I've never understood this argument they had about black bakgrounds. The backlight is always on and hence why we should all be using LED or the newly available translucent monitors that use ambient light. I think the myth is due to our perception of light & dark. We fail to understand black on a monitor is a lack of color and an absorption of all light but the backlight as stated operates independently of the display's image.
Can we acknowledge the government has effectively ZERO CONTROL over oil prices? They have abundant levers that may affect oil prices but have no control over them. As it stands taxes are around 10-20% of a gallon of gas at any given time. Speculation and world demand have driven gas prices up. To compare and contrast is just obtuse. When Bush was in office I wasn't letting myself or anybody I knew actually blame him for gas prices being high, I made a point of defending him as much as I hated to. He is responsible for far worse follies that are actually attributable to him. Thus can we refrain from a bad Fox News talking point? It really makes you sound bad.
If you're going to get upset when somebody makes a valid comparison because the valid comparison makes your personal views look bad maybe you should stop and think about it? The argument here (and it is a fairly weak one) is that Pres. Obama somehow took much more credit than he should have and is somehow claiming to be personally responsible for Bin Laden's death. Now I fail to see this as it was a Fox News talking point shortly after the reality set in that he did something that the previous president couldn't manage to do whether reasonably possible or not. The major difference though is that Pres. Obama made a nice tasteful press conference and said the reign of terror was over. Pres. Bush flew onto a massive aircraft carrier in a flight suit and proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" on a large banner as if he personally had done the fighting in Iraq. Neither of them were active military participants in either war and from what little we know of each President's personal handling of the war it would seem that Pres. Obama is more strategically involved and diplomatically aware than the last president. Still the crux of the argument falls upon Pres. Obama being massively overconfident and insinuating his position within the military when he wasn't and Pres. Bush was doing the very thing this argument implies. It's very much an issue of projection. They're projecting all the worse qualities they've experienced over the previous 8 years under Pres. Bush onto Pres. Obama to attempt to create an unwarranted parallel. It's much like the "don't you wish he was back" featuring Pres. Bush's face bumper stickers. So quick to forget and try and turn his presidency into a rather good one when historically he led us into two unfunded wars, quadrupled the national debt because of said wars, and his tax cuts rewarded the wealthiest people in the US and somehow still allowed the economy to collapse. Now the same group wants to elect his slightly more elegant duplicate in Mitt Romney.
So, now that I have written a diatribe on the subject do we really need to keep going down this path? Conservatives distrust government yet their leaders are completely in bed with large corporations. Can we just accept this and move on? I've accepted their oxymoron lifestyle and figure the best answer is to simply outlast them as a generational issue.
The problem I see with this argument facing labor issues is that Google has next to no authority over the third party corporations that produce the handsets. I'm an outspoken supporter of fair trade and better labor practices. I'm frustrated that all of our electronics are produced in near-slave conditions but Apple as a direct manufacturer (sub-contracted or not) has a much greater hand in the dealings of Foxconn than Google ever did. I give you once the Motorola acquisition is complete they'll be as responsible but that won't be for atleast some time still.
Also, lets not lie about Apple "trying to improve things" since they shipped the last of their jobs overseas and make a profit of $575 on each iPhone sold. They could easily bring the entire production line home and pay excellent wages and still profit $200+ per phone. Apple has no interest in that so lets not get into that sort of "they're trying!" talk because it simply is not true.
If anything the media is run by a surprisingly small circle of individuals. Much as we picture the media as these monolithic creatures with vast resources most of those resources are NOT spent on reporting or research. Mainstream media treat technology like they treat science, each new product is an awesome advancement in our society. In the tech media environment it becomes a bit of a value judgment rule where most products are built with commodity parts and thus who puts those parts to the best use for the price tends to get the highest praise. Even now Windows has the largest installation base by such a long shot on the Desktop market that even the slight dent in it made news for Apple shows that it isn't about showing the reality but painting the narrative. Especially as the media becomes consumed by the Apple-classism products that "just work" or rather "just make me look like I can afford to not work" they're going to garner more random support articles as they win the value judgment battles.
They did...several years ago. Whoever is on Vista deserves it now.
Can I substantiate why Open Source can involve security risks? As old holes close new holes open. You don't explain how a lock works to a thief. This is once again/.'s mantra to solve everything.
When Linux gets a small army of paid employees to keep the OS working around the clock they can join Windows in that exclusive circle of OSes. It doesn't disprove my point as it only serves to reinforce it. YOU personally keep the system up to date and running. Other companies are uninterested or too small to care. They want a product that works and when it doesn't it gets fixed and sent out so quickly they hardly notice. Linux can do that but you need to be supported by the right distro and have good support staff in house.
