My family does. Interestingly, the most ardent and consistent fan is my two year old, who'll sit on the coffee table with a wiimote in one hand while watching TV. He'll glance at the WII ever so often and flick the wiimote to "participate" in whatever he's got up on it's screen. My ten year old plays a couple times a week but it gets a serious workout when she has friends over. It is engaging enough that my wife's planning the kids a WII party and has tasked me with buying two more remotes as well as a new game (Mario, I think she wants). My teen came home on Spring break and had a whale of a time playing with her siblings.
Instead of seeing diminished use over time, I'm seeing the opposite. I, like the OP, had basically stopped playing after the first few week but the toddler has literally dragged me back to the WII and I now do find myself happy to spend a couple of hours with him on it over a weekend. I really do wish he'd stop thinking that 2:00 a.m. is a good time though...
Just in case I've given the impression that I've got screen-fixated, all-geek kids, let me hasten to note that the college kid sings, did the dance troupe bit, and parties hard with a (seemingly) alright clique, while the ten year old bikes, sings, roller blades, plays with bugs(!), does gymnastics and studies drums, piano and guitar. The two year old is active enough that my wife is insisting that we start him off at martial arts next year in hopes of bleeding off some of the boundless energy that makes watching him a tag team effort.
I'd like to see this become required for all those choosing to write in the field of tech journalism, be they pundits, journalists, bloggers, thinktank members or any other name.
[ The examples were fun, too - Microsoft, Walmart, RIAA and the 70s? I thought "one of these things is not like the others":-) ]
Regardless of what you might think, the thing is a smartphone. People who have used smartphones, be they Treos, Blackberries, or even the old Nokia flip-open communicator are going to be the first people who buy these phones. And, the article's whole point is that these people are likely to be sorely disappointed not by what the iPhone does, but what it doesn't.
OK, I've waited, I've read, and I really was determined not to comment but there's stuff I'm thinking that I'll let spill into this thread...
I doubt that the first people to buy (or consider buying) the iPhone will be the current smartphone crowd. I think there are three groups who'll be first purchasers: compulsive first-on-the-block buyers, current Apple product users and fed-up current phone users. Ignoring the first group as a given for anything new & shiny, I think the other two are orthogonal to current smartphone owners.
I fit several of the profiles discussed by many here: I am a Mac enthusiast. I own a Treo 650 smartphone. I own a Motorola RAZR. I'm an iPod user. I'm in IT. I make corporate purchasing decisions for communications tech as well as servers and desktops. I'm the one friends and family turn to for the scoop when considering gadget and tech purchases. And, tempering my fanboi credentials: I administer primarily non-Mac environments - Windows and Linux. I run a heterogenous household - five Mac laptops, two Windows desktops, one Windows 2000 server, one Linux server and one Sun Solaris workstation. I'm extremely intolerant of bloat, bad user interfaces, and Stuff That Doesn't Really Work As Hyped. I'm equally appreciative of an all-powerful command line and a comprehensive, easy GUI. I've moved from mainframe assembly language programming with 8K core memory available to PERL-and-damn-any-platform-specificity.
I passionately dislike Cingular - even moreso than my general dislike of the cell phone companies in general. They rank slightly below the RIAA on my contempt scale. Verizon's got the best USA coverage but their lock-down of handset features in order to force use of their extra pay-to-use services drove me over to T-Mobile. I got really tired of the limitation of my tech use being arbitrarily set by Verizon. I mean, WTF was it with the Bluetooth crippling?! So now my Treo is a glorified Palm that's available for emergency phone use or if I'm going to be away from T-Mobile coverage. The RAZR wal better than free when I switched and is a good enough phone. T-Mobile is not very restrictive and way less arrogant then Verizon.
