I always wonder why Creative doesn't ensure all it's players play AAC files; because as more and more people buy iPods, more and more music will be AAC encoded. I can't believe that everyone knows to go into the preferences and change the encoding format for their music from AAC into MP3.
It's becoming the de facto next gen audio format, and it's a surprise more people don't adopt it out of Apple's de facto hegemony.
Someone will figure out how to break Apple's hegemony; it may even be Apple itself, in which case everyone else is in trouble.
I thought the 1984 commercial was about how the Mac was going to change the world of computers; if there's an analogy today, it's how the iTMS is going to shake up music, TV, and video, or how the iPod has transformed music from being about albums and CDs and organization to instant and constant immediate access to music. Every time Apple releases one of it's iPods, it DOES change the world:
iPod, 2001, made music portable: The contemporary Nomad Jukebox was the size of a Mac mini and had USB1 iTunes music store, 2003, music is no longer chained to albums OR publishers: Small independents can now make money iPod mini, 2004, made music MORE portable: The contemporary iPod was the size of a pack of cigarettes, while the mini was the size of cigarette lighter iPod photo, 2004, try expanding the universe to include pictures; did not really take off iPod shuffle, 2005, made music even MORE portable: If the mini was a cigarette lighter, the shuffle was a pack of gum iPod nano, 2005, made music even MORE portable: Now the size of 6 credit cards, the nano is the smallest MP3 player of it's capacity iPod video and iTunes TV store, 2005, TV is made accessible without commercials: What will TV look like in 10 years?
Music used to be about 300 CD jukeboxes and albums with 30 CDs under the front seat of your car. Now music is about little iPods with 1000 CDs and an iPod in the glove compartment of your car. Any CD you've ever listened to is accessible in under 10 seconds. Any track, any artist, any album, any composer, available at your fingertips.
Yes, you would. Just as an example, imagine you have 400 songs by Jamiroquoi; his name has a Q in it, so he gets selected automatically. He's got some stupid intro clips of 1:30 seconds in which he talks, so by selecting over 2 you remove them. For whatever reason you also have a long 15 minute narrative by Quentin Tarintino, so he gets selected out. You don't want to listen to his crappy songs, so 15 of his 2 star rated songs and 20 of his three star rated songs get selected out. You don't want to listen to the same songs over and over again, so if you've played it in the last two seeks, you kick them out; you also want to kick out songs you listen to too many times, so his three songs you've played 40 times also get kicked out. Perhaps you have a bunch of poorly encoded songs too, so the stupid MP3s ripped at 64kbps are also kicked out, and finally you don't care about his first two Albums from 2003 and 2002, leaving only 83 songs left in this playlist.
You're right, it is mostly a social disease, but can be transmitted mother to child, blood donor to blood donor, organ transplant to organ recipient. Working on a cure isn't pointless, as it does advance knowledge and science, but in terms of preventing an epidemic, all the tools already exist, until it mutates.
Nothing is an evolutionary dead end unless it reduces the chance of survival or reproduction; in which case, I don't think monogamy is a dead end as: 1) Monogamous couples have kids 2) Monogamous couples don't die of monogamy
It still doesn't invalidate the rest of my comment that AIDS is a predominantly social disease; even in areas with 30% infection, the changing of social norms would make the remaining 70% of the population effectively immune:
1) Curtail sexual promiscuity 2) Practice protected sex 3) Encourage long term monogamy
All three of those things will render AIDS a harmless disease for 99% of the uninfected population.
A cure is necessary, of course, for the survival of the remaining infected population.
Well, until HIV becomes an airborne virus, not catching it in the first place is a pretty good way for 99% of the population to survive the epidemic...
AIDS so far is a social disease, which means certain behaviors minimize risk and certain behaviors maximize risk; unlike, say, the flu, which is both airborne, transmitted by contact, and through animals.
