i think you didn't quite see my point. my point is, computers should be designed to get tasks done efficiently rather than focusing on being simple. if that getting things done efficiently involves a slightly steeper learning curve, so be it. people need to deal with that.
Computers can be efficient as well as simple. And since most users aren't experts at most tasks they perform on a computer, simple takes precedence because in those cases, simple is efficient.
also, i believe that computers should be adaptable to the user. windows is reasonably good at this and linux is very good at this. macs, on the other hand, ask the user to adapt to the ways of the OS, something i think is very backward.
This is an utterly absurd statement to make. I personally use several Linux distros (mostly Ubuntu nowadays), Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista. The Windows flavours are currently the least malleable. Linux and Mac OS X are both just flavours of Unix. You can open a shell and hack away. On the Mac, all applications are basically folders. Open them, and you can change them. The UI on Mac apps is generally specified in user-editable files. You can hack, change and configure everything on a Mac. You can even replace the Finder with another file manager, similar to Linux. Windows simply can't compete.
My guess is that you have more experience with Windows and Linux, thus don't know how to configure Macs, and thus think that they can't be configured. You are, however, wrong.
inexperienced computer users need to learn a little. not much, just a little. using apple computers are like saying inexperienced english speakers should always read at kindergarten-level.
Do you realize how insane that sounds? Computers are tools. They should be usable by normal people without them having to learn anything about what makes them tick. You don't have to know about how electric motors work to drill a hole in a wall. You don't have to learn about physics to ride a bike. You don't have to know how to produce a sausage in order to buy one. You don't have to know how an engine works to drive a car. You don't have to know about the brothers wright to fly a plane.
The burden is on the software engineer to make his applications usable and save. If he fails, it's never the user's fault.
Your elitist arrogance is inappropriate. I hope you don't design UI for a living.
interfaces are oversimplified and prevent real work from being done in many cases pertinent to me.
What? This is Unix. You can do whatever you want. Please provide examples detailing where the UI prevented "real work from being done."
2. oversimplified interfaces ensure that people never learn about computers
GAH! I hate this argument. It's so fucking stupid. What you're basically saying is that you want to force people to use unusable stuff just so that they are forced to learn. This is insane. Nobody does that! It's like asking for cars to have no electronics because due to all the electronics, people don't have to learn about how an engine works.
Look, if you have a choice between something that is hard to use and something that is easy to use, picking the hard item is not smart. It's stupid.
3. oversimplified and unintuitive hardware.
Where by "unintuitive" you mean "not matching what I've learned while using another system." So not only do you want to use the hard-to-use system because it forces you to learn, you also want every other system to behave like the hard-to-use system.
4. badly-designed hardware. slot-loading cd drives that scratch disks, don't eject disks, and have no easy way to manually take them out in emergency. batteries that cannot be replaced by the user, on iphone and many ipods.
Never heard about the slot-loading drives scratching disks. The batteries are somewhat annoying, but you can replace iPod batteries on your own, and frankly, I've never wanted to replace a battery in a cell phone or an iPod, so I don't really care. You get something in return, too: Better design.
5. badly-designed hardware as a marketing tactic to get people to spend more on tech support (batteries, being the biggest culprit).
What? Is this conspiracy theory day?
6. proprietary hardware. the "apple display connector". non-standard usb cables on some keyboards. non-standard earphone jacks on the iPod instead of simply having standard mini USB connector and standard 1/8" jack connector separately so any cable from your closet can be used to transfer data.
Apple goes with proprietary if they think they can significantly improve upon the open solution. They've done it less and less often recently.
7. bad looks. i hate white hardware. okay, this is just my opinion, though.
Few Apple hardware is white anymore.
8. non-intuitive software. for one, the easiest way one can think of using an mp3 player on windows is to shove it into a USB drive, have the drive pop open as any thumb drive would, drag mp3's into it, and eject it. but nooooooo you have to either install iTunes or get some hack that updates the iPod DB. sheesh.
Uh. What. Manually dragging your MP3 files on a MP3 player that is mounted by Windows is more intuitive than just plugging it in and letting it sync automatically? Using Windows to manage your portable music player is more intuitive than using your music management application? I think you should consider the possibility that your definition of "intuitive" does not match most other people's definition of "intuitive." I would guess that using your hard-to-use system has kind of destroyed your calibration in that area.