And I'll probably get an iPhone upon release. Why? Well, I'll perhaps finally be able to properly sync my address book?? I have an address book with about 1500 contacts. For some of 'em I want more than just a raw number in the telephone field. For the contact that's my utility company, for example, I want to store the main number, emergency number, billing department number, etc. I also want to keep the numbers of useful contacts or last-resort facilitators. So I either can use custom labels or put the info in parentheses next to the number itself. [No, I'm not OK with putting the notes about each number into the comments section. When I pop the contact or get an incoming call , I won't see the info in context] The same thing pertains for personal contacts where I have the person and then numbers for various places they might be found - home, home unlisted, office direct line, office private line, main business, moonlighting job, spouse/partner/other romantic interest, getaway cabin, family place, etc. So what happens if I let anything sync this stuff to a phone? The custom labels or parenthetical notations get mangled. If the iPhone will preserve a full, uncompromised sync of the OS X Address Book, that'll be head and shoulders above anything else for me. Then comes the idea of intelligent handling at my ear: I'm on the train, perhaps working on a laptop or reading a book. My iPod's providing a good song. Call comes in. Get the phone out of my pocket, headphone out my ear,
In scenario 1, a PC supplier (HP, Compaq, Dell, whatever) buys all their bits (hdds, mbs, cases, power supplies etc.) from a variety of manufacturers at cost x; buys Windows from MS at cost y; assembles, markets, factors in a profit margin and ships for cost z. The final cost to the punter is the sum of x + y + z.
The above price (x + y + z) is inaccurate unless the profit margin, marketing and assembly costs equal z, not the cost at which the system is shipped. In your statement as written, z = x + y + (profit margin, etc.) and z is the final cost to the punter...
If you're talking about cell phone service then the customer has the right to cancel their plan with no early termination fees when the provider adds fees which aren't in the original contract
Do you have any cites (and/or sites) for this? I'm not disputing it (and, in fact, agree) but for a dispute that's in progress I'm looking for this info...
the newest iTunes update has apparently made it so that if I rip a CD and put it on my iTunes, upload to my iPod, I CAN NOT pull those songs off the iPod onto another computer... EVEN IF THAT COMPUTER IS AUTHORIZED for my iTunes account!
For a self-confessed Apple fanboi, you seem to have gone out of your way to deliberately misrepresent Apple on this one. Let's clear this up for you - Apple has added a feature! Prior to this update you couldn't pull any songs off the iPod onto another computer without third party software. Now they've added a way for you to copy the purchased music to a different computer. Ostensibly, this is to facilitate backup as well as allow playback. Let me state it again - something that Apple did not allow/facilitate before has now been added. It's progress not the regression you seem to mistakenly believe...
I thought these electronic voting machines are supposed to be secure - so noone involved in their deployment could 'influence' elections even if they wanted to?
I found this to be the most insightful comment I've seen on this topic and would regret that I have no mod points if not for the fact that pointing out the importance of your comment via my wordy response might well garner it more attention than a mundane point.
As an analogy - if an evil dictatator contributed good, secure, peer-reviewed code to an open source effort, his personal ex-computing habits would be irrelevant to the code's acceptability. Similarly, ownership of acceptable voting machines is irrelevant if they are indeed acceptable machines. If ownership is of concern then a closer look should be taken at all the machines, ownership notwithstanding. It suggests that ownership can be instrumental in results, which should concern anyone interested in democracy.
Been there, suffered through that. My headache was a secure co-location facility where there was no phone inside the room and no cell signal. Getting in and out of the room required biometrics and security accomnpaniment to our stack to unlock the cabinets. Each time. Sigh.
