What if 5 months wasn't enough time to stabilise the Quicktime code?
I'm sure Apple is painfully aware that every time someone can't use iTunes on Windows, there's an other reason for someone to buy a competitor's MP3 player instead of Apple's.
I don't buy the "Apple trying to boost Mac sales" line that some people have trotted out here. "Apple too busy with Leopard to get Vista compatibility out the door" I might believe, if it was the same folk working on the last minute code and quality assurance that would normally work on the Windows iTunes software... but that's drawing a very long bow.
The simplest explanation to me is that 5 months was just enough time to get iTunes fixed to work around the major changes in Windows Vista, with the last minute changes in RTM causing a few more hassles which will delay release by an extra month or so. Apple has a lab full of Macs of all varieties for developers to test their software on before releasing to market. I'm sure they have a lab full of the worst PCs they've encountered to make sure that iTunes works properly.
To be fair, Apple's not the only company that hasn't got their software fully compatible with Vista. One explanation could be that they were all expecting a very small interest in Vista, and chose to spend their time working on other things until at least SP1 was released. But that would only make sense if their software was operating in a vacuum and had no competition in the market.
Thanks for that. I've read a lot about the painful time that the office group has with releasing new versions of Word and Excel, but I've never seen anything about the OS group looking at the Windows upgrade path.
Your patients that you see every day? Are you a nurse in a rehabilitation clinic? I don't think that's a representative sample of the population, and in fact I'd expect that you'd be witnessing the worst of the worst of the problems that some people have with addictions.
Remember, those medical conditions you describe are caused by *excessive* alcohol intake. Cirrhosis? You're looking at an intake of more than four standard drinks a day to get into the risk zone.
Please, get your facts straight before launching on a moral crusade.
I disagree - it would seem more reasonable to expect that if people have problems with Apple software on their existing Windows computer, they'll resort to using some other software.
Which do you think is easier for most people: download someone else's "free" MP3 player, or buy a new computer and transfer all their existing documents across?
My experience with iPod on Windows has been: plug it in, and it works as advertised.
If you're having such problems I'd suspect a non-compliant USB card, or perhaps an installation of Windows on hardware which isn't 100% supported by Windows.
c) With four months to go till release, Microsoft modified some part(s) of the Windows Vista API as part of their continuing efforts to shoehorn the X-Box DirectX into the Windows codebase. This left the people writing software for Vista playing catch-up, with many of them not quite ready when Vista was actually launched.
You seem to be operating on the assumption that Apple didn't get it's act together, when it's equally likely that the reason Apple's products aren't fully compatible with Vista is that Microsoft changed some API calls at the last minute in a way that was not fully compatible with the previous two years of that API's existence.
Yes, but the response training on how to not overreact involves many, many kilometres of walking on well-groomed grass chasing a white response-invoking device, which is interacted with through a response-actioning device.
$1M will buy many many sessions of response training for the Mayor and his support team.
I don't recall Apple ever saying "no" to the chance of having a plethora of buggy software endangering the user experience of their desktop and notebook PC's.
But by the same token, Steve wants to make sure that Apple's entry into the mobile phone/mobile internet market is perceived by the unwashed masses to be perfect. You're right - the initial foray into the market will likely be little different to Microsoft certification of Vista applications. I expect this will change within the first 12 months due to pressure from customers who wish to install in-house applications on the iPhone to take advantage of it as a mini tablet PC.
The restrictions on third-party software will have to fall sometime - it's a market reality. If Apple doesn't do it, someone else will launch their own device on their own service and take the customers that want that flexibility.
Most people I know either aren't smart enough to figure out that a problem with their system is caused by a piece of software rather than the Operating System, or are smart enough but call the in-house desktop support anyway.
How many times do I get, "I'm trying to paste this photo into my Windows document, but it won't let me!"
As for the "seeing a chance to make a buck" comment - why do you think they're in the business in the first place? Is Cingular providing a GSM network because they're interested in the greater good? Is Apple releasing the Apple iPhone because they're interested in encouraging people to develop great FOSS? No to both - they're commercial enterprises, and they're trying to make money from this investment.
