The entire UI is monochromatic, shades of white and grey, with black and dark grey text. There is only four colors in my UI, red, yellow, and green buttons and blue icons.
I had always thought of the iPod (at least since 2001, maybe not any more today) to be in the top 2:)
In 2001 they had the following wins: Highest storage density, compared to flash or 2.5" HDD Fastest upload, compared to serial or USB Simplest interface, at least compared to the 11 button Nomads and 9 button Rios Easiest to manage, at least comparing iTunes to Explorer, Xing Encoder, and Winamp
Haha, well, if the iPod is "extremely bad design" then it's competitors, the Nomads, the Yepps, the X420s, etc, must be "extremely horrible design".
The iPods success has a lot to do with usability; insofar as usability is relative and the iPod was more usable than the competition.
You can believe if you want that marketing is the key to the iPods success, but if nothing else you would think an "extremely bad design" wouldn't last for five generations and three different models. I imagine good design and good usability has to account for longevity.
In the one case AoM isn't paying the RIAA members, they are paying ROMS In the other case AoM loses customers who STILL don't pay the RIAA members, but no longer financing AoM or ROMS
So it sounds like the "other" case is a net win for the RIAA.
It's funny because I always considered iTunes the solution and file management the problem. You think iTunes is the problem and file management the solution.
1) If your music is on an external drive, you can tell iTunes not to copy files. Drag the folder of music into iTunes and it will index and synch but not copy. Problem solved. 2) The player is designed for playback, not media management. iTunes is designed for media management. Your OS is designed for file management. Each has it's own space. 3) Your elderly friend, with iTunes, won't have to worry about files, folders, or tags. Using iTunes she need only insert CDs and have them autoripped, drag movies into iTunes and have them autosynched, and plug in an iPod and have it autouploaded. Nothing else. If she needs to find a file, do a search using the iTunes search, rather than looking through her hard drive, her download folder, her music folder, her external hard drive, or her desktop.
You really think so? Gen 1: iPod vs Creative Nomad, iPod uses 1.8" HDD Nomad uses 3.5" HDD Gen 2: iPod vs Creative Sleek, iPod uses 1.8" HDD and Nomad uses 2.5" HDD Gen 3: iPod mini vs Creative Zen micro, iPod uses 1" HDD and Zen uses 1" HDD (8 months later) Gen 4: iPod vs Creative Vision:M, iPod uses 80gb 1.8" HDD and Zen uses 60gb 1.8" HDD and is nearly twice as thick Gen 5: iPod shuffle vs Creative Muvo, iPod eschews screen for size Gen 6: iPod nano vs Creative Zen V, iPod uses flash and Zen uses flash (several months later) Gen 7: iPod shuffle vs Creative Muvo, iPod eschews USB hardware for size
Every generation of iPod has been smaller until several months later when a competitor steps up to the plate and copies them. Every generation of iPod has been competitively priced, and when competitors try to match prices they suffer quarterly losses (See Creative, iRiver, new Zune, etc)
Can you name another 30gb MP3 player as small as the iPod for significantly less than $249, Apple's price? Creative's Zen Vision:M costs the same and is bigger in volume.
Noise cancelation should work if the Zune could accurately determine the position of it's headphones with it's microphone, since it knows what the Zune is playing. Knowing that, it knows the distance of the headphones. With two microphones it would be able to triangulate the headphones in 3d space.
As for the volume level, it doesn't need to know the headphones if the built in microphone can hear/detect the music coming out of the headphones, limited by a maximum gain.
How about a better product? 1) Microsoft could have easily designed the Zune to be a better MP3 player; build in a microphone for active noise cancelation and automatic volume adjustment, and provided an API for games, applications, and synchronization, and accessories.
How about an easier to use product? 1) Microsoft could have easily had the Zune do wireless sync; bring it near your host computer and everything gets synched. No plugging necessary!
Apple CONTINUOUSLY creates incentives for people to upgrade and replace their iPods by releasing better iPods: 1) Better battery life 2) Smaller 3) More features 4) Cheaper
Marketing only goes as far as product quality; a poor product won't last more than one generation. Apple is on seven now.
You are surrounded by them daily, choked by their suffocating apathy. They are individual only in the individual ways that they acquiesce to other humans who exude the "master" pheromone. Ultimately, democracy collapses under the dead weight of their inborn complacency
Which is why the US is a constitutional republic and a representative democracy. In other words, we elect our masters and then we don't worry about anything unless our masters do something stupid.
