I'm not sure why you think consoles only play games of one variety? I've played platformers (Kingdom Hearts), rpgs (Xenogears), sneakers (Metal Gear Solid 2), racers (Gran Turismo), dance (DDR), puzzle (Puzzle Fighter), and fighter (Soul Caliber) on a single console.
People always bitch about Macs as expensive PCs, where you pay anywhere from a 10% to a 50% markup over a similar PC. Well, a PC is a similarly overpriced console. I got my PS2 for $149, where a similarly equipped PC is 200% to 3000% more expensive.
Do you really get 3x to 100x the fun from a PC? Or do you just like paying more?
Diesel does not necessarily produce soot; any more than gasoline does at least. The problem is old poorly maintained busses. Modern technology does allow for soot-free busses. Think "Hybrid electric diesel busses".
There are over 72 million PS2s, as of last November, probably closer to 75 million or more now. All come with standard hardware, a controller, and DVD-ROM.
Sure, there were more PCs sold, but how many were gaming capable, and how many were intended for entertainment purposes?
So for all intents and purposes, if you want to play a bunch of Metal Gear games, buy a PS2 ($150) and MGS3 Subsistence (you get MGS3 + bonus games if I've read correctly) for $50.
At least the XBox will only be selectively backwards compatible (meaning even from the announcement you can expect that the XBox is less compatible than the PS)
Don't expect any miracles when you buy an XBox360 unless they announce full compatibility.
Stop being anthropomorphic. "Favors" can be used perfectly reasonably here. "Chance favors the prepared mind" does not mean chance has any goal.
The current situation favors evolution. In this case, "Evolution favors the diverse genepool". From a strictly biological viewpoint, a billion idiots with a 10% survival rate vs 10 super geniuses with the same 10% survival rate means the billion idiots have the advantage.
Doubly so when the 'super genius' genes also sprinkle the 10 billion idiots.
Also, take a look at the "Flynn effect" if you think the average IQ is dropping. What that means is that IQ's correlation with DNA is much lower than, say, height's correlation with DNA.
You misunderstand evolution if you think it's not working.
The current situation, where everyone survives, works in favor of evolution. It means when the next catastrophe occurs (whether it be killer allergies, poison canaries, pollution, parasitic ants, whatever), we will have a hundredfold more diverse genetic pool than if we were thinned out because less people survived.
To put it succinctly, we are currently in a phase where the geneline is being enriched.
I'm also not quite sure about the legality or morality of ripping music from a game ROM/disc. Yes, it is technically possible, but I'm not sure that grabbing them online is kosher.
Much in the same way that ripping music off CDs for your mp3 player is fine, but grabbing them online, even if you own the CD, becomes a copyright infringement because ownership of the game does not give you free and clear the ability to share the files with other people.
Regardless, I don't think of OSTs as a ripoff, and the iTMS has at least 3 non OST albums there; two Black Mages CDs and one orchestral CD, from my brief perusal.
Tell me how to 'trivially' grab the music for FFI, released on the original Famicom?
Now compare that effort with the $5.99 download from iTunes.
Tell me how to capture all the music, with tags and titles, from FFVII, vs the effort of grabbing it from iTunes for $24.99
I've bought my share of OSTs over the years because for a long time it wasn't trivial (lack of emulators, lack of rom rippers, etc) to grab music from cartridges or CDs. Even now I couldn't name how, though I'm sure Google would help.
Doesn't that imply that the music is worth approximately half the game's retail price?
Perhaps to you the music is worth less than that, but to me (and others who have purchased game music) the soundtrack is worth MORE than the game, once you've played the game.
Likewise if you're willing to go with dual 1.8GHz G5s (Apple has a sale section on their store site), you only need to shell out $1,699.
And a $100 case doesn't do the PowerMac case justice; it's akin to a $200 aluminum Lian case. $900 for the case, mobo, and CPUs alone, an additional $300 for basic ram, hard drive, and video card, brings you up to a bare $1200. The additional difference in price is not nearly as outrageous as a $2,500 system would be.
Store lectures Store conversations (for language) Audio flashcards (for any subject) Audio books (for stories) Performances (for actors and storytellers)
iTunes DRM: What iTunes DRM? None of the files I've encoded ever got DRMed, and all the files I've purchased through the iTMS played on all iPods.
Hoops: Um, it's a firewire device. Drag music on, drag music off.
You mean how to grab music out of the iPod library? They didn't make these hoops to be obtuse or difficult, extracting out of the library is 'difficult' because it makes it 'easy' for the iPod. Your music is sorted into 100 folders in the manner of a hash table, guaranteeing an average minimum and maximum seek time when you access any song. The songs themselves have no real human usable names because all the information (names, tags, artists, etc) are stored in a database file, guaranteeing nigh instantaneous song access because the database file is always loaded in memory.
