Do you act with all your power to reduce your own taxes?
Government's primary purpose is to further itself. Any entity's primary purpose has to be, else said entity would cease.
It's secondary purpose, then, is to govern, ie regulate and control it's people. It's third perpose would be to a side effect of the second, and that is benefit those goverened.
But USB2 is fast enough for now, until you start hitting devices that need more, and that will always happen. And then what?
You have either Firewire800, which already exists, or you hobble along with USB2 for three more years until USB3 is released. Take a broader view, man! Imagine two years ago, you only had Firewire because USB1 was too slow!
In terms of price, USB2 and Firewire is the same price in terms of production. The only reason it isn't the same price in deployment is because Intel has chosen to support USB over firewire. They bundle and mass produce the controllers on their motherboards. A few pieces of silicon and a port cost the same regardless of protocol. But the design differences between USB and Firewire means USB always requires a faster CPU, where Firewire has it's own dedicated control logic. If I'm not mistaken it's due to USB's host centricity, where Firewire has peer negotiation.
If you want to believe that it's 'historical' reasons, fine, but then I would have to argue that 'historical' means 'USB1 was inadequate and USB2 didn't exist'. And if you say (that's changing) then I think you mean (USB2 doesn't suck as much as USB1 now, and is no longer an order of magnitude slower than Firewire, and eventually USB3 will be faster than Firewire).
He himself prefers Firewire over USB2, at his own admission.
Oh, you mean what rational reasons would he prefer powered Firewire?
Maybe he wants an iPod. He did mention it in his post! Or maybe he HAS one?
Because Firewire is faster, as explained in multiple points?
Because Firewire does carry more power, you can have many neater gadgets (yes at battery expense) that do not require external power. iPods, hard drives, CD drives, etc.
Because he wants a camcorder?
Because he wants to chain multiple devices?
I've got an iPod, camcorder, CD-RW, and hard drive unit, all living off two Firewire ports.
I also have USB devices of course. A scanner, a mouse, a keyboard, and a digi cam.
But you're being silly if you think Firewire doesn't have a reason to exist. It has much better performance, sustained performance, and for stuff like video work (camcorder and hard drives) and other high performance activities, more performance is better.
Or do you also believe people shouldn't want faster CPUs?
Your points are not the parent AC's points. His was "USB2 is faster than Firewire" and your points are "USB2 is more ubiquitous and fast enough."
If you use the parent AC's belief that USB2 is faster than Firewire and purchase accordingly, you will be disappointed because in fact Firewire is faster.
If you buy using your points, that USB2 is more ubiquitous and fast enough then of course you won't be disappointed because it's true.
I've enjoyed a nice healthy 16mb/s from my iPod, a good 3.5mb/s from my camcorder, and 35mb/s from my external firewire drive for two years+ now. Yes, each device IS more expensive than what USB would have cost, but at the time I bought the camcorder there was no real alternative, when I bought my Firewire drive we only had external USB1 drives, and when I bought my iPod we only had USB1 Nomads as the competition, so if I paid a premium it was because there was no USB2 to drive prices down.
If you like, you can also see it as Firewire driving the USB backers to release a faster spec to stay competitive, but in the end all consumers win with choice, price competition, and variety.
If they make money by helping you, then of course they will help you.
Competition helps. If Canon isn't selling a camera with integrated storage and battery, and it really is a strong selling point, then eventually someone else will and take those sales away from Canon.
As an analogy, look at the iPod, and then the iPod mini, as examples of exactly this formula.
Market is flooded with removable storage, removable battery mp3 players. Apple releases an integrated storage, integrated battery mp3 player which happens to become a big hit. In fact, I do believe the CF hd market was languishing until Apple stepped in.
So yes, if you believe that you make the most money when you help the consumer more than your competitors do, a corporation is out to do BOTH.
But... aren't CF memory cards anywhere from 3 to 5 times slower?
So even though power consumption of a memory card is about 4 times less than a microdrive (305mA write vs 80mA write, but possibly worse since it will only be reading and the flash is still 80mA read), it will be spending about 4 times as long actually reading from the device, too.
And I'm fairly certain that the iPod shuts down the hard drive entirely, rather than having it sit idle, to conserve power. If it doesn't, it could, and considering the new 4G iPod got a 50% power boost over the 3G iPod, with no change in battery, I suspect that's what happened.