Give them time, and you'll find that the barrier to entry will come down. Eventually Apple will have to allow third-party apps to be installed on the iPhone. Big customers will want to use the iPhone as a mini tablet PC, and they'll want to install their custom applications on the system. It's only a matter of time.
DRM will usually require some piece of software. That means that - for example - if you release your DRM system to support Microsoft Windows XP, the DRM will probably break (ie: not allow me to do what I am legally allowed to do) on Microsoft Windows Vista. Or what if the DRM system is a Universal Binary today, then in three years time Apple changes platform to UltiProcessor, and the DRM system no longer works on the UltiProcessor?
Some people will suggest a system where we pay a copy tax on blank media. This benefits noone but the big corporations - the small artists who will be proportionally copied more will not get the royalties they're due from the system. People who use their blank media for data backups or recording their own original work will be punished, and in the end the only people who get the money are the artists in the top 40 and the various publishing houses that support them (not to mention the people doing the job of collecting and distributing the copy tax).
What he was saying "no" to is having a plethora of buggy software out there that would endanger the user experience of the phone. I still expect to see non-Apple and non-Cingular developers having access to the tools to build applications for the iPhone. Now it's just a matter of sorting out the protocol (as in "administrative process") for getting the application that I write for my 100 users, installed onto the iPhones that we're going to buy, for the purpose of using them as small tablet computers.
One easy way is to provide the ability for user-added applications to run with lower privileges (just like they can already under Mac OS X - I can run my own programs as me, but not as "root" or any other user). Though that opens up the avenue for local root escalation vulnerabilities to be exploited.
Of course, for my immediate needs it would be enough to have some way to scan barcodes and interact with web pages. But then, Steve is pushing the line that it's the phone reinvented, not a tablet PC.
The GPs post mentioned that "what doesn't sell well... is people dying in large numbers". This does not mean large numbers of people dying (eg: 8000 dying to some disease every ear in individual events), it means a large number of people dying (eg: 400 people dying in a 747 crash).
Please note the semantic and psychological difference. 8000 people dying to some cruel disease each year is a tragedy that most people won't hear about until the next slow news day. 400 lives being extinguished in one fatal incident is a disaster that you'll hear about minute after it happens.
I agree with your comment about the Moon being better for getting started than an orbiting space station. Even better, once there are machines on the Moon capable of digging holes or moving dirt, the facilities can be buried to provide some protection from Solar radiation. This could be an interesting study into longevity of construction materials.
As opposed to a space station such as Skylab, where once the funding runs out the Yanks just dump their trash over Western Australia.
Hey, if people are paying for AddOns like RDX, why wouldn't they pay for cute-sounding voice actors to join them on Ventrilo for 5 hours a night, 365 days a year?
Show me how to print a triangular dot from one microscopic droplet of ink, and you'll have found a way to print a smaller round dot.
Dots are one colour - unless you have a printer that can change the colour of the ink it's printing with on the fly, all the "colours" you see in matrix printing come from a dithered pattern of various sizes of dots of 3-7 different coloured inks.
Region encoding for DVDs was only intended to allow staged releases of a movie through different markets. That is, release the movie in the USA for three months, then start selling the DVD there. Then release the movie in some other market, and start selling the DVDs there some time later. Since people weren't supposed to be able to import DVDs from the USA six months before they were available in Australia, the theory was that the movie moguls could maximise their income from limited production resources.
The fact of the matter is that the Australian consumers just bought region-free DVD players and bought their DVDs on the (much cheaper) USA market, thus leaving the movie companies out in the cold when it came to releasing DVDs in Australia. We'd already seen the movie on DVD before it opened in cinemas here. So now movies have to be released at the same time in all markets, rather than treating half the world as second class citizens.
