On the other, it will play Youtube videos, which are in fact Flash Video files (.flv). So iPhone does include Flash.
You misunderstand how YouTube works. Video uploaded to YouTube is in many different formats. They keep these videos, and can re-encode them to whatever they want. Up until now, they've only done Flash video, which is advantageous on the web, but now they are encoding them to h.246 MPEG4 as well for iPhone/AppleTV.
What is this nonsense? Why would Youtube deliberately use an inferior video codec for EVERYBODY not using an iPhone?
It is very simple. YouTube uses Flash, which only supports an inferior video codec. The iPhone YouTube application doesn't use Flash, and so doesn't have that constraint.
Apple wants you to use Safari. Microsoft wants you to use Internet Explorer. Opera wants you to use Opera.
That isn't the same thing as "the goal is to be the #1 browser". You can participate in a market without expecting to dominate it.
Hence the notion that that slide is deliberate and no accident.
Who said it was an accident? I'm saying that the slide is not evidence that Apple is "hunting" Firefox. Nobody seems to be able to answer questions like "Why would they want to target Firefox instead of Internet Explorer?" or "What has Apple done with Safari harm Firefox?" All of the speculation revolves around a single Keynote slide.
Says who? My point (again) is that as long as browsers are interoperable it shouldn't matter what share of the market they have. Would being "#1" matter if it the market leaders each had about 33%? Being #1 becomes a statistical curiosity.
Which makes Steve's presentation even more curious, as he implies that Safari is going to gain marketshare at Firefox's (and the other small player's) expense.
Presumably according to Apple's market research, those are the users most likely to switch. That doesn't mean that Apple will do, or even can do anything to target the smaller players specifically. Can anyone point to something that Apple has actually done to shoot across the bow of Mozilla? One briefly displayed slide in a two-hour presentation does not seem like enough evidence to make a fuss over.
Just because Microsoft has chosen to stay with supporting the HTML 4.0 standards over the CSS3 standards in places they conflict
"Just"? Are you kidding? Internet Explorer has been fucking up standards long before CSS3. Take the box model bug in IE 5's CSS1 implementation that is fundamentally different from what is described in the spec, and still has to be compensated for in IE 6 and 7. In any event, I'm not saying that IE doesn't adhere to any standards. My point is that rendering the web the same way as any other browser (which one assumes is the point of having standards) is not among Microsoft's aims. That is the competition I was pointing out. Perhaps I should have used the term "interoperable" instead of "standards-compliant", but I don't see why there should be a difference.
They just follow a different set of standards that are also provided by the W3C.
The distinction is irrelevant. It is still Internet Explorer's unique and incompatible quirks vs. the rest of the world.
FF isn't innocent either (Last time I checked - CSS didn't include -moz-border-radius-topleft to round your corners).
You don't know what you're talking about. Vendor-specific properties (i.e. "-moz-") are in CSS 2.1, while "border-radius" is in CSS3. The vendor-specific tag is there because the spec isn't finalized and currently different implementations work differently. "-moz-border-radius" doesn't allow irregular curves, for instance, while "-webkit-border-radius" does. This is incompatibility done in a compatible way. When the spec is final, they will support "border-radius" in the way defined in the spec.
Can we please kill this meme? As I wrote the other day: "There are only two competitors in the web browser market: Internet Explorer and standards-compliant browsers. From a web development standpoint, it doesn't matter which of the many standards-compliant browsers is being used: that's why there are standards. So this talk about Safari "stealing" from Firefox is bullshit. It doesn't make any difference."
That's it. There's no story. Safari on Windows doesn't hurt anyone except maybe Microsoft. Just because Jobs didn't take time out of his keynote to stroke the collective Firefox ego does not mean Apple is "hunting" Mozilla.
The exec also highlighted Mozilla's attitude about market share: "We've never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the web open and a public resource," he said.
The subtext being that Apple somehow is contrary to this. As if releasing a browser (based on an open source rendering engine) which actually has better adherence to standards than Mozilla browsers is going to make the web less open and public. Sorry folks, but that is a dead end.
Some of the Nokia and other cell phones already can do Skype (or other VOIP)
Good for them. People that want it can get it.
VOIP is catching on, so it is just a matter of time when it will become more popular then ordinary phones.
And it stands to reason that span of time will be longer than the average lifespan of any phone coming to market today. i.e. the phone you buy today is not going to be the phone you use when VoIP becomes useful to most people.
