This was my first thought as well. Case in point: A friend of mine used a pay phone to report a car being broken into, and when they asked for his name he just said "Nope" and hung up. The cops arrived shortly thereafter and caught the thief in the act. He would not have made that call on his phone.
Notice the 'more' links on the PC list. There are single days where the PC will see more mainstream games released then the Mac will see for the rest of the year. Also notice those mac games.. they aren't exactly fresh titles.
The main reason I see Vista as doing so poorly is because XP was so good. Please don't try to start an OS holy war over that statement. The bottom line is that XP was a leaps and bounds improvement over 98 SE which most consumers were coming from, and a unification of business and individual users. And 98 was a huge improvement over 95.. and 95 was a huge improvement over Win 3.1.
I absolutely loathed every Microsoft Windows OS before 2000, and I couldn't really use that for games, so XP was the best of both worlds. Now Microsoft is trying to force us gamers into Vista with Dx10, but that probably won't really be a necessity for 5 years or so since game developers won't simply abandon XP's massive installed base. It was easier to make a big leap when most gamers quickly upgraded because of how horrible the previous OS was.
I think the biggest improvement to a Microsoft OS would be to make -all- software and OS interactions to be completely decoupable. I'd love to be able to take a fresh install of windows and swap apps and games in and out without losing all settings, save games, etc. Linux dist package management mostly achieves this since almost every sane application puts every setting in your home dir, and if that gets crufty it doesn't really impact too much.
Things are so horrifically intertwined with so many different settings mechanisms and locations in Windows its just a total nightmare. Maybe we'll use quad-core machines and dedicate one core to tracking all versioning all registry and file system changes just to deal with this problem.
It's the author of this editorial that appears to suggest removing the spaces entirely. The only suggestion made by Apple that is reported here is that the meters be removed and compensated for.
It's especially bad writing because they are framing the bureaucrats' response as being towards the author and not Apple.
Maybe they can't handle all the inevitable tech support calls from the entire world at once? You also gotta figure that any internationalization teams are automatically always lagging the main version a bit during development.
I think the reason why we won't see that is because the ISPs want to take advantage of their unique position, and basically hold a monopoly on ultra fast and cheap content delivery that doesn't go out over the internet.
Comcast already has the most comprehensive on-demand services, and it's quite expensive for the end-user. $6 to watch a HD movie. Why would they open up that door to equal competition? As competitors pop up, they'll always be able to undercut them because they don't have to pay a 3rd party for bandwidth.
I really have to wonder how it will be meaningful at all. There will be a ton of watermarked files on P2P networks that were stolen off of unsuspecting peoples' computers via various vulnerabilities.
I suppose it will at least discourage the casual user from sharing the files they acquire, so that's worth something.
I have heard before that Sony does it, especially in regards to being able to install and run Linux on the PS3, because they want to be taxed as a "Computer" and not as a "Video Game" in Europe, where countries apparently differentiate the two?
Also notice they call that business unit "Sony Computer Entertainment" and the system itself the "PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system"
Hmm, it's an interesting story. If you are encrypting things that are vitally important to you, but you don't really care about the privacy enough that you are willing to keep unencrypted backups or write passwords down, perhaps you should just use weak encryption that can be reasonably broken, or simply weak passwords.
Well, the nice thing is that it could just have more drives and produce more output at a rather low incremental cost to the machine. If it rents out a 1000 DVDs a day, that'd be pretty extreme. The machine would pay for itself in less then a month?
Perhaps the advantage is that you'll be able to gain access to a giant catalog of movies as opposed to simply what is in stock? Furthermore, locations could offer this huge selection of movies without even having stock?
A good example would be a kiosk at a supermarket. You could come in, choose a movie, swipe your credit card, start the burn process, when it's done, it could set it aside until you swipe your credit card again, after you are done shopping. It could use DVD-RW and predict demand for popular movies and keep recycling disks, so that if you pick a popular movie it doesn't even have to burn it. It could do this all through the night and at 10 minutes a disk (conservative estimate) could produce 144 DVDs a day. More likely it'd be closer to double that.
Even more obvious is that it could be integrated into an online service that would let you choose movies and guarantee their availability when you go to the store. Browse online then simply pick it up when you go for groceries. Convenience and instant gratification.
I agree that the first one will suck in terms of value and service, but I think that's the key to this debate. It seems a lot of people are ready to determine if the iPhone line is a success or failure based on the first revision.
The iPod wasn't an overnight blockbuster success either. It was released in 2001 and cost $400. People saw it as a high priced gadget but coveted it. It took a couple years for the price to come down and then it really took off.