Honestly in 1992 if they had built a $150 Million dollar Enterprise (even if it was 30 or so years prior to the current universe they were promoting) would have kept Star Trek active a great deal longer. Instead of DS9 & Voyager on their own private UPN they would have probably landed on CBS or NBC. The benefit of it existing would drive trekkies into a frenzy so that not only would it make a constant revenue stream available but it would essentially cement Star Trek as a permanent part of reality. As it stands unless they continue the current Star Trek continuum with the new Kirk when the baby boomer and Gen X generation get older and pass Star Trek will largely pass with them. Already shows like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners are starting to suffer that effect. I see it as both a great loss for Paramount and Trekkies but also for culture in general. With that giant ship constantly there we would have always had a nagging reminder of Star Trek in our minds, driving us into space with vigor.
That was a long post that I read with care and agree with you. I was more pointing out the simple fact that winding down an OS's life cycle is not some grand offense. Of course you run into the issue of planned obsolescence as an offense rather than an intentional function of the market. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a free OS that gets updated continuously by an army of hobbyists and a handful of IT companies that use it as their main system but as a consumer-level product OSX/Windows is successful because of the simplicity and support it gets through a streamlined process and for that benefit we as consumers (in this case...) are subject to having to re-purchase the OS to get the latest updates.
As far as I know on the use of OS'es Linux has pretty much become the choice of the third world because they cannot afford the steep pricing of Windows but in the first and second world Windows is dominant and it's only substantial losses has been to OSX in the last 2-3 years as people buy macs to match their iOS products. If anything the death of Vista was largely due to public perception of it's poor instability. We're still living in frontier times in terms of computer technology as we know it today. A good many of you were adults for the very cutting edge of computers as a home device but until Windows 95 showed up the computer was more novelty than useful for everyday use. Now we're only 5 major versions in and i'm being gracious by calling Vista a major version. That means in a little over 17 years we've updated our OS 5 times for an average of 3.4 year lifespan. Up until XP that average held true. I agree XP held on a great deal longer because it worked but also because processors sped up to support average internet surfing and thus XP wasn't painfully slow. It was as much the OS as the hardware. Vista was painfully bloated and slowed down the hardware to a crawl and failed because of that. Windows 7 runs faster on PCs i've seen from the XP-era. So arguably the progression isn't without cause.
I think the bottom line in this particular case is that Microsoft saw the issue in Vista and is trying to remove it from the market as painlessly as possible. The vast majority of Windows profit is from OEMs who sell it rather than upgrade path consumers. They even offered a relatively long period where if you had purchased a Vista PC you could get a free matching copy of Win 7 (Home Premium for Home Premium...so on and such forth). The need to profit in order to run their machine is a side-effect of our capitalist system but still Linux distros that are extremely popular update as fast/faster than Windows but lesser ones update slower. There are trade-offs on both sides of the argument.
and I'm rambling now...regardless, the shutdown cycle is because they failed with Vista not some giant money grab. XP is where the users are and it has been in shutdown cycle for the last year or more.
There needs to be a new Godwin's law for when people use the term "sheeple", like when a person uses the term "sheeple" it automatically ends the argument because that person is too stupid to acknowledge they themselves are sheeple in some respect.
I mean in all honesty who thinks they can hold down a full-time job that requires a college degree and write an entire OS then support that OS for almost every instance that requires it and push those updates as fast as you can. Microsoft is in business because their specific OS is widely adopted and hasn't been supplanted because they have commercial partners and they are more than just hobbyists. Open source is/.'s mantra and all but really, open source can't solve everything and brings its own set of problems to the table (i.e. security...etc). I know you're an AC trying to get a rise but what is deemed "support" here is literally updates sent to the OS through the update tool besides the over-the-phone support as the article seems to imply. The fact it is going into the shut-down cycle this soon proves how successful Win 7 was well as how big a failure Vista ended up being.
Oh I completely agree with you that our real wages have fallen (or as some call the inverse "purchasing power" which is a little more flexible as a concept). If anything I think your comment on psychological pressures is far more interesting. I wonder about the age of gaming increasing to the low-30s being part of that. Many more parents were established and giving their children games in the 80s/90s that went to college and became adults in the 2000s and have to pay for their own gaming habits. The dramatic increase in the number of AAA game releases each year has probably had a negative impact on them as well.
Course this is all subjective theory. It would be interesting research to do though.
You really hit the biggest point. The average price of a game at $50 remained so steady that inflation surpassed it. Now even at $60 it's still cheaper than NES/Atari games. On top of that of the $60 the game developers see about half that price or a touch over. Game Stop/Wal-Mart/Best Buy are taking at least $10-20 of that for simply stocking it. Another $10 goes to the manufacturer/shipping. There are a great deal of hands out there getting their share.