Wait, your argument is that Sony should create a new mini-blu-ray format? And probably mini-DVD, too. What the hell good would that do??? That would be absolutely useless since you couldn't actually play anything on it. The UMD format already is a kind of mini-DVD. And you want them to add yet another proprietary format??? I don't get it.
### Not sure why you'd say that Wii Sports isn't a good game.
Because those games are dumped down to a point where it just isn't interesting any more. Tennis without the ability to control the player just isn't my thing and well, I never liked sports games in the first place.
I suspect you mean "dumbed," and I further suspect you haven't actually played any of them very much:-)
Tennis, Bowling, Golf and Boxing are, in fact, very deep games that allow a lot more control than most other games in these genres. It's just that this is not immediately obvious, because the control does not involve pushing buttons, but manual control of the Wii Remote.
### Mario Strikers?
They had already one on the Gamecube that looked basically the same, I wasn't interested in it back then, so why should I now?
Owning both, I can tell you that they play quite different, and the Wii one is a lot better.
I was already thinking about replacing my PSP, but these don't look any different at all. Except for Darth Vader. I'd buy the Dart Vader one, maybe, but I don't really see any changes in the hardware itself.
Looks like Crush might also come out on the Wii and the DS. The developers are currently considering it, although there's no official announcement yet. It's a great game, btw.
Dunno. I love Wii Sports, and I'll buy the other games. Not sure why you'd say that Wii Sports isn't a good game. Anyway, maybe Super Paper Mario fits your description? It's a gamer's game, it's innovative, and it's good. Wario Ware isn't exactly innovative anymore (it's the fourth game in the series, I think), but it's still very fresh. Mario Strikers? Great game, and only the second Mario Football game. Excite Truck? And once we leave the Nintendo-published games, how about Trauma Center, Mercury Meltdown, Rayman, the new Sonic game...
MS has a history of eliminating competitors with rapid release cycles. Not just stay ahead of them, eliminate them. The fact that the 360 has been out longer means that if they push the next generation, it won't feel as rushed to 360 owners as it will seem to Wii/PS3 owners. If priced competitively, it will easily sway the PS3 fence-sitters to the new 'next-gen', further eroding Sony's userbase.
Ah, that's a good argument. They could drive the next generation early in order to force Sony to keep investing and keep them from making profits on the PS3, and Microsoft can certainly keep that up for longer. Microsoft risks alienating its own customers, but as you say, the 360 is a year older than the other consoles, which gives them some leeway. Interesting thought. I wonder how this plays out.
The next generation may see Sony dropping out of the market. There will be a PS4, but it's success is far from guaranteed.
Personally, I think that Sony will catch up with the 360 within two to three years. I think both Sony and Microsoft will will be in an acceptable position, and they'll try to keep this generation going as long as possible to maximize profits. I think Microsof had high hopes for the 360 to become a media computer which is used by many "normal" people to buy movies and media from them, and so far, this isn't happening (people seem to prefer something along the lines of iTunes and an AppleTV instead of an all-in-one box), which means the console market may not be as important to Microsoft as they once thought it was. I am not sure they're still willing to invest great amounts of money into it.
However, your theory makes sense, too. Only time will tell.
Wii Sports, Wii Music, the Wii Balance Board... Are you seriously suggesting Nintendo isn't making new, innovative, good games? I thought the argument I was writing an answer to was that they stopped being a gamer's gaming company.
I didn't buy Nintendo consoles in the past to get the same games as always, I did buy them to get new and interesting games.
If you're seriously claiming that the Wii and the DS don't deliver that, then I do not know what to tell you.
I didn't say "Microsoft," I said "Windows." I made a very specific argument. I most certainly did not claim that people didn't dislike Microsoft for moral reasons.
If anyone is going to make another market push, it will be MS again. Their system has been out the longest, they have the cash for it, and it's worked for them in the past.
Microsoft moved first with the 360 because they weren't able to turn a profit on the Xbox even years after they launched it. The Xbox was a money sink, and it wasn't making any progress in the market. Which is precisely the position the PS3 is in right now. As long as Microsoft will stay around 10 million ahead of the PS3, there will be no reason for them to release a successor.
