if they wanted to go Intel why not the Itanium range instead?
Because they're not stupid.
Itanium combines the nastiest problems of the very first RISC chips with the complexity and heat problems of the horrid Pentium 4 core, combined with and Intel's special ability to miss the point in instruction set design. I don't believe it has a future even in minicomputers, but for personal computers it would be a disaster.
I've used Itanium, programmed on it, and I hope to never have to do so again.
Code generation is SO hard that the only way to get decent performance is to perform test runs of the final code to let the compiler find the hot spots and optimize for the common paths. It requires cross-module optimizations... moving copies of code between calling and called subroutines. The ISA exposes internal implementation details... Itanium 1 code had to be recompiled to take advantage of the larger bundle size in Itanium 2. The performance penalty from not doing so was like running under emulation.
This would be like having to recompile your code for Core 2, and maintain separate versions for Core and Core 2 processors. You'd also want to recompile any time any of the libraries you used changed, because the cross-module optimizations could break, though I suppose you could just give up more performance and just optimize your software internally.
And if they didn't like the heat from the G5... my god...
I find no evidence that Apple's margins mean they're getting a better deal than any other manufacturer.
Apple is simply able to charge 40% more for the same hardware because people are willing to pay 40% more to get Apple's software. This has been consistently true... even back to when Apple's software was built on top of rotting dogmeat held together by formaldehyde and Reynold's Wrap. Now that Mac OS X is a first-class operating system in its own right, they're easily worth the premium.
You can do the calculations yourself. I did. When I got my Mac mini I was able to find a number of objectively better Wintel-compatible computers for under $300. I put together a package on HP's website. I put together a machine using generic parts and paid retail prices for them. That's 40% all the way down to the low end.
Apple's margins aren't due to any sweetheart deals from manufacturers.
Personally, I would love to see Apple get out of the hardware business. Not so much because their hardware is unexceptional and expensive, but because it's an ergonomic nightmare... whoever is responsible for the keyboard on my Macbook Pro has a special place reserved in hell being forced to climb flaming rocks while his wrists are flayed to the bone. I'd prefer a Thinkpad and a copy of generic OS X to run on it any day.
It's not going to happen though, not as long as voluntarily handicapping themselves like this keeps them out of Microsoft's gunsights.
I'm guessing that you either don't listen to music from major labels
OK, we seem to have a reading comprehension problem here. I wrote "I'm a Mac user who uses multiple online retailers." Not "I'm a Mac user who doesn't use the iTunes store".
No, I don't use allofmp3.
And, incidentally, there are artists with non-exclusive contracts who have material available through multiple labels. I support them, you should too.
There are cases where it's easier - if the CD isn't copy-protected, you can rip the CD and store it somewhere else, and you're done.
If you have a Mac, it doesn't matter if the CD is quote-copy-protected-unquote or not.
PS: If you have a backup strategy that automatically burns your music to a CD and rips it again I'd like a copy of the script. If you don't, you don't have a working backup strategy, because you're dependant on Apple's goodwill to continue to use the bulky dongle files you downloaded. Will the iTunes store still be around 20 years from now?
I've got some video I can't play on my Macbook, only on my Mac mini, because it depends on a codec that doesn't have an OS X version. I'm curently going through and ripping my old plastic and tape from the '70s and '80s into digital format. If they'd been in some '80s-era DRM-protected format I'd be out of luck. Some of this music is out of print, only had runs of a few hundred tapes, and will never be re-released.
It took them a while to catch on - they were livid when Microsoft Basic got pirated - but giving software away or winking at piracy for a while whenever they're faced with a market they're not yet dominant in... that's been a terribly effective tool for most of the company's existence.
And pretending that it's a sacrifice and convincing people that free copies of Microsoft software is a reasonable settlement for lawsuits has worked very well for them.
Internet Explorer, for god's sake.
Why are people showing anything but disdain for this appallingly transparent bargaining chip?
A nice presentation of the logical way to design digitally-enhanced voting machines. Thank you for putting it together so well.
The paper ballot remains the primary ballot.
It is not a "receipt" (whoever came up with that meme is an evil genius or misguided fool).
The electronic component is an aid to producing a valid ballot, and preliminary counter. Not a replacement, nor even (should there be a power failure or a shortage of ink) necessary.
There are many stories about someone proving that something we believed true is true, and people responding to this with "well, of course"... without thinking that we DO need to test assumptions and prove that what we believe to be true really is true.
