Have you worked at a school? I do, and I run all the labs at a community college. These people are the villains of the forest. I'm not sure how much we spent per year on paper, but the local school district here (have a good friend who is a sys admin there) says they spend over 80k on paper every year - that's like 2 employees at the wages they pay people.
I do know they bring paper here on huge pallets in massive semi trucks driven here by Georgia Pacific - that's usually a sigh that you have a problem.
Needless to say - they print everything! Powerpoint slides, emails, webpages - you name it. I have a lab printer with 1262724 pages on its clock (I copied and pasted that from its status page). I have an open lab that goes through over 100 reams of paper per term (thats 50,000 sheets of paper) and over 15-20 toner cartridges per term, and a term is only 10 weeks.
Sun wouldn't let you into their support site without having a support contract - which included hotfixes and service packs. Of course nothing prevented you from getting the files from a friend who did have a contract - maybe that is what they are enforcing?
Ironically Youtube is one of the few websites helping do this. Never before in history has it been easier to broadcast your stuff to potentially millions of viewers.
I think last year when I realized there were shows on Youtube that I (and a lot of other people) literally couldn't wait to see the next episode of that proved this point.
I suspect there is a lot of custom code/drivers for each specific handset model - while you can download the source to the android OS the expectation as an OEM is its your job to make it work on your device (kinda like the way Windows Mobile works actually).
Not all android devices have phones in them, or cameras for that matter. There are some really stripped down models that are being marketed in Korea that have no touch screens either.
What good is a smart phone without the ability to make phone calls? That's the problem with Apple - they took the radio for granted and Nokia said bzzt - try again.
The irony is MS can cheer Apple on and not fear anything because they cross licensed most of this stuff in the settlement to the look and feel lawsuit.
Its kind of a sad mess when you literally can't switch on your phone without paying up (because that method is patented too).
Quicktime uses 'normal' formats - H264, mp4, etc. Apple don't have any proprietary audio or video formats. You're confusing format with DRM, and there's none of that in their music either.
Except Apple is using software patents to make it so that you have less choice by asking international bodies to restrict imports.\
Is that the best example you have? One from more than 18 years ago?
Microsoft takes compatibility so seriously right now that when they were developing Vista - I was working for one of their competitors (as far as applications go) and they kept logging bugs with our application compatibility team on versions we hadn't supported in 8 years. Yes I'm not even kidding - they were testing every single one of our products on their Vista platform from 8 years ago to our current versions. Apple doesn't do that! I honestly really can't remember the last time a hotfix they released broke anything I support now (I run a bunch of computer labs at a community college these days, but thats a lot of machines, a lot of applications (well over a hundred - some of which are vertical market apps) and a lot of patches).
Compare that with Apple who's hotfixes regularly broke our stuff - repeatedly. We used to complain all the time to them that they should test that, and failing that - let us know so we can test it. They would change the way the print back-end worked, or change an api here or there that would screw stuff up and never tell anyone. Blissfully send out patches to uses and expect the vendors to fix everything - which we always did, about a month after all our customers complained bitterly about *US* being lazy.
This was for their largest 3rd party software developer too...
I'll give you one thing - Apple behaves today like Microsoft behaved 15+ years ago - with complete contempt for their vendors and customers. Luckily for them - their customers don't know it.
Apple needs better competition, but they are very good at defending their position in the court system.
Quicktime uses 'normal' formats - H264, mp4, etc. Apple don't have any proprietary audio or video formats. You're confusing format with DRM, and there's none of that in their music either.
So how do I play a quicktime movie without quicktime installed?
Its just like FLV and Flash - which support all those "standards" too - if I can't open the wrapper I can't get at the goodies. FLV is documented though as a format, Quicktime isn't - they don't want people legitimately opening up the goodies.
No - they want want because the marketing hype told them they wanted one. There have been plenty of internet appliances (like cell phones) that do all this already.
Aren't they semi-automatic? Granted I've only seen one of these fancy cars up close once (and it was a lot of them - at the classic car races in Laguna Seca) - you still have to shift gears, just its a paddle on either side of the steering wheel. Drag racers use auto-transmissions frequently because they can shift faster than any human. Rally car drivers in Group A use semi-automatic transmissions because it reduces the amount of gear boxes they've had to replace (Subaru started this trend - and thats what they have said at least). There is a good technical reason for an automatic transmission, but in the end its the drivers choice.
Also on a you can still get a Ferrari with a manual shift (at least according to Top Gear reviews). See? They give you a choice.
