Yes, but the idea is that Creative totally passed on the form factor from 1999 until 2004. Talk about stupid. Even AFTER the iPod was released in 2001, they still didn't look at the 1" drive until 2004.
The sad thing is that they DIDN'T monopolize the microdrive form factor.
IBM had been making them for at least three years already and no one had yet figured out what to do with them.
Re:I have an idea how Sony can save their own butt
on
Sony Admits MP3 Error
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· Score: 1
Or they could, you know, do what Apple did, and adopt the 'common format' Apple did it by openly embracing MP3.
They then added AAC support because it was better.
So Sony could, you know, adopt MP3 and AAC since those are the two prevalent formats.
Then if they REALLY want they could push ATRAC by releasing a music store in that format and making it an option in their encoding software, and undercut the other music stores at $0.50 a track and make ATRAC look really appetizing.
Well in 1999, the Apple iMac's 350MHz G3 was fanless.. So we're talking about a 10fold increase in MHz and probably a 3fold increase in compute efficiency for a 30x increase in performance, and all fanless.
It uses the same 'new' hard drives that everyone else does.
When it was first released, it was the FIRST to use the 1.8" Toshiba drives. Then the mini was the FIRST to use the 1" Hitachi microdrives. I wouldn't call the iPod dated. Bleeding edge is more like it.
And there are two features that other players haven't figured out yet: Music management and software quality.
For example, Apple's biggest erstwhile competitor, Creative, has it's PlayCenter software reviewed here. While the user is happy, there are three things that iTunes does that make the iPod a superior experience:
Smart playlist creation: The need to select artists, albums, songs, etc, is greatly reduced by the ability to create a playlist via database rules: Album is and Album is and Genre is and Genre is NOT and Artist is and Artist is and Song playcount is greater than and Song has not been played in and Song rating is greater than Playlist creation is trivial; you can create multiple playlists with only a few selections, instead of dragging and dropping.
The idea is that your music is in a database and not in a filesystem, even though on the back end there exists a filesystem to hold the music. How is that for 'dated technology'?
Then there is the 'transfer' process. On the iPod it will always transfer, until there is no more room. It has two synch modes; automatic and manual. Manual allows you to, if you so desire, drag and drop playlists and songs. Automatic synchs your playlists until your iPod is full. There is no mode during which a 'transfer' cannot occur unless the iPod is full.
Then there is the battery life. The user expects 12 hours, and Creative gave him 9 hours. Perhaps it was defective? But on my experiences with my two iPods, and my friends, we expected 10 hours and got 12 hours. How is that for exceeding user expectation?
The iPod IS the superior product, at least for the brief period of now, but that doesn't mean Creative or Sony can't catch up.
But I think the point is that iTunes is what makes (and not breaks) the iPod.
If Sony creates an iPod killer that has software that crashes, creates distorted or unplayable mp3s, corrupts mp3s on upload, and hangs the player if the wrong settings are chosen, how successful do you think it would be, even if:
It's interface is simpler: Think something like a scroll ring on the outside edge so that from one side it's a simple 'up/down' interface but from the front it's a full ring. Then place one button for 'play/pause/act' and one button for 'select/switch' and then place the display inside the ring.
Storage is bigger, size is smaller.
Price is lower.
Design is 'cooler'.
Wireless headphones.
Wireless sharing.
Wireless synching.
Even if it had all those things... Heck, even if Sony sells a rebranded iPod, but the software sucked, to the point that people couldn't and willingly wouldn't use it, how could Sony outsell the iPod? There would be no buzz, no word of mouth, because if the software sucks, the player sucks.
So do you at least concede we have no First Amendment rights here, as Apple is not a governmental body?
But to address your points: Apple has every right to TRY to stop you. It doesn't mean they have the guarantee of success, but if you're doing something that they don't like, they have as much right as anyone to stop you. They may get smacked for being frivolous or stupid, but it doesn't mean they don't have the right to TRY.
If Apple THINKS you did something illegal they can sue you. If Apple knows you did nothing illegal, they can still attempt to sue you, but then they'll just get kicked out.
I feel the law should be the LAST resort (well, second to last. Violence is the LAST resort) and that Apple should and could have handled this differently, but you aren't being very clever about this.
