You're missing GPS navigation on that list; lots of people including myself rely on that. Not just for driving either; I also use Osmand for hiking and cycling, as I can record my routes, see how fast I was going, etc. But one of the main uses for my smartphone is definitely Google Maps.
What we need is a Linux/KDE-based phone that can run Android apps. Didn't Blackberry do something like this, using their own OS but still making it able to run Android apps?
You're just not going to get much adoption if you try to carve out your own, entirely separate ecosystem: everyone has "that one app" that they rely on, and it's a different app for everyone. And you're just not going to get much adoption anyway without a big corporation running it (Google or Apple), so the best thing to shoot for is a stable position at #3: the underdog alternative for people who don't like the big corporate offerings and want more privacy and control. Making the system reasonably compatible, even if not 100%, with Android apps (like we do with WINE on Linux) is the way to do this.
Well hopefully they put more resources on it than Mozilla did, because Mozilla's still around and Firefox is OK (not great, just OK). I want to see Gnome die sooner rather than later. The death of Gnome would be a benefit to the cause of desktop Linux.
You're assuming that the death spiral is really a problem, or that it'll happen any time soon, or that it's even unavoidable.
Going backwards, is it unavoidable? Maybe it really isn't. Perhaps these companies have already figured out they're living on borrowed time. What would you have them do instead of soaking the remaining customers? Their shareholders want to preserve their investments, so jacking up prices is the obvious answer. They can't compete with online services any more than a buggy-whip maker can compete with established tire manufacturers. They've missed the boat, and have been rendered obsolete.
Will the end come any time soon? There's little indication that it will, IMO. They could probably keep going like this for another decade. There is a such thing as a "slow death spiral".There's probably going to be a bunch of people who just cannot imagine life without cable TV; they're too used to it. Did you know that there's still a bunch of people today who have residential landline phones, even in areas with excellent cellular service? It's the same here. Elderly people are going to want to keep their cable TV until they die. I even have an example for you from a different industry: the fax machine. That thing has been obsolete for at least 15 years now, but it's still hanging on, with so signs of going away any time soon. I still get people asking me if I can send them a fax of something! Honestly, I have no idea how they think a single individual would do this, but they do ask.
And is it really a problem? After all, if the cable executives can keep things going for another 10 years, that's plenty of time for them to get their golden parachutes and bail out. Why should they care about the long-term health of the industry? Even if it weren't headed downhill, they probably would have retired in that time anyway.
Up until now, the alternatives to cable are awesome. Sign up with Netflix and you enjoy a huge variety of shows and movies. For now. Disney already pulled their content out to create their own streaming service. You think it will be long until the various networks do the same? In the end, you'll end up with the same ugly shit that cable has become.
I agree. The answer is simple: cut it all off, and download what you like from BitTorrent. There isn't anything new worth watching anyway (except GoT), so just build a library of older classics and rewatch that when you feel like watching TV or movies.
and instead of adapting.. and changing services and plans (ala carte, death to 'bundles' and 'contracts', etc), the cable and satellite companies will just jack the price up for their remaining subscribers.
Yes, and what's wrong with that? Adapting to try to get subscribers back is a losing strategy; they're just not going to get that many back once they've experienced how much better life is without cable TV and with online streaming, and they'd have to accept much lower profits to try to appease those people, but then they'd also get much lower profits from their remaining subscribers too because many of them would take advantage of those offerings like a la carte.
Instead, they correctly recognize that they have a core group of customers who aren't likely to abandon them no matter what, because they're addicted to certain channels (e.g. sports) or are old and set in their ways and just can't imagine not having cable TV, and aren't interested in online streaming because it requires you to think too much (you have to actually make a selection, instead of just mindlessly turning on the TV to a default channel). So they're jacking up prices on those suckers to keep their profits from dropping.
I do have to ask: how the hell are you spending $140 for "slowest and cheapest" internet service? I've had cable internet in 3 places around the country, with Cox, Comcrap, and Metrocast, and it's always been between $50-75, and not for the slowest and cheapest tier either.
Computers are tools that automate things, so we don't have to do every little thing manually. Your suggestion isn't workable: it means I have to keep a blacklist of sites in my brain, and constantly watch out for them to avoid autoplaying video. It's much easier to have a browser (or extension) that simply blocks the autoplaying video so I don't waste my bandwidth on it, and then I can decide if I feel like staying on the site at that point or not. If I have to go to the site and experience the auto-playing video before making that decision, then I'm not really saving much.