But...
These are usually things that AREN'T well studied, they're just axioms that are so obvious that they haven't been examined before.
This is something that HAS been well studied. It's not news. It's not humbling. It's a review of the field, and anyone who is humbled by this "revelation" simply hasn't been paying attention.
Yes, if you have five computers and destroy two within a year's time, you'll have to contact Apple.
Or four and you destroy three, unless you're more patient than me.
Theoughwhen it happened to me the numbers were five and one, or four and 2, because they ddin't havethat little button there.
I'm not sure how likely this scenario is
If you get one of Apple's lemons, like the reporter who shamed Apple into upping the limit from three to five, you can go through ten system disks about as fast as you can ship laptops back to Apple.
Since Mac users don't really have a choice between different online retailers,
I'm a Mac user who uses multiple online retailers. So I guess it must be possible.
But your example shows that this is still better than buying plain old CDs
Buying plain old CDs is not, as noted, the alternative. Howeverit's actually *easier* to make portable offsite backups of plain-old-CDs than to make portable offsite backups of iTunes purchases, because the nudge-nudge-wink-wink-approved approach to doing the latter involved creating plain-old-CDs as an intermediate step.:)
Your friend who lost her portfolio in a fire has no way to get it back.
Indeed. An offsite backup in a portable form is a good backup. Robust portable media is best.
Although The Scotsman Unbound might have kind of potential as an offbeat pop hit. Maybe as a Dr. Demento submission.
Just listening to the sample on iTMS I know EXACTLY what that is.
I suspect that I've heard between fifty zillion and a oodleplex covers of that song.
You ought to look at eMusic. Admittedly, they only charge 25c a track at the subscription rate if you use all your monthly quota, but because it's use-it-or-lose-it I find myself buying stuff there just in case I run out, then buying extra downloads anyway... so there's a lot of musicians who've gotten my money through them that I'd never have tried on iTunes. And I hit iTunes before I think about plastic...
And they're not just a vanity distributor. I've got tracks by Art of Noise, Cocteau Twins, Kitaro, Coldplay, and Maurice Jarre from there... and their Jazz collection is excellent.
However, by that line of reasoning, why do you even worry about whether Apple lets you redownload your music?
*sigh*
I'm not "worried about whether Apple lets me redownload my music".
I'm pointing out two independant problems and ways in which the iTunes store fails to address them.
1. You have five computers you listen to music on. A couple at home, a couple at work, a laptop. If you have a family you might have more than a couple at home... it's not that hard to get up to the five computer limit if you have a family, or you work out of multiple offices. I've been there a few times, once I had ONE computer count as three because I was multi-booting it to different versions of OSX for development and testing, and with Boot Camp a lot of people are going to have two of theor five computers on the same physical system disk.
If you lose a system disk you have to reset all your computers before you can play your Fairplay-protected music on the replacement. If you lose two in a year (not unlikely, even for Macs, and quite likely for Windows) you have to beg Apple to be allowed to play your music.
The first time this happened to me they hadn't put a reset in iTunes, once you lost a few system disks you were stuck waiting for Apple support to get back to you.
This isn't an imaginary scenario. It's why Apple increased the limit from 3 to 5 and then added the reset-once-per-year option. These make it less likely, but don't eliminate it.
If your back up your music to audio CDs, that problem becomes a lot less of an issue.
OK, that's issue number one. Now, a completely separate issue number two:
2. If you lose your computers and backups (not likely for me, since I have them at multiple locations, but most people don't bother - I know one artist who lost her whole digital portfolio in a fire and never got back into it afterwards), since your music is just a dongle and cached copy representing the music you're licensed to play, you should be able to redownload it all. You should be able to buy your music once and download it to each of your computers without having to physically copy it yourself. Every other store I buy digital content online from allows this... why not Apple?
Well, apparently, you can, but you have to beg apple for the "privilege"... you can't do it automatically.
Ipod production is contracted out, like much other consumer electronics. There are multiple such contractors. That's why the iPod packaging reads "designed by Apple".
One of these contractors used Windows and infected some number of the iPods during the production process.
All the "Apple's using Windows *snicker*" messages from people who can't read for content just reinforce the "slashdork" meme.
Second Life is modelled on Snow Crash, but in practice it's MUCH more like the "Other Plane" of True Names, than the "Metaverse" of Snow Crash, especially since they abandoned the Snow-Crash style "100% connected" world for one where individuals and companies can set up private estates (to bring things back on topic).