What's your point with the question, "All I have ever known is that to download music to your iPod or purchase music for your iPod you had to use iTunes - no execptions. Even books bought through audible.com needs iTunes to dowload the books to the iPod last time I looked"
Is it Apple's problem then that no one else writes programs to load music onto an iPod? How about Yamipod? I mean, what else are they going to do? Rely on Microsoft to write a program to upload music to their MP3 player? Does it bother you then that Sony uses SonicStage, Dell uses MusicMatch, and Creative uses Creative Media Source?
What's the problem with iTunes? Because it's free? Because it's crappy? Does that mean you don't use IE, either? Apple bought iTunes when it was called SoundJam, then released it as iTunes; and when it was first released, it was compatible with Rio, Creative, and Sony MP3 players; it was a generic MP3 jukebox written for Mac users because no one else would provide a decent one (sound familiar? Developers tend to forget about the Mac, so Apple usually takes it upon themselves to provide decent programs to their user base). Even as far back as last year, iTunes was compatible with OTHER mp3 players. I'm not sure if they still are, but I don't see why Apple would remove that functionality.
So why do we have to use iTunes? Because no one else (Microsoft, Creative, Sony, Dell, etc) is willing to write iPod compatible software. Only third parties who don't make MP3 players do.
So maybe I'll try again. You're asking, "Do I have to use iTunes to use an iPod?"
The answer is, "No you don't have to use iTunes to use an iPod". There are even WinAMP plugins for the iPod and people have also written tools to allow Windows Media Player to synch with the iPod. Why are you blaming Apple for the lack of iPod support from Microsoft and others? The iPod doesn't use secret sauce: All it does is create a database of all the songs to enable quick ID3 tag browsing without spinning up the harddrive, and it stores all the songs in a hash-table on the iPod to maximize efficiency and minimize tree depth.
Tell me, who has Apple told, "You may only bundle iTunes if it is the only media player you bundle?"
HP sold iPods, bundled iTunes, and STILL bundled Windows Media Player. When Apple first sold iPods to PC users, they bundled MusicMatch. When Apple first sold iPods to PC users, they sold them through Dell.
So can you name anyone that Apple restricted iPod or iTunes distribution bundles? Because Dell certainly never bundled iTunes, and HP never stopped bundling MusicMatch.
Why do you think we've overpaid for iPods? Just because there are cheaper MP3 players? How about the fact that, for two quarters straight, Creative hasn't made money off it's MP3 players? Are they charging too little? Or how about the fact that there are MP3 players that cost more?
It's not because there are no other players that support FairPlay that make or break the iPod, btw. Over 500 million songs sold and something like 20 million iPods. Or 25 songs per iPod. To put it bluntly, the iTMS isn't really part of the equation (yet). The dominant format of choice is MP3 and AAC, and not Fairplay.
Both of which are actually open standards, both belonging to the MPEG group.
So why is it that the champion of AAC is Apple, while everyone else has chosen the 'closed' WMA?
And as for competition with Apple on hardware, there is plenty. Most of it sucks. Is that Apple's fault? Has Apple done anything to prevent Creative or Sony from doing any of 4 things to make competitive music players? 1) Better design (Sony's is prettier, but Creative's isn't) 2) Better software (iTunes wipes SonicStage or whatever Creative uses. We know about Apple's iTunes because it's free. Where can I download and use Creative Lab's software to organize my music?) 3) Better ad campaigns (Apple's more or less saturating the market. Sony can definitely match them. How come they aren't?) 4) Better price (Sony and Creative are more expensive. The 20gb Zen Sleek is $249 from Amazon, the 30gb iPod is $299 from Apple; cheaper per gb, plus you get color, pictures, and video from Apple. You get FM from Creative)
Are you kidding? How do you think we upload songs onto the iPod except by using Firewire (and now USB2) at 10-12mb/s? I clocked my original iPod to 16mb/s peak in short bursts.
Really? How many of those music stores gave away free music jukeboxes to organize your music? How many of them sold music the same way your music was organized, making finding music as easy as finding songs in your own library?
When I saw the iTMS for the first time it seemed brilliant? Who else has done this before?
I mean, at the time iTunes was outstanding; database organization, live search, smart playlists, etc. Now everyone does it, but which online music store was so well thought out in 2003?
