Yep, and build a product that tries and mostly fails to do all those things, and apparently 10% of people will still keep buying it. It's a funny ol' world.
This is why Apple make it in the consumer market - the whole concept of "buy only our products" works
Like hell. If you think I'm going to go out and buy a Mac so that I can also buy an iPod and have the privilege of running iTunes to deal with the thing, you're fucking crazy.
Nice troll. Let me flip it for you. "Opera needs to do many things out of the box because being non-free software, it cannot attract a decent mass of plugin developers, unlike Firefox which can."
Not the GP, but with regards to plugins, I think they're correct. Without a free (as in "free country") base to build on, you just don't see people rushing in to write extensions for your product. How many great IE extensions do you hear about?
The setting does not change the way the iPod manages music
But is it possible to use an iPod as a normal hard-drive based music player (I know Rockbox does that, but I mean the Apple firmware.)
I'm sorry, but I just cannot agree that it was a thorough test/shrug Never said it was. I have several media applications that I already like (and hey, I run Linux), so it's not like I was switching in any event.
Just stop spreading FUD that iTunes would not do what you wanted it to do, when it plainly can.
That's not fair on a couple counts. First, I didn't say it couldn't, I said it didn't. And out of the box, that's entirely true. And second, Apple is a company that sells "it just works out of the box." That's their whole schtick. So although I accept (and indeed appreciate) your correction, I stand by the spirit of my comment.
and you come back yelling
I did not. I said "Oh, I didn't know that."
I bought a flashlight the other day but it didn't come with batteries. when I clicked the on button the light didn't come on. Should I return it as faulty and look for another flashlight that already has batteries installed? This one obviously does not work.
If the flashlight was from a company whose entire marketing campaign was based on "This is the easiest flashlight ever invented, and you'll never even need to open it!" then I'd say that was a legitimate complaint, yes.
Of course not. It didn't do what I wanted out of the box, I really can't stand the UI, and I don't own an iPod. Why the hell would I look at the preferences? There's a million and five media player applications, and at least a hundred thousand of them do what I want them to out of the box. Why would I mess around with something that doesn't?
Of course it is the default option - iTunes is primarily a jukebox/music organiser that is tailored to ease of use. The most automated function is going to be the default
The most automated function is plainly not, from conversations I've had with people who use iTunes, the most easy to use.
If you used iTunes for more than about half an hour...
Yes, yes, I get it. You know how to use iTunes. Not to belabor the point, but one more time with feeling: It doesn't work for me out of the box. I went with something that did. Every other media player application I use(d) works for me out of the box. Amarok, Banshee, hell, even Rhythmbox. Apple's did not.You can go ahead and believe that's my fault if you want. I don't really care.
It's on by default, for someone interested in manual control it is very easy to find
Tell me something, does that setting disable that behavior on your iPod as well?
Click the button in iTunes that says "let iTunes manage my library" so that it is disabled
As I said to another respondent, I was unaware of that option. However...
Don't let genuine options get in the way of a good troll though. The iTunes automatic organisation is optional, and always has been. For normal users, it is fine - it will take care of the files for you. If you want to do it yourself though, it is trivially easy to do so.
Wrong. Optional or not, it is the default, and I'm obviously not the only person to be unaware that the option to turn that off exists. And for normal users it is anything but fine. Unless your definition of "normal" does not include anyone who ever wants to put a file on a flash drive, or not have to rely on dodgy id3 tags to organize their music library, or access their music from anything other than iTunes. You may think that's a "normal" user. It's not.
Which, when you extract the logic, means that people who think the iTunes DB is the right way you call "Apple Fanboys", and those that don't think it's right you call "iTunes Users". With the result that you can claim 100% of "iTunes Users" agree with you. Even though lots of people that use iTunes don't agree with you.
No. I can understand how you misunderstood that, but no. Let me try again. A bunch of people who I've never met but hear a lot from on places like Slashdot seem to propagate the "users are too dumb to handle their own files, let iTunes do it" argument. But 100% of people who I have actually spoken to and looked at at the same time have said they hate it.
