When trying to find out how many servers that are running IIS or Apache or some other http-server, counting IP's are much more valid than counting sites for just that reason. If one IIS server has one thousand sites, it is still just one IIS server installation. If one Apache server has one thousand sites, it is still just one Apache server installation. Any other way of counting is invalid.
For counting hosts, yes IP is better. For counting popularity of Apache vs IIS with customers, sites is better.
Think of this example: 20 IPs are IIS, with 40 sites 10 IPs are Apache, with 80 sites
That means that although there are twice as many machines running IIS, it also means that there are twice as many customers that chose an Apache-based hosting provider.
And, by what magic of the new HTTP 2.0 protocol are you running two different server software types on the same IP and on the same port?
Cisco, Foundry, and several other vendors make load balancing devices that allow you to have one public-facing IP distributed to dozens of back-end machines. If you connect to 1.2.3.4 on port 80, you can actually be connected to machine A, B, C, etc.. these machines not necessarily running the same web server software or operating system. In this case the actual public-facing IP is often called a VIP (Virtual IP) since it's not assigned anywhere except on the load balancer.
Counting by IP address is by far, more accurate than comparing hostnames and sites. So counting by IP is MORE VALID than the method they used.
You're right, it depends what you're counting. If you're counting the number of boxes that run a particular web server, then IPs will probably be more accurate, although load balancing will skew this. If you're counting the number of customers those chose IIS vs. Apache, whether or not they are jammed onto a large hosting server with other customers? Counting by sites will be more accurate there, although skewed by domain parking.
Despite your ignorant little point.
I love you too man!
If you want to count individual BOXES, then IP is as close as you are going to get without doing a survey or special fingerprinting of the data to find differences in machines. (It will still be too big, I run 122 IPs with about 350 sites on them. The ratio changes all the time due to customers coming/going and reconfigurations...)
I'm guessing 121 of those sites are SSL? Name-based multihosting and load-balancers mean you normally only ever need one public-facing IP for non-SSL sites. Better yet, all your back-end boxes can be configured identically, with all of the sites on every box, so you can spread the load evenly. Even if your application needs to keep the user on a particular box during a session, the load balancer can be directed to do so.
I am going to guess, that the fact that millions of "parking" domains are run for the most part on Apache causes the popularity of that particular activity of lowlife scum to weigh heavily in the Netcraft numbers.
If that's the methodology, then the more obvious solution is to base any statistics on IP address, and not on sites. Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone would use a "site" as the primary means of doing web server counts.
Many legitimate hosting sites use a handful of IPs for hundreds or thousands of sites. Counting by IP isn't valid.
It might be different if it were a group therapy session or an AA meeting at the local church. But it's not.
Why? How is a group of drunks/fundies gathering to hear people speak different from a group of hackers gathering to hear people speak? You don't have to sign up to go to a church, so it's even more public than a security conference.
It's a group of people talking about how to break the law.
Sigh. It's a conference on security, which is useful to security professionals to test and defend their own networks. I've been sent by two different employers (both financial institutions).
I can't think of a place where the public has a greater interest in what is being said and who is saying it.
Oh, I don't know - government proceedings?
"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while Congress is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker of New York, 1866
YOu posted that whole thing, but didn't realize that there isn't a single bit of useful fact in there at all.
The fact that different carbs affect glucose and insulin levels differently, while still having the same amount of calories, isn't useful? Many people in this thread seem to think that 500 calories of fructose will affect the body the same way as 500 calories of sucrose, which isn't true.
The glycemic index is another BS gimmick that losers like you trot out to pretend you're fat because of some reason other than your own slovenly behavior. You're wrong, fat and stupid. Why do those things always seem to correlate so closely, like with you?
Ahh, argumentum ad hominem. If you have information about GI's effectiveness, I'd love to hear it. Insults, not so much.
Not all carbohydrate foods are created equal, in fact they behave quite differently in our bodies. The glycemic index or GI describes this difference by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. Choosing low GI carbs - the ones that produce only small fluctuations in our blood glucose and insulin levels - is the secret to long-term health reducing your risk of heart disease and diabetes and is the key to sustainable weight loss.
In other words - it's not just counting calories. Some calories are actually worse for you. Sucrose is better for you than fructose, for example.
Unless you accidentally hit the menu button and get thrown out of the volume control. Or the opposite, which happens to me all the time where your trying to switch tracks and your hand slips a little causing the thing to change volume. Once you have the levels on your deck EQ and sub and everything set just right, its really annoying to have to reset the ipod volume or risk distortion. And this is just me who uses it all the time. Give a passenger the ipod and they will without fail accidentally change the volume.
The scroll wheel is easy to turn by accident, agreed. Clicking the menu button? People can hit the wrong button on any device and screw it up.
It sounds like you're using a tape adapter. If you use line-out instead of the headphone jack, then the volume on the iPod doesn't matter (and you get better sound). Some FM adapters use line out, and I've got a cradle/dock type thing in my car that pretends it's a CD changer to the deck.
Good point, and I didn't even know about that. But, seeking through a song by holding down a button is naturally going to be more awkward than using the wheel, since there's no variability in seek speed. If buttons are to be used for one of the functions, volume adjustment would certainly be the better choice. They could have made the device much more usable just by surreptitiously nestling a pair of buttons, or even a slider, into its edge.
Indeed, I think volume buttons could be a good addition. But the point was that is currently possible to operate the iPod without looking at it, even without volume buttons.
You never listen to, say, a live album or a concept album in track order? You never get a new album and want to listen to it, start to end, as the artist intended? Track order is still important to a lot of people in many situations, so being able to conveniently toggle shuffle mode doesn't seem terribly esoteric.