I think it was that Apple, who introed one of the first PDAs, the Newton, realized where PDAs would end up first, and thus decided on the iPod.
Look at the iPods and don't tell me they aren't computers! 32mb ram, dual core 90MHz ARM CPU, Firewire, 5gb 4200rpm HD, 160x128 LCD in October of 2001 for $499. 4.02", 2.43", and 0.78"
Handspring in comparison released in September the Handspring Neo; 33MHz Dragonball CPU, 8mb ram, USB, grayscale 160x160 LCD, and the expansion slot for $199. 4.8", 3.0", 0.7"
Of course the iPod cost more, but you get 6x the CPU, 20x the transfer speed, 500x the storage, and probably half as small in volume... The writing was on the wall. Palm is 4 years too late, now, with the LifeDrive! I wish the LifeDrive the best of luck... they should have released it two years ago!
If you have room for 10,000 files, but you have 30,000 files, you'll actually go through, folder by folder, song by song, to move music onto your player? Or will you also manually drag 20,000 files into 40 different playlists, and then drag those playlists onto your player?
Myself I just let my media player upload the highest rated songs (about half my music) on my 5 favorite playlists automatically and randomly, so every couple weeks it rotates out the songs I haven't heard for songs I have; additionally I tell the media player not to upload songs played more than 15 times.
iPod only displays at 320x240, but it's fully capable of playing at 480x320 (and who knows with firmware updates if it'll go higher? We certainly saw old 1g iPods gain the ability to play AAC and ALE!)
The video iPod is slimmer than a regular iPod color; the regular iPod color is smaller than comparable multigigabyte Archos. Ergo the video iPod is smaller and less bulky than a similarly functional Archos.
Besides which, I bet 90% of the people who buy the new iPod buy it for two reasons: 1) Music 2) It's black
You miss my point (and in doing so make some stupid statements)
I said you didn't have a point; all you said was:
as much as you guys hate microsoft, they are going to be driving higher performance graphic cards with the release of Vista.
My point was not that your view was wrong, or that my view was right; my point was that your statement was incomplete.
I never said anything about OS X having any impact on the sales of video cards; when I said, "I'm willing to bet that the release of OS X on Intel based Macs will push higher performance graphics cards too" I literally meant that Intel based Macs will ask more of video cards than OS X on PowerPC already does; push, physically, to the limit.
You used the word "drive", without actually giving any object that Vista would drive! Sales, performance, prevalence, whatever.
So 1) My statement had nothing to do with "Impact on sales of video cards", so your response is irrelevant 2) My statement had nothing to do with OS X driving down the costs of video cards, so your response is irrelevant 3) My statement had nothing to do with volume, so your response is irrelevant 4) My statement had nothing to do with "MACTEL" taking out windows, so your response is irrelevant
Your statement, "My point was that we are going to get more power for less money because Vista is being released" makes sense. When something like Vista is released and requires so many resources, all the manufacturers will be competing to produce the solution that gets sold in all the new systems, and that kind of competition is good; that kind of competition reduces prices and increases performance simultaneously.
I never criticized Vista (though you in response have denigrated OS X, bad manners on your part). I think Vista will be a fine product when it is released. I can't wait until the computers at work finally catch up to my computers at home (OS X at home, XP at work). When Microsoft finally catches up to Apple, everyone wins.
So what? What does it mean that they are going to be driving higher performance graphic cards with the release of Vista? It's still a year away, so the point is moot until something actually happens.
I'm willing to bet that the release of OS X on Intel based Macs will push higher performance graphics cards too; but still, what is the point of stating something like that? Is there any point at all?
There is a balance between easy to use and easy to remember.
40 buttons is pushing the hard to use because of too much complexity envelope 5 buttons is pushing the hard to use because of too much complexity envelope
Put it another way; what if every single word in the US language had it's own key on the keyboard: That would be akin to the solution of every function getting a single button!
