It is expected that the hardware is limited due to hardware limitations, rather than by some fake limitation placed there to get more money out of you.
People are more annoyed by buying the $20,000 car, that is identical to the $50,000 car, except for a governor that has been installed at the factory by the manufacturer. Now, if this happened to you, would you pay the manufacturer the $30,000 to just remove the governor, or would you personally go in there and rip the damned thing out yourself to give you the $50,000 value?
That is really all this is, a limiter that has been put into a product to limit performance, and they want you to pay extra to remove that limiter. That is a very different thing than buying something for a lower cost that doesn't have the features and functionality already there, just waiting for a TINY signal to provide the functionality. Or, picture if EVERY SINGLE CAR had built in GPS, automatic parallel parking(with all the sensors already installed on the car), backup camera, side proximity detectors, etc, yet you had to pay extra to turn on each individual feature. Would you pay an extra $10,000 to turn on features that are already there, or would you look for a way to turn the features on without paying the money?
When you buy a CPU, it is certified to operate properly at a given speed, and if you get a higher end CPU from AMD(a Black Edition chip), it comes unlocked, so you don't have to pay extra to overclock it. It may still have a "normal speed" selection, but it is fully unlocked to its capabilities. No one objects to having their CPU locked as much as being told that "to get the full potential of your purchase, you have to pay extra". If you buy a house and half of it has been bricked up to prevent you from using it, and the brick wall will only be removed if you pay the seller extra money, that would seem pretty screwed up, wouldn't it?
You still have the issue where there are different tiers of products from a design perspective. More or less cache, speed differences due to using a low power design vs. a high power design, etc.
This only comes into play with new designs and tweaking existing designs to faster speeds. If an initial design comes up with the same chip in three different speed bins, you might see 3.6GHz, 3.4GHz, and 3.2GHz, same exact chip, same exact design cost, same cache memory, same cost to produce these chips. If the yields are good, all three chips may even QA properly at the 3.6GHz speed. Now, it stands to reason that the manufacturer may lock the slower speed chips to encourage people to buy a higher end chip, but to say, "Oh yea, we will unlock it for you for a price", and if it is a bit of software to do it, that just seems fishy, since the consumer SHOULD be able to do it themselves.
AMD knows this, and that is why they released the "Black Edition" processors as unlocked. They have made a profit on the CPU at the speed they sold it for, but to encourage people to buy higher profit margin items, they make it so those who know how to build their own computers can take advantage of the whole system.
Now, when they improve the design, then it makes sense that more money had to go into design or fab process improvements, but then, it goes to making the "slower" chips cheaper to produce. If you add cache, then it makes sense that it will cost more to manufacture, so paying more makes sense as well. The moment the $400 chip costs the exact same amount to manufacture as the $200 chip, that is when the price structure starts to bother people.
Bad example, and it is NOT the way the chip industry works.
Normally, you have different product tiers with different abilities, such as cache size. This means that a middle tier product does NOT have all the extra cache memory(which would add to manufacturing cost). Within that tier then, you have the QA issue, start at the top speed, and if it fails, clock it down and test again. You then have different "bins" based on how high it was able to be clocked. Now, there is a certain amount that are EXPECTED to fail at the top speed, but will work fine at a lower speed, so you get it so the high end are tested to run properly at that speed, and going down in speed, the QA process specifies how fast the chip has been "certified" to run at.
Of course, as the manufacturing process improves, fewer and fewer chips fail to QA at the highest speed, but the company has committed to selling slower speed chips. So you find chips that HAVE been QAed to the highest speed being used in those lower-speed chips. This is where people love overclocking, and historically, chip manufacturers accept making lower profits on these "good" chips that have been clocked down. Intel now wants to make money on the chips that have been clocked down for this reason.
The real question that should be questionable is why cache memory can be unlocked via software, and that is something I find more questionable. Or, how about more of an encouragement for CPU upgrades on a consumer level, where new socket designs would make it easier to swap a CPU, rather than having OEMs leaving big question marks about what CPUs a will work in a given machine?
