Ah, but then you'd still have to address the issue of all the people who own a 360 demanding that this "fix" get applied to their console.
You'd also have the issue of shareholders being afraid that the company (or division at least), which has yet to turn a profit, is spending still more money for no reason than because people kept "nagging" them.
That sort of logic doesn't work well with accountability to shareholders, and that means that they'd have to have full disclosure, which would make the press and make whatever spin they gave it meaningless.
It would be embarrassing because they have vehemently denied there was a problem since the console launched.
Also, admitting that perhaps it has an issue might open themselves up to class action lawsuits (perhaps requiring that the change be made available to every console shipped free of charge), not to mention the bad publicity that would follow.
All and all not something MS wants to contemplate as the Wii and PS3 don't seem to have that problem, and are competing with it at both ends of the market.
Now, what I can't decide is this: did they actually just figure this out (doubtful...) or did marketing decide to restate the doesn't-deserve-to-be-restated obvious in hopes of getting a bunch of people to nod their heads and say: "yep, Sony is definitely now a contender in this race (I'm willing to put money on it...).
Actually, while of course the statement is obvious business 101, it is a fair reaction to a lot of the media's criticism of "Sony's arrogance."
If you get bashed for saying "we've won in the past and we'll win again", and get bashed for saying "we've won in the past, but we realize that means we still have to fight", what exactly do you EXPECT them to say?
Apple probably wants to market the phone Globally, so it makes sense to stick with GSM carriers (at least at first). They also need a certain amount of cooperation with the cell phone company to handle their take on Voice Mail and other things.
The only other GSM carrier in the U.S. is T-Mobile, and, since they are a more global company, they probably either wanted more money, and/or would relinquish less control to Apple, so AT&T it is.
If the iPhone gets bigger, then once the Exclusivity contract expires with AT&T, I'd expect them to be available on T-Mobile, and maybe Verizon (if/when they come out with a CDMA version of the phone).
If your phone dies, you could miss an important email/call/whatever.
Nah.. its easy... you just carry a spare battery and when the iPhone battery gets low, you swap it out.... oh wait... the battery is built in... and can't be swapped... never mind.
Personally, I can't see why people would want to spend $500 on a cell phone/music player
I agree, but the idea of a merged device, so you don't have to carry a cell phone and music player, makes a lot of sense.
The iPhone's ability to handle VoiceMail the way it does, will also make it popular to a lot of people who NEED to stay in touch. Heck, ditto for the integrated IM and SMS capabilities.
Think of it more as an SmartPhone with iTunes capabilities, rather than an iPod with SmartPhone capabilities.
Also, they are usually tied to the phone company.
I'm guessing you don't have a GSM phone (ATT/Cingular and T-Mobile in the U.S.A.). Those phones are easy to go from carrier to carrier and will work around the world. Additionally, when you get a new phone, you can hold on to the old one as an "emergency backup". How do you switch phones? Just remove the SIM card and put it in whatever phone you want to use.
As an aside, if you want a "Big Button Phone" for Mom/Grandma, look into the jitterbug.
Their bullet points are:
Live, 24-hour operators provide personal service
Dialing is easy with large, backlit buttons
A soft ear cushion lets you hear every word
Affordable rate plans from just $10 a month
Managing the phone number list is via the operator by talking to them or sending them an email or fax (or manage it yourself online soon). They even have a "simple" phone where you just have the list of numbers, no dial buttons.
Its only available in the U.S. right now, but its a great idea for a service, and I believe Samsung makes the phones.
Yeah... and by the time the third rev is out, you know things finally start to stabilize so it might be worth getting... oh wait... thats MicroSoft... never mind.
I can only imagine the number of idiots trying to press "buttons" on their flat touch screen while driving.
Well... they HAVE confirmed that it has bluetooth, and I know a lot of GPS systems with touch screens also include Speakerphone and Remote-Dialing via bluetooth. My wife and I picked up a stand-alone GPS (instead of trying to integrate one into a 10 year old car:) ), and I surprised her by using it to dial our home phone from the living room (while she was sitting next to me, and she went to go answer it in the kitchen).
She was even more surprised when she answered it and our company all wished her a happy birthday via the speakerphone.:)
Yeah, its not exactly the same thing, but its neither a pure hardware or a pure software solution.
In the case of the WinModems the drivers used some of the system CPU in place of a dedicated processor, in the case of this "WinFirewall" the drivers are using the ethernet jack and the USB port to route the network traffic to/from the dongle. I'd imagine you would see some sort of performance hit, in terms of CPU, and BUS speed issues (depending on how much data is going through the network).
I'm not aware of any unofficial mods for the PS3 yet either, and you're right that the hypervisor keeps any other OS from accessing either the graphics chip, or the PS3 partition, but I think Linux IS officially supported.