If you've been waiting anxiously for a Verizon EV-DO ExpressCard to use in your Mac, a solution has finally arrived. EVDOInfo.com has posted directions on how to configure modem settings to use the Dell 5700 EV-DO ExpressCard with the MacBook Pro. Without the hack, the Dell card, which runs on the Verizon Broadband Access service, will only work in Windows (and Boot Camp on the Mac). The Dell is shipping now. But if you can wait just a little longer, Verizon is expected to ship its own version of the Novatel V640 ExpressCard within the next couple weeks. Verizon has already updated its Mac VZAccess software, which will be bundled with the card at launch. In other Verizon news, Nortel Networks has won a contract to start upgrading Verizon's system to EV-DO Rev. A beginning this fall. The peak data rates of up to 3.1Mbps that Rev. A provides will allow applications like streaming video and VoIP. Currently both of these activities are among those prohibited under Verizon's "unlimited" Broadband Access contract. We hope that Rev. A brings not only a speed increase, but a change in contract terms.
No, but fairplay AAC is vendor specific. Guess which one iTunes uses?
I'd guess the open, non-locked AAC.
But perhaps you're confusing music purchased from the iTunes Music Store with that ripped within iTunes? "FairPlay AAC" is only encountered within the context of music purchased through the iTMS.
iTunes uses AAC (non-protected) as its default. And this default is easily changed to lossless, MP3, etc.
DRM really only affects popular media - this is easily something most people could learn to live without.
That just ain't gonna happen. Most people will not, absolutely not, do without popular media. They'll buy it, accept it free or benefit from the piracy of it. But they will not do without it. Their favourite songs and videos, TV shows, latest movies, radio programme - all getting more and more DRM'd. And the consumer response is not "well, I'll forego it, DRM is wrong". Instead the response is to pick out the prettiest lock and wear it to the ball.
SCO knows that this update was released only to make their Caldera announcement look bad. Just when they got a handle on the 2.5 codebase, the 2.6 has been advanced yet further. Their lawyer-by-day, codemeister-by-night personnel can't keep up. The hide-from-it-by-day, suck-at-it-by-night schedule is killing their undead.
It didn't look like something that'll engage the attention of anyone that matters. By that, I mean that it isn't a particularly well-done, entertaining cartoon sequence that also raises questions or drives a call to action. It's boring, the characters are uninteresting, the "story" is only the message. No wordplay, no good characterisation, no hook. The items that are destroyed are so generic and undetailed that they carry no identity, conveying no sense of loss when destroyed. I don't come away from it feeling that anything personal and valuable is under threat. So it remains a little cartoon sequence, easily forgotten. It certainly won't lead anyone not already fired up to go learn more, write a congresscritter, etc.
Outside of the geek universe, this is worthless. It's the difference between the MPAA, RIAA & other lobbies and the "good guys". The bad guys know their marketing - they successfully sell their policies to those who can mandate them. The good guys are really ineffective at selling resistance to anyone that could be heard - including "the masses".
Perhaps this would have gotten some attention if it was done as high-def, burned to Blu-Ray, and handed out at the locations where the Samsung player is launching this weekend?
Seriously, I thought the concept of "proprietary formats" was understood by now...
I've stopped trying to understand it 'cause I keep tripping up over all those makers of alternative players who distribute software for the user to use with their players but which is unusable with my Macs, then turn around and complain that Apple won't let the iTMS content get to their devices. They can ignore my consumer wishes in pursuit of their dream while chastising Apple in my supposed interest. Similarly, the competing purveyors of digital music content also ignore or short-change me 'cause I chose an Apple computer but want Apple to be forced to give them a leg up on "fair" competition.
Nah, I don't understand the concepts involved. I'm crippled by common sense and a sense of irony...
People don't buy systems hoping that some day at some unspecified point in the future, the platform will become popular enough to make it useful for the reason they bought it for in the first place.
I respectfully disagree. I see more and more people and companies that buy computers using criteria like "is it expandable" (they never crack the case open), "make sure it has 5.1 sound" (they turn it down and use headphones), "add the media card reader" (they use the USB cable to the camera), "dual layer burner" (they're paying the cable company for a PVR and never burn movies), etc., etc.
Apple may be counting on there being a majority of those who won't buy unless they can check the boxes "Windows XP", "Microsoft Access", "popular-package-name-X" but then seldom actually use anything other than what comes up when the machine is first set up and whatever their in-law/co-worker insists on installing on their behalf.