Why in the hell would you ever buy music through the iTunes store if you weren't going to at least keep it in iTunes?
Same reason I'll buy it from eMusic.com. Because I can buy the one track I like off a CD that's otherwise, well, bleh. So I can make my own "Best Of" compilation without spending hundreds of dollars on the "Rest Of" slush. So I can buy music from artists I'd otherwise never try because, well, I can afford to drop a buck each on a dozen musicians where I'd balk at dropping a C-note or two at the record store.
A lot of my iTMS store purchases have been followed by Amazon CD purchases.
If you have a significant amount of music purchased from iTMS, then to listen to it on a portable device you will either have to buy Apple devices for the rest of your life, or one day you will have to go through an inconvenient and potentially illegal protection stripping exercise.
Or you can follow Apple's recommended DRM-stripping technique on the music as you buy it, building up a library of hard backups of your music as you go along.
As long as iPods are better than their competitors, you can be complacent about this state of affairs.
The only way that iPods are consistently better than their competitors is that the accessories you buy for your iPod will work with your next iPod. The only accessories for your random MP3 player that you can keep when it breaks and you buy a new one... even from the same vendor in most cases... are things with mini stereo jacks as the only way they hook up.
That's a MUCH bigger and MUCH harder problem to solve than ripping the fraction of your music that you bought from iTMS. It's the iPod accessory ecosystem that really locks you in.
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if they wanted to go Intel why not the Itanium range instead?
Because they're not stupid.
Itanium combines the nastiest problems of the very first RISC chips with the complexity and heat problems of the horrid Pentium 4 core, combined with and Intel's special ability to miss the point in instruction set design. I don't believe it has a future even in minicomputers, but for personal computers it would be a disaster.
I've used Itanium, programmed on it, and I hope to never have to do so again.
Code generation is SO hard that the only way to get decent performance is to perform test runs of the final code to let the compiler find the hot spots and optimize for the common paths. It requires cross-module optimizations... moving copies of code between calling and called subroutines. The ISA exposes internal implementation details... Itanium 1 code had to be recompiled to take advantage of the larger bundle size in Itanium 2. The performance penalty from not doing so was like running under emulation.
This would be like having to recompile your code for Core 2, and maintain separate versions for Core and Core 2 processors. You'd also want to recompile any time any of the libraries you used changed, because the cross-module optimizations could break, though I suppose you could just give up more performance and just optimize your software internally.
And if they didn't like the heat from the G5... my god...
I find no evidence that Apple's margins mean they're getting a better deal than any other manufacturer.
Apple is simply able to charge 40% more for the same hardware because people are willing to pay 40% more to get Apple's software. This has been consistently true... even back to when Apple's software was built on top of rotting dogmeat held together by formaldehyde and Reynold's Wrap. Now that Mac OS X is a first-class operating system in its own right, they're easily worth the premium.
You can do the calculations yourself. I did. When I got my Mac mini I was able to find a number of objectively better Wintel-compatible computers for under $300. I put together a package on HP's website. I put together a machine using generic parts and paid retail prices for them. That's 40% all the way down to the low end.
Apple's margins aren't due to any sweetheart deals from manufacturers.
Personally, I would love to see Apple get out of the hardware business. Not so much because their hardware is unexceptional and expensive, but because it's an ergonomic nightmare... whoever is responsible for the keyboard on my Macbook Pro has a special place reserved in hell being forced to climb flaming rocks while his wrists are flayed to the bone. I'd prefer a Thinkpad and a copy of generic OS X to run on it any day.
It's not going to happen though, not as long as voluntarily handicapping themselves like this keeps them out of Microsoft's gunsights.
I'm not THAT much of a completist.
Gotta leave time for all the covers of Greensleeves and The Wind Beneath my Wings.
I'm guessing that you either don't listen to music from major labels
OK, we seem to have a reading comprehension problem here. I wrote "I'm a Mac user who uses multiple online retailers." Not "I'm a Mac user who doesn't use the iTunes store".
No, I don't use allofmp3.
And, incidentally, there are artists with non-exclusive contracts who have material available through multiple labels. I support them, you should too.
There are cases where it's easier - if the CD isn't copy-protected, you can rip the CD and store it somewhere else, and you're done.
If you have a Mac, it doesn't matter if the CD is quote-copy-protected-unquote or not.