The iPhone has all hardware and facilities (Wifi) to enable VOIP, so it is just the lack of SDK that prevents it.
It also has all the facilities to play a miniature finger version of the very popular game Dance Dance Revolution, but that doesn't mean it's "missing" it.
Cingular/AT&T is the largest wireless provider in the US. Maybe not all of its 60 million subscribers "like it", but you can't argue that the iPhone will fail because AT&T doesn't have a big enough user base.
too expensive especially given roll out of [...] $600 ultraportable laptop devices
None of which are phones.
touch screens s*ck
This in an era where the overwhelming majority of laptops have touch pads that don't "make your finger tips sore". Maybe you're just pressing down too hard? Touching most things is not supposed to hurt. If it does, you're doing it wrong.
glass? so is it unbreakable glass? or does one drop take out the iphone?
Maybe you didn't get the memo, but most of us have been using lots of things made of glass for a long time without too much trouble. I am in fact wearing some scratch-resistant glass much like what the iPhone would use on my face right now, and I've yet to have a problem with it shattering into my eyes. You worry too much.
as usual Apple overprices a [lots of words that make me doubt English is your first language]
Bzzt. You already said it was overpriced. Move to the back of the line.
Apple released the ROUND MOUSE a few years ago that was a real case of design takes the lead over utility
The failing of the mouse wasn't that it was round, it was that it was also very small. This was good if you held the mouse in an uncommon way (with your fingers instead of your palm) or if you were a child with small hands. Holding the mouse like that is actually superior from an RSI standpoint, and the original iMac it shipped with was intended to be usable by children, and somehow those demands mistakenly overrode all others at the time.
It was a terrible design for everyone else, of course, but it wasn't made that way just for show.
One of the commercials advertises 'real internet' but EDGE is only about 4 times faster than dialup.
Even dial-up internet access is still the "real internet". That's not the point of the commercial anyway: the point is that Safari is a real browser, not a stripped-down mobile version like Mobile Internet Explorer or a WAP browser. And don't forget that it has WiFi. You may not realize how common it is unless you've walked around with a WiFi capable device.
If this isn't providing health care to those who can't afford it, then I don't know what is.
You're fortunate to live in Arizona. It isn't like that in much of the US. Here's a counter-example from my own experience.
I live in North Carolina, have an income about the same as yours, and I need psychiatric services. Health Choice in NC is only for families with children, which I do not have. I'm not eligible for Medicaid because I do not receive state or federal assistance. I'm not legally disabled, and my financial "resources" (not income) are according to the state too high for state or federal assistance. The state psychiatric services were privatized several years ago, so my only remaining option would have been to go to the local low-income psychiatric clinic. I say would have because it closed last year because it wasn't making enough money to cover costs. Now I'm looking at $100/hr. to see my old shrink.
Thank god for privatized health care and state assistance for those who can't afford it!
Something that is simply biased in the other direction? That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. The Fifty-Nine Deceits isn't about getting at anything more truthful than Fahrenheit 9/11: it's about discrediting the film outright using the opposite political viewpoint.
If you read again, you'll find that a number of the "Deceits" have little to do with the content of the film. Take "Moore's changing positions", where a segment of the film with no narration is compared to a quote from Moore on September 12th, 2001 that wasn't even in the film, and presented as evidence that "Fahrenheit's purported view does not appear to be the same as Moore's actual view." I, a thinking individual, cannot understand how this counts as a "deceit", and the article is full of such nonsense.
"Truth about Bowling for Columbine"'s reach also exceeds its grasp. The thesis is that the average viewer is an incredible idiot that is incapable of understanding that he is watching a film with a political viewpoint and to illustrate this he quotes "reviewers", many of which (if you follow the links) turn out to be blog postings and Geocities pages. It contains such gems "Bowling's theme is, rather curiously, not opposed to firearms ownership.", a fact which is utterly transparent to the viewer and is stated outright. But the main thing I remember from it is the conclusion: "The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or lacking in objectivity.", followed shortly thereafter by "Suppose for a moment that Moore's behavior can be explained as a product of Narcisstic Personality Disorder [...]"
QuickTime 7.2, apparently the version shipping with Leopard, supports standard analog-style 608 captions. I'd like to think that this means TV downloaded from iTunes (and iTunes U) will include the same captioning data as regular TV broadcasts (i.e. not a QuickTime text track). It may well already be there.
The blurb is here, but the rest is my speculation. I'd suggest inquiring with Apple in any case.
