You guys just keep redefining "comparable" until you're right.
And this is different than you...how exactly?
Suppose I define "comparable" to mean that it has free expansion slots and available drive bays
The G5 towers have free expansion slots and available drive bays. Yawn.
I can get that from Dell starting at $299.
From their backalley supplier-of-the-week in a $10 cut-your-hand-special case with an old toaster oven converted into a power supply, sure. This is Dell's specialty. Once you start sticking quality components into your PC, then your price advantage starts to dissapear.
You can't even buy PCs on today's market with laptop-speed hard drives
You want that form factor with an optical drive built in, you're going to need a laptop drive.
or video cards 3 generations old.
...nevermind that most video cards are actually integrated, and don't even have the horsepower of a 3 generation old offering from ATI or Nvidia.
As far as your wireless, firewire, gigabit ethernet rant goes, these things are commonplace on top of the line motherboards these days.
They sure are. But if you're paying for top of the line, there goes your price advantage. Also, make sure you're comparing Apple to another OEM and not a list of parts that you get off Newegg, for an actuall Apple to apples comparison.
But it has been a commercial disaster. Market share at 2% and falling means the end of the business.
Nonsense. Apple has perinally been one of the top five manufacuters of computers, sells 4 million machines a year, and has remained consistantly profitable through the dot com bubble and beyond. Quick, how many big PC manufactuers have made money these last few years, other than Dell? IBM is done with PC's. HP-Compaq have been in the red. Of course Dell has been consistently profitable - but so has Apple.
Quicktime: Another player with its own proprietary formats but since it comes from Apple and really cool movie trailers are published with it, we let that go.
Oh get off your high horse already. Don't like it, don't use it. And it plays many formats, some of which are proprietary. And for the 5,999,999,999 people on this planet who aren't Richard Stallman, that's just fine.
In Quake, all you had to do with the demo was pull down the console and type "registered 1". The demo was missing the big map pack, but once you threw that into the data directory, you were set.
People abroad (and a lot of people here) don't realize that the decentralized system is what makes America's economy strong.
This "decentralized system" is why we have rampant corporate welfare. This "decentralized system" is why the tax burden has shifted more and more away from coporations and more and more onto individual taxpayers. The "state competition" you refer to does *nothing* for the people living in the state, nothing for the workers, nothing for the taxpayers when it encourages companies to move once their incentives for moving to that location run out. The *only* people who benefit from this are the companies who offer to bring 2,000 jobs to a community in exchange for a ten year break from taxes, sometimes even getting the community to build some of the companies facilities, and then leave when the incentives run out. It's a race to the bottom.
By "exclusive distribution" I mean "the labels exclusive distribution of any artist's music that signs with the label." So Sony and BMG are free to sell their music to Wal-Mart or Best Buy or Apple, but the artist can't make deals on his own. And since no major label is willing to sell digital music w/o DRM, that means no emusic, and it means none of their signed bands can sell on emusic either. I would guess that Green Day's contract was up, but without looking at the site (they seem to want you to sign up before you can look at anything) it's hard to tell.
Napster and iTunes use DRM, so they've agreed to use those services, because how you use the music is limited by the DRM. eMusic uses unencumbered mp3's, so there is no control after the sale.
He's talking about buying from his campus bookstore, you're talking about the online store. Which doesn't even ask for an ID if you're buying an iPod once you've selected your school...might be different for a computer.
Aside from having your dates mixed up, as another poster pointed out, you're still missing the boat. Look at it from the point of view of a device manufactuer: why would you take on the expense of making a seperate device with USB, when you can count on all PC users having parallel? Then suddenly the iMac hits the market, and it only has USB. And hundereds of thousands of the consumers buying it are also going to need new USB perphrials. Face it, the iMac is what broke the USB damn.
I think I'm not.:) Radio is still the most common way people are introduced to new music, and just about the only way to get on the radio is to be signed with a big label. And big labels want exclusive distribution, which means no eMusic. Sure there are notable exceptions like the Greatful Dead or Phish, but they got big by constant touring.
I am surprised they had Green Day though, maybe it's a sign the market is changing, and for the better.
it's reasonable to say "the device lasts 8 hours on a battery"
They didn't say that either. They said lasts up to 8 hours on a charge, a different story. One used by everyone else who makes a device with a rechargable battery, so I still don't see how they have a case.
Which at least finally left the door open for the idea that maybe the Republic was ineffectual and corrupt, and maybe the Dark Side was the right answer at the right time.
They touched on that in the KOTOR games...the Mandalorians were attacking the Republic, and the Jedi took the "wait and see" approach while millions died. Two of the Republic's most promising young Jedi decided enough was enough, and beat the holy hell out of the Mandalorians, and turned to the dark side in the process. And then attacked the Republic as Sith. The second game got into this in more detail, but if some of the Jedi hadn't taken action, the Republic would have fallen. And it was theorized that Revan (one of the two young Jedi) tried to conquer the Republic not so much for the sake of power, but to prepare it for some unseen threat. Maybe she just saw the Yuza Vong gayness 4,000 years in advance.