Besides providing the tools to reformat and repartition the hard-drive (and making it a standard, user-servicable, laptop hard-drive), along with tools to backup your settings to a USB/flash drive, and restore them (all crucial in reformatting a hard-drive to include a Linux partition) there is this bit from a March press release:
Following the keynote presentation, the SCEA booth will be a central focus at GDC as the company introduces new development tools and technologies designed specifically for PS3 and the PLAYSTATION®Network, as well as PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) handheld entertainment system. The SCEA booth - Booth #410, West Hall - will offer visitors a sneak-peek at:
Tuner for PS3 - Developed by SN Systems, a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., the Tuner is a profiling tool that enables developers to quickly highlight bottlenecks and conflicts in source code, helping them improve code performance. The Tuner is a software application, so there is no special hardware required, which enables developers to create high performance games with less guesswork.
Unreal® Engine 3 - Epic's next-generation game engine technology targets a diverse set of genres from fighting games to shooters to Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games High-Level Graphics Package - PSSG (a PS3 optimized cross-platform graphics engine and tool-chain) production-ready extensible scene-graph framework that is written to take advantage of PS3 strengths
Pioneering profiling and analysis tools and physics technologies
Developing with Linux on PS3
Demonstration of downloadable titles from the PLAYSTATION Network, such as flOw, Blast Factor(TM) and Calling all Cars(TM)
Don't worry.... MS has already thought of this for you. Now you have a reason to go out and purchase an XBox Elite and leave it unmodified, whereas before this, you merely may have been angry over a newer higher-priced model becoming available.:)
Seriously though, whats to stop MS from banning XBox customers who upgrade their hard-drive on their own, instead of shilling out for the ludicrously expensive branded upgrade?
To be fair, the difference isn't only the size of the optical media.
Devs for the XB360 also can't rely on a hard drive being available, which might limit things also. Of course MS may decide to be more lenient on this and just "suggest" that core owners purchase the proprietary (and expensive) hard-drive upgrade in order to get new content.
I as well as many other people (along with the OP) are aware that Fun and Graphics are not mutually exclusive. However, they both come from the same budget. I'd rather have a game that had it's budget split 70/30 on fun/graphics than a game that was 30/70 fun/graphics. Many games seem to have only 10/90 fun/graphics split which produces some really nice looking games, but they aren't really that fun to play. Some of the games I had for GC that were really fun without extrememly good graphics are Chibi Robo, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and Zelda WW. The graphics on some of those aren't terrible, you can see that they spent more of their budget on making the game fun rather than making it look good.
Yes, but I'm far too leery, that most developers will just say "slash the budget on art, and we can have bigger profits all around".
Just because a game might cost less to produce in one area, doesn't mean the money saved is going to go into the other areas instead.
I'm not saying that it can't happen your way, and I hope you are right, because more developers need to think of the game design and wether it is fun, but I see the shovel-ware headed to the Wii and expect thats the way 90-99% of the titles will end up.
Don't know what it is or why but Linux makes people want to become power users.
Thats easy. With windows people take things for granted (like the OS crashing, but coming back after a reboot), and that "any software will run on it.
With Linux there is a cognitive break with their "Windows Knowledge", so the user feels they need to learn in order to make sure they don't "mess it up".
Of course once they start learning one of two things happens:
1) They get overwhelmed by bad/wrong/lots-of information and ask someone else to help (similar to lots of windows folks). 2) They find that it makes sense, they can do what they want without problems, and their system doesn't keep crashing. Once they no longer have to husband the system and be afraid that anything they do will make it crash, they can actually start to have fun with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yin, whose official press release was a blistering "no comment", has been overheard remarking off the record that he will "have his day again."
... couldn't resist)
(sorry
Ah, but then you'd still have to address the issue of all the people who own a 360 demanding that this "fix" get applied to their console.
You'd also have the issue of shareholders being afraid that the company (or division at least), which has yet to turn a profit, is spending still more money for no reason than because people kept "nagging" them.
That sort of logic doesn't work well with accountability to shareholders, and that means that they'd have to have full disclosure, which would make the press and make whatever spin they gave it meaningless.
It would be embarrassing because they have vehemently denied there was a problem since the console launched.
Also, admitting that perhaps it has an issue might open themselves up to class action lawsuits (perhaps requiring that the change be made available to every console shipped free of charge), not to mention the bad publicity that would follow.
All and all not something MS wants to contemplate as the Wii and PS3 don't seem to have that problem, and are competing with it at both ends of the market.
Actually, while of course the statement is obvious business 101, it is a fair reaction to a lot of the media's criticism of "Sony's arrogance."
If you get bashed for saying "we've won in the past and we'll win again", and get bashed for saying "we've won in the past, but we realize that means we still have to fight", what exactly do you EXPECT them to say?
Restricting it to Cingular/AT&T makes SOME sense.
Apple probably wants to market the phone Globally, so it makes sense to stick with GSM carriers (at least at first). They also need a certain amount of cooperation with the cell phone company to handle their take on Voice Mail and other things.
The only other GSM carrier in the U.S. is T-Mobile, and, since they are a more global company, they probably either wanted more money, and/or would relinquish less control to Apple, so AT&T it is.
If the iPhone gets bigger, then once the Exclusivity contract expires with AT&T, I'd expect them to be available on T-Mobile, and maybe Verizon (if/when they come out with a CDMA version of the phone).