No - if you like car analogies the iPad would be like having a car where you can only use approved tires from the car companies "tire store", and you couldn't get an after market stereo because it "duplicates functionality". Addons to you car (like plugins) would be banned by the manufacturer because they would reduce fuel economy - so no comfy seat back, heads up display, 2 way radio or mp3 player.
On the plus side you'd have as many cd's as you want that make fart noises (no - I'm not making fun of the fact that a lot of app store apps are totally useless), but forget about picking up that hot date because those are immoral.
I graduated from PSU in Oregon in 2000 and didn't have a cell phone, however there were public phones everywhere (pay phones). Last time I was on campus showing a friend around most all were gone.
Now I don't even have a home phone - things change rapidly don't they?
Its kinda cool - having multitasking on my Symbian phone. While a web page is loading (thanks at&t - fastest network alive... cough cough) I can flip over and check my email, or change a track on an album I'm listening to.
Your argument is so similar to the ones the ms-dos users on our local bbs used to use when I told them how wonderful multi-tasking on my Amiga was. In other words - I don't have it and I'm glad for it!
My response was always something like - I like listening to music, managing files, editing graphics etc etc while responding to this post - while the machine was busy applying a filter, copying a file or playing a mod I was still typing away on another app.
But you said your IT department went over to Bill Gates office to demand something that didn't suck? Hopefully he laughed his ass off, and gave them a user manual.
I had a dos machine back then - it had thousands if not tens of thousands of productivity apps written for it by the time the Mac came out - Like Lotus 1,2,3, Word Perfect, Word, Autocad (yes - that came out in 1982!), Paintshop, Q&A (database app), DBase, all those Borland apps - I could go on for a very very very long time here. In fact you mention engineering - first time I ever used Autocad was in high school on a NEC XT clone running - you guessed it - ms-dos.
A good chunk of these apps also ran on the Mac too - because surprise! when the Mac came out - many of these programs were written by the same companies who wrote the DOS apps.
Windows 1 sucked sure, and it wasn't until version 3 that it didn't suck, but that doesn't mean there weren't people solving problems on a machine with a c:> winking cursor years prior to that. It wasn't until Windows 95 that many of us gave up our full screen text apps.
Actually Tandy says he took no inspiration from Apple, and that Bill Gates went out and bought a Xerox Star for software engineers to play with because he believed like Jobs that it was the future of computing (keeping in mind this machine was purchased before Apple released the Mac).
I believe that was actually an internal video to get sales excited about promoting the product.
We had videos made like this all the time (although I don't recall a single one starring an executive) when I worked at Adobe back in the day - I've never seen one leaked though.
Newegg kinda did try to shift the blame on Intel calling these "demo units" - Intel was quite quick to say they don't ship "demo units" like this. The pictures however reaked of fraud (the sealed text on the box was printed on the box, not the tape, there were typos on the box etc). Newegg's demo unit press release came out *after* the pictures did. Their second release however called their vendor out and owned up to them being counterfeit - something I believe they should have done from the start.
It was only after they were called out on that they owned owned up to shipping counterfeit units. Who knows the rational for that, maybe it was just ignorance or whatever.
Still - glad they realize that their reputation is worth something more than a couple hundred cpu's - not many hardware companies in this business realize this.
Look at the closeups for the box - the "sealed box" usually reserved for the stick tape is actually printed on the box. The box has typos in the text itself on the outside. Its like someone photocopied the original box, or something.
Above all - Intel officially said these were counterfeits.
Porting an app to a platform isn't such a big deal supporting it is. Its easy to support Windows and Mac because both platforms are the same - there's no forks, different distributions etc etc, and all the drivers are certified by Apple or Windows HQL.
On Linux you can say "we tested it on xyz distro's with this these displays", but then all you'll get is complaints from people who's distro you don't and can not support. And I do speak from first hand real experience on this - there really are Linux users who call in on how to get an app working, or when its not working properly - not all are uber hackers.
Subsequently I've seen a lot of well known apps ported internally to Linux at places I've worked and even places my friends have worked (and probably shouldn't have told me) that have never seen the light of day for this exact reason.
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Well its a small school in rural Oregon :).
Have you worked at a school? I do, and I run all the labs at a community college. These people are the villains of the forest. I'm not sure how much we spent per year on paper, but the local school district here (have a good friend who is a sys admin there) says they spend over 80k on paper every year - that's like 2 employees at the wages they pay people.