There are only two competitors in the web browser market: Internet Explorer and standards-compliant browsers. From a web development standpoint, it doesn't matter which of the many standards-compliant browsers is being used: that's why there are standards. So this talk about Safari "stealing" from Firefox is bullshit. It doesn't make any difference.
I might be way off, but it seems more likely to me that Safari will be grabbing its marketshare from firefox, not IE.
Given many Firefox user's penchant for craping all over anything that isn't Firefox, I doubt it. You could argue that Internet Explorer users are "too stupid" or unable to switch to anything else, but Firefox users are downright unwilling. I would say that Safari has a better chance at making inroads on IE's user base than on Firefox's fan base.
It astounds me that Apple flips the bird to all of the Windows UI conventions for marketing purposes and nobody seems to care.
What have you been reading? People are bitching all over the place about the interface quirks.
highly hypocritical of Apple to say, "you should stick to conventions when designing UIs"
"Should" is the critical word. It isn't a rule, and it isn't something that never takes a back seat to other considerations. And it has nothing to do with Apple specifically. Look at Office 2007 -- one of the biggest apps on Windows, and it's by Microsoft, and it has a non-standard UI. So what? People manage. Some even like it. Even if you just look at other web browsers on Windows you can see that they all crap all over the conventions when it suits them.
Whatever happened to programs just doing their job in an unobtrusive manner?
As far as I can tell, they all moved to the Mac, where there is no Start menu or Quick Launch or system tray, and there isn't the sanctioned tradition of covering the desktop in shortcuts.
The iPhone has the full WebKit framework which means any Web 2.0/Ajax app will run on it if it runs in Safari.
Yeah, but it isn't "as if". The demo was in Safari. That's what pisses everybody off. They're saying "you can write apps for the iPhone", but what they mean is that "you can write web pages that you can then browse on the iPhone". You would have been able to do that anyway, and yet it was part of a Steve Jobs "One More Thing..." announcement.
They did a sweet demo where clicking on links would bring up the mail app, make a phone call through Safari, send an address to Google maps, etc.
I think people are way too impressed by this. It isn't magic. Haven't you ever clicked a "mailto:" link?
I'm fairly certain that when I upgrade to the Ultimate version that it will cost more than $129.
If you applied the same demented logic to Windows, the "Ultimate" version with "server niceities" would cost you...well, hell, I don't know. You try to figure it out.
This leads me to believe that it may be a quasi online version of simcity, some of the micro-management removed to make it easier to deal with the increase in diplomacy with other neighboring cities which are controlled by other players in a sort of MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer online City Simulator)
I think SimCity would do better using an approach like Spore. What they call "Massively Single-Player". Basically, everyone has a city, but all of the other cities in SimNation are downloaded versions of everybody else that's playing. Any "diplomacy" with other cities is done in the game, without interacting with other players, but the cities themselves are built by other players.
It would still have to be a very different game from SimCity today, but I can't help but think that this is an idea that was kicked around.
I've had no problem with SC4 performance on my PC.... It's not top of the line, but it was when SC4 came out.
Which is what was so infuriating about SC4. For a pretty "casual" game it had absurdly high system requirements. Developers don't target anything but the high-end these days, which alienates a large but less-profitable segment of the gaming population.
The main problem with SC4 is that it's horribly unbalanced.
I found that paying close attention to the balance of wealth levels mitigated a lot of the problems you encountered. It is very easy to build (for example) high-wealth population without enough high-wealth jobs, which stalls growth. Another thing is that early in the game police and fire stations are much less important than it seems. If you wait until your taxation can support them, you won't be starved for cash at the beginning. Also, adjusting the coverage radius of service buildings keeps them from getting overcrowded. If they complain, reduce coverage instead of increasing funding. It's better to cover a smaller area well than cover a larger area poorly. Note that they have a radius even when you give $0 to bus/ambulance funding -- and nobody will complain about that.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other, it will play Youtube videos, which are in fact Flash Video files (.flv). So iPhone does include Flash.
You misunderstand how YouTube works. Video uploaded to YouTube is in many different formats. They keep these videos, and can re-encode them to whatever they want. Up until now, they've only done Flash video, which is advantageous on the web, but now they are encoding them to h.246 MPEG4 as well for iPhone/AppleTV.
What is this nonsense? Why would Youtube deliberately use an inferior video codec for EVERYBODY not using an iPhone?
It is very simple. YouTube uses Flash, which only supports an inferior video codec. The iPhone YouTube application doesn't use Flash, and so doesn't have that constraint.