Why'd it take them so long? In fact, why does *any* browser allow auto-playing video? It should have been disallowed and blocked by the browsers as soon as the advertisers started doing it.
It's not meant to be a term for people who don't pay for something; it's meant to be a term for people who *used* to pay for something that was extremely ubiquitous for a long time, and have now stopped.
So you can't compare it to people who never subscribed it to Netflix (though you could compare it to people who did subscribe to Netflix and gave it up because they were disappointed by all the content constantly disappearing). You could, however, compare it to people who have stopped shopping at the mall and now buy everything online, because that's a similar phenomenon. You could also compare it people who used to have a car, but then gave it up in favor of living in a city and using public transit, Uber/Lyft, etc.
Standalone GPS, to my knowledge, doesn't get traffic updates and route you around traffic jams. How would it, unless it has its own cellular modem, which you'd have to spend extra money on for data service? Standalone GPS also doesn't help me find businesses. Quick: I want to see all the Italian restaurants near me and pick one to go to. A Garmin isn't going to be much help here. Maybe it'll have some large businesses pre-programmed, like the GPS in my car (which also doesn't have traffic updates), and while that's fine if I just want to find the nearest Walmart or whatever, for anything more obscure, or anything newer than the last update, it won't help me. Heck, even if I know the name of where I want to go, if I don't know the street address offhand (and who does?), it's going to be a pain to navigate to it with a standalone unit.
Yes, you can be a bunch of devices for the price of a flagship phone, but: 1) you can't seriously think it's a viable option to haul all that crap around with you everywhere you go (except perhaps the GPS, you can leave that in the car). 2) the Chromebook won't work on the internet, unless it has a cellular modem, which means you need another data plan ($$), unless you can somehow get the flip-phone to tether (not likely, since flip-phones don't usually have data anyway) 3) why are you comparing to a flagship phone? Most fully-featured Android phones are not "flagship" phones, and are much cheaper. Honestly, these days, it really doesn't make sense to spend $600-900 on a flagship phone. You don't *need* a handheld screen with 4K resolution; 1080p is more than enough. And even the cameras on these phones are still very good (though of course not as good as a dedicated camera). The features that used to come on flagship phones only 3 years ago are now standard in $100-150 phones. They've gotten pretty close to disposable now (relatively speaking of course).
If you're actually serious, then you're a fucking idiot to think I want to haul around a camera and a laptop everywhere I go, and that I'm somehow going to get a laptop to actually work as a GPS navigator in my car.
** no GPS navigation ** no web browsing ** no camera worth a damn ** no texting (I don't do 10-key texting) ** no wifi calling ** no visual voicemail ** no storing an entire music library and using it as an ipod ** no genuinely useful apps like my hiking GPS app or calculator app
** good at actual phone calls, but this is one of the *least common* things I still do on a phone!
You are cancelling netflix? Because the ONLY content in existence you care about is Disney content????
It might be a case of the straw that broke the camel's back.
Netflix, while far from perfect, has done by far the best job of getting content, making it available on a wide variety of platforms, keeping streaming quality high, providing a nice user interface, and keeping the price affordable.
They've also been steadily losing access to content from major studios, and are set to lose more, so they've been pushing their self-produced stuff instead. That's a laudable move, given what they have to work with, but it's counter to the original "value proposition" (to borrow some marketing-speak) which was having access to basically everything from a wide ranger of major studios all in one place for one low monthly price.
even if some moronic content creator wants to pull their shit. I'll continue to pay netflix and just pirate content from the assholes that want to exclude themselves.
That's fine, but if it gets to a point where Netflix just doesn't have much that you care to watch, then you're basically supporting Netflix out of nostalgia and charity, rather than because they're providing you with a service that you value enough to pay the going price for. For the previous poster, this is likely why he's canceling his subscription.
The cable model is crap because we pay, for example, $75 a month to watch a few dozen shows/series on just a dozen of their 1,000 channels. I don't watch sports, but I am forced to pay ESPN extortion fees. I don't watch reality TV, daytime drama, news, weather, ethnic channels, etc, etc, etc, etc... and yet I have to pay for all of those, and they are all rewarded.
No, you don't have to pay for those, and you're not forced to pay ESPN. You're free to cancel your cable subscription at any time, or just not sign up in the first place.
So yeah, we are right back into the cable situation when you have to get 5 streaming services each at $15/mo and tada- you are paying the same super-high $75 a month.... and that is whether you watch it or not.
If I, as a manager, go for an open office, the productivity of my people goes down, and that's not cheap. Same for bringing out a worse interface.