Well perhaps some people do, but then they'd be idiots.
There's an old canard about estimating the intelligence of the buying public...
In the country in which the company is incorporated, it has been convicted of illegal monopoly conduct, after the *legal* fact of monopoly status was established to the satisfaction of the court. The Webster definition is not relevant. In the context of discussion, it's a strawman.
Whatever your opinions are about their non-portable equipment; their politics or their policies, Sony has ALWAYS made very durable and dependable portable equipment.
You're confusing "then" Sony with "now" Sony. Sony's reputation for quality remains largely unblemished even though they've stopped providing the quality of old for a few years now.
Paying a "premium" for Sony equipment is like paying a premium for Apple equipment- except that you get durable devices instead of pretty ones.
I'd say that the converse is true. Sony still has very appealing designs but the build quality and component reliability suck. Apple has their lemons sometimes but seems rather committed to a rewarding user experience. I'm not convinced that Sony has yet returned to the customer-oriented path.
[snip]
These people brought us the betamax wars (beta was better!) and, more popularly, the CD format that has been the basis for data and audio transfer for two decades.
When did we start talking about Philips? You make it sound like Sony originated or innovated. They eventually collaborated and made good contributions but...
Slashdot Mirror
My family does. Interestingly, the most ardent and consistent fan is my two year old, who'll sit on the coffee table with a wiimote in one hand while watching TV. He'll glance at the WII ever so often and flick the wiimote to "participate" in whatever he's got up on it's screen. My ten year old plays a couple times a week but it gets a serious workout when she has friends over. It is engaging enough that my wife's planning the kids a WII party and has tasked me with buying two more remotes as well as a new game (Mario, I think she wants). My teen came home on Spring break and had a whale of a time playing with her siblings.
Instead of seeing diminished use over time, I'm seeing the opposite. I, like the OP, had basically stopped playing after the first few week but the toddler has literally dragged me back to the WII and I now do find myself happy to spend a couple of hours with him on it over a weekend. I really do wish he'd stop thinking that 2:00 a.m. is a good time though...
Just in case I've given the impression that I've got screen-fixated, all-geek kids, let me hasten to note that the college kid sings, did the dance troupe bit, and parties hard with a (seemingly) alright clique, while the ten year old bikes, sings, roller blades, plays with bugs(!), does gymnastics and studies drums, piano and guitar. The two year old is active enough that my wife is insisting that we start him off at martial arts next year in hopes of bleeding off some of the boundless energy that makes watching him a tag team effort.
"French" and "Fries" worked together? Who knew?
I'd like to see this become required for all those choosing to write in the field of tech journalism, be they pundits, journalists, bloggers, thinktank members or any other name.
:-) ]
[ The examples were fun, too - Microsoft, Walmart, RIAA and the 70s? I thought "one of these things is not like the others"
Regardless of what you might think, the thing is a smartphone. People who have used smartphones, be they Treos, Blackberries, or even the old Nokia flip-open communicator are going to be the first people who buy these phones. And, the article's whole point is that these people are likely to be sorely disappointed not by what the iPhone does, but what it doesn't.
OK, I've waited, I've read, and I really was determined not to comment but there's stuff I'm thinking that I'll let spill into this thread...
I doubt that the first people to buy (or consider buying) the iPhone will be the current smartphone crowd. I think there are three groups who'll be first purchasers: compulsive first-on-the-block buyers, current Apple product users and fed-up current phone users. Ignoring the first group as a given for anything new & shiny, I think the other two are orthogonal to current smartphone owners.