Apple wants you to use Safari. Microsoft wants you to use Internet Explorer. Opera wants you to use Opera.
That isn't the same thing as "the goal is to be the #1 browser". You can participate in a market without expecting to dominate it.
Hence the notion that that slide is deliberate and no accident.
Who said it was an accident? I'm saying that the slide is not evidence that Apple is "hunting" Firefox. Nobody seems to be able to answer questions like "Why would they want to target Firefox instead of Internet Explorer?" or "What has Apple done with Safari harm Firefox?" All of the speculation revolves around a single Keynote slide.
The goal is to be the #1 browser.
Says who? My point (again) is that as long as browsers are interoperable it shouldn't matter what share of the market they have. Would being "#1" matter if it the market leaders each had about 33%? Being #1 becomes a statistical curiosity.
Which makes Steve's presentation even more curious, as he implies that Safari is going to gain marketshare at Firefox's (and the other small player's) expense.
Presumably according to Apple's market research, those are the users most likely to switch. That doesn't mean that Apple will do, or even can do anything to target the smaller players specifically. Can anyone point to something that Apple has actually done to shoot across the bow of Mozilla? One briefly displayed slide in a two-hour presentation does not seem like enough evidence to make a fuss over.
Just because Microsoft has chosen to stay with supporting the HTML 4.0 standards over the CSS3 standards in places they conflict
"Just"? Are you kidding? Internet Explorer has been fucking up standards long before CSS3. Take the box model bug in IE 5's CSS1 implementation that is fundamentally different from what is described in the spec, and still has to be compensated for in IE 6 and 7. In any event, I'm not saying that IE doesn't adhere to any standards. My point is that rendering the web the same way as any other browser (which one assumes is the point of having standards) is not among Microsoft's aims. That is the competition I was pointing out. Perhaps I should have used the term "interoperable" instead of "standards-compliant", but I don't see why there should be a difference.
They just follow a different set of standards that are also provided by the W3C.
The distinction is irrelevant. It is still Internet Explorer's unique and incompatible quirks vs. the rest of the world.
FF isn't innocent either (Last time I checked - CSS didn't include -moz-border-radius-topleft to round your corners).
You don't know what you're talking about. Vendor-specific properties (i.e. "-moz-") are in CSS 2.1, while "border-radius" is in CSS3. The vendor-specific tag is there because the spec isn't finalized and currently different implementations work differently. "-moz-border-radius" doesn't allow irregular curves, for instance, while "-webkit-border-radius" does. This is incompatibility done in a compatible way. When the spec is final, they will support "border-radius" in the way defined in the spec.
Can we please kill this meme? As I wrote the other day: "There are only two competitors in the web browser market: Internet Explorer and standards-compliant browsers. From a web development standpoint, it doesn't matter which of the many standards-compliant browsers is being used: that's why there are standards. So this talk about Safari "stealing" from Firefox is bullshit. It doesn't make any difference."
That's it. There's no story. Safari on Windows doesn't hurt anyone except maybe Microsoft. Just because Jobs didn't take time out of his keynote to stroke the collective Firefox ego does not mean Apple is "hunting" Mozilla.
The exec also highlighted Mozilla's attitude about market share: "We've never ever at Mozilla said that we care about Firefox market share at the expense of our more important goal: to keep the web open and a public resource," he said.
The subtext being that Apple somehow is contrary to this. As if releasing a browser (based on an open source rendering engine) which actually has better adherence to standards than Mozilla browsers is going to make the web less open and public. Sorry folks, but that is a dead end.
Some of the Nokia and other cell phones already can do Skype (or other VOIP)
Good for them. People that want it can get it.
VOIP is catching on, so it is just a matter of time when it will become more popular then ordinary phones.
And it stands to reason that span of time will be longer than the average lifespan of any phone coming to market today. i.e. the phone you buy today is not going to be the phone you use when VoIP becomes useful to most people.
The iPhone has all hardware and facilities (Wifi) to enable VOIP, so it is just the lack of SDK that prevents it.
It also has all the facilities to play a miniature finger version of the very popular game Dance Dance Revolution, but that doesn't mean it's "missing" it.
The day your favorite OS dominates the market, it'll be pwned, don't you worry.