These decisions aren't usually made at such a low level, and there's many other variables intertwined so the loss of productivity is blamed on something else. Also, open offices cost a lot less than other arrangements, and managers like them because they can see who's in and what they're doing. Actual productivity isn't that important; most office workers spend a small minority of their time actually doing anything productive anyway.
Seriously, if checks are obsolete in other countries, what do most countries use for small (in size or frequency) person to person transfers?
Bank transfers, just like I said.
Just because the US is a backwards country full of religious morons that can't figure out how to implement free and easy bank transfers doesn't mean it can't be done.
I noticed QA testings are not so important. MS axed its QA testings. It's nice to have developers test their own works, but let the real QA testers do it.
No. QA testing is a complete waste of money when you're a large company like Microsoft. What good is it? How is it going to make you more money? It's not. It's a cost center, with no benefit whatsoever. The best strategy is to just have developers do their own quick tests to make sure stuff isn't completely broken, and then just ship it. Let the users test it out, and if anything they complain about is a big enough problem, then fix it, otherwise ignore it because fixing it costs money.
Your argument will be that proper QA testing avoids having customers exposed to a buggy product, but how does that improve profitability? It doesn't. When you're Microsoft, the customers are going to happily use your product no matter what, so it really doesn't matter if they have a good experience or a lousy one because of bugs that QA would have caught. So it's better for the shareholders to eliminate QA altogether and let the customers suffer with a buggy product. If the customers hated it that much, they'd abandon your company and not be your customers any more, but many, many years of experience have shown this simply isn't the case for Microsoft, and for many other big companies as well.
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You're missing GPS navigation on that list; lots of people including myself rely on that. Not just for driving either; I also use Osmand for hiking and cycling, as I can record my routes, see how fast I was going, etc. But one of the main uses for my smartphone is definitely Google Maps.
What we need is a Linux/KDE-based phone that can run Android apps. Didn't Blackberry do something like this, using their own OS but still making it able to run Android apps?
You're just not going to get much adoption if you try to carve out your own, entirely separate ecosystem: everyone has "that one app" that they rely on, and it's a different app for everyone. And you're just not going to get much adoption anyway without a big corporation running it (Google or Apple), so the best thing to shoot for is a stable position at #3: the underdog alternative for people who don't like the big corporate offerings and want more privacy and control. Making the system reasonably compatible, even if not 100%, with Android apps (like we do with WINE on Linux) is the way to do this.
Well hopefully they put more resources on it than Mozilla did, because Mozilla's still around and Firefox is OK (not great, just OK). I want to see Gnome die sooner rather than later. The death of Gnome would be a benefit to the cause of desktop Linux.
Hopefully we can gather important data from this disaster, and potentially improve upon our infrastructure.
What is this, some kind of joke? That's about as likely as the US voters picking a really great President in 2020, or world peace being achieved.
You're assuming that the death spiral is really a problem, or that it'll happen any time soon, or that it's even unavoidable.
Going backwards, is it unavoidable? Maybe it really isn't. Perhaps these companies have already figured out they're living on borrowed time. What would you have them do instead of soaking the remaining customers? Their shareholders want to preserve their investments, so jacking up prices is the obvious answer. They can't compete with online services any more than a buggy-whip maker can compete with established tire manufacturers. They've missed the boat, and have been rendered obsolete.
Will the end come any time soon? There's little indication that it will, IMO. They could probably keep going like this for another decade. There is a such thing as a "slow death spiral".There's probably going to be a bunch of people who just cannot imagine life without cable TV; they're too used to it. Did you know that there's still a bunch of people today who have residential landline phones, even in areas with excellent cellular service? It's the same here. Elderly people are going to want to keep their cable TV until they die. I even have an example for you from a different industry: the fax machine. That thing has been obsolete for at least 15 years now, but it's still hanging on, with so signs of going away any time soon. I still get people asking me if I can send them a fax of something! Honestly, I have no idea how they think a single individual would do this, but they do ask.
And is it really a problem? After all, if the cable executives can keep things going for another 10 years, that's plenty of time for them to get their golden parachutes and bail out. Why should they care about the long-term health of the industry? Even if it weren't headed downhill, they probably would have retired in that time anyway.
Up until now, the alternatives to cable are awesome. Sign up with Netflix and you enjoy a huge variety of shows and movies. For now. Disney already pulled their content out to create their own streaming service. You think it will be long until the various networks do the same? In the end, you'll end up with the same ugly shit that cable has become.