I do know they bring paper here on huge pallets in massive semi trucks driven here by Georgia Pacific - that's usually a sigh that you have a problem.
Needless to say - they print everything! Powerpoint slides, emails, webpages - you name it. I have a lab printer with 1262724 pages on its clock (I copied and pasted that from its status page). I have an open lab that goes through over 100 reams of paper per term (thats 50,000 sheets of paper) and over 15-20 toner cartridges per term, and a term is only 10 weeks.
Sun wouldn't let you into their support site without having a support contract - which included hotfixes and service packs. Of course nothing prevented you from getting the files from a friend who did have a contract - maybe that is what they are enforcing?
Ironically Youtube is one of the few websites helping do this. Never before in history has it been easier to broadcast your stuff to potentially millions of viewers.
I think last year when I realized there were shows on Youtube that I (and a lot of other people) literally couldn't wait to see the next episode of that proved this point.
Source is right here:
http://source.android.com/download
I suspect there is a lot of custom code/drivers for each specific handset model - while you can download the source to the android OS the expectation as an OEM is its your job to make it work on your device (kinda like the way Windows Mobile works actually).
Not all android devices have phones in them, or cameras for that matter. There are some really stripped down models that are being marketed in Korea that have no touch screens either.
What good is a smart phone without the ability to make phone calls? That's the problem with Apple - they took the radio for granted and Nokia said bzzt - try again.
The irony is MS can cheer Apple on and not fear anything because they cross licensed most of this stuff in the settlement to the look and feel lawsuit.
Its kind of a sad mess when you literally can't switch on your phone without paying up (because that method is patented too).
Except Apple is using software patents to make it so that you have less choice by asking international bodies to restrict imports.\
So actually they are trying to control that too.
Is that the best example you have? One from more than 18 years ago?
Microsoft takes compatibility so seriously right now that when they were developing Vista - I was working for one of their competitors (as far as applications go) and they kept logging bugs with our application compatibility team on versions we hadn't supported in 8 years. Yes I'm not even kidding - they were testing every single one of our products on their Vista platform from 8 years ago to our current versions. Apple doesn't do that! I honestly really can't remember the last time a hotfix they released broke anything I support now (I run a bunch of computer labs at a community college these days, but thats a lot of machines, a lot of applications (well over a hundred - some of which are vertical market apps) and a lot of patches).
Compare that with Apple who's hotfixes regularly broke our stuff - repeatedly. We used to complain all the time to them that they should test that, and failing that - let us know so we can test it. They would change the way the print back-end worked, or change an api here or there that would screw stuff up and never tell anyone. Blissfully send out patches to uses and expect the vendors to fix everything - which we always did, about a month after all our customers complained bitterly about *US* being lazy.
This was for their largest 3rd party software developer too...
I'll give you one thing - Apple behaves today like Microsoft behaved 15+ years ago - with complete contempt for their vendors and customers. Luckily for them - their customers don't know it.
Apple needs better competition, but they are very good at defending their position in the court system.
So how do I play a quicktime movie without quicktime installed?
Its just like FLV and Flash - which support all those "standards" too - if I can't open the wrapper I can't get at the goodies. FLV is documented though as a format, Quicktime isn't - they don't want people legitimately opening up the goodies.
No - they want want because the marketing hype told them they wanted one. There have been plenty of internet appliances (like cell phones) that do all this already.
Aren't they semi-automatic? Granted I've only seen one of these fancy cars up close once (and it was a lot of them - at the classic car races in Laguna Seca) - you still have to shift gears, just its a paddle on either side of the steering wheel. Drag racers use auto-transmissions frequently because they can shift faster than any human. Rally car drivers in Group A use semi-automatic transmissions because it reduces the amount of gear boxes they've had to replace (Subaru started this trend - and thats what they have said at least). There is a good technical reason for an automatic transmission, but in the end its the drivers choice.
Also on a you can still get a Ferrari with a manual shift (at least according to Top Gear reviews). See? They give you a choice.
No - if you like car analogies the iPad would be like having a car where you can only use approved tires from the car companies "tire store", and you couldn't get an after market stereo because it "duplicates functionality". Addons to you car (like plugins) would be banned by the manufacturer because they would reduce fuel economy - so no comfy seat back, heads up display, 2 way radio or mp3 player.
On the plus side you'd have as many cd's as you want that make fart noises (no - I'm not making fun of the fact that a lot of app store apps are totally useless), but forget about picking up that hot date because those are immoral.