Nah
I agree, but the idea of a merged device, so you don't have to carry a cell phone and music player, makes a lot of sense.
The iPhone's ability to handle VoiceMail the way it does, will also make it popular to a lot of people who NEED to stay in touch. Heck, ditto for the integrated IM and SMS capabilities.
Think of it more as an SmartPhone with iTunes capabilities, rather than an iPod with SmartPhone capabilities.
I'm guessing you don't have a GSM phone (ATT/Cingular and T-Mobile in the U.S.A.). Those phones are easy to go from carrier to carrier and will work around the world. Additionally, when you get a new phone, you can hold on to the old one as an "emergency backup". How do you switch phones? Just remove the SIM card and put it in whatever phone you want to use.
Their bullet points are:
Managing the phone number list is via the operator by talking to them or sending them an email or fax (or manage it yourself online soon).
They even have a "simple" phone where you just have the list of numbers, no dial buttons.
Its only available in the U.S. right now, but its a great idea for a service, and I believe Samsung makes the phones.
Isn't it a three SKU strategy since the introduction of the "Elite", or did I miss a discontinuation notice on the Core?
Yeah ... and by the time the third rev is out, you know things finally start to stabilize so it might be worth getting ... oh wait ... thats MicroSoft ... never mind.
Well
She was even more surprised when she answered it and our company all wished her a happy birthday via the speakerphone.
This sort of reminds me of the old WinModems.
Yeah, its not exactly the same thing, but its neither a pure hardware or a pure software solution.
In the case of the WinModems the drivers used some of the system CPU in place of a dedicated processor, in the case of this "WinFirewall" the drivers are using the ethernet jack and the USB port to route the network traffic to/from the dongle. I'd imagine you would see some sort of performance hit, in terms of CPU, and BUS speed issues (depending on how much data is going through the network).
Besides providing the tools to reformat and repartition the hard-drive (and making it a standard, user-servicable, laptop hard-drive), along with tools to backup your settings to a USB/flash drive, and restore them (all crucial in reformatting a hard-drive to include a Linux partition) there is this bit from a March press release:
http://www.us.playstation.com/News/PressReleases/
(emphasis mine)
The latest linux kernel from YellowDogLinux has working support for the Wireless Network adapter, and there is also the following from Terra Soft's (the company behind YDL) PS3 FAQ:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/faq/ps
(emphasis mine)
Don't worry.... MS has already thought of this for you. Now you have a reason to go out and purchase an XBox Elite and leave it unmodified, whereas before this, you merely may have been angry over a newer higher-priced model becoming available. :)
Seriously though, whats to stop MS from banning XBox customers who upgrade their hard-drive on their own, instead of shilling out for the ludicrously expensive branded upgrade?
yes, but the only reasonable way to generate the file in the first place is via distributed computing, which means its broken up anyway.
Oddly ironic that. The keys would be broken, and so is AACS.
(next stop BD+?)
No, but expect future reports from the HD-DVD consortium to base their slowing momentum on pirating (instead of loosing to Blu-Ray) :)
To be fair, the difference isn't only the size of the optical media.
:)
Devs for the XB360 also can't rely on a hard drive being available, which might limit things also. Of course MS may decide to be more lenient on this and just "suggest" that core owners purchase the proprietary (and expensive) hard-drive upgrade in order to get new content.
I'm sure the masses would love that.
Yes, but I'm far too leery, that most developers will just say "slash the budget on art, and we can have bigger profits all around".
Just because a game might cost less to produce in one area, doesn't mean the money saved is going to go into the other areas instead.
I'm not saying that it can't happen your way, and I hope you are right, because more developers need to think of the game design and wether it is fun, but I see the shovel-ware headed to the Wii and expect thats the way 90-99% of the titles will end up.
Exactly. Sony took a similar hit on the PS2 during the first year post release.
The best list of upcoming titles I know of is http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/ message?message.uid=27804779#U27804779
Unfortunately it doesn't list release dates, and I'm not sure how often it gets updated.
You'd be amazed at how many Win95/98 machines are still out there. Remember, before XP it was THE consumer OS.
Also, most users don't know what "Get good hardware with good drivers" mean. They just have whatever the system had when it was installed (maybe).
But
Apple?
(written from a G4 running OS X 10.4)
Thats easy. With windows people take things for granted (like the OS crashing, but coming back after a reboot), and that "any software will run on it.
With Linux there is a cognitive break with their "Windows Knowledge", so the user feels they need to learn in order to make sure they don't "mess it up".
Of course once they start learning one of two things happens:
1) They get overwhelmed by bad/wrong/lots-of information and ask someone else to help (similar to lots of windows folks).
2) They find that it makes sense, they can do what they want without problems, and their system doesn't keep crashing. Once they no longer have to husband the system and be afraid that anything they do will make it crash, they can actually start to have fun with it.
Forget terrorism. They were released in actual crowded theaters!!! I think we should storm Hollywood and see if its harboring any other WMDs!