Battery replacement: $99 through Apple (easy, if slow) or $29 diy (a little more complicated, but fast). You mean the fact that they don't use 'standard' alkaline batteries? They use special batteries to achieve their form factor and weight. They sacrificed long term maintainability for long term and immediate usability, and it seems to have worked because the average consumer has accepted it.
Audio quality: You mean there isn't enough bass? Granted, some players have more, but most are on par. Apple gets points for actually being slightly louder, all around, than most other players.
Jukebox: You mean you can select a playlist, an album, an artist, or a song with one hand? Because the usage you described, "play, next, back, and volume" sounds like the iPod shuffle. You also said, "It didn't reward laziness like the iPod does," and I think you're confused because you attribute to laziness what is actually good design. Your Jukebox makes it harder for you to use in two ways: You have to pay attention to how you put your music on the device, and you have to pay attention on how to use the device.
Don't you think that's silly? The point of the device is to listen to music, not to teach you how to organize your music or how to use the device.
iTunes solve those two issues quite simply: It organizes your music for you in automatic artist/album folders, if you want to browse the folders, and it maintains a database of all the information on your music so you access the music by any aspect, not merely filename or folder: Artist Playcount Type Album Composer Genre Comment etc
iTunes also does other things to improve your experience; you insert the CD, and it automatically rips (if you let it). You plug in your iPod, and it is automatically synched (if you let it).
All you have to worry about are three things: Inserting CDs into the computer (or buying them or dragging them into iTunes) Plugging in your iPod (since it not only synchs, but charges, through it's connection to the computer) Deciding what you want to listen to on your iPod
Anything else is a pointless exercise. Creative is lucky that Apple hasn't actually pushing as hard in the market as it could have. Apple decided to take a nice healthy profit, instead of slashing margins to totally own the market. As it is, Apple is pretty close to owning the market in the flash AND hard drive markets, and there is still things they can do to further marginalize Creative.
I don't disagree with you, the Apple of the time was pretty poorly run.
In 10 years, will we be remembering the current era as a time when "Microsoft should have focused on security and usability instead of producing the crap that they did. Windows XP was the worst OS on the market from the early 00s until [insert future OS successor]"
Reality stares you in the face every time you boot a computer and use a feature that Apple adopted that later became adopted by the rest of the industry.
See, your bias shows. I didn't use the word innovation, and never intended that. I didn't use the word attribution, and never intended that.
I even SAID that Apple doesn't necessarily deserve credit:
It's not necessarily the case that Apple can get 'credit', so much as Apple was first to 'get it right'. If not Apple, then someone else would have, it was just the fact that Apple was first that it matters. Examples include:
BeOS had their database functionality first, but they died. Xerox had their WiMP interface first, but they never released (licensed only to Apple of course!)
Networking wasn't new, but it was experimental and Apple made it both easy and integrated.
CGA counts as color, but Apple introduced 24 bit color to a consumer level device.
3d acceleration was done first by SGI, in $10k devices, then by VooDoo Graphics in $600 video cards, but no 'common' or 'commodity' OS has implemented until Apple did in 2001.
Perhaps you're bitter, but you have to also understand Apple HAS done things, just like Microsoft has, and SGI, and Linux, and all the other companies out there.
The biggest thing people seem to have issue with is Apple's iPod.
The iPod did three things that no other mp3 player did before: Density. 5gb in your pocket. Predecessors include Creative, with 20gb in a Mac mini sized device and the Rio with 64mb in a lighter sized device. Apple's was 5gb in a cigarette pack sized device. Usability. Apple's device could be used by one hand. Creative, with 13 buttons (maybe it was 11) could not. The use of iTunes and a database meant, also, you could access thousands of songs with only a thumb and a forefinger. Finally the adoption of Firewire, over USB1, meant you could fill the thing up in 5 minutes, instead of 5 hours. Style. Apple cared enough to make it look good. People don't like wearing ugly clothes, driving ugly cars, or wearing ugly watches, so why would they want an 'ugly' mp3 player?
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Or a PC is an EXPENSIVE console.
I'm not sure why you think consoles only play games of one variety? I've played platformers (Kingdom Hearts), rpgs (Xenogears), sneakers (Metal Gear Solid 2), racers (Gran Turismo), dance (DDR), puzzle (Puzzle Fighter), and fighter (Soul Caliber) on a single console.
People always bitch about Macs as expensive PCs, where you pay anywhere from a 10% to a 50% markup over a similar PC. Well, a PC is a similarly overpriced console. I got my PS2 for $149, where a similarly equipped PC is 200% to 3000% more expensive.
Do you really get 3x to 100x the fun from a PC? Or do you just like paying more?
I think you're mistaking causation.
Busses produce soot
Busses are diesel
Diesel does not necessarily produce soot; any more than gasoline does at least. The problem is old poorly maintained busses. Modern technology does allow for soot-free busses. Think "Hybrid electric diesel busses".