Frankly there doesn't seem to be any rational argument for taking on the manual task of keeping your media files in order rather then letting the computer do the work for you
Unless you access your files from anything that is not iTunes or an iPod. Or want to transfer files onto... well, anything, really. Or you've accumulated music from a variety of sources and the id3 tags don't jibe up (it is a lot easier to create a homogeneous file naming system than it is to have uniform id3 tags; believe me, I've felt the pain). Or maybe you just have the weird urge to actually know where your shit is.
but if you are so inclined to do so it's a checkbox option in preferences to do so.
In fairness, I was not aware of that.
So your complaint makes no sense whatsoever.
I don't think that's true, I think I've made my case pretty well here. I do welcome your reply.
Oh God, I thought you'd never ask. Not the OP, but let me play! Just a quick Top 4 here, because I could really go on forever but I'd like to read the rest of the thread.
1. The ungodly top bar on OSX. Self-morphing UI elements are a Bad Thing. How this abomination has survived so long is totally beyond me, but I think it has something to do with that shitty hack called... 2. The dock. The idea that "it shouldn't matter whether or not the application's running or how many instances of this application are running" is bullshit. Just because Microsoft parroted it doesn't make it good. (Christ, if anything, MS took the worst of it.) There's plenty of room for innovation in 2D interfaces. Take a look at Gnome Shell (I'm not huge on it, but I'm not huge on Gnome) or the Plasma Netbook interface (which I am an enormous fan of). Plenty of room for new ideas. Doesn't change the fact that the dock was a shitty one. 3. The wheel interface is still dumb. If I have to take the mp3 player out of my pocket to know what I'm doing, that's a big fat fail. 4. Okay, I was just gonna do three, but here's a bonus: the iTunes database. Apple fanboys can pretend all they want that "normal users don't care where on the hard drive their music files are." But they know they're lying. Every time I have ever brought this up to an iTunes user, they've agreed with me. "Yeah, I've always hated that too, but what are you gonna do?" as if it were some kind of law of nature.
I don't own any touchscreen devices at all, but if I did and it was hackable, I'd consider putting KDE on it. The Plasma netbook interface is really nice (a hell of a lot better than that horrid Ubuntu Netbook Remix), and it was designed from the start with touchscreens in mind.
What a bunch of crap. Nobody "asks them why they tolerate a company acting like that." In fact, that's what the article is about. People are starting to ask those questions themselves, and Facebook Inc. is in a total pants-shitting panic over it.
That's what it means when "we may change the terms of service at any time with or without notice." It means you weren't informed. Fundamentally, it means you were lied to. Even if you are part of the 0.05% of people who actually read the TOS before checking the box, it doesn't matter. They could (and do) change all that tomorrow. You act like it's some ideal market of perfectly informed agents. It's the opposite. If you don't find that a problem, why the hell not?
according to the market, it's still head and shoulders above all the other crappy bullshit that is flogged by Apple's competitors
Hell no it's not. There were 33.3 million netbooks sold last year. When the iTampon even begins to remotely approach that number, give me a call. Apple's not exactly taking over here.
I don't buy that for a minute. So Apple's sold a million iPads. Whee. According to this article, there were 33.3 million netbooks sold last year.
It cracks me up when reports like this come out and everyone starts screaming about how Apple's taking over. No they're not. They're not close. They've never been close. They'll never be close. It's not what "everyone wants." The million people who will buy any stupid goddamn thing Apple sells bought iPads. Those million people are by no means "the general public." So in short, who the hell cares? In consumer electronics, a million units hardly even registers on the scale.
Let's play with the data a little bit. Let's assume for the sake of conversation that iPad sales continue at this rate. I don't think they will, but let's go with it. In three months, they've sold a million. By year's end, that makes four million. Four million units is roughly 12% of the netbooks sold last year. I don't know what your definition of "taking over" is, but in my book that doesn't cut it.
In one corner we has Steve Jobs. Rich guy. Hella-rich. (Nothing wrong with that either, as far as it goes. I personally am not anti-wealth by any stretch.)
In the opposing corner we have the developers of the Theora codec. Probably (but I'm just assuming) not hella-rich. Working hard on something that they then give away for nothing, to make the world (or at least the world behind my screen) a better place.
This act of charity somehow threatens the rich guy's sacred cow, in ways we know not. Rich guy tells non-rich guys "I'm going to sue you into oblivion." As rich guys often do to non-rich guys to force their submission to something, because even if the non-rich guys are in the right, the rich guy can afford to drag this shit out forever, until the non-rich guys give up, run out of money, or die of old age.