PS: If you have a backup strategy that automatically burns your music to a CD and rips it again I'd like a copy of the script. If you don't, you don't have a working backup strategy, because you're dependant on Apple's goodwill to continue to use the bulky dongle files you downloaded. Will the iTunes store still be around 20 years from now?
I've got some video I can't play on my Macbook, only on my Mac mini, because it depends on a codec that doesn't have an OS X version. I'm curently going through and ripping my old plastic and tape from the '70s and '80s into digital format. If they'd been in some '80s-era DRM-protected format I'd be out of luck. Some of this music is out of print, only had runs of a few hundred tapes, and will never be re-released.
It took them a while to catch on - they were livid when Microsoft Basic got pirated - but giving software away or winking at piracy for a while whenever they're faced with a market they're not yet dominant in... that's been a terribly effective tool for most of the company's existence.
And pretending that it's a sacrifice and convincing people that free copies of Microsoft software is a reasonable settlement for lawsuits has worked very well for them.
Internet Explorer, for god's sake.
Why are people showing anything but disdain for this appallingly transparent bargaining chip?
Does it run on Mac?
A nice presentation of the logical way to design digitally-enhanced voting machines. Thank you for putting it together so well.
The paper ballot remains the primary ballot.
It is not a "receipt" (whoever came up with that meme is an evil genius or misguided fool).
The electronic component is an aid to producing a valid ballot, and preliminary counter. Not a replacement, nor even (should there be a power failure or a shortage of ink) necessary.
There are many stories about someone proving that something we believed true is true, and people responding to this with "well, of course"... without thinking that we DO need to test assumptions and prove that what we believe to be true really is true.
But...
These are usually things that AREN'T well studied, they're just axioms that are so obvious that they haven't been examined before.
This is something that HAS been well studied. It's not news. It's not humbling. It's a review of the field, and anyone who is humbled by this "revelation" simply hasn't been paying attention.
Yes, if you have five computers and destroy two within a year's time, you'll have to contact Apple.
:)
Or four and you destroy three, unless you're more patient than me.
Theoughwhen it happened to me the numbers were five and one, or four and 2, because they ddin't havethat little button there.
I'm not sure how likely this scenario is
If you get one of Apple's lemons, like the reporter who shamed Apple into upping the limit from three to five, you can go through ten system disks about as fast as you can ship laptops back to Apple.
Since Mac users don't really have a choice between different online retailers,
I'm a Mac user who uses multiple online retailers. So I guess it must be possible.
But your example shows that this is still better than buying plain old CDs
Buying plain old CDs is not, as noted, the alternative. Howeverit's actually *easier* to make portable offsite backups of plain-old-CDs than to make portable offsite backups of iTunes purchases, because the nudge-nudge-wink-wink-approved approach to doing the latter involved creating plain-old-CDs as an intermediate step.
Your friend who lost her portfolio in a fire has no way to get it back.
Indeed. An offsite backup in a portable form is a good backup. Robust portable media is best.
Although The Scotsman Unbound might have kind of potential as an offbeat pop hit. Maybe as a Dr. Demento submission.
Just listening to the sample on iTMS I know EXACTLY what that is.
I suspect that I've heard between fifty zillion and a oodleplex covers of that song.
You ought to look at eMusic. Admittedly, they only charge 25c a track at the subscription rate if you use all your monthly quota, but because it's use-it-or-lose-it I find myself buying stuff there just in case I run out, then buying extra downloads anyway... so there's a lot of musicians who've gotten my money through them that I'd never have tried on iTunes. And I hit iTunes before I think about plastic...
And they're not just a vanity distributor. I've got tracks by Art of Noise, Cocteau Twins, Kitaro, Coldplay, and Maurice Jarre from there... and their Jazz collection is excellent.
However, by that line of reasoning, why do you even worry about whether Apple lets you redownload your music?
*sigh*
I'm not "worried about whether Apple lets me redownload my music".
I'm pointing out two independant problems and ways in which the iTunes store fails to address them.
1. You have five computers you listen to music on. A couple at home, a couple at work, a laptop. If you have a family you might have more than a couple at home... it's not that hard to get up to the five computer limit if you have a family, or you work out of multiple offices. I've been there a few times, once I had ONE computer count as three because I was multi-booting it to different versions of OSX for development and testing, and with Boot Camp a lot of people are going to have two of theor five computers on the same physical system disk.