So you want to overload similar keys and keep a set of state buttons; my example was way too strict. You'd probably have a 'mode' button with 4 different modes for easy cycling (volume, channel, settings, input).
The other thing needed is that the UI must be smart. Instead of 'channel 13' you'd have the display say 'ABC Network' or 'Disney Network' or 'Oxygen' or whatever. Don't forget this is how the iPod works; you have a scroll wheel that lets you scroll through your list quickly. There is no information with channel numbers, and there is no reason you shouldn't have visible meta-data.
Otherwise your argument would also hold for MP3 players: Instead of playlists and albums and artists, just map all the albums to numbers 0-99, and then all the artists, their songs, the genres, etc.
Volume: Remap to up/down Power: Remap to menu Teletext: Remap to menu Settings: Remap to menu Up/down: Present Channel Up/down: Remap to up/down Switch between two channels: Remap to left/right Input-selection: Remap to menu PIP on/off: Remap to menu Mute: Remap to menu
Why does this work? Because a TV is fundamentally a display device. There is no need to have the UI on the remote; instead you can hit 'menu' and select from Settings, Mute, PIP, Input, Teletext, and Power. Additionally you would use the enter button to toggle between volume and channel.
Of course it remains to be seen if Apple implements a TV tuner in a future release:)
The correlation; both TVs and automobiles are mature markets. I'm predicting when the MP3 market becomes a mature market. The induction is if luxury (TV) and necessity (cars) mature to 3/4 per capita, then so will MP3 players.
Oh, and your post brings up an EXCELLENT corollary; commuting (by car or by train) becomes more bearable with an mp3 player such as an iPod:)
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I always wonder why Creative doesn't ensure all it's players play AAC files; because as more and more people buy iPods, more and more music will be AAC encoded. I can't believe that everyone knows to go into the preferences and change the encoding format for their music from AAC into MP3.
It's becoming the de facto next gen audio format, and it's a surprise more people don't adopt it out of Apple's de facto hegemony.
Someone will figure out how to break Apple's hegemony; it may even be Apple itself, in which case everyone else is in trouble.
Try dragging a file from the Explorer to a minimized application, like a Word document or something.
You can't, because Windows has to first restore it, and then you have to drag the file to the newly restored application window.
Can you drag links from a webpage to a browser window?
I thought the 1984 commercial was about how the Mac was going to change the world of computers; if there's an analogy today, it's how the iTMS is going to shake up music, TV, and video, or how the iPod has transformed music from being about albums and CDs and organization to instant and constant immediate access to music. Every time Apple releases one of it's iPods, it DOES change the world:
iPod, 2001, made music portable: The contemporary Nomad Jukebox was the size of a Mac mini and had USB1
iTunes music store, 2003, music is no longer chained to albums OR publishers: Small independents can now make money
iPod mini, 2004, made music MORE portable: The contemporary iPod was the size of a pack of cigarettes, while the mini was the size of cigarette lighter
iPod photo, 2004, try expanding the universe to include pictures; did not really take off
iPod shuffle, 2005, made music even MORE portable: If the mini was a cigarette lighter, the shuffle was a pack of gum
iPod nano, 2005, made music even MORE portable: Now the size of 6 credit cards, the nano is the smallest MP3 player of it's capacity
iPod video and iTunes TV store, 2005, TV is made accessible without commercials: What will TV look like in 10 years?
Music used to be about 300 CD jukeboxes and albums with 30 CDs under the front seat of your car. Now music is about little iPods with 1000 CDs and an iPod in the glove compartment of your car. Any CD you've ever listened to is accessible in under 10 seconds. Any track, any artist, any album, any composer, available at your fingertips.
Yes, you would. Just as an example, imagine you have 400 songs by Jamiroquoi; his name has a Q in it, so he gets selected automatically. He's got some stupid intro clips of 1:30 seconds in which he talks, so by selecting over 2 you remove them. For whatever reason you also have a long 15 minute narrative by Quentin Tarintino, so he gets selected out. You don't want to listen to his crappy songs, so 15 of his 2 star rated songs and 20 of his three star rated songs get selected out. You don't want to listen to the same songs over and over again, so if you've played it in the last two seeks, you kick them out; you also want to kick out songs you listen to too many times, so his three songs you've played 40 times also get kicked out. Perhaps you have a bunch of poorly encoded songs too, so the stupid MP3s ripped at 64kbps are also kicked out, and finally you don't care about his first two Albums from 2003 and 2002, leaving only 83 songs left in this playlist.