Actually, no. If you know anything about Computer Science, you will recognize the iPod's file storage mechanism is a hash table in which all the songs are evenly distributed amongst a file tree; it reduces file seeks/searches. Then there is the other aspect, that the entire filesystem is stored in an index file to make searches and browsing of content instantaneous; instead of looking through the harddrive, the iPod merely looks through a file loaded into memory and when it needs to access the song uses the afore mentioned hash table to access the song.
Also if you didn't know, Apple just added in the latest revision of iTunes the ability to synch to multiple machines, and iTunes has existed for longer than the iPod. The very first versions of iTunes has (and still may, I don't see why they wouldn't) supported Rio, Diamond, and Creative MP3 players.
So in that respect all your assertions are off base.
A 1.6" external HDD, comparable to those found in an iPod, is $160 for 30gb, $240 for 60gb, and only $100 less than an iPod. That $100 isn't much when you consider there is a battery, video processing hardware, and a screen on top of the base HDD.
"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." -- Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation." -- General Douglas MacArthur
Liberty and freedom have already been recognized as requiring constant vigilance; why not security as well? Especially when you consider another famous quote: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)
Why is the system of eternal vigilance not the ideal one? Some more to keep you occupied: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke "There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." -- Edmund Burke
The problem of phishing is not new, it is basically a scam. You must always be aware of scammers, in stores, in life, and now in email. Certainly banks should do better, but that is the whole point of "eternal vigilance", and certainly we can do better, and that is also the point of "eternal vigilance."
There are a couple holes, however: 1) Any CD from Walmart, Best Buy, Target, or Amazon will import flawlessly on the iPod. 2) The iPod does not "lock out" competitor formats; it will quite willingly play anything imported into an iPod compatible format, such as wav, ale, aac, or mp3 3) Where is the antitrust violation then if you CAN play CDs, WMA (Apple's iTunes will quite happily transcode WMA into AAC for you), AAC (an industry standard), MP3 (another industry standard), and WAV (yet another industry standard)! Apple gives their users the ability to burn DRM-AAC to a CD and then ripped back into WMA if you want to play it on an iRiver. Don't other "competitor" formats allow the same luxury?
My examples, which you dismiss, is exactly the kind of behavior that Microsoft committed when they got busted: They threatened to raise the price of Windows on IBM for continuing to develop and produce OS/2 and they threatened to withhold Windows licenses from Compaq for attempting to bundle Netscape (rather than the default of IE) on their systems.
Apple has not threatened anyone with their iPod monopoly, either by withholding product or raising prices, for people who sell competing music players, operate competing music stores, or even competing OSes and computers since iTunes and iPods work on Windows!
Call it empathy, call it preparation, call it karma. One day you will be that idiot that got fooled by a flawless scam because you didn't help strengthen the system when you had the opportunity.
That, and every dollar the banks lose, ultimately if it isn't paid for by the scammed, it is paid for by EVERYONE ELSE, in the form of fees, insurance, taxes, and service charges.
So if you don't help stop the problem, you will pay for it in one way or another.
How has Apple violated/abused it's monopoly position in any manner to warrant the scrutiny of the Antitrust Chief?
Have they raised prices of iPods on Walmart for opening it's own music store? Have they taken a bigger cut from MTV for opening it's own online store? Do they charge more for their iPod dock because Creative makes their own MP3 player?
I think you need to argue that, in software, the UI is the product. Without a UI, or a bad UI, the product is useless.
It is, pardon the stupid analogy, like a car with a broken steering wheel. If the buttons, menus, toolbars, and UI renders 90% of the functionality of your software inaccessible, unusable, or difficult to use, you might as well save time and money and not develop those features.
But we'll know in 10 years what that really means, because software development gets easier (and thus development costs are cheaper) but the UI stays an intractable design problem.
You have failed to define the former. Is an open source company something that only sells products for which they have released the source code? So the minute Red Hat sells anything closed, such as a binary driver or app, they are no longer an open source company?
Define an "open source company", the general business model, and the opportunity for profit and growth. I think we have two different definitions.
My definition: A company that uses open source, contributes to open source projects, and releases internally developed projects as open source. Apple does all three of those things.
What is your definition, and by that definition what companies count?
You play in 30 mph winds, with a one pound ball, while running a marathon. The holes are placed a mile apart, so that 18 holes, roundtrip, is 36 miles.
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Sorry, MOST of the UI is monochromatic except those four colors.
Agreed, that is why I run Mac OS X.
The entire UI is monochromatic, shades of white and grey, with black and dark grey text. There is only four colors in my UI, red, yellow, and green buttons and blue icons.
And my terminal is blue too.
Now I'm curious, who IS in the top 50%?