I was especially disappointed when they turned out to STILL be working for sideous in the third movie despite the fact that they were double-crossed in the first movie and knew he was a dark jedi in charge of the senate in the second film.
Dooku obviously knew, but there was no reason for him to tell the people he was leading that his boss was playing both sides.
You clearly know nothing of what 68k users went through with the switch to PowerPC.
Not suprising that he doesn't know, considering that never happened. That was one of the smoothest technology transitions in history, you need to go back under your bridge.
How the hell did the teachers railroad the community into paying outrageous salaries, how did corporations get a monopoly for selling their products (like only pepsi and no coca-cola), and at prices twice as high as off campus??
How the hell is it unreasonable to expect a six figure salary after you've gotten a four year degree, a doctorate, AND TEN YEARS EXPERIENCE?!?
It is a damn shame that education has boiled down to money. I would love to see "free" universities, where people who love a subject give classes. How many 60ish year old retired engineers are there that would love to teach math part time, just because they love it?
You mean so you can go for free and not pay these people anything for their time? You want to do this, go right ahead, but expect this of others, and you deserve a strong slap in the face. You sir, are an ass.
Somethings probably crappy on your parent's PC then. I've got an Athalon 500 that works with iTunes A-OK with 16,000 songs. The only time I run into performance issues is when importing large amounts of songs (gigabytes) at a time. That can take hours, especially if you have "sound check" turned on.
eMusic is a US site, and they sell popular music without DRM, right?
If by "popular" you mean they offer a selection of "Country & Western", then yes. If by "popular" you mean "top 40" or "anyone signed to a major label" or "just about any big name band you can name", then no.
How much time is actually being spent, when you do a quick search, queue up several files (maybe even identical files, just in case), and let your machine just chug away at the download while you go off and do other things? (i.e. work)
Counter-counter argument: and how much time do you spend making sure those files are the right songs, not fake, the album is complete, of decent quality, and is properly tagged? With commercial services you don't have to worry about any of those issues. So it comes back to the parent posters point: just what is your time worth?
Slashdot Mirror
Only cheaper if your time is worthless.
You guys just keep redefining "comparable" until you're right.
And this is different than you...how exactly?
Suppose I define "comparable" to mean that it has free expansion slots and available drive bays
The G5 towers have free expansion slots and available drive bays. Yawn.
I can get that from Dell starting at $299.
From their backalley supplier-of-the-week in a $10 cut-your-hand-special case with an old toaster oven converted into a power supply, sure. This is Dell's specialty. Once you start sticking quality components into your PC, then your price advantage starts to dissapear.
You want that form factor with an optical drive built in, you're going to need a laptop drive.
or video cards 3 generations old.
...nevermind that most video cards are actually integrated, and don't even have the horsepower of a 3 generation old offering from ATI or Nvidia.
As far as your wireless, firewire, gigabit ethernet rant goes, these things are commonplace on top of the line motherboards these days.
They sure are. But if you're paying for top of the line, there goes your price advantage. Also, make sure you're comparing Apple to another OEM and not a list of parts that you get off Newegg, for an actuall Apple to apples comparison.
The first version of the iPod didn't have a scroll wheel,
Yes, it did. It didnt' have a clickable scroll wheel, but it had a scroll wheel nontheless.
the first mp3 player that "I" know of was the Creative Nomad Zen
Nobody cares. If people were making the claim that Apple invented the mp3 player, you'd have a point...but no one is, so you don't.
It wasn't until later, that they added in a scroll wheel. Kinda like "oh thats a kewl idea, lets do that too".
Wtf are you talking about here? Apple is the only company with a scroll wheel. One reason: it's patented.
But it has been a commercial disaster. Market share at 2% and falling means the end of the business.
Nonsense. Apple has perinally been one of the top five manufacuters of computers, sells 4 million machines a year, and has remained consistantly profitable through the dot com bubble and beyond. Quick, how many big PC manufactuers have made money these last few years, other than Dell? IBM is done with PC's. HP-Compaq have been in the red. Of course Dell has been consistently profitable - but so has Apple.
Quicktime: Another player with its own proprietary formats but since it comes from Apple and really cool movie trailers are published with it, we let that go.
Oh get off your high horse already. Don't like it, don't use it. And it plays many formats, some of which are proprietary. And for the 5,999,999,999 people on this planet who aren't Richard Stallman, that's just fine.
In Quake, all you had to do with the demo was pull down the console and type "registered 1". The demo was missing the big map pack, but once you threw that into the data directory, you were set.
People abroad (and a lot of people here) don't realize that the decentralized system is what makes America's economy strong.
This "decentralized system" is why we have rampant corporate welfare. This "decentralized system" is why the tax burden has shifted more and more away from coporations and more and more onto individual taxpayers. The "state competition" you refer to does *nothing* for the people living in the state, nothing for the workers, nothing for the taxpayers when it encourages companies to move once their incentives for moving to that location run out. The *only* people who benefit from this are the companies who offer to bring 2,000 jobs to a community in exchange for a ten year break from taxes, sometimes even getting the community to build some of the companies facilities, and then leave when the incentives run out. It's a race to the bottom.