I agree. The answer is simple: cut it all off, and download what you like from BitTorrent. There isn't anything new worth watching anyway (except GoT), so just build a library of older classics and rewatch that when you feel like watching TV or movies.
and instead of adapting.. and changing services and plans (ala carte, death to 'bundles' and 'contracts', etc), the cable and satellite companies will just jack the price up for their remaining subscribers.
Yes, and what's wrong with that? Adapting to try to get subscribers back is a losing strategy; they're just not going to get that many back once they've experienced how much better life is without cable TV and with online streaming, and they'd have to accept much lower profits to try to appease those people, but then they'd also get much lower profits from their remaining subscribers too because many of them would take advantage of those offerings like a la carte.
Instead, they correctly recognize that they have a core group of customers who aren't likely to abandon them no matter what, because they're addicted to certain channels (e.g. sports) or are old and set in their ways and just can't imagine not having cable TV, and aren't interested in online streaming because it requires you to think too much (you have to actually make a selection, instead of just mindlessly turning on the TV to a default channel). So they're jacking up prices on those suckers to keep their profits from dropping.
I do have to ask: how the hell are you spending $140 for "slowest and cheapest" internet service? I've had cable internet in 3 places around the country, with Cox, Comcrap, and Metrocast, and it's always been between $50-75, and not for the slowest and cheapest tier either.
Are you a malware writer, or do you work for an advertising company?
Computers are tools that automate things, so we don't have to do every little thing manually. Your suggestion isn't workable: it means I have to keep a blacklist of sites in my brain, and constantly watch out for them to avoid autoplaying video. It's much easier to have a browser (or extension) that simply blocks the autoplaying video so I don't waste my bandwidth on it, and then I can decide if I feel like staying on the site at that point or not. If I have to go to the site and experience the auto-playing video before making that decision, then I'm not really saving much.
(trans.: the advertisers were unhappy, and that might have jeopardized our shareholders plan to buy yet another Porsche).
You've got to be kidding. The Google execs aren't going to waste their time with such cheap-ass cars, they're probably buying Bugattis.
Why'd it take them so long? In fact, why does *any* browser allow auto-playing video? It should have been disallowed and blocked by the browsers as soon as the advertisers started doing it.
It's not meant to be a term for people who don't pay for something; it's meant to be a term for people who *used* to pay for something that was extremely ubiquitous for a long time, and have now stopped.
So you can't compare it to people who never subscribed it to Netflix (though you could compare it to people who did subscribe to Netflix and gave it up because they were disappointed by all the content constantly disappearing). You could, however, compare it to people who have stopped shopping at the mall and now buy everything online, because that's a similar phenomenon. You could also compare it people who used to have a car, but then gave it up in favor of living in a city and using public transit, Uber/Lyft, etc.
Standalone GPS, to my knowledge, doesn't get traffic updates and route you around traffic jams. How would it, unless it has its own cellular modem, which you'd have to spend extra money on for data service? Standalone GPS also doesn't help me find businesses. Quick: I want to see all the Italian restaurants near me and pick one to go to. A Garmin isn't going to be much help here. Maybe it'll have some large businesses pre-programmed, like the GPS in my car (which also doesn't have traffic updates), and while that's fine if I just want to find the nearest Walmart or whatever, for anything more obscure, or anything newer than the last update, it won't help me. Heck, even if I know the name of where I want to go, if I don't know the street address offhand (and who does?), it's going to be a pain to navigate to it with a standalone unit.
Yes, you can be a bunch of devices for the price of a flagship phone, but:
1) you can't seriously think it's a viable option to haul all that crap around with you everywhere you go (except perhaps the GPS, you can leave that in the car).
2) the Chromebook won't work on the internet, unless it has a cellular modem, which means you need another data plan ($$), unless you can somehow get the flip-phone to tether (not likely, since flip-phones don't usually have data anyway)
3) why are you comparing to a flagship phone? Most fully-featured Android phones are not "flagship" phones, and are much cheaper. Honestly, these days, it really doesn't make sense to spend $600-900 on a flagship phone. You don't *need* a handheld screen with 4K resolution; 1080p is more than enough. And even the cameras on these phones are still very good (though of course not as good as a dedicated camera). The features that used to come on flagship phones only 3 years ago are now standard in $100-150 phones. They've gotten pretty close to disposable now (relatively speaking of course).
If you're actually serious, then you're a fucking idiot to think I want to haul around a camera and a laptop everywhere I go, and that I'm somehow going to get a laptop to actually work as a GPS navigator in my car.
No headphone jack means it's useless for listening to music.