As for the actual article: it's crap. the Xbox 360's GPU is in line with the X1800 while the Wii U will be minimum a 4000-series radeon. The PS3 is no better with a 7800 Geforce architecture. Both are seriously 6+ years old. Even with a modest upgrade and a shorter life cycle the Wii U will be able to compete directly with the other two and will more often than not. The only problem I ever saw with the Wii was the limitation of the hardware that crippled the software side for AAA games. Now with that resolved if the price is kept down I see no reason not for it to succeed.
ah, stick it up your ass. You're playing a game of semantics and trying to turn insults around. Move it along, you know Apple has made it their point to seal all devices as best as they can that aren't actual computers and thus use commodity parts. If you're trying to pull a win out of your ass you mind as well pull your head out as well.
Yes yes...I'm the conspiracy theorist when the article is about that. Please, your frothing at the mouth defending Apple. Nobody is saying that their iMacs are sealed like vaults. The article was pointing out with the trend of Apple sealing batteries and everything else the days of upgradability or self-repair may be coming to a close if others follow suit.
Please remove yourself from this conservation because you're going to wreck yourself if you don't check yourself.
He pointed out that Apple was singled out and referenced Android Phone & Windows Phone as well. Macs4all was trying to draw Android & Windows phone into a comparison initially over the idea that they also do it for advert sigs and I simply pointed out there is a false dichotomy when you actually look at the point of talking about Apple as a manufacturer vs. Android and Windows as OS platforms. Apple and iOS are similar but not the same just as Google and Android are similar but not the same. Essentially one owns the other but they aren't representative of the whole company or their stated goals, design or otherwise.
The article at the top pointed out that Apple began the sealed like a vault to keep you out of the innards trend and to this day keeps it up. Not that smartphones are easily pulled apart but usually batteries are replaceable and if you're tenacious you can pry off the inner cover.
A few years ago that kind of warranty was standard. But let's put it into perspective, if a screen breaks it costs less than 30 USD apparently to replace it. If the board blows I imagine it costs north of 50-100 USD. The odds of the board blowing is low due to the low-wattage nature of ARM, heat + poor construction = destroyed PCB. ARM keeps the heat down by comparison.
This once again had nothing to do with warranty costs. This had to do with the question of Apple is sealing their products like vaults without any added benefit and want you to take it in for service rather than repair it yourself. The warranty has nothing to do with it.
Who said that Apple wasn't losing to Android in the mobile market? I said that Apple is the largest smartphone and tablet manufacturer. It still means they're losing to the half-dozen or so Android handset makers. The tablet market is very immature and again I suspect that in half a decade those android tablet makers will have gnawed into Apple's lead even further probably driving it down to a plurality as a manufacturer.
Nobody was talking about OS upgrades, this whole thread is about the idea that self-repairs and upgrades are becoming impossible as Apple seals their devices tighter and tighter.
Twice the repair cost wasn't meant to be quoted it was a rough generalization.
False Dichotomy. Look it up. Realize that Apple is the largest manufacturer of smartphones and Tablets. Also I believe they're third for PCs overall. On top of that they offer a very specific product that is different from other commodity-like products such as android phones and Windows PCs. They have a very strong identity and pull on the market and their decision to try and prohibit upgrading and intentionally sealing their devices like vaults (without adding any benefit like water-proofing) is just another attempt by them to control citizens and enforce the "it just works" ideology even when it doesn't and the repair is twice the cost of the other brands.
Most of the valuation for seriousness is based on the concept of scaling value. Stealing food from somebody who desperately needs it will surely get you the maximum penalty allowed under the statute. That being said, If anything this is a case where the phone subsidized or otherwise should be based on replacement (without any potential insurance). Thus if I got a $200 iPhone or Android phone but replacing it unsubsidized would cost me $500-600 makes far more sense. In the criminal courts its usually based on replacement as well as civil courts simply because destruction of it means replacement.
(remember when the whole selling point of cable was commercial free TV?)
Technically cable TV was designed to provide TV service to those people who couldn't normally get it over the air. Later on "premium" channels like HBO showed up and were to be commercial free form of TV but for the most part since cable's inception there hasn't been a huge perception it should be commercial free, especially since most of the original content was developed for the free networks so they were all 23 minutes out of 30 long. 7 minute vignettes only go so far.
If anything I see this as a quaint patent that will never seriously see the light of day because people are flexible but an obvious nickel and dime move like this would drive people away. I'm already debating once the next generation of consoles comes out to simple torrent shows I want to watch, get an ESPN subscription for sports, and enjoy my big screen TV with Netflix & the handful of services I would use besides that.