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And this is where getting VPN services through a regional carrier comes in. While most people may think of a VPN as a layer on top of the normal Internet, many smaller carriers who don't own their own fiber actually get their network via a network that really shares the fiber from carriers such as AT&T. It is far more secure than VPN over the normal Internet, and is pretty damned secure. Going national, a corporation might have to stitch together their own network that spans multiple fiber providers, but it DOES do the trick overall. This idea of cloud storage also rubs me the wrong way, because if your link goes down for whatever reason, such as a big tropical storm, even with a backup generator, you may not have access to data for days or even weeks.
The only thing that would be cheating is if the manufacturer claims it will run properly at a given speed and then when a customer does it, it does not. Every company will ALWAYS provide some extra room for overclocking, but what level of it is safe? AMD does not CLAIM that a retail part will run at those speeds, but the fact that it can be done with extreme cooling shows the design is stable.
There is a difference between playing a game where there is some generally reasonable reason for what you are doing, and just running around like a maniac causing harm to others. Most people are NOT sick sadistic freaks, so games should NOT encourage people to think that playing a sick sadistic freak is fun. Now, there are cases where there can be acts of violence and depravity in games without making the game revolve around those acts, and that is a HUGE difference in these games.
Going back to the previous post, Leisure Suit Larry was a game that revolved around a real loser of a guy who just couldn't get laid, and the whole purpose of the games were to help him find a woman who would willingly have sex with him. Yes, there were a lot of really lame attempts in each game, but there was really very little to the game that would make the character seem like he should be locked away in jail or given the death penalty as punishment for his acts.
Even other games where you end up killing people, but do it in self defense can be seen as somewhat acceptable, where violence is more of a self defense response rather than the goal the character is there for. And that's the real argument, games that encourage the "if it moves, shoot it" mindset are generally more primitive than games that have violence as a last resort.
So, being prepared to fight does not mean that fighting should be seen as the goal, and does not make people primitive in a violent society. Games SHOULD reflect that sense that you don't WANT to encourage people to be violent, so why not put in penalties in games for those who go around looking for trouble?
SmallFurryCreature has a point there. It is one thing to talk about violence, and another that encourages the idea that beating up on hookers and other innocent people, with no chance at there being any real punishment for your actions. At least in the real world, there are very real downsides to being a complete scumbag, and these games have removed all of those. The real problem that I see is that the more realistic you try to make the game world seem, the more realistic the consequences should be in that game world. You kill one person out of sight of others, you might get away with it, but the more trouble you cause SHOULD inspire more in-game problems, such as not just having the police out looking for your character, but also SWAT teams that may show up and that WILL be able to easily kick your ass and end your game if you can't escape.
If you allow for more realistic violence, it will only draw those who really get into the violence beyond a certain point. If you take a lot of the realism out of things, or limit interaction with the world in games like Carmageddon, then you have mayhem that is far enough removed from reality where you don't expect people to emulate that sort of behavior. There is also the point where almost no one is going to be a 100 percent scumbag like some of the characters you see in these games. If there is a storyline, make the characters have SOME sort of moral code or sense of ethics where there is a purpose to what is going on.
Could be, could be, but there is no information out there how production Bulldozer processors will perform once they start pumping out consumer chips. AMD may have been forced to wait this long to release Bulldozer just to deal with those 32nm process issues. I am not saying that Bulldozer will beat SB, but on the flip side, AMD machines have been selling well in that $500 and under range to this point, so Bulldozer SHOULD help.
The average consumer doesn't need a LOT of processing power, so if the Athlon 2 and Phenom 2 has been enough for THEM, then Bulldozer will be better yet. You also have to look at how far behind AMD has been to this point, and how much of an improvement Bulldozer is. In a Marathon, if Intel was 3 miles ahead, and the release of Bulldozer closes the gap to Intel being only 1 mile ahead, Intel is still in the lead, but AMD is looking better in comparison.
You really need to check what is included on those motherboards. Since when have the Intel based motherboards in a $500 desktop tower used supporting chips that are the same quality as the ones you see in an AMD based system?