All because somebody wanted to give something away for nothing.
I don't think that's true. I think there are several DEs that work and are polished and work well and are ready for John Q. Public to use and enjoy. Really, just pick one, it doesn't matter, they're all great. But if people like the GP insist on not using them the way they're meant to be used, and try to mix and match shit and expect it all to work exactly the same, well, they'll end up pissing and moaning because that's not how it works.
1. The notification system on KDE is a FreeDesktop.org standard. Anyone can choose to implement it. Firefox already does.
2. The Qt-Curve theme will allow your GTK2 apps to share the same look and feel as native Qt apps. I'm typing this on Firefox right now, it fits in with the rest of my desktop quite nicely.
3. w/r/t your comment on Dolphin and KIO, it sounds like you're saying "Gosh it's wonderful how integrated KDE is, but I really wish it would integrate with [whatever non-KDE app you want]." Well... no. That's not how it works.
The Apple systems work, you can find an application for almost anything you want to do
I can assure you that you are not even close.
the price point is not excessive for the perceived value
Sure, I mean what's excessive about a computer that does half as much for twice as much money as every other computer in the world?
Apple, on the other hand, has succeeded. That they did so by walling the garden makes little difference to their customers. Understand that and you will understand the future. Disregard it and you'll be consigned to the dust heap of history. If you want to fight their closedness, you first have to make your open systems appealing and easy to use. Get a clue, people.
You are stupid and wrong.
Windows has somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of the OS market. Linux, while obviously not in remotely the same ballpark, has something else going for it: geometric growth every year. Apple... well, Apple doesn't have either of those things. Yeah, they make good money off their 5% or so of the market, and good for them, that's great. But they're not the future of anything. Shit, they're not even the present.
Slashdot Mirror
FYI, it's "obsolescence." I couldn't spell it either, I looked it up :)
Yep, and build a product that tries and mostly fails to do all those things, and apparently 10% of people will still keep buying it. It's a funny ol' world.
This is why Apple make it in the consumer market - the whole concept of "buy only our products" works
Like hell. If you think I'm going to go out and buy a Mac so that I can also buy an iPod and have the privilege of running iTunes to deal with the thing, you're fucking crazy.
+1 Informative. I really will try this, thank you.
Really? Tell me where else I can run AdBlock and I'll try it.
Nice troll. Let me flip it for you. "Opera needs to do many things out of the box because being non-free software, it cannot attract a decent mass of plugin developers, unlike Firefox which can."
Wasn't that fun? Now you try!
Not the GP, but with regards to plugins, I think they're correct. Without a free (as in "free country") base to build on, you just don't see people rushing in to write extensions for your product. How many great IE extensions do you hear about?
The setting does not change the way the iPod manages music
But is it possible to use an iPod as a normal hard-drive based music player (I know Rockbox does that, but I mean the Apple firmware.)
I'm sorry, but I just cannot agree that it was a thorough test /shrug Never said it was. I have several media applications that I already like (and hey, I run Linux), so it's not like I was switching in any event.
Just stop spreading FUD that iTunes would not do what you wanted it to do, when it plainly can.
That's not fair on a couple counts. First, I didn't say it couldn't, I said it didn't. And out of the box, that's entirely true. And second, Apple is a company that sells "it just works out of the box." That's their whole schtick. So although I accept (and indeed appreciate) your correction, I stand by the spirit of my comment.
and you come back yelling
I did not. I said "Oh, I didn't know that."
I bought a flashlight the other day but it didn't come with batteries. when I clicked the on button the light didn't come on. Should I return it as faulty and look for another flashlight that already has batteries installed? This one obviously does not work.
If the flashlight was from a company whose entire marketing campaign was based on "This is the easiest flashlight ever invented, and you'll never even need to open it!" then I'd say that was a legitimate complaint, yes.
Did you even look at the preferences?
Of course not. It didn't do what I wanted out of the box, I really can't stand the UI, and I don't own an iPod. Why the hell would I look at the preferences? There's a million and five media player applications, and at least a hundred thousand of them do what I want them to out of the box. Why would I mess around with something that doesn't?
Of course it is the default option - iTunes is primarily a jukebox/music organiser that is tailored to ease of use. The most automated function is going to be the default
The most automated function is plainly not, from conversations I've had with people who use iTunes, the most easy to use.