Extremely high price means I could buy a whole bunch of Android phones for the same price as one iPhone.
** no GPS navigation
** no web browsing
** no camera worth a damn
** no texting (I don't do 10-key texting)
** no wifi calling
** no visual voicemail
** no storing an entire music library and using it as an ipod
** no genuinely useful apps like my hiking GPS app or calculator app
** good at actual phone calls, but this is one of the *least common* things I still do on a phone!
Google makes a mis-step so bad that Microsoft can capitalise on it? Not a good day for Google, or indeed us minions.
It's par for the course for Google these days.
You are cancelling netflix? Because the ONLY content in existence you care about is Disney content????
It might be a case of the straw that broke the camel's back.
Netflix, while far from perfect, has done by far the best job of getting content, making it available on a wide variety of platforms, keeping streaming quality high, providing a nice user interface, and keeping the price affordable.
They've also been steadily losing access to content from major studios, and are set to lose more, so they've been pushing their self-produced stuff instead. That's a laudable move, given what they have to work with, but it's counter to the original "value proposition" (to borrow some marketing-speak) which was having access to basically everything from a wide ranger of major studios all in one place for one low monthly price.
even if some moronic content creator wants to pull their shit. I'll continue to pay netflix and just pirate content from the assholes that want to exclude themselves.
That's fine, but if it gets to a point where Netflix just doesn't have much that you care to watch, then you're basically supporting Netflix out of nostalgia and charity, rather than because they're providing you with a service that you value enough to pay the going price for. For the previous poster, this is likely why he's canceling his subscription.
The cable model is crap because we pay, for example, $75 a month to watch a few dozen shows/series on just a dozen of their 1,000 channels. I don't watch sports, but I am forced to pay ESPN extortion fees. I don't watch reality TV, daytime drama, news, weather, ethnic channels, etc, etc, etc, etc... and yet I have to pay for all of those, and they are all rewarded.
No, you don't have to pay for those, and you're not forced to pay ESPN. You're free to cancel your cable subscription at any time, or just not sign up in the first place.
So yeah, we are right back into the cable situation when you have to get 5 streaming services each at $15/mo and tada- you are paying the same super-high $75 a month.... and that is whether you watch it or not.
Or you can opt out.
The kids want to watch the Disney movies often enough to buy the damn disc
Or you can just rent it at Redbox for $1.50, and then rip a copy.
All of those movies will still be available through the Netflix DVD-by-mail offering.
The selection is quite large, and it is very convenient.
It also costs extra money, and requires messing with an antiquated DVD/BD player. Easier to just not bother and watch something else.
Isn't this the same government that mandates that everyone use Internet Explorer with ActiveX to access government services, do banking, or shopping?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.reddit.com/r/today...
If I, as a manager, go for an open office, the productivity of my people goes down, and that's not cheap. Same for bringing out a worse interface.
These decisions aren't usually made at such a low level, and there's many other variables intertwined so the loss of productivity is blamed on something else. Also, open offices cost a lot less than other arrangements, and managers like them because they can see who's in and what they're doing. Actual productivity isn't that important; most office workers spend a small minority of their time actually doing anything productive anyway.
Seriously, if checks are obsolete in other countries, what do most countries use for small (in size or frequency) person to person transfers?
Bank transfers, just like I said.
Just because the US is a backwards country full of religious morons that can't figure out how to implement free and easy bank transfers doesn't mean it can't be done.
I noticed QA testings are not so important. MS axed its QA testings. It's nice to have developers test their own works, but let the real QA testers do it.
No. QA testing is a complete waste of money when you're a large company like Microsoft. What good is it? How is it going to make you more money? It's not. It's a cost center, with no benefit whatsoever. The best strategy is to just have developers do their own quick tests to make sure stuff isn't completely broken, and then just ship it. Let the users test it out, and if anything they complain about is a big enough problem, then fix it, otherwise ignore it because fixing it costs money.
Your argument will be that proper QA testing avoids having customers exposed to a buggy product, but how does that improve profitability? It doesn't. When you're Microsoft, the customers are going to happily use your product no matter what, so it really doesn't matter if they have a good experience or a lousy one because of bugs that QA would have caught. So it's better for the shareholders to eliminate QA altogether and let the customers suffer with a buggy product. If the customers hated it that much, they'd abandon your company and not be your customers any more, but many, many years of experience have shown this simply isn't the case for Microsoft, and for many other big companies as well.
It's nice for industrial-focused UIs
This is wrong, as of the 2016 version, according to your own post above.