Google became king in search but a lot of it is mostly spam quality results.
the theory is that people buy what others recommend. That's what facebook is all about, promote products by using people to "Like" things so that others buy them. kind of like the pointless but brand building TV ads. no one expects you to buy Coke after seeing a few ads, but after years you build a brand and make people think that it's better quality than other products.
take cereal. the organic stuff at Whole Foods is about the same price as the name brand artificial crap laden stuff you see in the super market.the reason the "brand name" costs the same even though it costs a lot less to make is that advertising makes up most of the cost of the product. Just like Nike shoes and paying Michael Jordan $40 million a year to promote them while they are made in slave shops for pennies
other than the fact that you're a fanboy and GL's core customer, it takes time and money to transfer them to each new format. you have to buy the workstations, software and pay people to do the transfer and the work of taking a 30 some year old movie and upgrading it to HD quality
until the iphone came around RIM and others would have low end, mid and high end devices with different hardware. i've even seen dumb phones run java. it allowed hardware makers to have a ton of devices out there for every niche and cut down on dev costs. Java was cool since you only write the app once.
then the iPhone came and killed that model. the cost of the iphone is something like $2200 over 2 years. Droid is about the same. any other smartphone on AT&T or VZW will be within $200. i tell people to get the best phone they want since the cost is negligible over 2 years.
i've been following the PC market since the 1990's and the days of $50/MB of RAM. this happens every few years. manufacturers ramp up production and prices plummet. then a few months later they go up again, repeat. the complete cycle usually lasts 2-3 years
you have to keep production running since the plants are built with debt and the interest has to be paid on a regular schedule
nobody cares since the people buying these won't care about playing Black Ops at the highest settings. i sat out the Steam sale this year because almost every game is available for the X-Box 360 and PS3. I just want a laptop to play Civ 4 once in a while and store all my photos and music. and Sandy Bridge seems to spank Apple's laptops in a lot of areas now
i have both, and only game on my 360. PS3 is great as a blu ray/media player. same price as the other blu ray players but a lot more functionality. no reason to ever buy a single game for it
things probably changed but back in the day it took permission from God to buy a server. and months of waiting. one time at one base they spent $200,000 on new switches that sat around for a year because the project to install them wasn't funded. and you can't keep the money for next year.
AWS is awesome. you pay Amazon a fee and you get flexibility. Clinton and Bush tried to fix things but the government unions kill any reform attempt
i've spent days playing it starting on the commodore 64 where it was just a bunch of squares. farmville and others are just slightly altered versions of Sim City and Civilization. so many people play them because they are on facebook and don't need to spend $50 plus extra DLC money to play the game
have you missed the iPod line? $79 to $399 with different features at each price point
i bet apple comes out with a 7" iPad next month for the same price or less. if someone is going to order millions of 7" screens then apple's spies will probably tip them off about it
the form factor is the cool part. you can buy board game apps so your house is not a mess and you can take your games everywhere you go. you can lay an ipad flat on a table and play monopoly like with the board game version.
any product that just tries to be a lite version of a netbook will fail
the iPad is cool not because it can read email but the app store. all kinds of apps that do things that were unimagined a few years ago.
i'm looking at an ipad next year because there are apps for kids that even out the cost between buying crap like leapfrog. there are apps to get kids to learn to read
but what the last 10 years have shown us is that even free has a cost. most of Apple's products are based on OSS software and yet apple still spends a lot of money on product development. same with HTC, Moto, the old Linksys and others. unless you want to be a brand X wifi router seller making the cheapest product you have to extend the original code and that costs a lot of money.
where MS screwed up is that back in the days when the linux kernel was 8MB the Windows kernel was something like 10 times that. flash was expensive back then and this is why mobile devices went ^nix. if MS had a similar sized kernel then it would have been cheaper to just license Windows and all mobile devices would be running Windows. you'd have to pay MS but there would be no dev costs like you have with android phones and you just sell a product
tens of millions of devices run ^nix only because in the 1990s MS screwed up with IE and Windows 2000/2003 and tried to push everything into the kernel. as the mobile device market was just being born then, the manufacturers turned to ^nix because it was so modular and you could grab small bits and pieces for your product.
Windows is still used on desktops and laptops but look around you and everything runs ^nix
because people don't care if email takes 10 seconds longer to arrive but they want youtube right now with no hiccups. no one has the capacity on the backend for every customer to run their internet at max speed. even the old ma bell didn't have the capacity for everyone to use the phone at the same time
it's for the people that can't get past the quaint idea of media being delivered in "issues" where you have to wait a day, week or month to read information
DOS/Windows gave people more control over their computers. people had the software locally and could install anything they wanted. anytime.
same with my iphone. i have all the files local on my laptop. if apple pulls an app then i can still use it. all i do is add the.app file in itunes and it will still sync. if someone breaks an app with an update i can still use the old version if i keep all the files.
with android the app install process is in the cloud and controlled by google
Slashdot Mirror
yes
Google became king in search but a lot of it is mostly spam quality results.
the theory is that people buy what others recommend. That's what facebook is all about, promote products by using people to "Like" things so that others buy them. kind of like the pointless but brand building TV ads. no one expects you to buy Coke after seeing a few ads, but after years you build a brand and make people think that it's better quality than other products.