If they're made in the same factory, why are the Ridgestones being sold as Ridgestones instead of Bridgestones? It occurs to me that Bridgestone will pull out the cream of the crop and let the "lesser" tyres be sold under a different brand - this means Bridgestone gets the best tyres from the lot, but the manufacturing costs are lower due to volume.
Certainly, if there's no evidence that a 5% difference in tyre hardness can significantly reduce collision speeds, go ahead and buy the Ridgestones.
If the products are totally identical, go ahead an buy the Ridgestones. But the products won't be totally identical.
The data structure is obvious - if you want to save time looking for stuff, you file it in the first place you're going to look.
There's no algorithm listed in the patent, nor are there any rules for maintaining the multiply linked data structure. That is, the patent describes what the filing system looks like, but doesn't provide the novel element of how to file stuff properly in the first place, or how to decide where to look.
Sets of data that are multiply linked into meaningful lists? Not novel. Incredibly smart way of deciding where to link this item into each list that shaves O(N) down to O(log N)? Priceless.
It's really past time to move to New Zealand, isn't it?
What if the popular-press senationalised article got it wrong?
What if the society is working on a written form of their language which has up to now only been spoken. In comes Microsoft and formalises a written version of the language without any consultation with the society.
What if the elders of this society are suing Microsoft to stop them publishing a formalised written form of the language before the formalised written form of the language has actually been decided?
Imagine the outcry there'd be if Microsoft suddenly decided that all residents of the USA were supposed to spell phonetically, using Cyrillic, because that's what the Greek academic who they consulted on the "American English" localisation of Microsoft Windows Vista told them? Suddenly tomato and tomato would be spelt as different words!
So... what if Microsoft made a mistake? It could happen, you know.
Because the writing isn't just instructions on how to use the device, it also elucidates on what the device is used for. Which is going to freak people out.
Vessels made of wood, sailing on an ocean made of water, powered by atmospheric wind?
Slashdot Mirror
What if 5 months wasn't enough time to stabilise the Quicktime code?
I'm sure Apple is painfully aware that every time someone can't use iTunes on Windows, there's an other reason for someone to buy a competitor's MP3 player instead of Apple's.
I don't buy the "Apple trying to boost Mac sales" line that some people have trotted out here. "Apple too busy with Leopard to get Vista compatibility out the door" I might believe, if it was the same folk working on the last minute code and quality assurance that would normally work on the Windows iTunes software... but that's drawing a very long bow.
The simplest explanation to me is that 5 months was just enough time to get iTunes fixed to work around the major changes in Windows Vista, with the last minute changes in RTM causing a few more hassles which will delay release by an extra month or so. Apple has a lab full of Macs of all varieties for developers to test their software on before releasing to market. I'm sure they have a lab full of the worst PCs they've encountered to make sure that iTunes works properly.
To be fair, Apple's not the only company that hasn't got their software fully compatible with Vista. One explanation could be that they were all expecting a very small interest in Vista, and chose to spend their time working on other things until at least SP1 was released. But that would only make sense if their software was operating in a vacuum and had no competition in the market.
Thanks for that. I've read a lot about the painful time that the office group has with releasing new versions of Word and Excel, but I've never seen anything about the OS group looking at the Windows upgrade path.
Your patients that you see every day? Are you a nurse in a rehabilitation clinic? I don't think that's a representative sample of the population, and in fact I'd expect that you'd be witnessing the worst of the worst of the problems that some people have with addictions.
Remember, those medical conditions you describe are caused by *excessive* alcohol intake. Cirrhosis? You're looking at an intake of more than four standard drinks a day to get into the risk zone.
Please, get your facts straight before launching on a moral crusade.
I disagree - it would seem more reasonable to expect that if people have problems with Apple software on their existing Windows computer, they'll resort to using some other software.
Which do you think is easier for most people: download someone else's "free" MP3 player, or buy a new computer and transfer all their existing documents across?
My experience with iPod on Windows has been: plug it in, and it works as advertised.
