No, they're actually not. iPhone is priced the same as other premium cell phones. iPads are generally cheaper than roughly-equivalent pads from other manufacturers. Macbook Pros are about the same price as other high-end laptops from Lenovo and others for the same specs/form factor/battery life.
I'm not sure where you get your pricing from, but the Apple prices I find always seem to be at least 25% higher than equivalent products. Apple should be able to provide their suppliers with more money to better take care of their workers and workers at their contractors factories. This should be obvious by looking at Apple's earnings the last few quarters. Maybe this is how Apple thinks differently now?
Aren't Apple products always higher priced than their competitors products with nearly identical features? I look at most Apple product consumers as people that are willing to pay far more for less features than other similar products.
I've been working with several ARM tablets that work well. They don't seem to be available at overpriced -Buy stores with poor service, but I have found them here:
Didn't they stop teaching civics in the US public schools starting in the 1960's?
The last time I checked a few years ago they were only teaching a dumbed down version of a US Constitution class in 8th grade. 8th graders are expected to memorise the answers to a US Constitution test in order to pass on to high school.
Commercial inkjet systems for printing electronics on a wide range of materials has also been available for some time: http://www.onelabs.com/prntelec0000.htm
Multilayer conductive pcb traces including passive and active components are already being inkjet printed. The current geometries however for components are in the few micron range. A couple of decades behind current semiconductor processing but far ahead of current pcb fabrication techniques.
The meters in Chicago just print off a receipt with a thermal printer and only in black. There are a few ~$100 portable thermal printers on the market that do an excellent job of printing similar receipts. I'm surprised that the private parking meter co's and the cities didn't make them more difficult to reproduce.
Raytheon is a for-profit corporation in a country where everything is for sale including the country. They are just trying to make a profit off of the pop-fear of domestic terrorism.
Try to change the culture of "profit first" above anything else and educate the masses if you want to never see programs like this again.
I helped with early development on the OLPC. OLPC really wanted the safe feeling of x86.
I've worked on several low cost computing platforms for the third world. If your applications can live without a FPU and 3D graphics then the PXA's may be a good fit. The i.MX SOC's always come in priced lower than the PXA's and have a FPU. Support is just as poor.
An ARM + FPU + 2D/3D graphics + mpeg2,4 accel. + SATA + USB-2 for under $10 in high volume will rule the third world.
The problem with the PXA versions of the ARM based SOC's has been proprietary and/or binary only libraries. Linux runs on the core cpu but you run into a wall when you need to get multimedia codecs or 2d/3d graphics support working at any usable rate.
Debian/Linux and UBoot support is available for the cores for many ARM SOC's but the problem has always been open source with the multimedia and graphics acceleration portions of the designs.
Many of the silicon vendors and makers of filters and amplifiers at the show today don't really expect to see much happening with WiMAX in high volumes for another year or so.
The PLAICE adds in-circuit Flash programming and emulation as well as a 32-bit cpu running uClinux to the sump.org project. It will also add USB and Ethernet connectivity vs just serial.
The logic analyzer design is targeted at debugging logic outside of the FPGA and the board itself. ChipScope is supported by the board for debug of logic inside the onboard Spartan-3E FPGA.
The memory emulator is currently targeted at FLASH devices.
LinuxBIOS supports the AMD Geodes. You'd have to do a little hardware hacking (flash in a socket, to allow recovery from a bad LinuxBIOS image) to get the first working image of LinuxBIOS working. After that it's just re-flash and you're up and running with LinuxBIOS!
Slashdot Mirror
A micron and a meter is a million times different! Why did that website use m for microns? Look at how much time this has already wasted!
He was using the symbol m vs the symbol for micron or micrometre. That is why it looked like he was measuring the wavelength in meters vs microns.
The site he was referring to is http://www.infrared-thermography.com/material-1.htm
They could have at least used um vs just m to be more clear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrometre
Or you just just get a T-Mobile "pay as you go" account with no monthly cost.
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/prepaid-plans.aspx
The my-simple-mobile service is far lower cost and is only by the month without any contract.
No, they're actually not. iPhone is priced the same as other premium cell phones. iPads are generally cheaper than roughly-equivalent pads from other manufacturers. Macbook Pros are about the same price as other high-end laptops from Lenovo and others for the same specs/form factor/battery life.
I'm not sure where you get your pricing from, but the Apple prices I find always seem to be at least 25% higher than equivalent products. Apple should be able to provide their suppliers with more money to better take care of their workers and workers at their contractors factories. This should be obvious by looking at Apple's earnings the last few quarters. Maybe this is how Apple thinks differently now?
Aren't Apple products always higher priced than their competitors products with nearly identical features? I look at most Apple product consumers as people that are willing to pay far more for less features than other similar products.
http://www.eletroworld.cn/ is the actual main distributor for http://en.smartdevices.com.cn/Buy/ in China. I've never had any problems with orders from them.
http://hotmid.com/ is in US if that is less scary.