1.) Spend more money on the more expensive solder technique. The proper names elude me but essentially stop using the cheap solder ball method that anybody worth a damn knows won't last and is meant for long-running/little-downtime designs (really great for servers, really bad for consoles).
OR
2.) Build a fan/Heatsink that can handle the heat.
There is a 3 and 4 but conceivably they involve redesigning the next gen CPU/GPU to require less power overall and would be into the tens if not hundreds of millions worth of work versus the first two being maybe 5-10 dollars more expensive per console. My guess is 2 since it would really add less than 5 dollars per unit.
If anything once a new console generation is announced the old one usually takes such a nose dive that a non-announcement announcement is practically a reinforcement of the current generation. 2013 sounds perfectly fine for a ramp-up to replace the Xbox 360 and do full-blown emulation within the hardware for backwards compatibility. I'm also thinking they're going to gauge the market against the Wii U. The 360 had a year lead that it basically never gave up to the PS3 thee Wii didn't compete with them on the same playing field. Now imagine the Wii U coming in at 300-350 doing everything the 360 does and the 720 needs some build up to surpass the Wii U. I think this is really Nintendo's game to lose at this point, barring the pun and cliche. The Wii U is going to be first to market and i it can start getting versions of Modern Warfare or the big FPS titles along side Mario it could win the next generational war....at least until cell phones take over (flame on and what not..)
No, see you're confusing exclusivity with quality. Ferraris through most of their existence have been truly awful cars. Good for tracks but not much else. Even in the fabled 60s/70s/80s a much cheaper Jaguar and Corvette could destroy them. Only in the 90s when advanced computers render their hand-hew designs obsolete did Ferrari really become a truly fast car. The same basically applies for almost all other 100+ price premium things. It's a game of exclusivity that makes them valuable. Coach bags aren't really that much better at carrying things or that much more beautiful (in all honesty in their attempt to become status symbols they've grown disturbingly ugly, but that's me). I can only think of a handful of companies that follow a quality justifies premium and almost all of them are watch makers and a fair portion of their cost is in labor because of the quality needed to make them.
Apple is a consumer electronics manufacturer that uses near-slave labor like all other consumer electronics manufacturers. They're verging on commodities because of their generic similarities. Apple insists on their price premium because of their class-based image and exclusivity pricing. They build out of metal which was what I was commending for the most part but that doesn't really add a huge cost onto the price, not the several hundreds of dollars of difference that they add.
This is why I avoid complimenting apple...their lovers come out and try and twist it into something deeper...
Apple will remain healthy for the foreseeable future and I agree they don't want or need 100% marketshare. I do believe though a great number of Apple fans were so proud to declare the marketshare when it was higher and now as it falls they rely on profitability which frankly unless you own Apple why would you want to bring it up? I own a Toyota Scion, doesn't mean I am proud when Toyota makes a profit, I could care less since I never see a dime of it and their R&D continues right along with out me. Apple's obnoxiously oversized war chest of cash actually proves they've largely been ripping off customers for the last decade...
I hate to sound like I hate Apple because I don't but when you argue profits as if you have a stake in the game and you don't it just comes across as incredibly stupid.
A.) Haterade addicts & Fanbois are incredibly incendiary terms and probably have no place in the discussion.
B.) Apple will inevitably fall to their relatively normal 30% market share if history tells us anything. Their PC marketshare hovers around 10% and will probably grow somewhat but not to 30% simply because of price.
C.) They're a brand that sells largely over-priced electronics. I won't lie, I really find apple designs endearing and well-crafted. They spend money on quality materials where others do not. But it doesn't justify a 100% premium over their competitors. It just so happens that in the tablet market they're leading the way but given the future and barring some radical development Apple will be a trendsetter but never a market leader. The iPhone opened the door but it's losing overall ground to Android just as it will inevitably to Android in Tablets as well. Why is the inevitable so offensive? Is it that big of a value judgment? It's sadly ironic in that Apple value judgments come from the "just works" and class-based aesthetic and the Android value judgment comes from the Price and power-based aesthetic. Neither really coincides in the same realm so even on the subjective level it is comparing apples to oranges.
and suppose you stopped being an AC so these sorts of schemes can stopped being brought up as an actual worry. This service would get sued so fast for pulling this their collective class-action heads would spin. A simple review of UPS documents along with inventory in the discovery phase of the lawsuit would ruin this and for what? A few thousand dollars in merchandise? Even if a couple employees did this after the first few items went missing their internal review would find out quickly. Businesses that operate on a return rental model always have this possibility of scam but never do it because it's so painfully obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never understood this argument they had about black bakgrounds. The backlight is always on and hence why we should all be using LED or the newly available translucent monitors that use ambient light. I think the myth is due to our perception of light & dark. We fail to understand black on a monitor is a lack of color and an absorption of all light but the backlight as stated operates independently of the display's image.