By "exclusive distribution" I mean "the labels exclusive distribution of any artist's music that signs with the label." So Sony and BMG are free to sell their music to Wal-Mart or Best Buy or Apple, but the artist can't make deals on his own. And since no major label is willing to sell digital music w/o DRM, that means no emusic, and it means none of their signed bands can sell on emusic either. I would guess that Green Day's contract was up, but without looking at the site (they seem to want you to sign up before you can look at anything) it's hard to tell.
/quibble
:-)
He's talking about buying from his campus bookstore, you're talking about the online store. Which doesn't even ask for an ID if you're buying an iPod once you've selected your school...might be different for a computer.
Aside from having your dates mixed up, as another poster pointed out, you're still missing the boat. Look at it from the point of view of a device manufactuer: why would you take on the expense of making a seperate device with USB, when you can count on all PC users having parallel? Then suddenly the iMac hits the market, and it only has USB. And hundereds of thousands of the consumers buying it are also going to need new USB perphrials. Face it, the iMac is what broke the USB damn.
It could if Apple did something totally radical to go head to head with Microsoft.
First they'd have to go head to head with Dell, which is like trying to take on Wal-Mart in a price war. It's just not gonna happen.
OMG! Five people, complaining about something on the INTERNET! On a MESSAGE BOARD! That must prove the iPod is absolute shite!!!!
/sarcasm
Read carefully - there's only one product mentioned in the original parent's post. You even quoted it.
I did read carefully. The problem is that the iPod is well known to be a well made product, a few lemons and a few crabby people nonwithstanding.
I think you're mistaken.
:) Radio is still the most common way people are introduced to new music, and just about the only way to get on the radio is to be signed with a big label. And big labels want exclusive distribution, which means no eMusic. Sure there are notable exceptions like the Greatful Dead or Phish, but they got big by constant touring.
I think I'm not.
I am surprised they had Green Day though, maybe it's a sign the market is changing, and for the better.
it's reasonable to say "the device lasts 8 hours on a battery"
They didn't say that either. They said lasts up to 8 hours on a charge, a different story. One used by everyone else who makes a device with a rechargable battery, so I still don't see how they have a case.
Which at least finally left the door open for the idea that maybe the Republic was ineffectual and corrupt, and maybe the Dark Side was the right answer at the right time.
They touched on that in the KOTOR games...the Mandalorians were attacking the Republic, and the Jedi took the "wait and see" approach while millions died. Two of the Republic's most promising young Jedi decided enough was enough, and beat the holy hell out of the Mandalorians, and turned to the dark side in the process. And then attacked the Republic as Sith. The second game got into this in more detail, but if some of the Jedi hadn't taken action, the Republic would have fallen. And it was theorized that Revan (one of the two young Jedi) tried to conquer the Republic not so much for the sake of power, but to prepare it for some unseen threat. Maybe she just saw the Yuza Vong gayness 4,000 years in advance.
I was especially disappointed when they turned out to STILL be working for sideous in the third movie despite the fact that they were double-crossed in the first movie and knew he was a dark jedi in charge of the senate in the second film.
Dooku obviously knew, but there was no reason for him to tell the people he was leading that his boss was playing both sides.
You clearly know nothing of what 68k users went through with the switch to PowerPC.
Not suprising that he doesn't know, considering that never happened. That was one of the smoothest technology transitions in history, you need to go back under your bridge.
How the hell did the teachers railroad the community into paying outrageous salaries, how did corporations get a monopoly for selling their products (like only pepsi and no coca-cola), and at prices twice as high as off campus??
How the hell is it unreasonable to expect a six figure salary after you've gotten a four year degree, a doctorate, AND TEN YEARS EXPERIENCE?!?
It is a damn shame that education has boiled down to money. I would love to see "free" universities, where people who love a subject give classes. How many 60ish year old retired engineers are there that would love to teach math part time, just because they love it?
You mean so you can go for free and not pay these people anything for their time? You want to do this, go right ahead, but expect this of others, and you deserve a strong slap in the face. You sir, are an ass.
Somethings probably crappy on your parent's PC then. I've got an Athalon 500 that works with iTunes A-OK with 16,000 songs. The only time I run into performance issues is when importing large amounts of songs (gigabytes) at a time. That can take hours, especially if you have "sound check" turned on.
eMusic is a US site, and they sell popular music without DRM, right?
If by "popular" you mean they offer a selection of "Country & Western", then yes. If by "popular" you mean "top 40" or "anyone signed to a major label" or "just about any big name band you can name", then no.
How much time is actually being spent, when you do a quick search, queue up several files (maybe even identical files, just in case), and let your machine just chug away at the download while you go off and do other things? (i.e. work)
Counter-counter argument: and how much time do you spend making sure those files are the right songs, not fake, the album is complete, of decent quality, and is properly tagged? With commercial services you don't have to worry about any of those issues. So it comes back to the parent posters point: just what is your time worth?
Are consumers so repressed to where it is socially acceptable to sell a well-known poorly made product
Okay, what products would those be?