:)
I had always thought of the iPod (at least since 2001, maybe not any more today) to be in the top 2
In 2001 they had the following wins:
Highest storage density, compared to flash or 2.5" HDD
Fastest upload, compared to serial or USB
Simplest interface, at least compared to the 11 button Nomads and 9 button Rios
Easiest to manage, at least comparing iTunes to Explorer, Xing Encoder, and Winamp
Haha, well, if the iPod is "extremely bad design" then it's competitors, the Nomads, the Yepps, the X420s, etc, must be "extremely horrible design".
The iPods success has a lot to do with usability; insofar as usability is relative and the iPod was more usable than the competition.
You can believe if you want that marketing is the key to the iPods success, but if nothing else you would think an "extremely bad design" wouldn't last for five generations and three different models. I imagine good design and good usability has to account for longevity.
In the one case AoM isn't paying the RIAA members, they are paying ROMS
In the other case AoM loses customers who STILL don't pay the RIAA members, but no longer financing AoM or ROMS
So it sounds like the "other" case is a net win for the RIAA.
It's funny because I always considered iTunes the solution and file management the problem. You think iTunes is the problem and file management the solution.
1) If your music is on an external drive, you can tell iTunes not to copy files. Drag the folder of music into iTunes and it will index and synch but not copy. Problem solved.
2) The player is designed for playback, not media management. iTunes is designed for media management. Your OS is designed for file management. Each has it's own space.
3) Your elderly friend, with iTunes, won't have to worry about files, folders, or tags. Using iTunes she need only insert CDs and have them autoripped, drag movies into iTunes and have them autosynched, and plug in an iPod and have it autouploaded. Nothing else. If she needs to find a file, do a search using the iTunes search, rather than looking through her hard drive, her download folder, her music folder, her external hard drive, or her desktop.
Instant DRM nullification.
Instant transfer of music to Zune.
Apple may prefer you stick to iTunes, but it doesn't force you.
Video content, on the other hand, hasn't been given the ability to transcode yet.
You really think so?
Gen 1: iPod vs Creative Nomad, iPod uses 1.8" HDD Nomad uses 3.5" HDD
Gen 2: iPod vs Creative Sleek, iPod uses 1.8" HDD and Nomad uses 2.5" HDD
Gen 3: iPod mini vs Creative Zen micro, iPod uses 1" HDD and Zen uses 1" HDD (8 months later)
Gen 4: iPod vs Creative Vision:M, iPod uses 80gb 1.8" HDD and Zen uses 60gb 1.8" HDD and is nearly twice as thick
Gen 5: iPod shuffle vs Creative Muvo, iPod eschews screen for size
Gen 6: iPod nano vs Creative Zen V, iPod uses flash and Zen uses flash (several months later)
Gen 7: iPod shuffle vs Creative Muvo, iPod eschews USB hardware for size
Every generation of iPod has been smaller until several months later when a competitor steps up to the plate and copies them.
Every generation of iPod has been competitively priced, and when competitors try to match prices they suffer quarterly losses (See Creative, iRiver, new Zune, etc)
Can you name another 30gb MP3 player as small as the iPod for significantly less than $249, Apple's price? Creative's Zen Vision:M costs the same and is bigger in volume.
All those are engineering problems.
Noise cancelation should work if the Zune could accurately determine the position of it's headphones with it's microphone, since it knows what the Zune is playing. Knowing that, it knows the distance of the headphones. With two microphones it would be able to triangulate the headphones in 3d space.
As for the volume level, it doesn't need to know the headphones if the built in microphone can hear/detect the music coming out of the headphones, limited by a maximum gain.
How about a better product?
1) Microsoft could have easily designed the Zune to be a better MP3 player; build in a microphone for active noise cancelation and automatic volume adjustment, and provided an API for games, applications, and synchronization, and accessories.
How about an easier to use product?
1) Microsoft could have easily had the Zune do wireless sync; bring it near your host computer and everything gets synched. No plugging necessary!
Apple CONTINUOUSLY creates incentives for people to upgrade and replace their iPods by releasing better iPods:
1) Better battery life
2) Smaller
3) More features
4) Cheaper
Marketing only goes as far as product quality; a poor product won't last more than one generation. Apple is on seven now.
Which is why the US is a constitutional republic and a representative democracy. In other words, we elect our masters and then we don't worry about anything unless our masters do something stupid.
I dunno, I've been doing that with Mac OS X since 2001, when the first iPod was released.
In other words, I could install both the OS or keep my user account on the iPod HDD. In comparison Knoppix has only been around since 2002, hasn't it?