"Wah, Apple is being mean to us!" is about how intelligent your arguments come off as. There are plenty of intelligent reasons, but "First Amendment rights!" and "They don't have the right to bully us" aren't very bright at all.
Think of all the iBook and PowerBook owners out there with 1GHz machines.
Or PowerMac owners with 1.25GHz machines.
It's cheap. It's small. It's not underpowered.
It should do great folding complex proteins, modeling, and chess. The only drawback is the FSB, at 133MHz. As long as it's compute bound and not memory bound, the mini is pretty good.
You'll make your wife very happy, and I bet within a month you'll be very happy.
If you use Unix and Linux, you'll have no problems with OS X (It's based off a mix of Free and Net BSDs underneath) and if you use Windows you'll have no problems with OS X because everything you expect to work in Windows works the way it should on the Mac.
It's like that poor kid who asked for an iMac and his well meaning father went, "Oh pooh, I can build you a better system" and went out and founded Hip E. How embarrassing.
If the wife wants a cute Mac mini, and it's cheaper, smaller, and easier than building one, GET IT!
Firewire 400 has about 50mb/s throughput. Firewire 800 a theoretical 100mb/s throughput, realistically it's closer to 40mb/s and 80mb/s. Are you thinking of hooking up an XServe RAID to one of these things? You'd need two modern hard drives in a RAID 0 enclosure to 'need' Firewire 800.
It's bizarre talking about a $500 computing device alongside gigabit and RAID. The RAID setup alone costs more than the Mac mini, doesn't it?
Re:Building is more fun than working at Maccers
on
Mac mini Dissection
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· Score: 1
Actually, it really only takes about an hour to make an awesome dinner.
For example, enchiladas.
$9 at a restaurant. $18 for two people. $3 for drinks. $5 for appetizers, say chips with salsa. $26 for a nice dinner.
For an hour's work, $2 in beef, $2 in tortillas, $1 of sour cream, $1 in various spices (though a bottle itself costs $3), $1 in soda, $1 in chips, $1 in salsa... $9 for materials, and assume your wages are $10 an hour, you've spent $19 for a $26 meal.
Plus you get enough leftovers for lunch the next day. So really you've spent $19 for two meails, or about $52 worth.
I don't think, however, building a PC is comparable. You're not saving anything, really, because you aren't building your own media jukebox software, or your own OS, or your photo management software. If you really wrote those then I'd compare that to making a meal. You'd spend maybe a month writing software, but you'd get so much experience and value that it would be worth it.
But putting a PC together? That's the equivalent of making brownies from a box.
You talk as if iTunes is a liability, and I actually think it's an asset.
It makes music management simple. It's fast. It's easy.
I've never heard anyone rave about Creative's music jukebox management software, but I have heard people rave about Apple's iTunes. People can actually use it's features; every upgrade/version adds more functionality that people actually like: Rip with one button Streaming libraries to multiple computers Smart playlists Synch to the iPod with zero interaction Party playlist Automatically manage your library
These things make collecting CDs and music so easy that the iPod is a joy to use. Unless Creative has improved drastically (I keep hearing that it's a pain to use), I don't see how they can catch up. If people hate synching to their Muvos and Zens because the software sucks, people won't fall in love with their players either.
I think the real shame is that Microsoft won't be shipping Longhorn with smart folders since they're dropping major functionality in their WinFS component.
So maybe there won't even be an option of screaming, "Copycat!"
The market for used Macs may go kerblooey, but not because of their inability to retain value. A 3 year old Mac is very nearly as useful as a new Mac, and I think it will still be as true three years from now as it is today and three years ago. That 500MHz G4 of eBay will get depreciated because of the mini, but that's not going to happen to a 500MHz PowerBook or 500MHz iBook or a PowerMac or an iMac because they all fill different niches:
The mini can't replace an iBook for portability, or a PowerBook for versatility. The mini can't replace the PowerMac for expansion (4 ATA drives or 2 SATA drives, 2 CPUs, etc), or the iMac for it's display and simplicity.
In some situations, yes, someone will chose a mini over a PowerMac (I am in that kind of situation since I don't really need 4 ATA drives since I use Firewire enclosures), but I still expect to be able to sell my PowerMac for several hundred dollars to someone who does want to RAID 4 120GB IDE drives together for some reason.