If you used iTunes for more than about half an hour...
Yes, yes, I get it. You know how to use iTunes. Not to belabor the point, but one more time with feeling: It doesn't work for me out of the box. I went with something that did. Every other media player application I use(d) works for me out of the box. Amarok, Banshee, hell, even Rhythmbox. Apple's did not.You can go ahead and believe that's my fault if you want. I don't really care.
It's on by default, for someone interested in manual control it is very easy to find
Tell me something, does that setting disable that behavior on your iPod as well?
Click the button in iTunes that says "let iTunes manage my library" so that it is disabled
As I said to another respondent, I was unaware of that option. However...
Don't let genuine options get in the way of a good troll though. The iTunes automatic organisation is optional, and always has been. For normal users, it is fine - it will take care of the files for you. If you want to do it yourself though, it is trivially easy to do so.
Wrong. Optional or not, it is the default, and I'm obviously not the only person to be unaware that the option to turn that off exists. And for normal users it is anything but fine. Unless your definition of "normal" does not include anyone who ever wants to put a file on a flash drive, or not have to rely on dodgy id3 tags to organize their music library, or access their music from anything other than iTunes. You may think that's a "normal" user. It's not.
Which, when you extract the logic, means that people who think the iTunes DB is the right way you call "Apple Fanboys", and those that don't think it's right you call "iTunes Users". With the result that you can claim 100% of "iTunes Users" agree with you. Even though lots of people that use iTunes don't agree with you.
No. I can understand how you misunderstood that, but no. Let me try again. A bunch of people who I've never met but hear a lot from on places like Slashdot seem to propagate the "users are too dumb to handle their own files, let iTunes do it" argument. But 100% of people who I have actually spoken to and looked at at the same time have said they hate it.
Frankly there doesn't seem to be any rational argument for taking on the manual task of keeping your media files in order rather then letting the computer do the work for you
Unless you access your files from anything that is not iTunes or an iPod. Or want to transfer files onto... well, anything, really. Or you've accumulated music from a variety of sources and the id3 tags don't jibe up (it is a lot easier to create a homogeneous file naming system than it is to have uniform id3 tags; believe me, I've felt the pain). Or maybe you just have the weird urge to actually know where your shit is.
but if you are so inclined to do so it's a checkbox option in preferences to do so.
In fairness, I was not aware of that.
So your complaint makes no sense whatsoever.
I don't think that's true, I think I've made my case pretty well here. I do welcome your reply.
You could at least provide some examples here
Oh God, I thought you'd never ask. Not the OP, but let me play! Just a quick Top 4 here, because I could really go on forever but I'd like to read the rest of the thread.
1. The ungodly top bar on OSX. Self-morphing UI elements are a Bad Thing. How this abomination has survived so long is totally beyond me, but I think it has something to do with that shitty hack called...
2. The dock. The idea that "it shouldn't matter whether or not the application's running or how many instances of this application are running" is bullshit. Just because Microsoft parroted it doesn't make it good. (Christ, if anything, MS took the worst of it.) There's plenty of room for innovation in 2D interfaces. Take a look at Gnome Shell (I'm not huge on it, but I'm not huge on Gnome) or the Plasma Netbook interface (which I am an enormous fan of). Plenty of room for new ideas. Doesn't change the fact that the dock was a shitty one.
3. The wheel interface is still dumb. If I have to take the mp3 player out of my pocket to know what I'm doing, that's a big fat fail.
4. Okay, I was just gonna do three, but here's a bonus: the iTunes database. Apple fanboys can pretend all they want that "normal users don't care where on the hard drive their music files are." But they know they're lying. Every time I have ever brought this up to an iTunes user, they've agreed with me. "Yeah, I've always hated that too, but what are you gonna do?" as if it were some kind of law of nature.
I don't own any touchscreen devices at all, but if I did and it was hackable, I'd consider putting KDE on it. The Plasma netbook interface is really nice (a hell of a lot better than that horrid Ubuntu Netbook Remix), and it was designed from the start with touchscreens in mind.
What a bunch of crap. Nobody "asks them why they tolerate a company acting like that." In fact, that's what the article is about. People are starting to ask those questions themselves, and Facebook Inc. is in a total pants-shitting panic over it.