So you'd get, I am willing to wager, no increase in battery life, better shock resistance, lower lifetime since they have limited read/write cycles, more expense, and maybe lower weight.
If they act 'nice' it's because they believe it's a good strategy to make money. I completely fail to see how that should inspire any loyalties from me.
If a company A is more successful than company B because it acts nicer, that will reinforce company A's nice behavior.
If that is what you value in a company AND it's products, since no product exists in a vacuum, then it SHOULD inspire loyalty from you because that is what you pay for. If you DON'T value niceness, then of course it shouldn't inspire loyalty from you.
Some of us happen to like nicer companies than unnice, or even evil, companies, and choose our 'loyalty' accordingly.
Loyalty may be too strong a word, but our proclivities if that seems better to you.
More power for the HD, or more power for the CPU. The hard constraints on a laptop, more than anything else, is power consumption and heat dissapation. If your hard drive is sucking down 9W to spin at 10krpm, vs 5.5W at 7200, 5.0W at 5400, and 4.5W at 4200, then you'll need to significantly upgrade your cooling system, or sacrifice 4W from the CPU or GPU.
It is different, but it is also similar. Avalon is supposed to keep all the primitives down to the hardware, such that transforms retain maximum flexibility. Quartz flattens the primitives at a fairly early stage (possibly because until recently the hardware available couldn't handle anything else!) such that for the first iteration all the hardware had to do was composite bitmaps.
Now it can actually do a little more, with transforms, and I expect with Tiger, and more advanced shaders and hardware, some higher levels of QE.
I do expect by the time Avalon ships that both systems will be functionally identical.
The City of San Francisco is apparently one of the plaintiffs in the suit. They've been having a budget crisis for the last couple of years, but what "crisis" really means is that they've raised their spending from about $4 billion to about $5 billion, and they're having trouble finding all that money, since the city only has 750,000 people to tax.
Agreed
If you want to live in the city of San Francisco, you have to pay them, and return you get things like new baseball stadiums for the baseball company without even giving the citizens free baseball tickets, and lots of favors for the real estate developers who are friends of the old mayor.
Agreed
Meanwhile, Microsoft's "business power" comes from giving people things they want in return for money, and using the money to develop more things that people want (or do more advertising so more people want the things they make.)
Not entirely in agreement. Some parts of Microsoft definitely work in that manner, but some don't. The parts that threaten companies with higher licensing fees for Microsoft Windows if said companies do anything that threaten (compete) with Microsoft in a non Windows area (See Quicktime, see Netscape, that I can think of off the top of my head) gets it's business power from monopoly. The fact that Compaq has no choice, no alternatives, than doing what is good for Microsoft over what is good for the consumer because doing what is good for the consumer would hurt Microsoft.
Of course it's 2004 and things are different than 1998, where HP has licensed the iPod, is bundling iTunes, and offering a compatibility tool called HPTunes that allow for the playing of AAC in the media center PCs, but the point still stands that Microsoft isn't entirely a company that competes on the merits of it's products.
There's entirely nothing wrong with that, and if you don't like it, you can buy a Macintosh instead, or buy QNX or WindRiver or Symbian or PalmOS or SCO, or use free Linux or BSD software, or write your own software.
Agreed. Consumers still have a choice, despite what Microsoft does, it's really up to the consumer to exercise that choice. Part of that does require them being up to speed on what the choices are and why each one has different costs.
The justice system's job isn't to get you a refund on products you decided were worth paying for when you bought them, or to tell Microsoft to deliver products you like better than the ones you bought - it's to make sure that nobody assassinates Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs or RMS.
Agreed
And if you can't get the software you want on a the cheap PC hardware you want to pay for, don't blame Bill Gates, blame Steve Jobs.
Nope, it's not more Job's fault that he sets his prices the way he does than Gate's fault that he sets the prices on Microsoft's products. Each does what they think will net them the best ROI, right?
Market Forces are less, not more, likely to deliver working and cool IT products if every time they're successful at it, some bunch of thugs comes and steals it through anti-trust laws.
Are you suggesting that without the antitrust actions that Microsoft would have released some seriously cool functional products in the past four years? Instead of focusing their attentions on the notorious insecurity of Windows 2000 and Windows XP, or IE, IIS, and Outlook? Yes, Microsoft would have had more funds to pursue product instead of lawsuit, but we are talking about a company with 50 billion in cash too.