Can we acknowledge the government has effectively ZERO CONTROL over oil prices? They have abundant levers that may affect oil prices but have no control over them. As it stands taxes are around 10-20% of a gallon of gas at any given time. Speculation and world demand have driven gas prices up. To compare and contrast is just obtuse. When Bush was in office I wasn't letting myself or anybody I knew actually blame him for gas prices being high, I made a point of defending him as much as I hated to. He is responsible for far worse follies that are actually attributable to him. Thus can we refrain from a bad Fox News talking point? It really makes you sound bad.
You hit the nail on the head. I think it's much like comparing Lincoln to Buchanan. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
If you're going to get upset when somebody makes a valid comparison because the valid comparison makes your personal views look bad maybe you should stop and think about it? The argument here (and it is a fairly weak one) is that Pres. Obama somehow took much more credit than he should have and is somehow claiming to be personally responsible for Bin Laden's death. Now I fail to see this as it was a Fox News talking point shortly after the reality set in that he did something that the previous president couldn't manage to do whether reasonably possible or not. The major difference though is that Pres. Obama made a nice tasteful press conference and said the reign of terror was over. Pres. Bush flew onto a massive aircraft carrier in a flight suit and proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" on a large banner as if he personally had done the fighting in Iraq. Neither of them were active military participants in either war and from what little we know of each President's personal handling of the war it would seem that Pres. Obama is more strategically involved and diplomatically aware than the last president. Still the crux of the argument falls upon Pres. Obama being massively overconfident and insinuating his position within the military when he wasn't and Pres. Bush was doing the very thing this argument implies. It's very much an issue of projection. They're projecting all the worse qualities they've experienced over the previous 8 years under Pres. Bush onto Pres. Obama to attempt to create an unwarranted parallel. It's much like the "don't you wish he was back" featuring Pres. Bush's face bumper stickers. So quick to forget and try and turn his presidency into a rather good one when historically he led us into two unfunded wars, quadrupled the national debt because of said wars, and his tax cuts rewarded the wealthiest people in the US and somehow still allowed the economy to collapse. Now the same group wants to elect his slightly more elegant duplicate in Mitt Romney.
So, now that I have written a diatribe on the subject do we really need to keep going down this path? Conservatives distrust government yet their leaders are completely in bed with large corporations. Can we just accept this and move on? I've accepted their oxymoron lifestyle and figure the best answer is to simply outlast them as a generational issue.
The problem I see with this argument facing labor issues is that Google has next to no authority over the third party corporations that produce the handsets. I'm an outspoken supporter of fair trade and better labor practices. I'm frustrated that all of our electronics are produced in near-slave conditions but Apple as a direct manufacturer (sub-contracted or not) has a much greater hand in the dealings of Foxconn than Google ever did. I give you once the Motorola acquisition is complete they'll be as responsible but that won't be for atleast some time still.
Also, lets not lie about Apple "trying to improve things" since they shipped the last of their jobs overseas and make a profit of $575 on each iPhone sold. They could easily bring the entire production line home and pay excellent wages and still profit $200+ per phone. Apple has no interest in that so lets not get into that sort of "they're trying!" talk because it simply is not true.
If anything the media is run by a surprisingly small circle of individuals. Much as we picture the media as these monolithic creatures with vast resources most of those resources are NOT spent on reporting or research. Mainstream media treat technology like they treat science, each new product is an awesome advancement in our society. In the tech media environment it becomes a bit of a value judgment rule where most products are built with commodity parts and thus who puts those parts to the best use for the price tends to get the highest praise. Even now Windows has the largest installation base by such a long shot on the Desktop market that even the slight dent in it made news for Apple shows that it isn't about showing the reality but painting the narrative. Especially as the media becomes consumed by the Apple-classism products that "just work" or rather "just make me look like I can afford to not work" they're going to garner more random support articles as they win the value judgment battles.
They did...several years ago. Whoever is on Vista deserves it now.
Can I substantiate why Open Source can involve security risks? As old holes close new holes open. You don't explain how a lock works to a thief. This is once again /.'s mantra to solve everything.
When Linux gets a small army of paid employees to keep the OS working around the clock they can join Windows in that exclusive circle of OSes. It doesn't disprove my point as it only serves to reinforce it. YOU personally keep the system up to date and running. Other companies are uninterested or too small to care. They want a product that works and when it doesn't it gets fixed and sent out so quickly they hardly notice. Linux can do that but you need to be supported by the right distro and have good support staff in house.