Precisely the reason that no OS should dominate the market. Homogeny just means a bigger target.
no one likes ATT
Cingular/AT&T is the largest wireless provider in the US. Maybe not all of its 60 million subscribers "like it", but you can't argue that the iPhone will fail because AT&T doesn't have a big enough user base.
too expensive especially given roll out of [...] $600 ultraportable laptop devices
None of which are phones.
touch screens s*ck
This in an era where the overwhelming majority of laptops have touch pads that don't "make your finger tips sore". Maybe you're just pressing down too hard? Touching most things is not supposed to hurt. If it does, you're doing it wrong.
glass? so is it unbreakable glass? or does one drop take out the iphone?
Maybe you didn't get the memo, but most of us have been using lots of things made of glass for a long time without too much trouble. I am in fact wearing some scratch-resistant glass much like what the iPhone would use on my face right now, and I've yet to have a problem with it shattering into my eyes. You worry too much.
as usual Apple overprices a [lots of words that make me doubt English is your first language]
Bzzt. You already said it was overpriced. Move to the back of the line.
Apple released the ROUND MOUSE a few years ago that was a real case of design takes the lead over utility
The failing of the mouse wasn't that it was round, it was that it was also very small. This was good if you held the mouse in an uncommon way (with your fingers instead of your palm) or if you were a child with small hands. Holding the mouse like that is actually superior from an RSI standpoint, and the original iMac it shipped with was intended to be usable by children, and somehow those demands mistakenly overrode all others at the time.
It was a terrible design for everyone else, of course, but it wasn't made that way just for show.
One of the commercials advertises 'real internet' but EDGE is only about 4 times faster than dialup.
Even dial-up internet access is still the "real internet". That's not the point of the commercial anyway: the point is that Safari is a real browser, not a stripped-down mobile version like Mobile Internet Explorer or a WAP browser. And don't forget that it has WiFi. You may not realize how common it is unless you've walked around with a WiFi capable device.
The Apple iPhone is a very attractive phone, but it seems to lack Skype support.
That's because it is a phone. Phones are like Skype except more people use them.
If this isn't providing health care to those who can't afford it, then I don't know what is.
You're fortunate to live in Arizona. It isn't like that in much of the US. Here's a counter-example from my own experience.
I live in North Carolina, have an income about the same as yours, and I need psychiatric services. Health Choice in NC is only for families with children, which I do not have. I'm not eligible for Medicaid because I do not receive state or federal assistance. I'm not legally disabled, and my financial "resources" (not income) are according to the state too high for state or federal assistance. The state psychiatric services were privatized several years ago, so my only remaining option would have been to go to the local low-income psychiatric clinic. I say would have because it closed last year because it wasn't making enough money to cover costs. Now I'm looking at $100/hr. to see my old shrink.
Thank god for privatized health care and state assistance for those who can't afford it!
you really should take the time to read
Something that is simply biased in the other direction? That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. The Fifty-Nine Deceits isn't about getting at anything more truthful than Fahrenheit 9/11: it's about discrediting the film outright using the opposite political viewpoint.
If you read again, you'll find that a number of the "Deceits" have little to do with the content of the film. Take "Moore's changing positions", where a segment of the film with no narration is compared to a quote from Moore on September 12th, 2001 that wasn't even in the film, and presented as evidence that "Fahrenheit's purported view does not appear to be the same as Moore's actual view." I, a thinking individual, cannot understand how this counts as a "deceit", and the article is full of such nonsense.
"Truth about Bowling for Columbine"'s reach also exceeds its grasp. The thesis is that the average viewer is an incredible idiot that is incapable of understanding that he is watching a film with a political viewpoint and to illustrate this he quotes "reviewers", many of which (if you follow the links) turn out to be blog postings and Geocities pages. It contains such gems "Bowling's theme is, rather curiously, not opposed to firearms ownership.", a fact which is utterly transparent to the viewer and is stated outright. But the main thing I remember from it is the conclusion: "The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or lacking in objectivity.", followed shortly thereafter by "Suppose for a moment that Moore's behavior can be explained as a product of Narcisstic Personality Disorder [...]"
QuickTime 7.2, apparently the version shipping with Leopard, supports standard analog-style 608 captions. I'd like to think that this means TV downloaded from iTunes (and iTunes U) will include the same captioning data as regular TV broadcasts (i.e. not a QuickTime text track). It may well already be there.
The blurb is here, but the rest is my speculation. I'd suggest inquiring with Apple in any case.
There are only two competitors in the web browser market: Internet Explorer and standards-compliant browsers. From a web development standpoint, it doesn't matter which of the many standards-compliant browsers is being used: that's why there are standards. So this talk about Safari "stealing" from Firefox is bullshit. It doesn't make any difference.
