Yeah. Sony claimed that their ATRAC compression was so much better than everything else that their 48kbps songs sounded as great as other people's 128 kbps AAC files. It's not true, of course, but what do you expect of Sony.
Well, I'm sorry that your ignorance and prejudice keep you from objectively evaluating why people choose Apple products. The point you bring up about the number of songs is laughable, by the way. It's an example of Apple turning tech specs into something people actually understand. They're using average song length and bitrate to determine how many songs a typical user can store on the iPod. Nothing nefarious about it. Anyway, obviously, discussion is pointless since you've made up your mind about Apple and its customers. If you can't see a reason to buy a computer running Mac OS X, I'm afraid I don't know what to tell you.
I have to admit that I was not able to parse the first two paragraphs of your reply (the name of the product tells you that it is shit? huh?), thus I have to ignore those. I don't think it matters, because this seems to be the meat of what you're trying to say:
But whatever, people think pretty=good...
Actually, this is precisely what they hopefully don't think. Please note that the iPhone ads don't actually show the iPhone. They show a person using the iPhone's interface. When was the last time you saw a phone ad that did not concentrate on design and lifestyle? I bet this is the first.
I don't really know what you have against Apple or the people who buy Apple's products, but it seems to be clouding your judgement. Apple is the only cell phone manufacturer which is not selling its phone based on "prettiness."
Obviously they won't reach 70+% market share. That was also not the comparison I was making. I was merely pointing out that calling the iPhone "just a phone" because it doesn't do more than other cell phones was similar to calling the iPod "just an iPod" because when it came out, it didn't do more than other MP3 players.
And yes, the iPhone is already a game changer. No high-end phone manufacturer can afford to ignore the iPhone or "keep going as it always has." If they do, the iPhone may very well soon break the 1% market share Apple is aiming for. And, in fact, the other manufacturers aren't ignoring the iPhone: LG, Palm; and Palm again.
So far, cell phones were about hardware design and lifestyle ads. Apple is changing the game, and we'll all benefit.
Palm killed itself the moment it split into a hardware company and a software company. They're still kind of hanging in there like a freaking Zombie that doesn't really realize that its clock has stopped ticking, and they could yet come back from the dead if they really concentrated on creating a superior user experience - kinda going back to what made them big in the first place - but they need to do it fast. The iPhone is a wake-up call (actually a rise-from-the-dead call, to continue with this fucked up analogy).
I hope they manage to pull it off. The more competition, the merrier.
Yes, it is. I was not meaning to sarcastically imply that the iPod is actually more than an MP3 player. I realize that while it does do a bunch of things outside of playing MP3s, these things aren't all that important. It's true: The iPod is just an MP3 player. No sarcasm.
However, you're still missing the whole point. The iPod is not important because it's more than just an MP3 player. It is important because it's just an MP3 player that is actually nicely designed and sports a usable interface. There were many MP3 players before the iPod that did more and cost less than an iPod. But they were not accessible for most users.
The same applies to the iPhone. There are many cell phones that are cheaper and do more than the iPhone, but people can't really use them. Of all the people you know who own cell phones, how many use their cell phone's internet access to look up maps on google? Make conference calls? Use the built-in organizer?
I'm bewildered by the number of Slashdot people who seriously believe that virtually everyone is "unhappy" with their cellphones. This may come as a surprise to you, but I actually have non-geek friends. I know that they don't like their phones because I'm often the one they go to if they have tech problems. Obviously, the issues they have are not those a normal/. user has. They're annoyed if they start writing an SMS and then can't easily choose who to write it to because the phone software expected them to start from an address book entry instead of from an empty sms. They're annoyed if they can't figure out how to send the picture they took to their computer. They're annoyed if they missed a call, pressed "close" and then don't know where to find the list of missed calles. They're annoyed that there's no easy way to add a phone number from an sms they've received to an existing contact.
It gets even more laughable when you consider the common thread amongst those who criticise cellphones on Slashdot tends to be that they're too functional, a constituency that isn't going to be in any way satisfied by an expensive multifunctional touch-screen controlled cellphone. You're missing the point. People aren't complaining that their phones are too functional. They complain because all the functions keep them from doing what they actually want to do at any given time. This is an important distinction.
I'm glad your friends like their phones, but I'm afraid you're not part of the majority on this one.