That's what it means when "we may change the terms of service at any time with or without notice." It means you weren't informed. Fundamentally, it means you were lied to. Even if you are part of the 0.05% of people who actually read the TOS before checking the box, it doesn't matter. They could (and do) change all that tomorrow. You act like it's some ideal market of perfectly informed agents. It's the opposite. If you don't find that a problem, why the hell not?
The thing they need most is a name that's not "diaspora" the streak of horribly named open source projects continued.
I think it beats "Facebook."
according to the market, it's still head and shoulders above all the other crappy bullshit that is flogged by Apple's competitors
Hell no it's not. There were 33.3 million netbooks sold last year. When the iTampon even begins to remotely approach that number, give me a call. Apple's not exactly taking over here.
I don't buy that for a minute. So Apple's sold a million iPads. Whee. According to this article, there were 33.3 million netbooks sold last year.
It cracks me up when reports like this come out and everyone starts screaming about how Apple's taking over. No they're not. They're not close. They've never been close. They'll never be close. It's not what "everyone wants." The million people who will buy any stupid goddamn thing Apple sells bought iPads. Those million people are by no means "the general public." So in short, who the hell cares? In consumer electronics, a million units hardly even registers on the scale.
Let's play with the data a little bit. Let's assume for the sake of conversation that iPad sales continue at this rate. I don't think they will, but let's go with it. In three months, they've sold a million. By year's end, that makes four million. Four million units is roughly 12% of the netbooks sold last year. I don't know what your definition of "taking over" is, but in my book that doesn't cut it.
Does it matter whose "fault" it is?
Hell yes.
Not the OP, but I'll take a stab.
In one corner we has Steve Jobs. Rich guy. Hella-rich. (Nothing wrong with that either, as far as it goes. I personally am not anti-wealth by any stretch.)
In the opposing corner we have the developers of the Theora codec. Probably (but I'm just assuming) not hella-rich. Working hard on something that they then give away for nothing, to make the world (or at least the world behind my screen) a better place.
This act of charity somehow threatens the rich guy's sacred cow, in ways we know not. Rich guy tells non-rich guys "I'm going to sue you into oblivion." As rich guys often do to non-rich guys to force their submission to something, because even if the non-rich guys are in the right, the rich guy can afford to drag this shit out forever, until the non-rich guys give up, run out of money, or die of old age.
All because somebody wanted to give something away for nothing.
Or at least that's my take.
I've found that many BIOSes (BIOSen?) have some sort of Quick Boot option that is enabled by default and is often the culprit for this sort of thing.
KIO requires Dolphin? Um... no. Really, no.
I don't think that's true. I think there are several DEs that work and are polished and work well and are ready for John Q. Public to use and enjoy. Really, just pick one, it doesn't matter, they're all great. But if people like the GP insist on not using them the way they're meant to be used, and try to mix and match shit and expect it all to work exactly the same, well, they'll end up pissing and moaning because that's not how it works.
1. The notification system on KDE is a FreeDesktop.org standard. Anyone can choose to implement it. Firefox already does.
2. The Qt-Curve theme will allow your GTK2 apps to share the same look and feel as native Qt apps. I'm typing this on Firefox right now, it fits in with the rest of my desktop quite nicely.
3. w/r/t your comment on Dolphin and KIO, it sounds like you're saying "Gosh it's wonderful how integrated KDE is, but I really wish it would integrate with [whatever non-KDE app you want]." Well... no. That's not how it works.
The Apple systems work, you can find an application for almost anything you want to do
I can assure you that you are not even close.
the price point is not excessive for the perceived value
Sure, I mean what's excessive about a computer that does half as much for twice as much money as every other computer in the world?
Apple, on the other hand, has succeeded. That they did so by walling the garden makes little difference to their customers. Understand that and you will understand the future. Disregard it and you'll be consigned to the dust heap of history. If you want to fight their closedness, you first have to make your open systems appealing and easy to use. Get a clue, people.
You are stupid and wrong.
Windows has somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of the OS market. Linux, while obviously not in remotely the same ballpark, has something else going for it: geometric growth every year. Apple... well, Apple doesn't have either of those things. Yeah, they make good money off their 5% or so of the market, and good for them, that's great. But they're not the future of anything. Shit, they're not even the present.
Apple comes up with the great ideas and transformational change
Like mp3 players, cell phones, and BSD-derived operating systems? Way to innovate there, guys.