It replaces the 100% of cars using fossil fuels with 100% of cars using electricity.
If a plant produces less pollution than the equivalent number of powered cars, that's a net win.
I'm searching for a mattress right now, and I enter the terms "pillowtop", "eurotop", etc. I want to learn what those things are.
Google returns both search and ad links. The ad links are legitimately useful, especially if I plan on ordering online.
I mean, if I'm searching for a mattress, wouldn't I *want* ads?
I like that Google can provide both.
You're right, it is mostly a social disease, but can be transmitted mother to child, blood donor to blood donor, organ transplant to organ recipient. Working on a cure isn't pointless, as it does advance knowledge and science, but in terms of preventing an epidemic, all the tools already exist, until it mutates.
Nothing is an evolutionary dead end unless it reduces the chance of survival or reproduction; in which case, I don't think monogamy is a dead end as:
1) Monogamous couples have kids
2) Monogamous couples don't die of monogamy
It still doesn't invalidate the rest of my comment that AIDS is a predominantly social disease; even in areas with 30% infection, the changing of social norms would make the remaining 70% of the population effectively immune:
1) Curtail sexual promiscuity
2) Practice protected sex
3) Encourage long term monogamy
All three of those things will render AIDS a harmless disease for 99% of the uninfected population.
A cure is necessary, of course, for the survival of the remaining infected population.
Well, until HIV becomes an airborne virus, not catching it in the first place is a pretty good way for 99% of the population to survive the epidemic...
AIDS so far is a social disease, which means certain behaviors minimize risk and certain behaviors maximize risk; unlike, say, the flu, which is both airborne, transmitted by contact, and through animals.
What's your point with the question, "All I have ever known is that to download music to your iPod or purchase music for your iPod you had to use iTunes - no execptions. Even books bought through audible.com needs iTunes to dowload the books to the iPod last time I looked"
Is it Apple's problem then that no one else writes programs to load music onto an iPod? How about Yamipod? I mean, what else are they going to do? Rely on Microsoft to write a program to upload music to their MP3 player? Does it bother you then that Sony uses SonicStage, Dell uses MusicMatch, and Creative uses Creative Media Source?
What's the problem with iTunes? Because it's free? Because it's crappy? Does that mean you don't use IE, either? Apple bought iTunes when it was called SoundJam, then released it as iTunes; and when it was first released, it was compatible with Rio, Creative, and Sony MP3 players; it was a generic MP3 jukebox written for Mac users because no one else would provide a decent one (sound familiar? Developers tend to forget about the Mac, so Apple usually takes it upon themselves to provide decent programs to their user base). Even as far back as last year, iTunes was compatible with OTHER mp3 players. I'm not sure if they still are, but I don't see why Apple would remove that functionality.
So why do we have to use iTunes? Because no one else (Microsoft, Creative, Sony, Dell, etc) is willing to write iPod compatible software. Only third parties who don't make MP3 players do.
So maybe I'll try again. You're asking, "Do I have to use iTunes to use an iPod?"
The answer is, "No you don't have to use iTunes to use an iPod". There are even WinAMP plugins for the iPod and people have also written tools to allow Windows Media Player to synch with the iPod. Why are you blaming Apple for the lack of iPod support from Microsoft and others? The iPod doesn't use secret sauce: All it does is create a database of all the songs to enable quick ID3 tag browsing without spinning up the harddrive, and it stores all the songs in a hash-table on the iPod to maximize efficiency and minimize tree depth.
More info on iTunes with other players.
Tell me, who has Apple told, "You may only bundle iTunes if it is the only media player you bundle?"