I fit several of the profiles discussed by many here: I am a Mac enthusiast. I own a Treo 650 smartphone. I own a Motorola RAZR. I'm an iPod user. I'm in IT. I make corporate purchasing decisions for communications tech as well as servers and desktops. I'm the one friends and family turn to for the scoop when considering gadget and tech purchases. And, tempering my fanboi credentials: I administer primarily non-Mac environments - Windows and Linux. I run a heterogenous household - five Mac laptops, two Windows desktops, one Windows 2000 server, one Linux server and one Sun Solaris workstation. I'm extremely intolerant of bloat, bad user interfaces, and Stuff That Doesn't Really Work As Hyped. I'm equally appreciative of an all-powerful command line and a comprehensive, easy GUI. I've moved from mainframe assembly language programming with 8K core memory available to PERL-and-damn-any-platform-specificity.
I passionately dislike Cingular - even moreso than my general dislike of the cell phone companies in general. They rank slightly below the RIAA on my contempt scale. Verizon's got the best USA coverage but their lock-down of handset features in order to force use of their extra pay-to-use services drove me over to T-Mobile. I got really tired of the limitation of my tech use being arbitrarily set by Verizon. I mean, WTF was it with the Bluetooth crippling?! So now my Treo is a glorified Palm that's available for emergency phone use or if I'm going to be away from T-Mobile coverage. The RAZR wal better than free when I switched and is a good enough phone. T-Mobile is not very restrictive and way less arrogant then Verizon.
And I'll probably get an iPhone upon release. Why? Well, I'll perhaps finally be able to properly sync my address book?? I have an address book with about 1500 contacts. For some of 'em I want more than just a raw number in the telephone field. For the contact that's my utility company, for example, I want to store the main number, emergency number, billing department number, etc. I also want to keep the numbers of useful contacts or last-resort facilitators. So I either can use custom labels or put the info in parentheses next to the number itself. [No, I'm not OK with putting the notes about each number into the comments section. When I pop the contact or get an incoming call , I won't see the info in context] The same thing pertains for personal contacts where I have the person and then numbers for various places they might be found - home, home unlisted, office direct line, office private line, main business, moonlighting job, spouse/partner/other romantic interest, getaway cabin, family place, etc. So what happens if I let anything sync this stuff to a phone? The custom labels or parenthetical notations get mangled. If the iPhone will preserve a full, uncompromised sync of the OS X Address Book, that'll be head and shoulders above anything else for me. Then comes the idea of intelligent handling at my ear: I'm on the train, perhaps working on a laptop or reading a book. My iPod's providing a good song. Call comes in. Get the phone out of my pocket, headphone out my ear,
In scenario 1, a PC supplier (HP, Compaq, Dell, whatever) buys all their bits (hdds, mbs, cases, power supplies etc.) from a variety of manufacturers at cost x; buys Windows from MS at cost y; assembles, markets, factors in a profit margin and ships for cost z. The final cost to the punter is the sum of x + y + z.
The above price (x + y + z) is inaccurate unless the profit margin, marketing and assembly costs equal z, not the cost at which the system is shipped. In your statement as written, z = x + y + (profit margin, etc.) and z is the final cost to the punter...
If you're talking about cell phone service then the customer has the right to cancel their plan with no early termination fees when the provider adds fees which aren't in the original contract
Do you have any cites (and/or sites) for this? I'm not disputing it (and, in fact, agree) but for a dispute that's in progress I'm looking for this info...
the newest iTunes update has apparently made it so that if I rip a CD and put it on my iTunes, upload to my iPod, I CAN NOT pull those songs off the iPod onto another computer... EVEN IF THAT COMPUTER IS AUTHORIZED for my iTunes account!
For a self-confessed Apple fanboi, you seem to have gone out of your way to deliberately misrepresent Apple on this one. Let's clear this up for you - Apple has added a feature! Prior to this update you couldn't pull any songs off the iPod onto another computer without third party software. Now they've added a way for you to copy the purchased music to a different computer. Ostensibly, this is to facilitate backup as well as allow playback. Let me state it again - something that Apple did not allow/facilitate before has now been added. It's progress not the regression you seem to mistakenly believe...