If you lose a system disk you have to reset all your computers before you can play your Fairplay-protected music on the replacement. If you lose two in a year (not unlikely, even for Macs, and quite likely for Windows) you have to beg Apple to be allowed to play your music.
The first time this happened to me they hadn't put a reset in iTunes, once you lost a few system disks you were stuck waiting for Apple support to get back to you.
This isn't an imaginary scenario. It's why Apple increased the limit from 3 to 5 and then added the reset-once-per-year option. These make it less likely, but don't eliminate it.
If your back up your music to audio CDs, that problem becomes a lot less of an issue.
OK, that's issue number one. Now, a completely separate issue number two:
2. If you lose your computers and backups (not likely for me, since I have them at multiple locations, but most people don't bother - I know one artist who lost her whole digital portfolio in a fire and never got back into it afterwards), since your music is just a dongle and cached copy representing the music you're licensed to play, you should be able to redownload it all. You should be able to buy your music once and download it to each of your computers without having to physically copy it yourself. Every other store I buy digital content online from allows this... why not Apple?
Well, apparently, you can, but you have to beg apple for the "privilege"... you can't do it automatically.
Ipod production is contracted out, like much other consumer electronics. There are multiple such contractors. That's why the iPod packaging reads "designed by Apple".
One of these contractors used Windows and infected some number of the iPods during the production process.
All the "Apple's using Windows *snicker*" messages from people who can't read for content just reinforce the "slashdork" meme.
Apple (like just about everyone) contracts out production. One of their contractors did all of the above.
...advertising statistics have been manipulated and misleading since the beginning of...
...time...
Re: If your backup isn't to audio CD, it's hardly a backup
Why would you say that?
Because if you don't back up to audio CD, your files are just a bulky dongle, you need to get to iTunes to authorise the new system.
Wow. That's impressive coverage...
Hmmm...
You need to upload an image for last.fm.
Wake me up when they put a virtual world online that more like something from the movie "Tron"
No thanks, I look horrible in spandex.
I think Ice Weasel is a much better name for a browser than Firefox.
Second Life is modelled on Snow Crash, but in practice it's MUCH more like the "Other Plane" of True Names, than the "Metaverse" of Snow Crash, especially since they abandoned the Snow-Crash style "100% connected" world for one where individuals and companies can set up private estates (to bring things back on topic).
Why in the hell would you ever buy music through the iTunes store if you weren't going to at least keep it in iTunes?
Same reason I'll buy it from eMusic.com. Because I can buy the one track I like off a CD that's otherwise, well, bleh. So I can make my own "Best Of" compilation without spending hundreds of dollars on the "Rest Of" slush. So I can buy music from artists I'd otherwise never try because, well, I can afford to drop a buck each on a dozen musicians where I'd balk at dropping a C-note or two at the record store.
A lot of my iTMS store purchases have been followed by Amazon CD purchases.
If it were up to ANY hardware manufacturer, there would be no DRM. -jcr ... if it were up to any hardware manufacturer but Sony, you mean.
Don't see you on eMusic.com, though.
You do need to contact Apple and tell them what went wrong, but they will let you re-download everything
Ah, you still have to beg them for your own music. Every other site that I buy music and ebooks from lets you do this as a matter of course.
if you were too stupid to back it up.
If your backup isn't to audio CD, it's hardly a backup, but I don't call you stupid for not doing it...
I think the "reset authorized computers" function is now exposed inside iTunes
It is, after months of bad press about people having to beg them for their own music because of hardware failures, Apple finally relented there.
If you have a significant amount of music purchased from iTMS, then to listen to it on a portable device you will either have to buy Apple devices for the rest of your life, or one day you will have to go through an inconvenient and potentially illegal protection stripping exercise.
Or you can follow Apple's recommended DRM-stripping technique on the music as you buy it, building up a library of hard backups of your music as you go along.
Mix, Burn, Rip
As long as iPods are better than their competitors, you can be complacent about this state of affairs.
The only way that iPods are consistently better than their competitors is that the accessories you buy for your iPod will work with your next iPod. The only accessories for your random MP3 player that you can keep when it breaks and you buy a new one... even from the same vendor in most cases... are things with mini stereo jacks as the only way they hook up.
That's a MUCH bigger and MUCH harder problem to solve than ripping the fraction of your music that you bought from iTMS. It's the iPod accessory ecosystem that really locks you in.