A computer that 'keeps its value' is a lot like a car that doesn't lose 25% of it's value when you drive it off the lot.
The implication is that the product is somehow inherently better.
If you take a Toyota for $20k off the lot and sold it to your neighbor, you'd be able to get $18k out of it. Take a $20k Ford Focus and you'd be lucky to get $12k out of it.
So the thing about commodity PC market is not that prices keep going down: Performance keeps going up! So if you spend $2k on a computer today, and $2k on a computer next year, you get a computer roughly 110% better. Or upgrade the ram for $200. Then upgrade the video card for $300. Then buy a new hard drive for $300. Then replace the power supply for $80. Then get a new CPU for $150.
On a Mac what you do is: Spend $2k now. Wait 5 years. sell it for $500, and buy another Mac for $2k. Total outlay is roughly the same, but the difference is that you spend less effort on your computer.
That, and your Mac stays just as useful 5 years later without upgrades as your PC.
The PC is only really a benefit for those that enjoy that kind of thing.
Now with the Mac mini a person can invest $500 into their Mac and then replace it five years later when they decide they need something better, instead of spending $2k
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but the idea is that Creative totally passed on the form factor from 1999 until 2004. Talk about stupid. Even AFTER the iPod was released in 2001, they still didn't look at the 1" drive until 2004.
The sad thing is that they DIDN'T monopolize the microdrive form factor.
IBM had been making them for at least three years already and no one had yet figured out what to do with them.
Or they could, you know, do what Apple did, and adopt the 'common format'
Apple did it by openly embracing MP3.
They then added AAC support because it was better.
So Sony could, you know, adopt MP3 and AAC since those are the two prevalent formats.
Then if they REALLY want they could push ATRAC by releasing a music store in that format and making it an option in their encoding software, and undercut the other music stores at $0.50 a track and make ATRAC look really appetizing.
Well in 1999, the Apple iMac's 350MHz G3 was fanless.. So we're talking about a 10fold increase in MHz and probably a 3fold increase in compute efficiency for a 30x increase in performance, and all fanless.
And what is a credit card account but VIRTUAL MONEY?
Dated technology?
It uses the same 'new' hard drives that everyone else does.
When it was first released, it was the FIRST to use the 1.8" Toshiba drives. Then the mini was the FIRST to use the 1" Hitachi microdrives. I wouldn't call the iPod dated. Bleeding edge is more like it.
And there are two features that other players haven't figured out yet: Music management and software quality.
For example, Apple's biggest erstwhile competitor, Creative, has it's PlayCenter software reviewed here. While the user is happy, there are three things that iTunes does that make the iPod a superior experience:
Smart playlist creation: The need to select artists, albums, songs, etc, is greatly reduced by the ability to create a playlist via database rules:
Album is and
Album is and
Genre is and
Genre is NOT and
Artist is and
Artist is and
Song playcount is greater than and
Song has not been played in and
Song rating is greater than
Playlist creation is trivial; you can create multiple playlists with only a few selections, instead of dragging and dropping.
The idea is that your music is in a database and not in a filesystem, even though on the back end there exists a filesystem to hold the music. How is that for 'dated technology'?
Then there is the 'transfer' process. On the iPod it will always transfer, until there is no more room. It has two synch modes; automatic and manual. Manual allows you to, if you so desire, drag and drop playlists and songs. Automatic synchs your playlists until your iPod is full. There is no mode during which a 'transfer' cannot occur unless the iPod is full.
Then there is the battery life. The user expects 12 hours, and Creative gave him 9 hours. Perhaps it was defective? But on my experiences with my two iPods, and my friends, we expected 10 hours and got 12 hours. How is that for exceeding user expectation?
The iPod IS the superior product, at least for the brief period of now, but that doesn't mean Creative or Sony can't catch up.
They just can't ignore the software.
No one is saying iTunes is SELLING the iPod.
But I think the point is that iTunes is what makes (and not breaks) the iPod.
If Sony creates an iPod killer that has software that crashes, creates distorted or unplayable mp3s, corrupts mp3s on upload, and hangs the player if the wrong settings are chosen, how successful do you think it would be, even if:
It's interface is simpler: Think something like a scroll ring on the outside edge so that from one side it's a simple 'up/down' interface but from the front it's a full ring. Then place one button for 'play/pause/act' and one button for 'select/switch' and then place the display inside the ring.