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
It's been a year with my RAZR and I'm a supposed gadget freak yet I had no clue. Thanks for the knowledge...
All your base are belong to Chuck Norris.
Perhaps more appropriately:
All your bass are belong to Chuck Norris?
s/dictatator/dictator/
:-)
The evil dictatator mangled the transcription of my voice memo to Slashdot
I thought these electronic voting machines are supposed to be secure - so noone involved in their deployment could 'influence' elections even if they wanted to?
I found this to be the most insightful comment I've seen on this topic and would regret that I have no mod points if not for the fact that pointing out the importance of your comment via my wordy response might well garner it more attention than a mundane point.
As an analogy - if an evil dictatator contributed good, secure, peer-reviewed code to an open source effort, his personal ex-computing habits would be irrelevant to the code's acceptability. Similarly, ownership of acceptable voting machines is irrelevant if they are indeed acceptable machines. If ownership is of concern then a closer look should be taken at all the machines, ownership notwithstanding. It suggests that ownership can be instrumental in results, which should concern anyone interested in democracy.
Been there, suffered through that. My headache was a secure co-location facility where there was no phone inside the room and no cell signal. Getting in and out of the room required biometrics and security accomnpaniment to our stack to unlock the cabinets. Each time. Sigh.
From the JiWire newsletter:
MacBook Pro EV-DO ExpressCards Are Here, Sort of
If you've been waiting anxiously for a Verizon EV-DO ExpressCard to
use in your Mac, a solution has finally arrived. EVDOInfo.com has
posted directions on how to configure modem settings to use the Dell
5700 EV-DO ExpressCard with the MacBook Pro. Without the hack, the
Dell card, which runs on the Verizon Broadband Access service, will
only work in Windows (and Boot Camp on the Mac). The Dell is shipping
now.
But if you can wait just a little longer, Verizon is expected to ship
its own version of the Novatel V640 ExpressCard within the next
couple weeks. Verizon has already updated its Mac VZAccess software,
which will be bundled with the card at launch.
In other Verizon news, Nortel Networks has won a contract to start
upgrading Verizon's system to EV-DO Rev. A beginning this fall. The
peak data rates of up to 3.1Mbps that Rev. A provides will allow
applications like streaming video and VoIP. Currently both of these
activities are among those prohibited under Verizon's "unlimited"
Broadband Access contract. We hope that Rev. A brings not only a
speed increase, but a change in contract terms.
No, but fairplay AAC is vendor specific. Guess which one iTunes uses?
I'd guess the open, non-locked AAC.
But perhaps you're confusing music purchased from the iTunes Music Store with that ripped within iTunes? "FairPlay AAC" is only encountered within the context of music purchased through the iTMS.
iTunes uses AAC (non-protected) as its default. And this default is easily changed to lossless, MP3, etc.
DRM really only affects popular media - this is easily something most people could learn to live without.
That just ain't gonna happen. Most people will not, absolutely not, do without popular media. They'll buy it, accept it free or benefit from the piracy of it. But they will not do without it. Their favourite songs and videos, TV shows, latest movies, radio programme - all getting more and more DRM'd. And the consumer response is not "well, I'll forego it, DRM is wrong". Instead the response is to pick out the prettiest lock and wear it to the ball.
SCO knows that this update was released only to make their Caldera announcement look bad. Just when they got a handle on the 2.5 codebase, the 2.6 has been advanced yet further. Their lawyer-by-day, codemeister-by-night personnel can't keep up. The hide-from-it-by-day, suck-at-it-by-night schedule is killing their undead.
It didn't look like something that'll engage the attention of anyone that matters. By that, I mean that it isn't a particularly well-done, entertaining cartoon sequence that also raises questions or drives a call to action. It's boring, the characters are uninteresting, the "story" is only the message. No wordplay, no good characterisation, no hook. The items that are destroyed are so generic and undetailed that they carry no identity, conveying no sense of loss when destroyed. I don't come away from it feeling that anything personal and valuable is under threat. So it remains a little cartoon sequence, easily forgotten. It certainly won't lead anyone not already fired up to go learn more, write a congresscritter, etc.