The price the iPhone releases at will set that point as the perceived value for awhile. When it gets down to $250, people will rationalize the purchase by thinking they are getting a $500-600 device for a much better price.
Your argument that Apple wants to be a style brand more then a technology one applies to this situation in another somewhat unfortunate way.
When debating whether or not to make it an open platform, they probably realized that only geeks would particularly understand or care. When weighing the pros and cons of that, they probably decided that a bunch of geek early adopters running around with their phone could tarnish its hip image and spun it as purposeful market pruning.
As more skilled workers come to America the less appealing outsourcing looks because all the good talent will all be here in the first place. At least in the US, they'll come to expect something resembling US standards for pay and not something 1/8th of it.
So demonstrating their search monopoly would do what now?
Maybe inspire legislators to create the notion of search neutrality, forcing google to implement pagerank according to a law? It would also give ammunition to those who are already trying to bring antitrust cases against Google.
There is only one reason to believe that "Do no evil" has some merit. It's the reason they are the #1 search engine. Not because people saw that motto and believed it, but because the user experience on google was by far the least evil of the top search engines they quickly overtook.
But evil then was in terms of pop-ups, pop-unders, epilepsy inducing flash banners, putting paid results mixed in with normal search results, and various other things basic internet things. All the stuff we have come to totally take for granted from google.
Now because they have peoples' private email, the government is subpoenaing them, and they are dealing with foreign governments so now they have to make actual choices with actual moral complications.
Because their reputation is an integral part of how they became #1, I think even their investors should be interested in protecting that reputation.
"Last March, Cory Ondrejka, the chief technology officer at "Second Life" publisher Linden Lab, bet a symbolic quarter that his virtual world would within two years have more users than the wildly popular online game "World of Warcraft."... The bet was certainly ambitious."
That's quite the bet there, speedy. Is it at least a real quarter that symbolizes a real bet or is it actually just a symbol of a quarter? Aaand, who gets the quarter?
You've completely left out of the economic impact of the dual-income family that affects that choice.
Basically, because there are so many dual-income families, home prices have inflated to that market and now many people have to be dual-income to afford a home. Not really a win/win situation for society at large.
Sierra's claim to fame in my opinion was they were first to support sound cards with King's Quest IV. This alone started to create the notion of a custom "gaming PC" market that existed seperately from how computers were normally sold and marketted.
Along these lines Sierra was really pushing the limits of disk based distribution, and as such probably were a major factor in creating demand for CD-ROM.
Also don't forget Origin.. The Wing Commander was another rather cinema-meets-games breakthrough and WC2 brought full voice acting for the first time.
I think music is even more important in video games the further you go back.
Of all the tools available to early game developers, music I really think was the most developed because the essence of a good tune comes through with virtually any technology that can at least play a tone.
Just start remembering your old favorite games, at least with me what I always remember first is the music.
I think there is a certain amount of usefulness to this notion, however what I think it needs to clarify is that when the player is what causes the improbable action, it spends far less of the 'credibility budget' then when the game seems to be the impetus.
When I drive off a ramp, flip over and cause a 15 car explosion in GTA, it doesn't really affect my notion of the game as a vaguely believable caricature of America. However, if that happened all around me constantly it would bust that and I'd feel like I were in crazy stunt world or something.
I think that the difference in credibility effect between player impetus and game impetus is so great that the mere suggestion that player freedom is a bad thing is almost entirely busted.
It certainly makes it more difficult for the -game- to respond to the player in credible ways, but it isn't directly what the player did that hurts that credibility.
I'd say that arbitrarily limiting a player's freedom has a credibility damaging effect as well, since you feel like you are in an invisible straight jacket whenever there exists a mind numbingly obvious solution to a problem that can only be dealt with in the circuitous manner decided by the game developer.
All valid points. I mostly meant my post as a joke.
The real story here isn't that people were "suckered" into installing beta software, it's that this is a story at all.
It's perfectly normal for a few people to lose all their data to beta software all the time. It's just when it happens with a mac to a few people it's abnormal enough to become news apparently.
I do honestly think though that the main Boot Camp page is really advertising aimed at people like me, those who are tied to Windows for various application reasons but would like to own a mac, and was not really designed with existing Mac users in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
This was my first thought as well. Case in point: A friend of mine used a pay phone to report a car being broken into, and when they asked for his name he just said "Nope" and hung up. The cops arrived shortly thereafter and caught the thief in the act. He would not have made that call on his phone.
"Valve is about the only major game publisher not owned by MS that doesn't port their mainstream titles to the Mac. "
Erm.. What?