HP sold iPods, bundled iTunes, and STILL bundled Windows Media Player.
When Apple first sold iPods to PC users, they bundled MusicMatch.
When Apple first sold iPods to PC users, they sold them through Dell.
So can you name anyone that Apple restricted iPod or iTunes distribution bundles? Because Dell certainly never bundled iTunes, and HP never stopped bundling MusicMatch.
Why do you think we've overpaid for iPods? Just because there are cheaper MP3 players? How about the fact that, for two quarters straight, Creative hasn't made money off it's MP3 players? Are they charging too little? Or how about the fact that there are MP3 players that cost more?
It's not because there are no other players that support FairPlay that make or break the iPod, btw. Over 500 million songs sold and something like 20 million iPods. Or 25 songs per iPod. To put it bluntly, the iTMS isn't really part of the equation (yet). The dominant format of choice is MP3 and AAC, and not Fairplay.
Both of which are actually open standards, both belonging to the MPEG group.
So why is it that the champion of AAC is Apple, while everyone else has chosen the 'closed' WMA?
And as for competition with Apple on hardware, there is plenty. Most of it sucks. Is that Apple's fault? Has Apple done anything to prevent Creative or Sony from doing any of 4 things to make competitive music players?
1) Better design (Sony's is prettier, but Creative's isn't)
2) Better software (iTunes wipes SonicStage or whatever Creative uses. We know about Apple's iTunes because it's free. Where can I download and use Creative Lab's software to organize my music?)
3) Better ad campaigns (Apple's more or less saturating the market. Sony can definitely match them. How come they aren't?)
4) Better price (Sony and Creative are more expensive. The 20gb Zen Sleek is $249 from Amazon, the 30gb iPod is $299 from Apple; cheaper per gb, plus you get color, pictures, and video from Apple. You get FM from Creative)
Are you kidding? How do you think we upload songs onto the iPod except by using Firewire (and now USB2) at 10-12mb/s? I clocked my original iPod to 16mb/s peak in short bursts.
Really? How many of those music stores gave away free music jukeboxes to organize your music? How many of them sold music the same way your music was organized, making finding music as easy as finding songs in your own library?
When I saw the iTMS for the first time it seemed brilliant? Who else has done this before?
I mean, at the time iTunes was outstanding; database organization, live search, smart playlists, etc. Now everyone does it, but which online music store was so well thought out in 2003?
I think it was that Apple, who introed one of the first PDAs, the Newton, realized where PDAs would end up first, and thus decided on the iPod.
Look at the iPods and don't tell me they aren't computers! 32mb ram, dual core 90MHz ARM CPU, Firewire, 5gb 4200rpm HD, 160x128 LCD in October of 2001 for $499. 4.02", 2.43", and 0.78"
Handspring in comparison released in September the Handspring Neo; 33MHz Dragonball CPU, 8mb ram, USB, grayscale 160x160 LCD, and the expansion slot for $199. 4.8", 3.0", 0.7"
Of course the iPod cost more, but you get 6x the CPU, 20x the transfer speed, 500x the storage, and probably half as small in volume... The writing was on the wall. Palm is 4 years too late, now, with the LifeDrive! I wish the LifeDrive the best of luck... they should have released it two years ago!
If you have room for 10,000 files, but you have 30,000 files, you'll actually go through, folder by folder, song by song, to move music onto your player? Or will you also manually drag 20,000 files into 40 different playlists, and then drag those playlists onto your player?
Myself I just let my media player upload the highest rated songs (about half my music) on my 5 favorite playlists automatically and randomly, so every couple weeks it rotates out the songs I haven't heard for songs I have; additionally I tell the media player not to upload songs played more than 15 times.
iPod only displays at 320x240, but it's fully capable of playing at 480x320 (and who knows with firmware updates if it'll go higher? We certainly saw old 1g iPods gain the ability to play AAC and ALE!)
The video iPod is slimmer than a regular iPod color; the regular iPod color is smaller than comparable multigigabyte Archos. Ergo the video iPod is smaller and less bulky than a similarly functional Archos.