Everyone cares about clock for clock, because no one wants to figure out the relative performance of a Phenom 2 X4 running at 3.6GHz vs. what Intel processor? Yes, price vs. performance ends up being the real key, but if AMD were to release a 2.4GHz chip that could outperform an Intel running at 3.8GHz, that gives AMD a lot of room to increase clock speeds, since you might expect the 2.4GHz chip runs cooler than the 3.8GHz chip(which may or may not be correct).
In the same way that Intel moving from the Core 2 to Core i series did nothing? How about the move from the Pentium to the Core architecture, that did nothing, right? Bulldozer is about a new processor core design that SHOULD bring significant performance improvements per-clock compared to the current K10.5 design from AMD. If Bulldozer can compete well with Sandy Bridge on a per-clock basis, that will still narrow the performance gap between AMD and Intel, even after Ivy Bridge is released.
It depends on the games you are looking at. Most of the first person shooters are highly GPU focused, with very little AI involved. Much of this is due to this idea of releasing the same game for consoles as well as PCs, they go for the lowest common denominator, and that generally means low end CPU and even the graphics tend to avoid being cutting edge to make the PC version almost identical to the console version.
Many people do not associate the improvements in technology with the delay in getting tablets into the mainstream. You had the displays, which you well know have dropped in price by a HUGE amount. You have improvements in chip fab process which allows for far more powerful chips at smaller sizes with less power demand. Batteries, while slow to improve, HAVE gotten a bit better over time. All of these things together have opened the door to the tablets we see today.
One thing that most of the industry does not seem to pay attention to, is that the user interface needs to be more of a focus than it currently is, and even Apple seems to be forgetting about that. Palm had the right idea with WebOS, but didn't have the hardware manufacturing skill or marketing ability to get their products into the spotlight. Then you have HP, who clearly didn't pay enough attention to the Palm division to make sure the slackers were removed and replaced by people who could get things done quickly.
I maintain that the gesture area on the WebOS phones is a very elegant solution, and the overall UI works a bit better as a design than what you see from most other devices. Ideas like Touch to Share, and making induction charging with the Touchstone really are great concepts that really deserve to become mainstream.
The iDevices don't have an instant-on, but they have a very very fast wake-up. If you have any of these iDevices and it is fully turned off, it's not instant to have it turn on.
And is far less capable than a $500 notebook computer. This is really the key problem, $500 is the price point of a decent laptop, yet tablets cost the same and do far less. This is why the Touchpad clearance was so crazy, because for $100, people had NO question about the value of the product vs. how much use they would get out of it.
There is a lot to be said about people who buy a device they just don't understand how to use and have no use for. People who buy into a fad, rather than buying a product because they have a use for it are the ones who draw most of these negative posts about tablets or anything else. When you have people who can't handle the idea of a smartphone because it is too complicated for them, those are the same people who should NOT be buying a tablet just because it is popular.
Yes, the tablet has uses, but is NOT for everyone. Laptops are the same way, they are popular, but should not replace a desktop computer in many situations and for many people. Every device out there may have some very practical purposes, and I agree that too many people are blinded by the feeling that just because THEY do not need something means that no one else should either.
What you fail to understand is that there are and have been, four tiers of mobile computing devices. At the bottom you have smartphones, both with and without physical keyboards. You have your netbook/tablet machine, which is really only useful for viewing content and for long battery life. The Kindle also counts in this category. Laptops/notebooks are next up as being your "mobile productivity" type of device for those who want to do more while on the go than a tablet. Laptops in general can NOT beat the power of a desktop machine, just because the more powerful chips need better cooling than a laptop can effectively offer. While a laptop CAN do just about everything a desktop machine can do, the limitations of the small size of a laptop when it comes to processor heat generation will always leave room for desktop machines in the overall market.