Storage is bigger, size is smaller.
Price is lower.
Design is 'cooler'.
Wireless headphones.
Wireless sharing.
Wireless synching.
Even if it had all those things... Heck, even if Sony sells a rebranded iPod, but the software sucked, to the point that people couldn't and willingly wouldn't use it, how could Sony outsell the iPod? There would be no buzz, no word of mouth, because if the software sucks, the player sucks.
So do you at least concede we have no First Amendment rights here, as Apple is not a governmental body?
But to address your points: Apple has every right to TRY to stop you. It doesn't mean they have the guarantee of success, but if you're doing something that they don't like, they have as much right as anyone to stop you. They may get smacked for being frivolous or stupid, but it doesn't mean they don't have the right to TRY.
If Apple THINKS you did something illegal they can sue you. If Apple knows you did nothing illegal, they can still attempt to sue you, but then they'll just get kicked out.
I feel the law should be the LAST resort (well, second to last. Violence is the LAST resort) and that Apple should and could have handled this differently, but you aren't being very clever about this.
"Wah, Apple is being mean to us!" is about how intelligent your arguments come off as. There are plenty of intelligent reasons, but "First Amendment rights!" and "They don't have the right to bully us" aren't very bright at all.
The Constitutional Amendment that protects our freedom of speech shields us from governmental abuse.
You know, because we can't switch governments if they piss us off, but we can stop buying from Apple if they piss us off.
So you'll need another shield than 'Freedom of Speech' if you want to defend Nick DePlume.
Perhaps you should use the argument of 'decency'.
Or maybe 'indiscretions of youth'.
Constitutional Amendments can't protect us here.
Of course prices has dropped.
But then, sizes have also increased to compensate for those price drops. A 21" LCD is now $700. In 1995 a 17" CRT was $700.
I bought a package of them. How much does 10 tortillas cost you? It was actually $1.29, but I rounded up.
A 1.25GHz G4 isn't too shabby. Or 1.42GHz.
Think of all the iBook and PowerBook owners out there with 1GHz machines.
Or PowerMac owners with 1.25GHz machines.
It's cheap. It's small. It's not underpowered.
It should do great folding complex proteins, modeling, and chess. The only drawback is the FSB, at 133MHz. As long as it's compute bound and not memory bound, the mini is pretty good.
Yes, much shorter:
Mac mini is 165.1mm x 165.1mm
Nanode is 160mm x 150mm
So the mini is only 50.8mm tall to the Nanode's 94mm height, but is bigger in depth by half a centimeter and wider by one and a half centimeters.
Taking width and depth into consideration, the Nanode is still bigger:
1.384 L for the mini
2.256 L for the Nanode
So the mini isn't quite half as big. Just a tad over half as big.
I would suggest that, in terms of 'fun and educational' learning the ins and outs of a new Unix, Mac OS X, is also tremendously enjoyable.
You'll make your wife very happy, and I bet within a month you'll be very happy.
If you use Unix and Linux, you'll have no problems with OS X (It's based off a mix of Free and Net BSDs underneath) and if you use Windows you'll have no problems with OS X because everything you expect to work in Windows works the way it should on the Mac.
Of course that's fine if you're willing to settle for something bigger.
The Nanode is 94mm tall. The mini is 50.8mm tall.
Two minis atop each other is 101.6mm tall. The Nanode isn't exactly small compared to a mini. Small, yes, but not as small.
That and it'd probably take longer since it's not out yet.
It's like that poor kid who asked for an iMac and his well meaning father went, "Oh pooh, I can build you a better system" and went out and founded Hip E. How embarrassing.
If the wife wants a cute Mac mini, and it's cheaper, smaller, and easier than building one, GET IT!
What is wrong with people?
Firewire 400 has about 50mb/s throughput. Firewire 800 a theoretical 100mb/s throughput, realistically it's closer to 40mb/s and 80mb/s. Are you thinking of hooking up an XServe RAID to one of these things? You'd need two modern hard drives in a RAID 0 enclosure to 'need' Firewire 800.
It's bizarre talking about a $500 computing device alongside gigabit and RAID. The RAID setup alone costs more than the Mac mini, doesn't it?