The videos I saw didn't really show me anything 'new'. Don't know about you, but I've never seen a cell phone ad that showed me the phone's UI. Usually, cell phone ads are about style, and elegance, and maybe features. And most phones are pretty and have tons of feature, but you end up never using them because the phones are buggy and slow and complicated.
Showing the actual UI - and nothing but the UI - in an ad, that's pretty new for a cell phone.
And this is the difference. This is why the iPhone will change the cell phone market for the better - not necessarly because everyone will get an iPhone, but simply because other manufacturers will be forced to give the UI more thought.
Thousands is probably about right, and a pretty small number if you sell millions. So, your iPod player has a battery that never dies? Where did you buy that? I want one too.
Yeah, because if you do that, the iPhone will look so much worse than any other phone on the planet. I mean, my P990i was made for bags filled with keys and sand! It's the ultimate sandbagphone!
There will probably be about a gazillion different socks and bags and thingies to choose from into which you can put your iPhone before you throw it into your bag filled with nickels, knives, scissors and other sharp objects. Maybe the iPhone will even come with some kind of protective case. Have fun with the hour-long shaking, though, if you're into that kind of thing.
Watching their demos you'd think that all you do on a cellphone is browse preloaded content. Apart from entering SMS messages, this is pretty much what people do, I'd say.
The revolutionary thing about the iPhone is not that it uses a multitouch screen (although that is pretty new, too - if you know of any other cell phones that do that, I'd love to hear about it). The revolutionary thing is how it uses the touch screen. Have you ever seen a cell phone ad that focused on usability? That's pretty damn revolutionary if you ask me. Which you don't, of course... but... it still is! HA!
No thanks Apple, unlike portable music players, people actually are happy with their cellphones. Really? Who is this mystery person who is happy with his or her cell phone? I have yet to meet him or her.
All of them (except OS X) have been hugely influential, often redefining the "niches" they were in. I expect the iPhone to do the same, and so it's no surprise people are excited. And, in fact, it's already starting to influence other manufacturers. For example, Palm has hired a former Apple software designer to work on its new handhelds.
The iPhone will be good for all of us, just like Mac OS X has been good for all of us. It will bring some much-needed competition into the UI area of cell phone design. Let's face it, cell phone UIs are crap. My P990i is probably the worst piece of pure interface idiocy I have ever used. Cell phone manufacturers care about how the device looks, how many features it has, and how much it costs. This is obvious when looking at their ads. Check out Apple's new iPhone ads and you'll immediately see the difference.
The iPhone is not sold as a pretty, feature-rich cell phone. It is sold as a beautiful, intuitive user interface with a matching hardware shell.
While being able to program in assembly is a good skill to have, it should be noted that many of the modern processors are so complex that it's often (or even most of the time) better to let the compiler and the processor itself worry about optimizing your code.
When I wrote "make it a Mac application and not just a Windows port," I did not mean to imply that VMWare is a Windows port. I was speaking generally and used "Windows port" since this is the most obvious and most common source of Mac ports.
This nation was founded on individuality, and not on doing what one is told.
That may be possible, but in my experience, jingoism and mindless patriotism are a lot more pervasive in the US than in most other western, first-world countries, while individual opinion and reason is often almost frowned upon - especially since 9/11.
Actually, Rare has said that Microsoft-owned franchises on the VC are "a possibility". Personally, I would not bet on it, but I wouldn't count it out, either. Could make Microsoft some money while hurting Sony... They are developing DS games, so you never know.
I, too, have bought a lot of games I already own. I don't need to connect the SNES to my beamer to play them (which never really worked anyway), if I take my Wii somewhere, all my games come with me without taking any space, the Classic Controller is a really great controller, the games look very pretty using Component cables (at least those which work with my beamer - some games unfortunately don't show on the beamer if I use the Component cables), they auto-save whenever I want.
I think it's great. Some games may be a bit on the expensive side, but I can live with that.
No, the thesis doesn't state that things get harder when you get closer to realism. It states that things will look uncanny the closer you get to realism till you hit a point where things will go better again, very different thing.
GAH! If you fix the "small mistakes,"* obviously it will become more realistic, thus getting out of the valley again. IT'S THE SAME THING! Obviously you're just arguing for argument's sake, and you're not going to admit that at this point of the discussion, so I will end here and just encourage you to - if you indeed still don't get it - read through the wikipedia article again. I'm sure you'll figure it out. Good luck.