Isn't it thoughtful of Apple to have figured that out first and given you the ability to burn your DRM media to CD in unprotected glory?
Actually, no. If you know anything about Computer Science, you will recognize the iPod's file storage mechanism is a hash table in which all the songs are evenly distributed amongst a file tree; it reduces file seeks/searches. Then there is the other aspect, that the entire filesystem is stored in an index file to make searches and browsing of content instantaneous; instead of looking through the harddrive, the iPod merely looks through a file loaded into memory and when it needs to access the song uses the afore mentioned hash table to access the song.
Also if you didn't know, Apple just added in the latest revision of iTunes the ability to synch to multiple machines, and iTunes has existed for longer than the iPod. The very first versions of iTunes has (and still may, I don't see why they wouldn't) supported Rio, Diamond, and Creative MP3 players.
So in that respect all your assertions are off base.
$50? Where do you find that?
A 1.6" external HDD, comparable to those found in an iPod, is $160 for 30gb, $240 for 60gb, and only $100 less than an iPod. That $100 isn't much when you consider there is a battery, video processing hardware, and a screen on top of the base HDD.
Hehe, if I want to find something on wiki, I'll use Google:
'mazda wiki'
"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." -- Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation." -- General Douglas MacArthur
Liberty and freedom have already been recognized as requiring constant vigilance; why not security as well? Especially when you consider another famous quote:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)
Why is the system of eternal vigilance not the ideal one? Some more to keep you occupied:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke
"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." -- Edmund Burke
The problem of phishing is not new, it is basically a scam. You must always be aware of scammers, in stores, in life, and now in email. Certainly banks should do better, but that is the whole point of "eternal vigilance", and certainly we can do better, and that is also the point of "eternal vigilance."
There are a couple holes, however:
1) Any CD from Walmart, Best Buy, Target, or Amazon will import flawlessly on the iPod.
2) The iPod does not "lock out" competitor formats; it will quite willingly play anything imported into an iPod compatible format, such as wav, ale, aac, or mp3
3) Where is the antitrust violation then if you CAN play CDs, WMA (Apple's iTunes will quite happily transcode WMA into AAC for you), AAC (an industry standard), MP3 (another industry standard), and WAV (yet another industry standard)! Apple gives their users the ability to burn DRM-AAC to a CD and then ripped back into WMA if you want to play it on an iRiver. Don't other "competitor" formats allow the same luxury?
My examples, which you dismiss, is exactly the kind of behavior that Microsoft committed when they got busted: They threatened to raise the price of Windows on IBM for continuing to develop and produce OS/2 and they threatened to withhold Windows licenses from Compaq for attempting to bundle Netscape (rather than the default of IE) on their systems.
Apple has not threatened anyone with their iPod monopoly, either by withholding product or raising prices, for people who sell competing music players, operate competing music stores, or even competing OSes and computers since iTunes and iPods work on Windows!
Call it empathy, call it preparation, call it karma. One day you will be that idiot that got fooled by a flawless scam because you didn't help strengthen the system when you had the opportunity.
That, and every dollar the banks lose, ultimately if it isn't paid for by the scammed, it is paid for by EVERYONE ELSE, in the form of fees, insurance, taxes, and service charges.
So if you don't help stop the problem, you will pay for it in one way or another.
How has Apple violated/abused it's monopoly position in any manner to warrant the scrutiny of the Antitrust Chief?
Have they raised prices of iPods on Walmart for opening it's own music store?
Have they taken a bigger cut from MTV for opening it's own online store?
Do they charge more for their iPod dock because Creative makes their own MP3 player?
Which is why I don't run Windows :D
I think you need to argue that, in software, the UI is the product. Without a UI, or a bad UI, the product is useless.
It is, pardon the stupid analogy, like a car with a broken steering wheel. If the buttons, menus, toolbars, and UI renders 90% of the functionality of your software inaccessible, unusable, or difficult to use, you might as well save time and money and not develop those features.
But we'll know in 10 years what that really means, because software development gets easier (and thus development costs are cheaper) but the UI stays an intractable design problem.
You have failed to define the former. Is an open source company something that only sells products for which they have released the source code? So the minute Red Hat sells anything closed, such as a binary driver or app, they are no longer an open source company?
Define an "open source company", the general business model, and the opportunity for profit and growth. I think we have two different definitions.
My definition: A company that uses open source, contributes to open source projects, and releases internally developed projects as open source. Apple does all three of those things.
What is your definition, and by that definition what companies count?
You play in 30 mph winds, with a one pound ball, while running a marathon. The holes are placed a mile apart, so that 18 holes, roundtrip, is 36 miles.