Honestly in 1992 if they had built a $150 Million dollar Enterprise (even if it was 30 or so years prior to the current universe they were promoting) would have kept Star Trek active a great deal longer. Instead of DS9 & Voyager on their own private UPN they would have probably landed on CBS or NBC. The benefit of it existing would drive trekkies into a frenzy so that not only would it make a constant revenue stream available but it would essentially cement Star Trek as a permanent part of reality. As it stands unless they continue the current Star Trek continuum with the new Kirk when the baby boomer and Gen X generation get older and pass Star Trek will largely pass with them. Already shows like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners are starting to suffer that effect. I see it as both a great loss for Paramount and Trekkies but also for culture in general. With that giant ship constantly there we would have always had a nagging reminder of Star Trek in our minds, driving us into space with vigor.
That was a long post that I read with care and agree with you. I was more pointing out the simple fact that winding down an OS's life cycle is not some grand offense. Of course you run into the issue of planned obsolescence as an offense rather than an intentional function of the market. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a free OS that gets updated continuously by an army of hobbyists and a handful of IT companies that use it as their main system but as a consumer-level product OSX/Windows is successful because of the simplicity and support it gets through a streamlined process and for that benefit we as consumers (in this case...) are subject to having to re-purchase the OS to get the latest updates.
As far as I know on the use of OS'es Linux has pretty much become the choice of the third world because they cannot afford the steep pricing of Windows but in the first and second world Windows is dominant and it's only substantial losses has been to OSX in the last 2-3 years as people buy macs to match their iOS products. If anything the death of Vista was largely due to public perception of it's poor instability. We're still living in frontier times in terms of computer technology as we know it today. A good many of you were adults for the very cutting edge of computers as a home device but until Windows 95 showed up the computer was more novelty than useful for everyday use. Now we're only 5 major versions in and i'm being gracious by calling Vista a major version. That means in a little over 17 years we've updated our OS 5 times for an average of 3.4 year lifespan. Up until XP that average held true. I agree XP held on a great deal longer because it worked but also because processors sped up to support average internet surfing and thus XP wasn't painfully slow. It was as much the OS as the hardware. Vista was painfully bloated and slowed down the hardware to a crawl and failed because of that. Windows 7 runs faster on PCs i've seen from the XP-era. So arguably the progression isn't without cause.
I think the bottom line in this particular case is that Microsoft saw the issue in Vista and is trying to remove it from the market as painlessly as possible. The vast majority of Windows profit is from OEMs who sell it rather than upgrade path consumers. They even offered a relatively long period where if you had purchased a Vista PC you could get a free matching copy of Win 7 (Home Premium for Home Premium...so on and such forth). The need to profit in order to run their machine is a side-effect of our capitalist system but still Linux distros that are extremely popular update as fast/faster than Windows but lesser ones update slower. There are trade-offs on both sides of the argument.
and I'm rambling now...regardless, the shutdown cycle is because they failed with Vista not some giant money grab. XP is where the users are and it has been in shutdown cycle for the last year or more.
There needs to be a new Godwin's law for when people use the term "sheeple", like when a person uses the term "sheeple" it automatically ends the argument because that person is too stupid to acknowledge they themselves are sheeple in some respect.
I mean in all honesty who thinks they can hold down a full-time job that requires a college degree and write an entire OS then support that OS for almost every instance that requires it and push those updates as fast as you can. Microsoft is in business because their specific OS is widely adopted and hasn't been supplanted because they have commercial partners and they are more than just hobbyists. Open source is /.'s mantra and all but really, open source can't solve everything and brings its own set of problems to the table (i.e. security...etc). I know you're an AC trying to get a rise but what is deemed "support" here is literally updates sent to the OS through the update tool besides the over-the-phone support as the article seems to imply. The fact it is going into the shut-down cycle this soon proves how successful Win 7 was well as how big a failure Vista ended up being.
Oh I completely agree with you that our real wages have fallen (or as some call the inverse "purchasing power" which is a little more flexible as a concept). If anything I think your comment on psychological pressures is far more interesting. I wonder about the age of gaming increasing to the low-30s being part of that. Many more parents were established and giving their children games in the 80s/90s that went to college and became adults in the 2000s and have to pay for their own gaming habits. The dramatic increase in the number of AAA game releases each year has probably had a negative impact on them as well.
Course this is all subjective theory. It would be interesting research to do though.
You really hit the biggest point. The average price of a game at $50 remained so steady that inflation surpassed it. Now even at $60 it's still cheaper than NES/Atari games. On top of that of the $60 the game developers see about half that price or a touch over. Game Stop/Wal-Mart/Best Buy are taking at least $10-20 of that for simply stocking it. Another $10 goes to the manufacturer/shipping. There are a great deal of hands out there getting their share.