Outside of the geek universe, this is worthless. It's the difference between the MPAA, RIAA & other lobbies and the "good guys". The bad guys know their marketing - they successfully sell their policies to those who can mandate them. The good guys are really ineffective at selling resistance to anyone that could be heard - including "the masses".
Perhaps this would have gotten some attention if it was done as high-def, burned to Blu-Ray, and handed out at the locations where the Samsung player is launching this weekend?
Seriously, I thought the concept of "proprietary formats" was understood by now...
I've stopped trying to understand it 'cause I keep tripping up over all those makers of alternative players who distribute software for the user to use with their players but which is unusable with my Macs, then turn around and complain that Apple won't let the iTMS content get to their devices. They can ignore my consumer wishes in pursuit of their dream while chastising Apple in my supposed interest. Similarly, the competing purveyors of digital music content also ignore or short-change me 'cause I chose an Apple computer but want Apple to be forced to give them a leg up on "fair" competition.
Nah, I don't understand the concepts involved. I'm crippled by common sense and a sense of irony...
That's the best single sentence rebuttal I've read all year.
I had to post as I used my latest set of mod points yesterday.
Hz is a unit of measure, named after a man who surprise!) considered his name to be a pronoun, and thus SPELLED IT WITH A CAPITAL FREAKING H!!!
Wouldn't he have considered his name to be a proper noun (as opposed to a pronoun)?
People don't buy systems hoping that some day at some unspecified point in the future, the platform will become popular enough to make it useful for the reason they bought it for in the first place.
I respectfully disagree. I see more and more people and companies that buy computers using criteria like "is it expandable" (they never crack the case open), "make sure it has 5.1 sound" (they turn it down and use headphones), "add the media card reader" (they use the USB cable to the camera), "dual layer burner" (they're paying the cable company for a PVR and never burn movies), etc., etc.
Apple may be counting on there being a majority of those who won't buy unless they can check the boxes "Windows XP", "Microsoft Access", "popular-package-name-X" but then seldom actually use anything other than what comes up when the machine is first set up and whatever their in-law/co-worker insists on installing on their behalf.
Well perhaps some people do, but then they'd be idiots.
There's an old canard about estimating the intelligence of the buying public...
Having your operating system store passwords so any web browser can access them...that's a horrible security flaw waiting to happen.
And is not what the GP asserted - having a browser store to the Keychain does not allow other browsers to access the item.
culminating in running himself over in his car and breaking his leg.
How?!!
Who was driving?
How'd he step on the accelerator?
Are you sure it wasn't a motorbike?
In the country in which the company is incorporated, it has been convicted of illegal monopoly conduct, after the *legal* fact of monopoly status was established to the satisfaction of the court. The Webster definition is not relevant. In the context of discussion, it's a strawman.
Whatever your opinions are about their non-portable equipment; their politics or their policies, Sony has ALWAYS made very durable and dependable portable equipment.
You're confusing "then" Sony with "now" Sony. Sony's reputation for quality remains largely unblemished even though they've stopped providing the quality of old for a few years now.
Paying a "premium" for Sony equipment is like paying a premium for Apple equipment- except that you get durable devices instead of pretty ones.
I'd say that the converse is true. Sony still has very appealing designs but the build quality and component reliability suck. Apple has their lemons sometimes but seems rather committed to a rewarding user experience. I'm not convinced that Sony has yet returned to the customer-oriented path.
[snip]
These people brought us the betamax wars (beta was better!) and, more popularly, the CD format that has been the basis for data and audio transfer for two decades.
When did we start talking about Philips? You make it sound like Sony originated or innovated. They eventually collaborated and made good contributions but...