I've been working with several ARM tablets that work well. They don't seem to be available at overpriced -Buy stores with poor service, but I have found them here:
http://www.eletroworld.cn/
http://www.allpmp.com/index.php
may be found here http://c0182732.cdn1.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/fcic_final_report_full.pdf
US public school civics class!?
Didn't they stop teaching civics in the US public schools starting in the 1960's?
The last time I checked a few years ago they were only teaching a dumbed down version of a US Constitution class in 8th grade. 8th graders are expected to memorise the answers to a US Constitution test in order to pass on to high school.
zonein2.com is new and gives you 1GB of free space. It allows only your trusted friends to see and share your files.
It's typically referred as Tissue Engineering and it's been around for a while. Systems have been available for research purposes for a few years O.N.E. Technologies Material Deposition Systems
as water based ink and does not require sintering or secondary processing and works well on standard inkjet or copier paper:
http://www.methodedevelopment.com/whatsnew.aspx?newsitem=29
http://www.methodedevelopment.com/whatsnew.aspx?newsitem=30
Commercial inkjet systems for printing electronics on a wide range of materials has also been available for some time: http://www.onelabs.com/prntelec0000.htm
Multilayer conductive pcb traces including passive and active components are already being inkjet printed. The current geometries however for components are in the few micron range. A couple of decades behind current semiconductor processing but far ahead of current pcb fabrication techniques.
The meters in Chicago just print off a receipt with a thermal printer and only in black. There are a few ~$100 portable thermal printers on the market that do an excellent job of printing similar receipts. I'm surprised that the private parking meter co's and the cities didn't make them more difficult to reproduce.
The point was "profit first, above anything else", not removing the motivation for profit. There are higher priorities than profit.
Raytheon is a for-profit corporation in a country where everything is for sale including the country. They are just trying to make a profit off of the pop-fear of domestic terrorism.
Try to change the culture of "profit first" above anything else and educate the masses if you want to never see programs like this again.
I helped with early development on the OLPC. OLPC really wanted the safe feeling of x86.
I've worked on several low cost computing platforms for the third world. If your applications can live without a FPU and 3D graphics then the PXA's may be a good fit. The i.MX SOC's always come in priced lower than the PXA's and have a FPU. Support is just as poor.
An ARM + FPU + 2D/3D graphics + mpeg2,4 accel. + SATA + USB-2 for under $10 in high volume will rule the third world.
The problem with the PXA versions of the ARM based SOC's has been proprietary and/or binary only libraries. Linux runs on the core cpu but you run into a wall when you need to get multimedia codecs or 2d/3d graphics support working at any usable rate.
RMI Mips based (formerly AMD/Alechemy) SOC's http://www.razamicroelectronics.com/products_alchemy/ are more open when it comes to multimedia and Linux support.
3DLabs has some multicore ARM mutimedia 2D/3D SOC's http://www.3dlabs.com/content/mediaProcessor.asp . But they don't open the tools and libraries to develop codecs.
Freescale also has their i.MX line of ARM media SOC's http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/taxonomy.jsp?nodeId=0162468rH311432973ZrDR
Debian/Linux and UBoot support is available for the cores for many ARM SOC's but the problem has always been open source with the multimedia and graphics acceleration portions of the designs.
Millennium Park http://www.millenniumpark.org/
Over budget by $350 million and was completed four years behind schedule.
I just got back from WiMAX World in Chicago today.
The two popular USB WiMAX dongles are the ones by Airspan
http://www.airspan.com/products_wimax_custprem_mimax.aspx
and Samsung
http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/news/newsRead.do?newstype=productnews&newsctgry=consumerproduct&news_seq=3584
Many of the silicon vendors and makers of filters and amplifiers at the show today
don't really expect to see much happening with WiMAX in high volumes for another year or so.
The PLAICE adds in-circuit Flash programming and emulation as well as a 32-bit cpu running uClinux to the sump.org project. It will also add USB and Ethernet connectivity vs just serial.
The logic analyzer design is targeted at debugging logic outside of the FPGA and the board itself. ChipScope is supported by the board for debug of logic inside the onboard Spartan-3E FPGA.
The memory emulator is currently targeted at FLASH devices.
If its fuctory BIOS is replaced with LinuxBIOS http://www.linuxbios.org/ then it is able to boot into Linux.
OFDM has been around for a while OFDM History
It's nice to see more practical uses of it in wireless standards like WiFi IEEE 802.11a, 802.11g and in WiMax IEEE 802.16a.
All this adds up to the death of the control by telco's in the last 100 yards of net connectivity. Go OFDM!!
The above link should be www.linuxbios.org
LinuxBIOS
LinuxBIOS supports the AMD Geodes. You'd have to do a little hardware hacking (flash in a socket, to allow recovery from a bad LinuxBIOS image) to get the first working image of LinuxBIOS working. After that it's just re-flash and you're up and running with LinuxBIOS!
www.linuxbios.com