The simple fact is that even if the PS3 is faster, the games on the PS3 will never look much better than the 360 games. Right now, they look worse. So it doesn't matter for Microsoft that they were out a year longer than the other consoles. They can still compete, and the longer they keep the 360, the more money they make.
Sony hopes to get what, 8 years out of the PS3?
Yeah, but that is the same bs every console manufacturer claims when the new consoles come out. In reality, it doesn't matter how fast your console is. What matters is how well it does on the market. The better it does, the longer you try to hang on to it. If it fails, you need to get rid of it as quickly as possible and try again. As of now, it seems the PS3 is firmly in the "fail" category.
A 'next-gen' Xbox priced competitively with the PS3 released in the next 2-3 years would leave Sony scrambling.
But Sony is already scrambling.
Nintendo is in a really good position to roll with that scenario by simply stepping up the horsepower of the Wii to 'current gen' levels and selling it for $250-300.
Yeah. Nintendo is in a great position. They can reply to anything the others can throw at them. If they wanted to, they could start the next generation in three or four years and really screw up Microsoft and especially Sony. I doubt they will, though. Nintendo is about making money, and the longer they keep the Wii going, the more of it they can make.
But every PS2 is also a sale that "could" be going to the PS3.
I doubt it. People buying a 100$ console and people buying a 500$ console are an entirely different market, I think.
I don't think the PS2 is competing with the PS3. If anything, it's competing with the Wii.
GOW2 seems like a big hit for Sony. But why isn't it a big hit for the PS3? I doubt that every PS2 sold is a lost Wii sale. Nintendo last time I looked was selling every Wii they made.
Which actually means that a lot of people looking for a Wii may end up with a PS2 instead. They wouldn't pay twice as much and buy a PS3, but they might pay half as much and buy a PS2. I doubt it happens often, but it seems more likely that the PS2 is stealing from the Wii than from the PS3.
This year (and a bit into next year, I guess), we're going to get Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros and a new Mario Kart (oh, and a bunch of awesome DS games, such as a brand new and apparently fantastic Zelda game). I don't know what you expect from a Nintendo console, but if that doesn't make you happy, no Nintendo console ever did.
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Computers can be efficient as well as simple. And since most users aren't experts at most tasks they perform on a computer, simple takes precedence because in those cases, simple is efficient.
also, i believe that computers should be adaptable to the user. windows is reasonably good at this and linux is very good at this. macs, on the other hand, ask the user to adapt to the ways of the OS, something i think is very backward.This is an utterly absurd statement to make. I personally use several Linux distros (mostly Ubuntu nowadays), Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista. The Windows flavours are currently the least malleable. Linux and Mac OS X are both just flavours of Unix. You can open a shell and hack away. On the Mac, all applications are basically folders. Open them, and you can change them. The UI on Mac apps is generally specified in user-editable files. You can hack, change and configure everything on a Mac. You can even replace the Finder with another file manager, similar to Linux. Windows simply can't compete.
My guess is that you have more experience with Windows and Linux, thus don't know how to configure Macs, and thus think that they can't be configured. You are, however, wrong.
Do you realize how insane that sounds? Computers are tools. They should be usable by normal people without them having to learn anything about what makes them tick. You don't have to know about how electric motors work to drill a hole in a wall. You don't have to learn about physics to ride a bike. You don't have to know how to produce a sausage in order to buy one. You don't have to know how an engine works to drive a car. You don't have to know about the brothers wright to fly a plane.
The burden is on the software engineer to make his applications usable and save. If he fails, it's never the user's fault.
Your elitist arrogance is inappropriate. I hope you don't design UI for a living.
What? This is Unix. You can do whatever you want. Please provide examples detailing where the UI prevented "real work from being done."
2. oversimplified interfaces ensure that people never learn about computersGAH! I hate this argument. It's so fucking stupid. What you're basically saying is that you want to force people to use unusable stuff just so that they are forced to learn. This is insane. Nobody does that! It's like asking for cars to have no electronics because due to all the electronics, people don't have to learn about how an engine works.