* the mistakes, by the way, may look small, but that doesn't mean they're easy to fix. If you render something realistically, people expect the rendering to behave like a human, which means you need to get a lot of small stuff right - muscle movements when talking or emoting, for example. Imperfections of the skin. Stuff like that. These may look small, but they're hard to get right, which is why the uncanny valley exists. People accept less realistic renderings more easily. If a smiley grins, it's easy to accept the grin as such. If a realistic rendering grins, you have to get a lot of stuff right to convince people that it's an honest laugh.
Some reasons for Nintendo's dominance were already mentioned in other comments. Here are two other ideas:
The old Nintendo franchises are still valid. Nobody remembers Kid Chameleon, and recent Sonic games were crap, but the Nintendo franchises still hold up. Zelda and Mario are still huge entities.
Another reason could be that third-parties are holding back with the big guns. No Final Fantasy, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. Sony claimed that their ATRAC compression was so much better than everything else that their 48kbps songs sounded as great as other people's 128 kbps AAC files. It's not true, of course, but what do you expect of Sony.
Well, I'm sorry that your ignorance and prejudice keep you from objectively evaluating why people choose Apple products. The point you bring up about the number of songs is laughable, by the way. It's an example of Apple turning tech specs into something people actually understand. They're using average song length and bitrate to determine how many songs a typical user can store on the iPod. Nothing nefarious about it. Anyway, obviously, discussion is pointless since you've made up your mind about Apple and its customers. If you can't see a reason to buy a computer running Mac OS X, I'm afraid I don't know what to tell you.
I have to admit that I was not able to parse the first two paragraphs of your reply (the name of the product tells you that it is shit? huh?), thus I have to ignore those. I don't think it matters, because this seems to be the meat of what you're trying to say:
But whatever, people think pretty=good...Actually, this is precisely what they hopefully don't think. Please note that the iPhone ads don't actually show the iPhone. They show a person using the iPhone's interface. When was the last time you saw a phone ad that did not concentrate on design and lifestyle? I bet this is the first.
I don't really know what you have against Apple or the people who buy Apple's products, but it seems to be clouding your judgement. Apple is the only cell phone manufacturer which is not selling its phone based on "prettiness."
Obviously they won't reach 70+% market share. That was also not the comparison I was making. I was merely pointing out that calling the iPhone "just a phone" because it doesn't do more than other cell phones was similar to calling the iPod "just an iPod" because when it came out, it didn't do more than other MP3 players.
And yes, the iPhone is already a game changer. No high-end phone manufacturer can afford to ignore the iPhone or "keep going as it always has." If they do, the iPhone may very well soon break the 1% market share Apple is aiming for. And, in fact, the other manufacturers aren't ignoring the iPhone: LG, Palm; and Palm again.
So far, cell phones were about hardware design and lifestyle ads. Apple is changing the game, and we'll all benefit.
Palm killed itself the moment it split into a hardware company and a software company. They're still kind of hanging in there like a freaking Zombie that doesn't really realize that its clock has stopped ticking, and they could yet come back from the dead if they really concentrated on creating a superior user experience - kinda going back to what made them big in the first place - but they need to do it fast. The iPhone is a wake-up call (actually a rise-from-the-dead call, to continue with this fucked up analogy).
I hope they manage to pull it off. The more competition, the merrier.
Yes, it is. I was not meaning to sarcastically imply that the iPod is actually more than an MP3 player. I realize that while it does do a bunch of things outside of playing MP3s, these things aren't all that important. It's true: The iPod is just an MP3 player. No sarcasm.
However, you're still missing the whole point. The iPod is not important because it's more than just an MP3 player. It is important because it's just an MP3 player that is actually nicely designed and sports a usable interface. There were many MP3 players before the iPod that did more and cost less than an iPod. But they were not accessible for most users.
The same applies to the iPhone. There are many cell phones that are cheaper and do more than the iPhone, but people can't really use them. Of all the people you know who own cell phones, how many use their cell phone's internet access to look up maps on google? Make conference calls? Use the built-in organizer?
I'm glad your friends like their phones, but I'm afraid you're not part of the majority on this one.
So, which phone do you use?
How old are you, and why are you not in school?
Showing the actual UI - and nothing but the UI - in an ad, that's pretty new for a cell phone.