If you're having such problems I'd suspect a non-compliant USB card, or perhaps an installation of Windows on hardware which isn't 100% supported by Windows.
I've only ever heard about the efforts that Microsoft goes to in order to make their Office products bug-for-bug compatible with previous versions.
It's news to me that Microsoft has made any effort to make a new version of Windows particularly compatible with software from previous versions.
Don't forget option (c):
c) With four months to go till release, Microsoft modified some part(s) of the Windows Vista API as part of their continuing efforts to shoehorn the X-Box DirectX into the Windows codebase. This left the people writing software for Vista playing catch-up, with many of them not quite ready when Vista was actually launched.
You seem to be operating on the assumption that Apple didn't get it's act together, when it's equally likely that the reason Apple's products aren't fully compatible with Vista is that Microsoft changed some API calls at the last minute in a way that was not fully compatible with the previous two years of that API's existence.
And if you've worked with both, you'll realise how much easier life is with neither.
Yes, but the response training on how to not overreact involves many, many kilometres of walking on well-groomed grass chasing a white response-invoking device, which is interacted with through a response-actioning device.
$1M will buy many many sessions of response training for the Mayor and his support team.
I just want to know: does this mean that the revolution will be televised?
But by the same token, Steve wants to make sure that Apple's entry into the mobile phone/mobile internet market is perceived by the unwashed masses to be perfect. You're right - the initial foray into the market will likely be little different to Microsoft certification of Vista applications. I expect this will change within the first 12 months due to pressure from customers who wish to install in-house applications on the iPhone to take advantage of it as a mini tablet PC.
The restrictions on third-party software will have to fall sometime - it's a market reality. If Apple doesn't do it, someone else will launch their own device on their own service and take the customers that want that flexibility.
Most people I know either aren't smart enough to figure out that a problem with their system is caused by a piece of software rather than the Operating System, or are smart enough but call the in-house desktop support anyway.
How many times do I get, "I'm trying to paste this photo into my Windows document, but it won't let me!"
As for the "seeing a chance to make a buck" comment - why do you think they're in the business in the first place? Is Cingular providing a GSM network because they're interested in the greater good? Is Apple releasing the Apple iPhone because they're interested in encouraging people to develop great FOSS? No to both - they're commercial enterprises, and they're trying to make money from this investment.
Give them time, and you'll find that the barrier to entry will come down. Eventually Apple will have to allow third-party apps to be installed on the iPhone. Big customers will want to use the iPhone as a mini tablet PC, and they'll want to install their custom applications on the system. It's only a matter of time.
DRM will usually require some piece of software. That means that - for example - if you release your DRM system to support Microsoft Windows XP, the DRM will probably break (ie: not allow me to do what I am legally allowed to do) on Microsoft Windows Vista. Or what if the DRM system is a Universal Binary today, then in three years time Apple changes platform to UltiProcessor, and the DRM system no longer works on the UltiProcessor?
Some people will suggest a system where we pay a copy tax on blank media. This benefits noone but the big corporations - the small artists who will be proportionally copied more will not get the royalties they're due from the system. People who use their blank media for data backups or recording their own original work will be punished, and in the end the only people who get the money are the artists in the top 40 and the various publishing houses that support them (not to mention the people doing the job of collecting and distributing the copy tax).
What he was saying "no" to is having a plethora of buggy software out there that would endanger the user experience of the phone. I still expect to see non-Apple and non-Cingular developers having access to the tools to build applications for the iPhone. Now it's just a matter of sorting out the protocol (as in "administrative process") for getting the application that I write for my 100 users, installed onto the iPhones that we're going to buy, for the purpose of using them as small tablet computers.
One easy way is to provide the ability for user-added applications to run with lower privileges (just like they can already under Mac OS X - I can run my own programs as me, but not as "root" or any other user). Though that opens up the avenue for local root escalation vulnerabilities to be exploited.
Of course, for my immediate needs it would be enough to have some way to scan barcodes and interact with web pages. But then, Steve is pushing the line that it's the phone reinvented, not a tablet PC.