The Federal Government's anti-trust suits against Microsoft were one of the three main causes of the software industry crash of 2000: sure, the "sell dogfood on line and don't worry about profits" business model h
Why is a $299 iPod pricey but a $274 Sony 400-Disc MegaStorage CD Changer is not? Why is a $299 iPod pricey but 50gb of music CDs is not? Why is a $299 iPod pricey but a $499 Alpine CDA-9833 car CD Player is not? Why is a $299 iPod pricey but a $349 Pioneer 600W 5.1-Ch. Home Theater System w/5-Disc P.-Scan SACD/DVD-Audio/MP3/DVD Player is not?
I don't advocate video jukeboxes yet because there isn't an iTunes equivalent for DVDs yet. Insert DVD, rip, and catalogue. How do you do this for the Archos? Everyone who seems to rant about them talks about watching movies... but how do you get the movies on the drive?
Apple's already got it's next generation GUI and graphical layer, ala Avalon... and it's had it in various incarnations for the past three years.
So even if Avalon comes out, say, in 2005, that means the competition, Apple, has implemented it for 4 years already. I do know Avalon and Quartz aren't the same in letter, but they are the same in spirit, being 3d accelerated hardware based composition and rendering engines.
As for other technologies... we'll see how fast Apple's Tiger comes out, and the next releases, regarding WinFS and other technologies:)
Linux just sits there happily re-implementing the best of all worlds.
Note the transponder (just like a license plate) Levy a fee Revoke the license Impound the vehicle Put it on an APB Flag it and give it a ticket Charge the owner with civil/criminal offenses
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Do you act with all your power to reduce your own taxes?
Government's primary purpose is to further itself. Any entity's primary purpose has to be, else said entity would cease.
It's secondary purpose, then, is to govern, ie regulate and control it's people.
It's third perpose would be to a side effect of the second, and that is benefit those goverened.
Of course not at ANY cost.
But USB2 is fast enough for now, until you start hitting devices that need more, and that will always happen. And then what?
You have either Firewire800, which already exists, or you hobble along with USB2 for three more years until USB3 is released. Take a broader view, man! Imagine two years ago, you only had Firewire because USB1 was too slow!
In terms of price, USB2 and Firewire is the same price in terms of production. The only reason it isn't the same price in deployment is because Intel has chosen to support USB over firewire. They bundle and mass produce the controllers on their motherboards. A few pieces of silicon and a port cost the same regardless of protocol. But the design differences between USB and Firewire means USB always requires a faster CPU, where Firewire has it's own dedicated control logic. If I'm not mistaken it's due to USB's host centricity, where Firewire has peer negotiation.
If you want to believe that it's 'historical' reasons, fine, but then I would have to argue that 'historical' means 'USB1 was inadequate and USB2 didn't exist'. And if you say (that's changing) then I think you mean (USB2 doesn't suck as much as USB1 now, and is no longer an order of magnitude slower than Firewire, and eventually USB3 will be faster than Firewire).
Don't you mean better as laptops get more power efficient?
The more power effecient a laptop is, the more power is available to use, the less is wasted.
What would make things worse is laptops getting
a) smaller batteries
b) less power efficient
c) more power hungry
He himself prefers Firewire over USB2, at his own admission.
Oh, you mean what rational reasons would he prefer powered Firewire?
Maybe he wants an iPod. He did mention it in his post! Or maybe he HAS one?
Because Firewire is faster, as explained in multiple points?
Because Firewire does carry more power, you can have many neater gadgets (yes at battery expense) that do not require external power. iPods, hard drives, CD drives, etc.
Because he wants a camcorder?
Because he wants to chain multiple devices?
I've got an iPod, camcorder, CD-RW, and hard drive unit, all living off two Firewire ports.
I also have USB devices of course. A scanner, a mouse, a keyboard, and a digi cam.
But you're being silly if you think Firewire doesn't have a reason to exist. It has much better performance, sustained performance, and for stuff like video work (camcorder and hard drives) and other high performance activities, more performance is better.
Or do you also believe people shouldn't want faster CPUs?
Uh, you really don't know?
Your points are not the parent AC's points. His was "USB2 is faster than Firewire" and your points are "USB2 is more ubiquitous and fast enough."