Of course.
There are over 72 million PS2s, as of last November, probably closer to 75 million or more now. All come with standard hardware, a controller, and DVD-ROM.
Sure, there were more PCs sold, but how many were gaming capable, and how many were intended for entertainment purposes?
So for all intents and purposes, if you want to play a bunch of Metal Gear games, buy a PS2 ($150) and MGS3 Subsistence (you get MGS3 + bonus games if I've read correctly) for $50.
Or you can get MGS1 for $10 and MGS2 for $15 now.
At least the XBox will only be selectively backwards compatible (meaning even from the announcement you can expect that the XBox is less compatible than the PS)
Don't expect any miracles when you buy an XBox360 unless they announce full compatibility.
Stop being anthropomorphic. "Favors" can be used perfectly reasonably here. "Chance favors the prepared mind" does not mean chance has any goal.
The current situation favors evolution. In this case, "Evolution favors the diverse genepool". From a strictly biological viewpoint, a billion idiots with a 10% survival rate vs 10 super geniuses with the same 10% survival rate means the billion idiots have the advantage.
Doubly so when the 'super genius' genes also sprinkle the 10 billion idiots.
Also, take a look at the "Flynn effect" if you think the average IQ is dropping. What that means is that IQ's correlation with DNA is much lower than, say, height's correlation with DNA.
You misunderstand evolution if you think it's not working.
The current situation, where everyone survives, works in favor of evolution. It means when the next catastrophe occurs (whether it be killer allergies, poison canaries, pollution, parasitic ants, whatever), we will have a hundredfold more diverse genetic pool than if we were thinned out because less people survived.
To put it succinctly, we are currently in a phase where the geneline is being enriched.
I'm also not quite sure about the legality or morality of ripping music from a game ROM/disc. Yes, it is technically possible, but I'm not sure that grabbing them online is kosher.
Much in the same way that ripping music off CDs for your mp3 player is fine, but grabbing them online, even if you own the CD, becomes a copyright infringement because ownership of the game does not give you free and clear the ability to share the files with other people.
Regardless, I don't think of OSTs as a ripoff, and the iTMS has at least 3 non OST albums there; two Black Mages CDs and one orchestral CD, from my brief perusal.
Ripping music from games wasn't always trivial.
Tell me how to 'trivially' grab the music for FFI, released on the original Famicom?
Now compare that effort with the $5.99 download from iTunes.
Tell me how to capture all the music, with tags and titles, from FFVII, vs the effort of grabbing it from iTunes for $24.99
I've bought my share of OSTs over the years because for a long time it wasn't trivial (lack of emulators, lack of rom rippers, etc) to grab music from cartridges or CDs. Even now I couldn't name how, though I'm sure Google would help.
Doesn't that imply that the music is worth approximately half the game's retail price?
Perhaps to you the music is worth less than that, but to me (and others who have purchased game music) the soundtrack is worth MORE than the game, once you've played the game.
1: So? How are any of your points relevant to the discussion?
2: If you want a rackmount case, Apple does sell a rackmount dual G5
3: You keep comparing 'build' to 'buy'. I suspect even if Apple did offer a quad CPU system, you wouldn't 'buy' because you 'build'.
Likewise if you're willing to go with dual 1.8GHz G5s (Apple has a sale section on their store site), you only need to shell out $1,699.
And a $100 case doesn't do the PowerMac case justice; it's akin to a $200 aluminum Lian case. $900 for the case, mobo, and CPUs alone, an additional $300 for basic ram, hard drive, and video card, brings you up to a bare $1200. The additional difference in price is not nearly as outrageous as a $2,500 system would be.
Why are you comparing a dual 2.3GHz G5 to a dual 1.8GHz Opteron? These architectures, at least compared to a P4, are far more similar than dissimilar.
How much is a dual 2.2GHz Opteron? Or a 2.4GHz Opteron?
Where can you find such a good deal on such an Opteron?
So the fact that NeXTStep releases an OS with a Dock in 1990 doesn't mean anything in your chronology?
The same Steve Jobs and NeXT that Apple 'acquired' in 1997 that becomes the core and basis of OS X in 2001?
The Taskbar was Windows, but the Dock is at least 15 years old now.
So if I use Mac OS X, is it okay for me to talk about Microsoft's code bloat?
There are people who do it way better!
You mean the fact that Macromedia sold Final Cut to Apple?
Well, what can you do with audio, in general?
Store lectures
Store conversations (for language)
Audio flashcards (for any subject)
Audio books (for stories)
Performances (for actors and storytellers)
"It all comes down to proper organization"
The point of Spotlight and desktop search, in general, is that the computer handles the proper organization.
Who would be more anal, perfect, and organized than a computer? Someone with OCD?
Haha, fair enough.