The GPs post mentioned that "what doesn't sell well ... is people dying in large numbers". This does not mean large numbers of people dying (eg: 8000 dying to some disease every ear in individual events), it means a large number of people dying (eg: 400 people dying in a 747 crash).
Please note the semantic and psychological difference. 8000 people dying to some cruel disease each year is a tragedy that most people won't hear about until the next slow news day. 400 lives being extinguished in one fatal incident is a disaster that you'll hear about minute after it happens.
I agree with your comment about the Moon being better for getting started than an orbiting space station. Even better, once there are machines on the Moon capable of digging holes or moving dirt, the facilities can be buried to provide some protection from Solar radiation. This could be an interesting study into longevity of construction materials.
As opposed to a space station such as Skylab, where once the funding runs out the Yanks just dump their trash over Western Australia.
Hey, if people are paying for AddOns like RDX, why wouldn't they pay for cute-sounding voice actors to join them on Ventrilo for 5 hours a night, 365 days a year?
Show me how to print a triangular dot from one microscopic droplet of ink, and you'll have found a way to print a smaller round dot.
Dots are one colour - unless you have a printer that can change the colour of the ink it's printing with on the fly, all the "colours" you see in matrix printing come from a dithered pattern of various sizes of dots of 3-7 different coloured inks.
Region encoding for DVDs was only intended to allow staged releases of a movie through different markets. That is, release the movie in the USA for three months, then start selling the DVD there. Then release the movie in some other market, and start selling the DVDs there some time later. Since people weren't supposed to be able to import DVDs from the USA six months before they were available in Australia, the theory was that the movie moguls could maximise their income from limited production resources.
The fact of the matter is that the Australian consumers just bought region-free DVD players and bought their DVDs on the (much cheaper) USA market, thus leaving the movie companies out in the cold when it came to releasing DVDs in Australia. We'd already seen the movie on DVD before it opened in cinemas here. So now movies have to be released at the same time in all markets, rather than treating half the world as second class citizens.
If they're made in the same factory, why are the Ridgestones being sold as Ridgestones instead of Bridgestones? It occurs to me that Bridgestone will pull out the cream of the crop and let the "lesser" tyres be sold under a different brand - this means Bridgestone gets the best tyres from the lot, but the manufacturing costs are lower due to volume.
Certainly, if there's no evidence that a 5% difference in tyre hardness can significantly reduce collision speeds, go ahead and buy the Ridgestones.
If the products are totally identical, go ahead an buy the Ridgestones. But the products won't be totally identical.
The data structure is obvious - if you want to save time looking for stuff, you file it in the first place you're going to look.
There's no algorithm listed in the patent, nor are there any rules for maintaining the multiply linked data structure. That is, the patent describes what the filing system looks like, but doesn't provide the novel element of how to file stuff properly in the first place, or how to decide where to look.
Sets of data that are multiply linked into meaningful lists? Not novel. Incredibly smart way of deciding where to link this item into each list that shaves O(N) down to O(log N)? Priceless.
It's really past time to move to New Zealand, isn't it?
What if the popular-press senationalised article got it wrong?
What if the society is working on a written form of their language which has up to now only been spoken. In comes Microsoft and formalises a written version of the language without any consultation with the society.
What if the elders of this society are suing Microsoft to stop them publishing a formalised written form of the language before the formalised written form of the language has actually been decided?
Imagine the outcry there'd be if Microsoft suddenly decided that all residents of the USA were supposed to spell phonetically, using Cyrillic, because that's what the Greek academic who they consulted on the "American English" localisation of Microsoft Windows Vista told them? Suddenly tomato and tomato would be spelt as different words!
So... what if Microsoft made a mistake? It could happen, you know.
Because the writing isn't just instructions on how to use the device, it also elucidates on what the device is used for. Which is going to freak people out.
Vessels made of wood, sailing on an ocean made of water, powered by atmospheric wind?
You've been standing in Eastwall Tower for far too long.