As for the actual article: it's crap. the Xbox 360's GPU is in line with the X1800 while the Wii U will be minimum a 4000-series radeon. The PS3 is no better with a 7800 Geforce architecture. Both are seriously 6+ years old. Even with a modest upgrade and a shorter life cycle the Wii U will be able to compete directly with the other two and will more often than not. The only problem I ever saw with the Wii was the limitation of the hardware that crippled the software side for AAA games. Now with that resolved if the price is kept down I see no reason not for it to succeed.
ah, stick it up your ass. You're playing a game of semantics and trying to turn insults around. Move it along, you know Apple has made it their point to seal all devices as best as they can that aren't actual computers and thus use commodity parts. If you're trying to pull a win out of your ass you mind as well pull your head out as well.
Yes yes...I'm the conspiracy theorist when the article is about that. Please, your frothing at the mouth defending Apple. Nobody is saying that their iMacs are sealed like vaults. The article was pointing out with the trend of Apple sealing batteries and everything else the days of upgradability or self-repair may be coming to a close if others follow suit.
Please remove yourself from this conservation because you're going to wreck yourself if you don't check yourself.
He pointed out that Apple was singled out and referenced Android Phone & Windows Phone as well. Macs4all was trying to draw Android & Windows phone into a comparison initially over the idea that they also do it for advert sigs and I simply pointed out there is a false dichotomy when you actually look at the point of talking about Apple as a manufacturer vs. Android and Windows as OS platforms. Apple and iOS are similar but not the same just as Google and Android are similar but not the same. Essentially one owns the other but they aren't representative of the whole company or their stated goals, design or otherwise.
The article at the top pointed out that Apple began the sealed like a vault to keep you out of the innards trend and to this day keeps it up. Not that smartphones are easily pulled apart but usually batteries are replaceable and if you're tenacious you can pry off the inner cover.
A few years ago that kind of warranty was standard. But let's put it into perspective, if a screen breaks it costs less than 30 USD apparently to replace it. If the board blows I imagine it costs north of 50-100 USD. The odds of the board blowing is low due to the low-wattage nature of ARM, heat + poor construction = destroyed PCB. ARM keeps the heat down by comparison.
This once again had nothing to do with warranty costs. This had to do with the question of Apple is sealing their products like vaults without any added benefit and want you to take it in for service rather than repair it yourself. The warranty has nothing to do with it.
Who said that Apple wasn't losing to Android in the mobile market? I said that Apple is the largest smartphone and tablet manufacturer. It still means they're losing to the half-dozen or so Android handset makers. The tablet market is very immature and again I suspect that in half a decade those android tablet makers will have gnawed into Apple's lead even further probably driving it down to a plurality as a manufacturer.
Nobody was talking about OS upgrades, this whole thread is about the idea that self-repairs and upgrades are becoming impossible as Apple seals their devices tighter and tighter.
Twice the repair cost wasn't meant to be quoted it was a rough generalization.
SO STOP MAKING IT A VALUE JUDGMENT...
False Dichotomy. Look it up. Realize that Apple is the largest manufacturer of smartphones and Tablets. Also I believe they're third for PCs overall. On top of that they offer a very specific product that is different from other commodity-like products such as android phones and Windows PCs. They have a very strong identity and pull on the market and their decision to try and prohibit upgrading and intentionally sealing their devices like vaults (without adding any benefit like water-proofing) is just another attempt by them to control citizens and enforce the "it just works" ideology even when it doesn't and the repair is twice the cost of the other brands.
Most of the valuation for seriousness is based on the concept of scaling value. Stealing food from somebody who desperately needs it will surely get you the maximum penalty allowed under the statute. That being said, If anything this is a case where the phone subsidized or otherwise should be based on replacement (without any potential insurance). Thus if I got a $200 iPhone or Android phone but replacing it unsubsidized would cost me $500-600 makes far more sense. In the criminal courts its usually based on replacement as well as civil courts simply because destruction of it means replacement.
(remember when the whole selling point of cable was commercial free TV?)
Technically cable TV was designed to provide TV service to those people who couldn't normally get it over the air. Later on "premium" channels like HBO showed up and were to be commercial free form of TV but for the most part since cable's inception there hasn't been a huge perception it should be commercial free, especially since most of the original content was developed for the free networks so they were all 23 minutes out of 30 long. 7 minute vignettes only go so far.
If anything I see this as a quaint patent that will never seriously see the light of day because people are flexible but an obvious nickel and dime move like this would drive people away. I'm already debating once the next generation of consoles comes out to simple torrent shows I want to watch, get an ESPN subscription for sports, and enjoy my big screen TV with Netflix & the handful of services I would use besides that.