If you use the parent AC's belief that USB2 is faster than Firewire and purchase accordingly, you will be disappointed because in fact Firewire is faster.
If you buy using your points, that USB2 is more ubiquitous and fast enough then of course you won't be disappointed because it's true.
I've enjoyed a nice healthy 16mb/s from my iPod, a good 3.5mb/s from my camcorder, and 35mb/s from my external firewire drive for two years+ now. Yes, each device IS more expensive than what USB would have cost, but at the time I bought the camcorder there was no real alternative, when I bought my Firewire drive we only had external USB1 drives, and when I bought my iPod we only had USB1 Nomads as the competition, so if I paid a premium it was because there was no USB2 to drive prices down.
If you like, you can also see it as Firewire driving the USB backers to release a faster spec to stay competitive, but in the end all consumers win with choice, price competition, and variety.
No, though as another helpful poster has linked, USB 2.0 is specced higher than Firewire.
Is a Volvo S60 faster than a Ford Expedition? Well, it depends on usage right? Freeway? Off road? In a river?
But in usage tests, Firewire is faster. Feel free to buy USB2, of course, but you're only cheating yourself in most situations!
Why do you have a computer with a 4 pin Firewire port?
You could have chosen one with 6 pin, too.
If they make money by helping you, then of course they will help you.
Competition helps. If Canon isn't selling a camera with integrated storage and battery, and it really is a strong selling point, then eventually someone else will and take those sales away from Canon.
As an analogy, look at the iPod, and then the iPod mini, as examples of exactly this formula.
Market is flooded with removable storage, removable battery mp3 players. Apple releases an integrated storage, integrated battery mp3 player which happens to become a big hit. In fact, I do believe the CF hd market was languishing until Apple stepped in.
So yes, if you believe that you make the most money when you help the consumer more than your competitors do, a corporation is out to do BOTH.
But... aren't CF memory cards anywhere from 3 to 5 times slower?
So even though power consumption of a memory card is about 4 times less than a microdrive (305mA write vs 80mA write, but possibly worse since it will only be reading and the flash is still 80mA read), it will be spending about 4 times as long actually reading from the device, too.
And I'm fairly certain that the iPod shuts down the hard drive entirely, rather than having it sit idle, to conserve power. If it doesn't, it could, and considering the new 4G iPod got a 50% power boost over the 3G iPod, with no change in battery, I suspect that's what happened.
So you'd get, I am willing to wager, no increase in battery life, better shock resistance, lower lifetime since they have limited read/write cycles, more expense, and maybe lower weight.
4gb microdrive specs
1gb CF specs
If they act 'nice' it's because they believe it's a good strategy to make money. I completely fail to see how that should inspire any loyalties from me.
If a company A is more successful than company B because it acts nicer, that will reinforce company A's nice behavior.
If that is what you value in a company AND it's products, since no product exists in a vacuum, then it SHOULD inspire loyalty from you because that is what you pay for. If you DON'T value niceness, then of course it shouldn't inspire loyalty from you.
Some of us happen to like nicer companies than unnice, or even evil, companies, and choose our 'loyalty' accordingly.
Loyalty may be too strong a word, but our proclivities if that seems better to you.
More power for the HD, or more power for the CPU. The hard constraints on a laptop, more than anything else, is power consumption and heat dissapation. If your hard drive is sucking down 9W to spin at 10krpm, vs 5.5W at 7200, 5.0W at 5400, and 4.5W at 4200, then you'll need to significantly upgrade your cooling system, or sacrifice 4W from the CPU or GPU.
Or accept an EVEN bigger desktop replacement.
You wanting a $999 G5 Cube only makes the problem of fans worse :)
Smaller enclosure == greater heat density
Faster processor == greater heat source
Lower price == less engineering resources
So you can either settle for a BIGGER case, a inferior processor, or a HIGHER price, to get what you want. A fanless design.
Or you mean like Apple started shipping back in May... of 1997!
Because you want to create the next iPod, rather than, say, the next Muvo or Walkman MP3.
I mean, what will look better on your resume 10 years from now, "Worked on the iPod Mini2" or "Worked on the Zen Muvo"?
LOL, maybe you're right. I bought it because it works so well :)
I might be attributing more reason to others because of it.