But it sure looks cool!
Interestingly enough you've summed up the whole Flash debacle in two sentences.
Some users like me - want Flash and Java, but the developer of the iPhone decided they didn't want me to have it.
Apple apologists turn around and try to convince me I don't need either of those technologies to be happy.
Which in turn - I end up getting an android phone because they do support both.
Apple in turn wonders why Android is the largest growing phone platform last quarter (which it was).
Its hilarious because you know - making phone calls was patented - look up 174465. Sure its old, but there you go.
On cell phones I'm sure Motorola patented the hell out of the original Dynatac as well.
My understanding was that music would play in the background, but that the iphone wouldn't download web pages, and email at the same time.
You're lucky you had shoes - in my day it was bare feet or you didn't go out.
I graduated from PSU in Oregon in 2000 and didn't have a cell phone, however there were public phones everywhere (pay phones). Last time I was on campus showing a friend around most all were gone.
Now I don't even have a home phone - things change rapidly don't they?
Its kinda cool - having multitasking on my Symbian phone. While a web page is loading (thanks at&t - fastest network alive... cough cough) I can flip over and check my email, or change a track on an album I'm listening to.
Your argument is so similar to the ones the ms-dos users on our local bbs used to use when I told them how wonderful multi-tasking on my Amiga was. In other words - I don't have it and I'm glad for it!
My response was always something like - I like listening to music, managing files, editing graphics etc etc while responding to this post - while the machine was busy applying a filter, copying a file or playing a mod I was still typing away on another app.
But you said your IT department went over to Bill Gates office to demand something that didn't suck? Hopefully he laughed his ass off, and gave them a user manual.
I had a dos machine back then - it had thousands if not tens of thousands of productivity apps written for it by the time the Mac came out - Like Lotus 1,2,3, Word Perfect, Word, Autocad (yes - that came out in 1982!), Paintshop, Q&A (database app), DBase, all those Borland apps - I could go on for a very very very long time here. In fact you mention engineering - first time I ever used Autocad was in high school on a NEC XT clone running - you guessed it - ms-dos.
A good chunk of these apps also ran on the Mac too - because surprise! when the Mac came out - many of these programs were written by the same companies who wrote the DOS apps.
Windows 1 sucked sure, and it wasn't until version 3 that it didn't suck, but that doesn't mean there weren't people solving problems on a machine with a c:> winking cursor years prior to that. It wasn't until Windows 95 that many of us gave up our full screen text apps.
Actually Tandy says he took no inspiration from Apple, and that Bill Gates went out and bought a Xerox Star for software engineers to play with because he believed like Jobs that it was the future of computing (keeping in mind this machine was purchased before Apple released the Mac).
Fair enough ;).
I believe that was actually an internal video to get sales excited about promoting the product.
We had videos made like this all the time (although I don't recall a single one starring an executive) when I worked at Adobe back in the day - I've never seen one leaked though.
Newegg kinda did try to shift the blame on Intel calling these "demo units" - Intel was quite quick to say they don't ship "demo units" like this. The pictures however reaked of fraud (the sealed text on the box was printed on the box, not the tape, there were typos on the box etc). Newegg's demo unit press release came out *after* the pictures did. Their second release however called their vendor out and owned up to them being counterfeit - something I believe they should have done from the start.
It was only after they were called out on that they owned owned up to shipping counterfeit units. Who knows the rational for that, maybe it was just ignorance or whatever.
Still - glad they realize that their reputation is worth something more than a couple hundred cpu's - not many hardware companies in this business realize this.
Look at the closeups for the box - the "sealed box" usually reserved for the stick tape is actually printed on the box. The box has typos in the text itself on the outside. Its like someone photocopied the original box, or something.
Above all - Intel officially said these were counterfeits.
Porting an app to a platform isn't such a big deal supporting it is. Its easy to support Windows and Mac because both platforms are the same - there's no forks, different distributions etc etc, and all the drivers are certified by Apple or Windows HQL.
On Linux you can say "we tested it on xyz distro's with this these displays", but then all you'll get is complaints from people who's distro you don't and can not support. And I do speak from first hand real experience on this - there really are Linux users who call in on how to get an app working, or when its not working properly - not all are uber hackers.
Subsequently I've seen a lot of well known apps ported internally to Linux at places I've worked and even places my friends have worked (and probably shouldn't have told me) that have never seen the light of day for this exact reason.