Besides which, I bet 90% of the people who buy the new iPod buy it for two reasons:
1) Music
2) It's black
It seems to be working so far; the secret is continually converting more people to your cause.
Given that 30 million iPods have been sold, and probably only 1/4 or less are to Mac users, it would seem Apple is doing a good job of converting.
I said you didn't have a point; all you said was:
My point was not that your view was wrong, or that my view was right; my point was that your statement was incomplete.
I never said anything about OS X having any impact on the sales of video cards; when I said, "I'm willing to bet that the release of OS X on Intel based Macs will push higher performance graphics cards too" I literally meant that Intel based Macs will ask more of video cards than OS X on PowerPC already does; push, physically, to the limit.
You used the word "drive", without actually giving any object that Vista would drive! Sales, performance, prevalence, whatever.
So 1) My statement had nothing to do with "Impact on sales of video cards", so your response is irrelevant
2) My statement had nothing to do with OS X driving down the costs of video cards, so your response is irrelevant
3) My statement had nothing to do with volume, so your response is irrelevant
4) My statement had nothing to do with "MACTEL" taking out windows, so your response is irrelevant
Your statement, "My point was that we are going to get more power for less money because Vista is being released" makes sense. When something like Vista is released and requires so many resources, all the manufacturers will be competing to produce the solution that gets sold in all the new systems, and that kind of competition is good; that kind of competition reduces prices and increases performance simultaneously.
I never criticized Vista (though you in response have denigrated OS X, bad manners on your part). I think Vista will be a fine product when it is released. I can't wait until the computers at work finally catch up to my computers at home (OS X at home, XP at work). When Microsoft finally catches up to Apple, everyone wins.
So what? What does it mean that they are going to be driving higher performance graphic cards with the release of Vista? It's still a year away, so the point is moot until something actually happens.
I'm willing to bet that the release of OS X on Intel based Macs will push higher performance graphics cards too; but still, what is the point of stating something like that? Is there any point at all?
There is a balance between easy to use and easy to remember.
40 buttons is pushing the hard to use because of too much complexity envelope
5 buttons is pushing the hard to use because of too much complexity envelope
Put it another way; what if every single word in the US language had it's own key on the keyboard: That would be akin to the solution of every function getting a single button!
So you want to overload similar keys and keep a set of state buttons; my example was way too strict. You'd probably have a 'mode' button with 4 different modes for easy cycling (volume, channel, settings, input).
The other thing needed is that the UI must be smart. Instead of 'channel 13' you'd have the display say 'ABC Network' or 'Disney Network' or 'Oxygen' or whatever. Don't forget this is how the iPod works; you have a scroll wheel that lets you scroll through your list quickly. There is no information with channel numbers, and there is no reason you shouldn't have visible meta-data.
Otherwise your argument would also hold for MP3 players: Instead of playlists and albums and artists, just map all the albums to numbers 0-99, and then all the artists, their songs, the genres, etc.
That doesn't work.
Volume: Remap to up/down
:)
Power: Remap to menu
Teletext: Remap to menu
Settings: Remap to menu
Up/down: Present
Channel Up/down: Remap to up/down
Switch between two channels: Remap to left/right
Input-selection: Remap to menu
PIP on/off: Remap to menu
Mute: Remap to menu
Why does this work? Because a TV is fundamentally a display device. There is no need to have the UI on the remote; instead you can hit 'menu' and select from Settings, Mute, PIP, Input, Teletext, and Power. Additionally you would use the enter button to toggle between volume and channel.
Of course it remains to be seen if Apple implements a TV tuner in a future release
My logic is both correlation and induction:
:)
Nearly 3 TVs per 4 people in the US.
The correlation; both TVs and automobiles are mature markets. I'm predicting when the MP3 market becomes a mature market. The induction is if luxury (TV) and necessity (cars) mature to 3/4 per capita, then so will MP3 players.
Oh, and your post brings up an EXCELLENT corollary; commuting (by car or by train) becomes more bearable with an mp3 player such as an iPod