Avalon isn't *totally* different.
It is different, but it is also similar. Avalon is supposed to keep all the primitives down to the hardware, such that transforms retain maximum flexibility. Quartz flattens the primitives at a fairly early stage (possibly because until recently the hardware available couldn't handle anything else!) such that for the first iteration all the hardware had to do was composite bitmaps.
Now it can actually do a little more, with transforms, and I expect with Tiger, and more advanced shaders and hardware, some higher levels of QE.
I do expect by the time Avalon ships that both systems will be functionally identical.
What if you are in love with iTunes?
What if you are in love with the interface?
What if you like that the iPod is both a USB mass storage device and a Firewire mass storage device you can install an OS and boot off of?
Didn't you know that the iPod can play any MP3 you put on it?
What if you want a smaller mp3 player?
Of course if you care about none of those things, then the iPod isn't for you. But if you want:
Smaller
Firewire/USB storage
iTunes
Simple interface
What choice do you have but an iPod?
Agreed
Agreed
Not entirely in agreement. Some parts of Microsoft definitely work in that manner, but some don't. The parts that threaten companies with higher licensing fees for Microsoft Windows if said companies do anything that threaten (compete) with Microsoft in a non Windows area (See Quicktime, see Netscape, that I can think of off the top of my head) gets it's business power from monopoly. The fact that Compaq has no choice, no alternatives, than doing what is good for Microsoft over what is good for the consumer because doing what is good for the consumer would hurt Microsoft.
Of course it's 2004 and things are different than 1998, where HP has licensed the iPod, is bundling iTunes, and offering a compatibility tool called HPTunes that allow for the playing of AAC in the media center PCs, but the point still stands that Microsoft isn't entirely a company that competes on the merits of it's products.
Agreed. Consumers still have a choice, despite what Microsoft does, it's really up to the consumer to exercise that choice. Part of that does require them being up to speed on what the choices are and why each one has different costs.
Agreed
Nope, it's not more Job's fault that he sets his prices the way he does than Gate's fault that he sets the prices on Microsoft's products. Each does what they think will net them the best ROI, right?
Are you suggesting that without the antitrust actions that Microsoft would have released some seriously cool functional products in the past four years? Instead of focusing their attentions on the notorious insecurity of Windows 2000 and Windows XP, or IE, IIS, and Outlook? Yes, Microsoft would have had more funds to pursue product instead of lawsuit, but we are talking about a company with 50 billion in cash too.
Why is a $299 iPod pricey but a $274 Sony 400-Disc MegaStorage CD Changer is not?
Why is a $299 iPod pricey but 50gb of music CDs is not?
Why is a $299 iPod pricey but a $499 Alpine CDA-9833 car CD Player is not?
Why is a $299 iPod pricey but a $349 Pioneer 600W 5.1-Ch. Home Theater System w/5-Disc P.-Scan SACD/DVD-Audio/MP3/DVD Player is not?
What you call bulk, I call video quality and flexibility
:)
What you call worse battery life, I call 'four hours of video per battery'
Yes, to each their own
How do you do your movie ripping?
I don't advocate video jukeboxes yet because there isn't an iTunes equivalent for DVDs yet. Insert DVD, rip, and catalogue. How do you do this for the Archos? Everyone who seems to rant about them talks about watching movies... but how do you get the movies on the drive?
That makes no sense.
Why not save money and buy a Mac laptop, then, and install Linux? You get the same benefits on a Linux box, and you save money ^^;
Apple's already got it's next generation GUI and graphical layer, ala Avalon... and it's had it in various incarnations for the past three years.
:)
So even if Avalon comes out, say, in 2005, that means the competition, Apple, has implemented it for 4 years already. I do know Avalon and Quartz aren't the same in letter, but they are the same in spirit, being 3d accelerated hardware based composition and rendering engines.
As for other technologies... we'll see how fast Apple's Tiger comes out, and the next releases, regarding WinFS and other technologies
Linux just sits there happily re-implementing the best of all worlds.
Note the transponder (just like a license plate)
Levy a fee
Revoke the license
Impound the vehicle
Put it on an APB
Flag it and give it a ticket
Charge the owner with civil/criminal offenses
If your GIM username is tied to your gmail account, why not have it show up when you view your email?
Or when you browse Google/The web, since gmail is web based?