Mac Games Release Calendar: http://www.amazon.com/Mac-Games/b?ie=UTF8&node=229647
PC Games Release Calendar: http://www.amazon.com/PC-Games/b?ie=UTF8&node=229575
Notice the 'more' links on the PC list. There are single days where the PC will see more mainstream games released then the Mac will see for the rest of the year. Also notice those mac games.. they aren't exactly fresh titles.
The main reason I see Vista as doing so poorly is because XP was so good. Please don't try to start an OS holy war over that statement. The bottom line is that XP was a leaps and bounds improvement over 98 SE which most consumers were coming from, and a unification of business and individual users. And 98 was a huge improvement over 95.. and 95 was a huge improvement over Win 3.1.
I absolutely loathed every Microsoft Windows OS before 2000, and I couldn't really use that for games, so XP was the best of both worlds. Now Microsoft is trying to force us gamers into Vista with Dx10, but that probably won't really be a necessity for 5 years or so since game developers won't simply abandon XP's massive installed base. It was easier to make a big leap when most gamers quickly upgraded because of how horrible the previous OS was.
I think the biggest improvement to a Microsoft OS would be to make -all- software and OS interactions to be completely decoupable. I'd love to be able to take a fresh install of windows and swap apps and games in and out without losing all settings, save games, etc. Linux dist package management mostly achieves this since almost every sane application puts every setting in your home dir, and if that gets crufty it doesn't really impact too much.
Things are so horrifically intertwined with so many different settings mechanisms and locations in Windows its just a total nightmare. Maybe we'll use quad-core machines and dedicate one core to tracking all versioning all registry and file system changes just to deal with this problem.
It's the author of this editorial that appears to suggest removing the spaces entirely. The only suggestion made by Apple that is reported here is that the meters be removed and compensated for.
It's especially bad writing because they are framing the bureaucrats' response as being towards the author and not Apple.
Actually, humor can be a good tool to make poignant statements about situations that are difficult to touch.
See Doonsebury's treatment of the war in Iraq.
Maybe they can't handle all the inevitable tech support calls from the entire world at once? You also gotta figure that any internationalization teams are automatically always lagging the main version a bit during development.
I think the reason why we won't see that is because the ISPs want to take advantage of their unique position, and basically hold a monopoly on ultra fast and cheap content delivery that doesn't go out over the internet.
Comcast already has the most comprehensive on-demand services, and it's quite expensive for the end-user. $6 to watch a HD movie. Why would they open up that door to equal competition? As competitors pop up, they'll always be able to undercut them because they don't have to pay a 3rd party for bandwidth.
I really have to wonder how it will be meaningful at all. There will be a ton of watermarked files on P2P networks that were stolen off of unsuspecting peoples' computers via various vulnerabilities.
I suppose it will at least discourage the casual user from sharing the files they acquire, so that's worth something.
There have been many laptops that are less upgradeable than the PS3. Are they not computers? I don't think that's a very useful criteria.
I have heard before that Sony does it, especially in regards to being able to install and run Linux on the PS3, because they want to be taxed as a "Computer" and not as a "Video Game" in Europe, where countries apparently differentiate the two?
Also notice they call that business unit "Sony Computer Entertainment" and the system itself the "PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system"
Hmm, it's an interesting story. If you are encrypting things that are vitally important to you, but you don't really care about the privacy enough that you are willing to keep unencrypted backups or write passwords down, perhaps you should just use weak encryption that can be reasonably broken, or simply weak passwords.
To that I would simply say way more people are watching movies on DVD players then on computers. There are movie download services.
Well, the nice thing is that it could just have more drives and produce more output at a rather low incremental cost to the machine. If it rents out a 1000 DVDs a day, that'd be pretty extreme. The machine would pay for itself in less then a month?
Perhaps the advantage is that you'll be able to gain access to a giant catalog of movies as opposed to simply what is in stock? Furthermore, locations could offer this huge selection of movies without even having stock?
A good example would be a kiosk at a supermarket. You could come in, choose a movie, swipe your credit card, start the burn process, when it's done, it could set it aside until you swipe your credit card again, after you are done shopping. It could use DVD-RW and predict demand for popular movies and keep recycling disks, so that if you pick a popular movie it doesn't even have to burn it. It could do this all through the night and at 10 minutes a disk (conservative estimate) could produce 144 DVDs a day. More likely it'd be closer to double that.
Even more obvious is that it could be integrated into an online service that would let you choose movies and guarantee their availability when you go to the store. Browse online then simply pick it up when you go for groceries. Convenience and instant gratification.
"Why will the iPhone (rev 1) suck?"