In this day and age, casual computer users may only use their computers for web browsing, and as a result, a tablet WOULD be acceptable for that purpose. Now, there have always been surges of interest when a new technology becomes available. The PC industry really exploded when it was new, but is at the point where there are very few first-time computer owners out there, so the sales you see are from people who want to replace their computer. Laptops also had their explosion period, and as time has gone on, they have become more and more useful. Smartphones are the same way, people are still getting their first smartphones, so you see huge growth in that area.
Netbooks....you remember those. Underpowered POS laptops that were only useful for those who needed long battery life. Running a full version of Windows on them wouldn't work because they always were underpowered, and they FELT that way. This is where tablets come in, because they are based on smartphones. Larger screens mean web browsing and e-mail are better on a tablet than on a smartphone, but since smartphones are based on the idea of limited computing power, you don't feel the tablets are underpowered pieces of garbage the way netbooks did.
Now, I agree that there are many people who ran out to buy an iPad, just because all of the hype that surrounds Apple product releases, and that is the sort of thing that WOULD cool after the initial hype fades. There is still room for tablets when it comes to overall productivity that you may not understand though. When you need LONG battery life, nothing beats a tablet at this point. If you work "on the road", a tablet is going to be a far better solution for you than a laptop that only gives you 3-5 hours of effective battery life. If you need FULL laptop power/ability, clearly the tablets will never do the job, but as tablets have become more powerful, they DO handle the job of the very low end computer market well enough.
From a price perspective, people who spend $500 for a tablet vs. $500 for a full laptop becomes a more difficult decision, but a tablet in the $350 range that has a USB port would be something that is very acceptable to most people, as long as it isn't locked down so much you can't do what you want.
There are far more apps available than any of these articles have made it out to be, and that is the sad thing. The apps out there for WebOS were primarily designed for the 3.2 inch screen of the Pre/Pre Plus, and Pre 2. Since the screen resolution was the same, there was no ability to easily scale apps implemented in WebOS 1.x, and even most versions of 2.x. With the Touchpad, the ability to scale apps based on screen size/resolution was added, but there were not a huge number of apps at launch that were updated or re-released for the larger screen of the Touchpad. That is something that would be an ongoing process for developers, but isn't horribly difficult. A number of apps DO get scaled up somewhat, but this is the sort of thing that too many reviews did not explore, which are "native" apps for the Touchpad, vs. how many apps are actually available.
Android had an advantage in being forced to deal with different screen sizes early on. HP really just screwed up royally by not PLANNING to do special sales like this to get the number of devices out to the public, but with the plan to continue selling devices after at more reasonable prices($400 for the 16GB model for example). Right now, if HP wanted to, they COULD make a decent go in the mobile space due to the number of devices now available out there.
Nope, not at all. But you have to admit, the world is dominated by stupid people.
Eighty-Five percent of the human species is GENETICALLY stupid, and nothing you do can possibly give these people a clue. There is an additional ten percent that have been corrupted by exposure, so they too became stupid. This leaves us with only five percent of the species even worth knowing!
So, think about that for a moment, since it explains what you have seen.
The key is to get to a certain level of market penetration, which is when you start making good amounts of money from the platform. iOS has it, Android has it, WebOS did not, but now does. Once people see that a certain "type" of product is popular enough, it becomes "cool" to have that product. A big thing is how difficult or easy that device is for other people to pick up and use, and WebOS also has that as a strength, once people know that the gesture area is there on phones.
I think you missed the point. The key is breaking into the market in a big enough way to be seen as a viable alternative. If HP had planned the popularity of the Touchpad, just to get the public using WebOS, it would be seen as a brilliant move since many people who have tried the Touchpad have been surprised at how much they enjoy using it. Picture if HP decided to stay in the device business after this "fire sale", and in another six months released a new and better version. For $300 or $350, people might scoop those up as well due to how well accepted the first generation has been(people who really like it, and not JUST for the price).
Once the perception that WebOS is a platform that people like using, it would go mainstream and sales of other devices WOULD go much better.
Since we don't have a full grasp of the laws of physics, all that is needed is discovery. There are far too many people who assume things based on current knowledge and understanding of physics, which in 100 years may very well seem primitive.