Look, if you have a choice between something that is hard to use and something that is easy to use, picking the hard item is not smart. It's stupid.
3. oversimplified and unintuitive hardware.Where by "unintuitive" you mean "not matching what I've learned while using another system." So not only do you want to use the hard-to-use system because it forces you to learn, you also want every other system to behave like the hard-to-use system.
4. badly-designed hardware. slot-loading cd drives that scratch disks, don't eject disks, and have no easy way to manually take them out in emergency. batteries that cannot be replaced by the user, on iphone and many ipods.Never heard about the slot-loading drives scratching disks. The batteries are somewhat annoying, but you can replace iPod batteries on your own, and frankly, I've never wanted to replace a battery in a cell phone or an iPod, so I don't really care. You get something in return, too: Better design.
5. badly-designed hardware as a marketing tactic to get people to spend more on tech support (batteries, being the biggest culprit).What? Is this conspiracy theory day?
6. proprietary hardware. the "apple display connector". non-standard usb cables on some keyboards. non-standard earphone jacks on the iPod instead of simply having standard mini USB connector and standard 1/8" jack connector separately so any cable from your closet can be used to transfer data.Apple goes with proprietary if they think they can significantly improve upon the open solution. They've done it less and less often recently.
7. bad looks. i hate white hardware. okay, this is just my opinion, though.Few Apple hardware is white anymore.
8. non-intuitive software. for one, the easiest way one can think of using an mp3 player on windows is to shove it into a USB drive, have the drive pop open as any thumb drive would, drag mp3's into it, and eject it. but nooooooo you have to either install iTunes or get some hack that updates the iPod DB. sheesh.Uh. What. Manually dragging your MP3 files on a MP3 player that is mounted by Windows is more intuitive than just plugging it in and letting it sync automatically? Using Windows to manage your portable music player is more intuitive than using your music management application? I think you should consider the possibility that your definition of "intuitive" does not match most other people's definition of "intuitive." I would guess that using your hard-to-use system has kind of destroyed your calibration in that area.
Wait, your argument is that Sony should create a new mini-blu-ray format? And probably mini-DVD, too. What the hell good would that do??? That would be absolutely useless since you couldn't actually play anything on it. The UMD format already is a kind of mini-DVD. And you want them to add yet another proprietary format??? I don't get it.
I suspect you mean "dumbed," and I further suspect you haven't actually played any of them very much :-)
### Mario Strikers? They had already one on the Gamecube that looked basically the same, I wasn't interested in it back then, so why should I now?Tennis, Bowling, Golf and Boxing are, in fact, very deep games that allow a lot more control than most other games in these genres. It's just that this is not immediately obvious, because the control does not involve pushing buttons, but manual control of the Wii Remote.
Owning both, I can tell you that they play quite different, and the Wii one is a lot better.
What part of "games come on UMD" do you not understand? Sony can not get rid of UMD until they replace the PSP with a new portable platform.
Do you realize how small the PSP is and how big a Blu-Ray disc is?
Sony, please. This is getting ridiculous. How about making the PS3 another 100 bucks cheaper instead of paying people to post crap like this to /.? :-)
I was already thinking about replacing my PSP, but these don't look any different at all. Except for Darth Vader. I'd buy the Dart Vader one, maybe, but I don't really see any changes in the hardware itself.
Oh my god, it's the ps triple guy, on Slashdot!
I guess you're right.
Looks like Crush might also come out on the Wii and the DS. The developers are currently considering it, although there's no official announcement yet. It's a great game, btw.
Yes, where is Microsoft's answer to Sony's answer to Halo!
...or downloadable minigames/arcade ports.
Plus, you have the option of running around with a stupid looking gun when playing FPS on the Wii :-)
...three of which (including one online game) are worth the money they cost.
Wow, what an endorsement! I bet they printed that on the box :-)
Killzone 2 got so much hype because
1) pretty pre-rendered trailer
2) there's not much else to get excited about on the PS3
Dunno. I love Wii Sports, and I'll buy the other games. Not sure why you'd say that Wii Sports isn't a good game. Anyway, maybe Super Paper Mario fits your description? It's a gamer's game, it's innovative, and it's good. Wario Ware isn't exactly innovative anymore (it's the fourth game in the series, I think), but it's still very fresh. Mario Strikers? Great game, and only the second Mario Football game. Excite Truck? And once we leave the Nintendo-published games, how about Trauma Center, Mercury Meltdown, Rayman, the new Sonic game...