I might be way off, but it seems more likely to me that Safari will be grabbing its marketshare from firefox, not IE.
Given many Firefox user's penchant for craping all over anything that isn't Firefox, I doubt it. You could argue that Internet Explorer users are "too stupid" or unable to switch to anything else, but Firefox users are downright unwilling. I would say that Safari has a better chance at making inroads on IE's user base than on Firefox's fan base.
It astounds me that Apple flips the bird to all of the Windows UI conventions for marketing purposes and nobody seems to care.
What have you been reading? People are bitching all over the place about the interface quirks.
highly hypocritical of Apple to say, "you should stick to conventions when designing UIs"
"Should" is the critical word. It isn't a rule, and it isn't something that never takes a back seat to other considerations. And it has nothing to do with Apple specifically. Look at Office 2007 -- one of the biggest apps on Windows, and it's by Microsoft, and it has a non-standard UI. So what? People manage. Some even like it. Even if you just look at other web browsers on Windows you can see that they all crap all over the conventions when it suits them.
Whatever happened to programs just doing their job in an unobtrusive manner?
As far as I can tell, they all moved to the Mac, where there is no Start menu or Quick Launch or system tray, and there isn't the sanctioned tradition of covering the desktop in shortcuts.
The iPhone has the full WebKit framework which means any Web 2.0/Ajax app will run on it if it runs in Safari.
Yeah, but it isn't "as if". The demo was in Safari. That's what pisses everybody off. They're saying "you can write apps for the iPhone", but what they mean is that "you can write web pages that you can then browse on the iPhone". You would have been able to do that anyway, and yet it was part of a Steve Jobs "One More Thing..." announcement.
They did a sweet demo where clicking on links would bring up the mail app, make a phone call through Safari, send an address to Google maps, etc.
I think people are way too impressed by this. It isn't magic. Haven't you ever clicked a "mailto:" link?
MacPaint was neat but Photoshop was one of the apps that made the Mac a must-have platform, and Photoshop didn't come from Apple.
Remember that Photoshop came five years after the Mac was introduced.
I'm fairly certain that when I upgrade to the Ultimate version that it will cost more than $129.
If you applied the same demented logic to Windows, the "Ultimate" version with "server niceities" would cost you...well, hell, I don't know. You try to figure it out.
Apple makes Safari run on Windows 2000
Why? Is there some advantage other than the fact that you would prefer it? You gloss over this point.
or when Safari can be installed on Gentoo.
Konqueror on Gentoo will render the same most of the time.
Then I'll be able to waste 10% of my time dealing with Safari's eccentricities
What eccentricities? Complying with standards? Have you even heard of Safari before?
I'm not upgrading Windows just because Apple says I should.
Where exactly did Apple tell you to upgrade Windows?
I hope it will be supporting the plugin framework that Safari on OS X does, I like things like the Inquisitor search plugin.
Inquisitor and most other Safari "plugins" are actually InputManager hacks, not supported by Apple, and not portable to Windows.
This leads me to believe that it may be a quasi online version of simcity, some of the micro-management removed to make it easier to deal with the increase in diplomacy with other neighboring cities which are controlled by other players in a sort of MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer online City Simulator)
I think SimCity would do better using an approach like Spore. What they call "Massively Single-Player". Basically, everyone has a city, but all of the other cities in SimNation are downloaded versions of everybody else that's playing. Any "diplomacy" with other cities is done in the game, without interacting with other players, but the cities themselves are built by other players.
It would still have to be a very different game from SimCity today, but I can't help but think that this is an idea that was kicked around.
I've had no problem with SC4 performance on my PC. ... It's not top of the line, but it was when SC4 came out.
Which is what was so infuriating about SC4. For a pretty "casual" game it had absurdly high system requirements. Developers don't target anything but the high-end these days, which alienates a large but less-profitable segment of the gaming population.
The main problem with SC4 is that it's horribly unbalanced.
I found that paying close attention to the balance of wealth levels mitigated a lot of the problems you encountered. It is very easy to build (for example) high-wealth population without enough high-wealth jobs, which stalls growth. Another thing is that early in the game police and fire stations are much less important than it seems. If you wait until your taxation can support them, you won't be starved for cash at the beginning. Also, adjusting the coverage radius of service buildings keeps them from getting overcrowded. If they complain, reduce coverage instead of increasing funding. It's better to cover a smaller area well than cover a larger area poorly. Note that they have a radius even when you give $0 to bus/ambulance funding -- and nobody will complain about that.