Software is very different from hardware. It is expected that the hardware is limited due to hardware limitations, rather than by some fake limitation placed there to get more money out of you.
People are more annoyed by buying the $20,000 car, that is identical to the $50,000 car, except for a governor that has been installed at the factory by the manufacturer. Now, if this happened to you, would you pay the manufacturer the $30,000 to just remove the governor, or would you personally go in there and rip the damned thing out yourself to give you the $50,000 value?
That is really all this is, a limiter that has been put into a product to limit performance, and they want you to pay extra to remove that limiter. That is a very different thing than buying something for a lower cost that doesn't have the features and functionality already there, just waiting for a TINY signal to provide the functionality. Or, picture if EVERY SINGLE CAR had built in GPS, automatic parallel parking(with all the sensors already installed on the car), backup camera, side proximity detectors, etc, yet you had to pay extra to turn on each individual feature. Would you pay an extra $10,000 to turn on features that are already there, or would you look for a way to turn the features on without paying the money?
When you buy a CPU, it is certified to operate properly at a given speed, and if you get a higher end CPU from AMD(a Black Edition chip), it comes unlocked, so you don't have to pay extra to overclock it. It may still have a "normal speed" selection, but it is fully unlocked to its capabilities. No one objects to having their CPU locked as much as being told that "to get the full potential of your purchase, you have to pay extra". If you buy a house and half of it has been bricked up to prevent you from using it, and the brick wall will only be removed if you pay the seller extra money, that would seem pretty screwed up, wouldn't it?
You still have the issue where there are different tiers of products from a design perspective. More or less cache, speed differences due to using a low power design vs. a high power design, etc.
This only comes into play with new designs and tweaking existing designs to faster speeds. If an initial design comes up with the same chip in three different speed bins, you might see 3.6GHz, 3.4GHz, and 3.2GHz, same exact chip, same exact design cost, same cache memory, same cost to produce these chips. If the yields are good, all three chips may even QA properly at the 3.6GHz speed. Now, it stands to reason that the manufacturer may lock the slower speed chips to encourage people to buy a higher end chip, but to say, "Oh yea, we will unlock it for you for a price", and if it is a bit of software to do it, that just seems fishy, since the consumer SHOULD be able to do it themselves.
AMD knows this, and that is why they released the "Black Edition" processors as unlocked. They have made a profit on the CPU at the speed they sold it for, but to encourage people to buy higher profit margin items, they make it so those who know how to build their own computers can take advantage of the whole system.
Now, when they improve the design, then it makes sense that more money had to go into design or fab process improvements, but then, it goes to making the "slower" chips cheaper to produce. If you add cache, then it makes sense that it will cost more to manufacture, so paying more makes sense as well. The moment the $400 chip costs the exact same amount to manufacture as the $200 chip, that is when the price structure starts to bother people.
Bad example, and it is NOT the way the chip industry works.
Normally, you have different product tiers with different abilities, such as cache size. This means that a middle tier product does NOT have all the extra cache memory(which would add to manufacturing cost). Within that tier then, you have the QA issue, start at the top speed, and if it fails, clock it down and test again. You then have different "bins" based on how high it was able to be clocked. Now, there is a certain amount that are EXPECTED to fail at the top speed, but will work fine at a lower speed, so you get it so the high end are tested to run properly at that speed, and going down in speed, the QA process specifies how fast the chip has been "certified" to run at.
Of course, as the manufacturing process improves, fewer and fewer chips fail to QA at the highest speed, but the company has committed to selling slower speed chips. So you find chips that HAVE been QAed to the highest speed being used in those lower-speed chips. This is where people love overclocking, and historically, chip manufacturers accept making lower profits on these "good" chips that have been clocked down. Intel now wants to make money on the chips that have been clocked down for this reason.
The real question that should be questionable is why cache memory can be unlocked via software, and that is something I find more questionable. Or, how about more of an encouragement for CPU upgrades on a consumer level, where new socket designs would make it easier to swap a CPU, rather than having OEMs leaving big question marks about what CPUs a will work in a given machine?