Actually, it really only takes about an hour to make an awesome dinner.
For example, enchiladas.
$9 at a restaurant. $18 for two people. $3 for drinks. $5 for appetizers, say chips with salsa. $26 for a nice dinner.
For an hour's work, $2 in beef, $2 in tortillas, $1 of sour cream, $1 in various spices (though a bottle itself costs $3), $1 in soda, $1 in chips, $1 in salsa... $9 for materials, and assume your wages are $10 an hour, you've spent $19 for a $26 meal.
Plus you get enough leftovers for lunch the next day. So really you've spent $19 for two meails, or about $52 worth.
I don't think, however, building a PC is comparable. You're not saving anything, really, because you aren't building your own media jukebox software, or your own OS, or your photo management software. If you really wrote those then I'd compare that to making a meal. You'd spend maybe a month writing software, but you'd get so much experience and value that it would be worth it.
But putting a PC together? That's the equivalent of making brownies from a box.
You talk as if iTunes is a liability, and I actually think it's an asset.
It makes music management simple. It's fast. It's easy.
I've never heard anyone rave about Creative's music jukebox management software, but I have heard people rave about Apple's iTunes. People can actually use it's features; every upgrade/version adds more functionality that people actually like:
Rip with one button
Streaming libraries to multiple computers
Smart playlists
Synch to the iPod with zero interaction
Party playlist
Automatically manage your library
These things make collecting CDs and music so easy that the iPod is a joy to use. Unless Creative has improved drastically (I keep hearing that it's a pain to use), I don't see how they can catch up. If people hate synching to their Muvos and Zens because the software sucks, people won't fall in love with their players either.
I wonder if Pages was descended from Pages for NeXT:
Article on it.
I wonder what happened to that software?
Some of us care when someone (in this case Apple, in other cases Open Office, or KDE) releases software that challenges the dominant monopolist.
I've seen articles on OpenOffice, AbiWord, and NeoOffice J. This article fits in with that theme.
Do you have a particular anti Apple sentiment that makes this article particularly disturbing to you?
They might.
I think the real shame is that Microsoft won't be shipping Longhorn with smart folders since they're dropping major functionality in their WinFS component.
So maybe there won't even be an option of screaming, "Copycat!"
The market for used Macs may go kerblooey, but not because of their inability to retain value. A 3 year old Mac is very nearly as useful as a new Mac, and I think it will still be as true three years from now as it is today and three years ago. That 500MHz G4 of eBay will get depreciated because of the mini, but that's not going to happen to a 500MHz PowerBook or 500MHz iBook or a PowerMac or an iMac because they all fill different niches:
The mini can't replace an iBook for portability, or a PowerBook for versatility. The mini can't replace the PowerMac for expansion (4 ATA drives or 2 SATA drives, 2 CPUs, etc), or the iMac for it's display and simplicity.
In some situations, yes, someone will chose a mini over a PowerMac (I am in that kind of situation since I don't really need 4 ATA drives since I use Firewire enclosures), but I still expect to be able to sell my PowerMac for several hundred dollars to someone who does want to RAID 4 120GB IDE drives together for some reason.
There's a lot of implications here.
A computer that 'keeps its value' is a lot like a car that doesn't lose 25% of it's value when you drive it off the lot.
The implication is that the product is somehow inherently better.
If you take a Toyota for $20k off the lot and sold it to your neighbor, you'd be able to get $18k out of it. Take a $20k Ford Focus and you'd be lucky to get $12k out of it.
So the thing about commodity PC market is not that prices keep going down: Performance keeps going up! So if you spend $2k on a computer today, and $2k on a computer next year, you get a computer roughly 110% better. Or upgrade the ram for $200. Then upgrade the video card for $300. Then buy a new hard drive for $300. Then replace the power supply for $80. Then get a new CPU for $150.
On a Mac what you do is: Spend $2k now. Wait 5 years. sell it for $500, and buy another Mac for $2k. Total outlay is roughly the same, but the difference is that you spend less effort on your computer.
That, and your Mac stays just as useful 5 years later without upgrades as your PC.
The PC is only really a benefit for those that enjoy that kind of thing.
Now with the Mac mini a person can invest $500 into their Mac and then replace it five years later when they decide they need something better, instead of spending $2k