I agree that the first one will suck in terms of value and service, but I think that's the key to this debate. It seems a lot of people are ready to determine if the iPhone line is a success or failure based on the first revision.
The iPod wasn't an overnight blockbuster success either. It was released in 2001 and cost $400. People saw it as a high priced gadget but coveted it. It took a couple years for the price to come down and then it really took off.
The price the iPhone releases at will set that point as the perceived value for awhile. When it gets down to $250, people will rationalize the purchase by thinking they are getting a $500-600 device for a much better price.
Your argument that Apple wants to be a style brand more then a technology one applies to this situation in another somewhat unfortunate way.
When debating whether or not to make it an open platform, they probably realized that only geeks would particularly understand or care. When weighing the pros and cons of that, they probably decided that a bunch of geek early adopters running around with their phone could tarnish its hip image and spun it as purposeful market pruning.
As more skilled workers come to America the less appealing outsourcing looks because all the good talent will all be here in the first place. At least in the US, they'll come to expect something resembling US standards for pay and not something 1/8th of it.
So demonstrating their search monopoly would do what now?
Maybe inspire legislators to create the notion of search neutrality, forcing google to implement pagerank according to a law? It would also give ammunition to those who are already trying to bring antitrust cases against Google.
There is only one reason to believe that "Do no evil" has some merit. It's the reason they are the #1 search engine. Not because people saw that motto and believed it, but because the user experience on google was by far the least evil of the top search engines they quickly overtook.
But evil then was in terms of pop-ups, pop-unders, epilepsy inducing flash banners, putting paid results mixed in with normal search results, and various other things basic internet things. All the stuff we have come to totally take for granted from google.
Now because they have peoples' private email, the government is subpoenaing them, and they are dealing with foreign governments so now they have to make actual choices with actual moral complications.
Because their reputation is an integral part of how they became #1, I think even their investors should be interested in protecting that reputation.
"Last March, Cory Ondrejka, the chief technology officer at "Second Life" publisher Linden Lab, bet a symbolic quarter that his virtual world would within two years have more users than the wildly popular online game "World of Warcraft." ... The bet was certainly ambitious."
That's quite the bet there, speedy. Is it at least a real quarter that symbolizes a real bet or is it actually just a symbol of a quarter? Aaand, who gets the quarter?
You've completely left out of the economic impact of the dual-income family that affects that choice.
Basically, because there are so many dual-income families, home prices have inflated to that market and now many people have to be dual-income to afford a home. Not really a win/win situation for society at large.
Sierra's claim to fame in my opinion was they were first to support sound cards with King's Quest IV. This alone started to create the notion of a custom "gaming PC" market that existed seperately from how computers were normally sold and marketted.
Along these lines Sierra was really pushing the limits of disk based distribution, and as such probably were a major factor in creating demand for CD-ROM.
Also don't forget Origin.. The Wing Commander was another rather cinema-meets-games breakthrough and WC2 brought full voice acting for the first time.
I think music is even more important in video games the further you go back.
Of all the tools available to early game developers, music I really think was the most developed because the essence of a good tune comes through with virtually any technology that can at least play a tone.
Just start remembering your old favorite games, at least with me what I always remember first is the music.
I think there is a certain amount of usefulness to this notion, however what I think it needs to clarify is that when the player is what causes the improbable action, it spends far less of the 'credibility budget' then when the game seems to be the impetus.
When I drive off a ramp, flip over and cause a 15 car explosion in GTA, it doesn't really affect my notion of the game as a vaguely believable caricature of America. However, if that happened all around me constantly it would bust that and I'd feel like I were in crazy stunt world or something.
I think that the difference in credibility effect between player impetus and game impetus is so great that the mere suggestion that player freedom is a bad thing is almost entirely busted.
It certainly makes it more difficult for the -game- to respond to the player in credible ways, but it isn't directly what the player did that hurts that credibility.
I'd say that arbitrarily limiting a player's freedom has a credibility damaging effect as well, since you feel like you are in an invisible straight jacket whenever there exists a mind numbingly obvious solution to a problem that can only be dealt with in the circuitous manner decided by the game developer.
All valid points. I mostly meant my post as a joke.
The real story here isn't that people were "suckered" into installing beta software, it's that this is a story at all.
It's perfectly normal for a few people to lose all their data to beta software all the time. It's just when it happens with a mac to a few people it's abnormal enough to become news apparently.
I do honestly think though that the main Boot Camp page is really advertising aimed at people like me, those who are tied to Windows for various application reasons but would like to own a mac, and was not really designed with existing Mac users in mind.