Ah, that's a good argument. They could drive the next generation early in order to force Sony to keep investing and keep them from making profits on the PS3, and Microsoft can certainly keep that up for longer. Microsoft risks alienating its own customers, but as you say, the 360 is a year older than the other consoles, which gives them some leeway. Interesting thought. I wonder how this plays out.
The next generation may see Sony dropping out of the market. There will be a PS4, but it's success is far from guaranteed.Personally, I think that Sony will catch up with the 360 within two to three years. I think both Sony and Microsoft will will be in an acceptable position, and they'll try to keep this generation going as long as possible to maximize profits. I think Microsof had high hopes for the 360 to become a media computer which is used by many "normal" people to buy movies and media from them, and so far, this isn't happening (people seem to prefer something along the lines of iTunes and an AppleTV instead of an all-in-one box), which means the console market may not be as important to Microsoft as they once thought it was. I am not sure they're still willing to invest great amounts of money into it.
However, your theory makes sense, too. Only time will tell.
Wii Sports, Wii Music, the Wii Balance Board... Are you seriously suggesting Nintendo isn't making new, innovative, good games? I thought the argument I was writing an answer to was that they stopped being a gamer's gaming company.
I didn't buy Nintendo consoles in the past to get the same games as always, I did buy them to get new and interesting games.If you're seriously claiming that the Wii and the DS don't deliver that, then I do not know what to tell you.
I didn't say "Microsoft," I said "Windows." I made a very specific argument. I most certainly did not claim that people didn't dislike Microsoft for moral reasons.
Microsoft moved first with the 360 because they weren't able to turn a profit on the Xbox even years after they launched it. The Xbox was a money sink, and it wasn't making any progress in the market. Which is precisely the position the PS3 is in right now. As long as Microsoft will stay around 10 million ahead of the PS3, there will be no reason for them to release a successor.
The simple fact is that even if the PS3 is faster, the games on the PS3 will never look much better than the 360 games. Right now, they look worse. So it doesn't matter for Microsoft that they were out a year longer than the other consoles. They can still compete, and the longer they keep the 360, the more money they make.
Sony hopes to get what, 8 years out of the PS3?Yeah, but that is the same bs every console manufacturer claims when the new consoles come out. In reality, it doesn't matter how fast your console is. What matters is how well it does on the market. The better it does, the longer you try to hang on to it. If it fails, you need to get rid of it as quickly as possible and try again. As of now, it seems the PS3 is firmly in the "fail" category.
A 'next-gen' Xbox priced competitively with the PS3 released in the next 2-3 years would leave Sony scrambling.But Sony is already scrambling.
Nintendo is in a really good position to roll with that scenario by simply stepping up the horsepower of the Wii to 'current gen' levels and selling it for $250-300.Yeah. Nintendo is in a great position. They can reply to anything the others can throw at them. If they wanted to, they could start the next generation in three or four years and really screw up Microsoft and especially Sony. I doubt they will, though. Nintendo is about making money, and the longer they keep the Wii going, the more of it they can make.
I doubt it. People buying a 100$ console and people buying a 500$ console are an entirely different market, I think.
I don't think the PS2 is competing with the PS3. If anything, it's competing with the Wii.
GOW2 seems like a big hit for Sony. But why isn't it a big hit for the PS3? I doubt that every PS2 sold is a lost Wii sale. Nintendo last time I looked was selling every Wii they made.Which actually means that a lot of people looking for a Wii may end up with a PS2 instead. They wouldn't pay twice as much and buy a PS3, but they might pay half as much and buy a PS2. I doubt it happens often, but it seems more likely that the PS2 is stealing from the Wii than from the PS3.
This year (and a bit into next year, I guess), we're going to get Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros and a new Mario Kart (oh, and a bunch of awesome DS games, such as a brand new and apparently fantastic Zelda game). I don't know what you expect from a Nintendo console, but if that doesn't make you happy, no Nintendo console ever did.