Do I have it right? Just because I read it on the internet doesn't make it automatically true. Did Apple license stuff from Xerox?
iTunes DRM: What iTunes DRM? None of the files I've encoded ever got DRMed, and all the files I've purchased through the iTMS played on all iPods.
Hoops: Um, it's a firewire device. Drag music on, drag music off.
You mean how to grab music out of the iPod library? They didn't make these hoops to be obtuse or difficult, extracting out of the library is 'difficult' because it makes it 'easy' for the iPod. Your music is sorted into 100 folders in the manner of a hash table, guaranteeing an average minimum and maximum seek time when you access any song. The songs themselves have no real human usable names because all the information (names, tags, artists, etc) are stored in a database file, guaranteeing nigh instantaneous song access because the database file is always loaded in memory.
Battery replacement: $99 through Apple (easy, if slow) or $29 diy (a little more complicated, but fast). You mean the fact that they don't use 'standard' alkaline batteries? They use special batteries to achieve their form factor and weight. They sacrificed long term maintainability for long term and immediate usability, and it seems to have worked because the average consumer has accepted it.
Audio quality: You mean there isn't enough bass? Granted, some players have more, but most are on par. Apple gets points for actually being slightly louder, all around, than most other players.
Jukebox: You mean you can select a playlist, an album, an artist, or a song with one hand? Because the usage you described, "play, next, back, and volume" sounds like the iPod shuffle. You also said, "It didn't reward laziness like the iPod does," and I think you're confused because you attribute to laziness what is actually good design. Your Jukebox makes it harder for you to use in two ways: You have to pay attention to how you put your music on the device, and you have to pay attention on how to use the device.
Don't you think that's silly? The point of the device is to listen to music, not to teach you how to organize your music or how to use the device.
iTunes solve those two issues quite simply: It organizes your music for you in automatic artist/album folders, if you want to browse the folders, and it maintains a database of all the information on your music so you access the music by any aspect, not merely filename or folder:
Artist
Playcount
Type
Album
Composer
Genre
Comment
etc
iTunes also does other things to improve your experience; you insert the CD, and it automatically rips (if you let it). You plug in your iPod, and it is automatically synched (if you let it).
All you have to worry about are three things:
Inserting CDs into the computer (or buying them or dragging them into iTunes)
Plugging in your iPod (since it not only synchs, but charges, through it's connection to the computer)
Deciding what you want to listen to on your iPod
Anything else is a pointless exercise. Creative is lucky that Apple hasn't actually pushing as hard in the market as it could have. Apple decided to take a nice healthy profit, instead of slashing margins to totally own the market. As it is, Apple is pretty close to owning the market in the flash AND hard drive markets, and there is still things they can do to further marginalize Creative.
Did I ever deny attribution or credit to PARC? I only suggested we owe credit to Apple.
What, for 5 years?
I don't disagree with you, the Apple of the time was pretty poorly run.
In 10 years, will we be remembering the current era as a time when "Microsoft should have focused on security and usability instead of producing the crap that they did. Windows XP was the worst OS on the market from the early 00s until [insert future OS successor]"
Haha, well, even better. I was barely 7 at the time.
You are right.
But I still expect MS PCs to eventually 'gain' this ability, even though it's already been out on Macs since 1991.
You don't have to BELIEVE me at all.
Reality stares you in the face every time you boot a computer and use a feature that Apple adopted that later became adopted by the rest of the industry.
I even SAID that Apple doesn't necessarily deserve credit:
BeOS had their database functionality first, but they died. Xerox had their WiMP interface first, but they never released (licensed only to Apple of course!)
Networking wasn't new, but it was experimental and Apple made it both easy and integrated.
CGA counts as color, but Apple introduced 24 bit color to a consumer level device.
3d acceleration was done first by SGI, in $10k devices, then by VooDoo Graphics in $600 video cards, but no 'common' or 'commodity' OS has implemented until Apple did in 2001.
Perhaps you're bitter, but you have to also understand Apple HAS done things, just like Microsoft has, and SGI, and Linux, and all the other companies out there.
The biggest thing people seem to have issue with is Apple's iPod.
The iPod did three things that no other mp3 player did before:
Density. 5gb in your pocket. Predecessors include Creative, with 20gb in a Mac mini sized device and the Rio with 64mb in a lighter sized device. Apple's was 5gb in a cigarette pack sized device.
Usability. Apple's device could be used by one hand. Creative, with 13 buttons (maybe it was 11) could not. The use of iTunes and a database meant, also, you could access thousands of songs with only a thumb and a forefinger. Finally the adoption of Firewire, over USB1, meant you could fill the thing up in 5 minutes, instead of 5 hours.
Style. Apple cared enough to make it look good. People don't like wearing ugly clothes, driving ugly cars, or wearing ugly watches, so why would they want an 'ugly' mp3 player?