Overheating is solved rather easily:
1.) Spend more money on the more expensive solder technique. The proper names elude me but essentially stop using the cheap solder ball method that anybody worth a damn knows won't last and is meant for long-running/little-downtime designs (really great for servers, really bad for consoles).
OR
2.) Build a fan/Heatsink that can handle the heat.
There is a 3 and 4 but conceivably they involve redesigning the next gen CPU/GPU to require less power overall and would be into the tens if not hundreds of millions worth of work versus the first two being maybe 5-10 dollars more expensive per console. My guess is 2 since it would really add less than 5 dollars per unit.
If anything once a new console generation is announced the old one usually takes such a nose dive that a non-announcement announcement is practically a reinforcement of the current generation. 2013 sounds perfectly fine for a ramp-up to replace the Xbox 360 and do full-blown emulation within the hardware for backwards compatibility. I'm also thinking they're going to gauge the market against the Wii U. The 360 had a year lead that it basically never gave up to the PS3 thee Wii didn't compete with them on the same playing field. Now imagine the Wii U coming in at 300-350 doing everything the 360 does and the 720 needs some build up to surpass the Wii U. I think this is really Nintendo's game to lose at this point, barring the pun and cliche. The Wii U is going to be first to market and i it can start getting versions of Modern Warfare or the big FPS titles along side Mario it could win the next generational war....at least until cell phones take over (flame on and what not..)
No, see you're confusing exclusivity with quality. Ferraris through most of their existence have been truly awful cars. Good for tracks but not much else. Even in the fabled 60s/70s/80s a much cheaper Jaguar and Corvette could destroy them. Only in the 90s when advanced computers render their hand-hew designs obsolete did Ferrari really become a truly fast car. The same basically applies for almost all other 100+ price premium things. It's a game of exclusivity that makes them valuable. Coach bags aren't really that much better at carrying things or that much more beautiful (in all honesty in their attempt to become status symbols they've grown disturbingly ugly, but that's me). I can only think of a handful of companies that follow a quality justifies premium and almost all of them are watch makers and a fair portion of their cost is in labor because of the quality needed to make them.
Apple is a consumer electronics manufacturer that uses near-slave labor like all other consumer electronics manufacturers. They're verging on commodities because of their generic similarities. Apple insists on their price premium because of their class-based image and exclusivity pricing. They build out of metal which was what I was commending for the most part but that doesn't really add a huge cost onto the price, not the several hundreds of dollars of difference that they add.
This is why I avoid complimenting apple...their lovers come out and try and twist it into something deeper...
Apple will remain healthy for the foreseeable future and I agree they don't want or need 100% marketshare. I do believe though a great number of Apple fans were so proud to declare the marketshare when it was higher and now as it falls they rely on profitability which frankly unless you own Apple why would you want to bring it up? I own a Toyota Scion, doesn't mean I am proud when Toyota makes a profit, I could care less since I never see a dime of it and their R&D continues right along with out me. Apple's obnoxiously oversized war chest of cash actually proves they've largely been ripping off customers for the last decade...
I hate to sound like I hate Apple because I don't but when you argue profits as if you have a stake in the game and you don't it just comes across as incredibly stupid.
A.) Haterade addicts & Fanbois are incredibly incendiary terms and probably have no place in the discussion.
B.) Apple will inevitably fall to their relatively normal 30% market share if history tells us anything. Their PC marketshare hovers around 10% and will probably grow somewhat but not to 30% simply because of price.
C.) They're a brand that sells largely over-priced electronics. I won't lie, I really find apple designs endearing and well-crafted. They spend money on quality materials where others do not. But it doesn't justify a 100% premium over their competitors. It just so happens that in the tablet market they're leading the way but given the future and barring some radical development Apple will be a trendsetter but never a market leader. The iPhone opened the door but it's losing overall ground to Android just as it will inevitably to Android in Tablets as well. Why is the inevitable so offensive? Is it that big of a value judgment? It's sadly ironic in that Apple value judgments come from the "just works" and class-based aesthetic and the Android value judgment comes from the Price and power-based aesthetic. Neither really coincides in the same realm so even on the subjective level it is comparing apples to oranges.
and suppose you stopped being an AC so these sorts of schemes can stopped being brought up as an actual worry. This service would get sued so fast for pulling this their collective class-action heads would spin. A simple review of UPS documents along with inventory in the discovery phase of the lawsuit would ruin this and for what? A few thousand dollars in merchandise? Even if a couple employees did this after the first few items went missing their internal review would find out quickly. Businesses that operate on a return rental model always have this possibility of scam but never do it because it's so painfully obvious.