And this is the difference. This is why the iPhone will change the cell phone market for the better - not necessarly because everyone will get an iPhone, but simply because other manufacturers will be forced to give the UI more thought.
Thousands is probably about right, and a pretty small number if you sell millions. So, your iPod player has a battery that never dies? Where did you buy that? I want one too.
Yeah, because if you do that, the iPhone will look so much worse than any other phone on the planet. I mean, my P990i was made for bags filled with keys and sand! It's the ultimate sandbagphone!
There will probably be about a gazillion different socks and bags and thingies to choose from into which you can put your iPhone before you throw it into your bag filled with nickels, knives, scissors and other sharp objects. Maybe the iPhone will even come with some kind of protective case. Have fun with the hour-long shaking, though, if you're into that kind of thing.
The revolutionary thing about the iPhone is not that it uses a multitouch screen (although that is pretty new, too - if you know of any other cell phones that do that, I'd love to hear about it). The revolutionary thing is how it uses the touch screen. Have you ever seen a cell phone ad that focused on usability? That's pretty damn revolutionary if you ask me. Which you don't, of course... but... it still is! HA!
Yeah, the iPhone is just a cell phone. In the same vein that the iPod is just an MP3 player.
The iPhone will be good for all of us, just like Mac OS X has been good for all of us. It will bring some much-needed competition into the UI area of cell phone design. Let's face it, cell phone UIs are crap. My P990i is probably the worst piece of pure interface idiocy I have ever used. Cell phone manufacturers care about how the device looks, how many features it has, and how much it costs. This is obvious when looking at their ads. Check out Apple's new iPhone ads and you'll immediately see the difference.
The iPhone is not sold as a pretty, feature-rich cell phone. It is sold as a beautiful, intuitive user interface with a matching hardware shell.
While being able to program in assembly is a good skill to have, it should be noted that many of the modern processors are so complex that it's often (or even most of the time) better to let the compiler and the processor itself worry about optimizing your code.
Yeah, that was a bit harsh. Lots of people remember Kid Chameleon. Just not as many as those who recognize Mario :-)
When I wrote "make it a Mac application and not just a Windows port," I did not mean to imply that VMWare is a Windows port. I was speaking generally and used "Windows port" since this is the most obvious and most common source of Mac ports.
I do not know how VMWare is developed.
That may be possible, but in my experience, jingoism and mindless patriotism are a lot more pervasive in the US than in most other western, first-world countries, while individual opinion and reason is often almost frowned upon - especially since 9/11.
Actually, Rare has said that Microsoft-owned franchises on the VC are "a possibility". Personally, I would not bet on it, but I wouldn't count it out, either. Could make Microsoft some money while hurting Sony... They are developing DS games, so you never know.
I, too, have bought a lot of games I already own. I don't need to connect the SNES to my beamer to play them (which never really worked anyway), if I take my Wii somewhere, all my games come with me without taking any space, the Classic Controller is a really great controller, the games look very pretty using Component cables (at least those which work with my beamer - some games unfortunately don't show on the beamer if I use the Component cables), they auto-save whenever I want.
I think it's great. Some games may be a bit on the expensive side, but I can live with that.
GAH! If you fix the "small mistakes,"* obviously it will become more realistic, thus getting out of the valley again. IT'S THE SAME THING! Obviously you're just arguing for argument's sake, and you're not going to admit that at this point of the discussion, so I will end here and just encourage you to - if you indeed still don't get it - read through the wikipedia article again. I'm sure you'll figure it out. Good luck.
* the mistakes, by the way, may look small, but that doesn't mean they're easy to fix. If you render something realistically, people expect the rendering to behave like a human, which means you need to get a lot of small stuff right - muscle movements when talking or emoting, for example. Imperfections of the skin. Stuff like that. These may look small, but they're hard to get right, which is why the uncanny valley exists. People accept less realistic renderings more easily. If a smiley grins, it's easy to accept the grin as such. If a realistic rendering grins, you have to get a lot of stuff right to convince people that it's an honest laugh.
Some reasons for Nintendo's dominance were already mentioned in other comments. Here are two other ideas:
The old Nintendo franchises are still valid. Nobody remembers Kid Chameleon, and recent Sonic games were crap, but the Nintendo franchises still hold up. Zelda and Mario are still huge entities.
Another reason could be that third-parties are holding back with the big guns. No Final Fantasy, for example.