take cereal. the organic stuff at Whole Foods is about the same price as the name brand artificial crap laden stuff you see in the super market.the reason the "brand name" costs the same even though it costs a lot less to make is that advertising makes up most of the cost of the product. Just like Nike shoes and paying Michael Jordan $40 million a year to promote them while they are made in slave shops for pennies
other than the fact that you're a fanboy and GL's core customer, it takes time and money to transfer them to each new format. you have to buy the workstations, software and pay people to do the transfer and the work of taking a 30 some year old movie and upgrading it to HD quality
idevices are 2/3 of apple's revenue. Mac's are like the bastard step kids that no one cares about anymore
adobe sells a lite version of photoshop called elements for $80. people just want the real thing to play around with
until the iphone came around RIM and others would have low end, mid and high end devices with different hardware. i've even seen dumb phones run java. it allowed hardware makers to have a ton of devices out there for every niche and cut down on dev costs. Java was cool since you only write the app once.
then the iPhone came and killed that model. the cost of the iphone is something like $2200 over 2 years. Droid is about the same. any other smartphone on AT&T or VZW will be within $200. i tell people to get the best phone they want since the cost is negligible over 2 years.
i remember in a school lab the teacher had the only Mac with a hard drive. 80MB. i thought it was so cool and that it would last a life time
all the online PC configurators are offering "free" upgrades to 6GB or 8GB RAM from 4GB
i've been following the PC market since the 1990's and the days of $50/MB of RAM. this happens every few years. manufacturers ramp up production and prices plummet. then a few months later they go up again, repeat. the complete cycle usually lasts 2-3 years
you have to keep production running since the plants are built with debt and the interest has to be paid on a regular schedule
i doubt it since almost everyone is making DDR3 these days and DDR2 is only the more expensive older assembly lines
nobody cares since the people buying these won't care about playing Black Ops at the highest settings. i sat out the Steam sale this year because almost every game is available for the X-Box 360 and PS3. I just want a laptop to play Civ 4 once in a while and store all my photos and music. and Sandy Bridge seems to spank Apple's laptops in a lot of areas now
my iphone is my camcorder
history has proved many times that cheap and mobile wins over single use and cool gee whiz tech
i have both, and only game on my 360. PS3 is great as a blu ray/media player. same price as the other blu ray players but a lot more functionality. no reason to ever buy a single game for it
things probably changed but back in the day it took permission from God to buy a server. and months of waiting. one time at one base they spent $200,000 on new switches that sat around for a year because the project to install them wasn't funded. and you can't keep the money for next year.
AWS is awesome. you pay Amazon a fee and you get flexibility. Clinton and Bush tried to fix things but the government unions kill any reform attempt
it has been a business for a long time. you really think all the medieval traveling musicians played for free? how did they buy food?
big difference in the last 70 years is RECORDED MUSIC. you no longer need a band to play music live. that's the reason for copyright
but how else are the kids going to feel cool about knowing classified information?
i've spent days playing it starting on the commodore 64 where it was just a bunch of squares. farmville and others are just slightly altered versions of Sim City and Civilization. so many people play them because they are on facebook and don't need to spend $50 plus extra DLC money to play the game
have you missed the iPod line? $79 to $399 with different features at each price point
i bet apple comes out with a 7" iPad next month for the same price or less. if someone is going to order millions of 7" screens then apple's spies will probably tip them off about it
the form factor is the cool part. you can buy board game apps so your house is not a mess and you can take your games everywhere you go. you can lay an ipad flat on a table and play monopoly like with the board game version.
any product that just tries to be a lite version of a netbook will fail
the iPad is cool not because it can read email but the app store. all kinds of apps that do things that were unimagined a few years ago.
i'm looking at an ipad next year because there are apps for kids that even out the cost between buying crap like leapfrog. there are apps to get kids to learn to read
but what the last 10 years have shown us is that even free has a cost. most of Apple's products are based on OSS software and yet apple still spends a lot of money on product development. same with HTC, Moto, the old Linksys and others. unless you want to be a brand X wifi router seller making the cheapest product you have to extend the original code and that costs a lot of money.
where MS screwed up is that back in the days when the linux kernel was 8MB the Windows kernel was something like 10 times that. flash was expensive back then and this is why mobile devices went ^nix. if MS had a similar sized kernel then it would have been cheaper to just license Windows and all mobile devices would be running Windows. you'd have to pay MS but there would be no dev costs like you have with android phones and you just sell a product
tens of millions of devices run ^nix only because in the 1990s MS screwed up with IE and Windows 2000/2003 and tried to push everything into the kernel. as the mobile device market was just being born then, the manufacturers turned to ^nix because it was so modular and you could grab small bits and pieces for your product.
Windows is still used on desktops and laptops but look around you and everything runs ^nix
apple and MS patent their own inventions
these patents date to 1989 when computer video was just beginning and look legit
because people don't care if email takes 10 seconds longer to arrive but they want youtube right now with no hiccups. no one has the capacity on the backend for every customer to run their internet at max speed. even the old ma bell didn't have the capacity for everyone to use the phone at the same time
it's for the people that can't get past the quaint idea of media being delivered in "issues" where you have to wait a day, week or month to read information
DOS/Windows gave people more control over their computers. people had the software locally and could install anything they wanted. anytime.
same with my iphone. i have all the files local on my laptop. if apple pulls an app then i can still use it. all i do is add the .app file in itunes and it will still sync. if someone breaks an app with an update i can still use the old version if i keep all the files.
with android the app install process is in the cloud and controlled by google