I personally don't. I only own one live album (a gift), and I'm not really sure what a "concept album" is. I do agree that live albums (or a ripped book-on-tape CD) are a great reason to toggle shuffle.. but I can't imagine people switching back and forth between them often enough to expose the shuffle option more. If you do, you can move the shuffle option to the main menu (it's customizable).
And trying to characterize the awful on-the-go playlist interface as driven by a "concious design decision" seems quite the stretch to me. More like a gigantic oversight in the original design of the device, no doubt in the name of "simplicity", that was awkwardly hacked on in software later on. Press and hold and flash-flash-flash? It's a usability disaster.
Hiding the on-the-go playlist feature on a menu because it's not used often is a decision; whether or not that playlist feature sucks is another story.:) I've really never used it - not because it's a pain, but because I don't listen to music that way. It was indeed added on after the fact due to user requests/competition.
I would conjecture that the only reason more people don't loathe it is that they've never used anything better. So, they don't even bother with it: they just sit there, staring at the screen, waiting for the exact moment one track ends before selecting the next.
I either let it play my whole library on shuffle, or pick an specific album/artist and let that play - approximately the same way I used to use CDs. I really never think to myself "I want to listen to A, then B, then C". I do have a few static playlists.
Another example is the iPod itself. The lack of an explicit power button, also mentioned in the article, isn't a big deal. But having no separate volume control really harms the usability of the device. While I'm listening to music, I don't want to have to look at the screen. But because volume and seeking within the track are loaded up on the same physical control, I have to watch the screen as I toggle between the two functions. It feels like a huge step back from my Rio Karma, where I could easily adjust the volume with a pair of buttons and use the thumb wheel to seek in the track.
Changing tracks, play/pause, seeking, and volume can all be done without looking. Hold down fast forward/rewind instead of using the scroll wheel to seek, and then you can still change volume with scroll wheel.
There are also nifty remotes you can use with iPods with separate volume buttons. I have a wireless remote strapped to my handlebars on my bike, which works great.
The amount of time you spend navigating those menus is just sick. Want to enable shuffle? Navigate up to the root, down to options, back up to the root, and back down to your songs. Want to select a song and start playing it in a fresh on-the-go playlist and, while it's playing, add more songs to the queue? Navigate down to select the song, up to the root, down to play from the playlist, back up to the root, back down to select your next song. Fantastic!
These are not often-used functions for most people (I turned on both shuffle and repeat, then never returned to those functions), so making them a little harder to get to in order to make the most-often-used functions easy, clean, and accessible is a conscious design decision. I happen to agree with their design; it sounds like you don't. Different products for different customer desires.
Didn't Disney violate someone's copyright with Mickey Mouse or something? I don't remember exactly, but just like Microsoft's behaviour it just goes to show that the people fearing thieves most are the thieves themselves.
I'm not aware of any copyright violation with Mickey Mouse. Disney had a fight over Winnie the Pooh's ownership; last I heard Disney had won. They also have a large history of taking free fairy tales and locking them up under copyright and trademark.
Never mind that congregating in the galley area could be illegal on flights to/from the US, depending if the galley is near the front of the plane. (Forgive me if few planes are structured this way, but I just looked up a few seating charts and it seemed that several common Boeing models were)
During the US portion of my trip last week, I was told that simply congregating in the aisle or galley was prohibited, regardless if you were near the front.
Why not make it 25 years or the death of the artist, whichever comes later?
I don't think it's that simple. Suppose a young musician is moderately popular, and is out on tour. Suppose (s)he dies in an accident, and their death sparks a tidal wave of interest in the musician. Now what if they had a very young child and widow? Are you suggesting the child and widow should be on welfare or be a working single-parent, when their spouse had more than enough money to support them if only they weren't screwed over by a copyright expiring at the artist's death? I'm pretty sure the dead musician would've wanted his family taken care of.
In your example, the 25 years would be the "later" event, and so the copyright would continue through death. (Unless the artist has made the work 25 years ago, then died, *then* it became popular)
I really don't understand why the copyright couldn't be 25 or 50 years and leave it at that. It doesn't seem unreasonable.
It was, originally. However, corporations making money off old creations lobbied to have it extended. For example, Disney is still pimping out a 1920s creation - Mickey Mouse.
I agree that the whole coding and community is garbage.. but, it's very reliable at finding old high school friends and keeping in touch. For free, at least. You're not going to find high school friends on a site that isn't made user-friendly for morons.
I see a new advertising campaign! "Myspace - built by morons, for morons".
And the encryption chips or CPU based encryption is not directly accessible to emulation, not without paying a genuinely unacceptable performance penalty in use.
I've used Windows on Intel emulated under PPC (the old VirtualPC for Mac). At that point you're translating the entire instruction set. It was acceptable for web browsing and Quicken. QEMU emulates an x86 chip on multiple platforms, and can either translate instructions (for like x86 on PPC or SPARC) or virtualize them (x86 on x86).
Computers these days have a lot of power left over - it wouldn't surprise me to see a DRM video running realtime on an emulated CPU.
And kill hundreds of thousands of people in one go. Read GP's link, the DOW section provides a perfect example of how much worse corps are than you think.
I've read about Bhopal before. BBC link, Wikipedia, and Union Carbide's account, Bhopal Medical Appeal's account. It's a terrible tragedy, but I think "kill hundreds of thousands of people" would be an exaggeration that detracts from the story, unless you're counting future deaths that may or may not be traceable to the accident.
What I got out of it: in 1984 was an accident at the plant, most likely due to skimping on safety controls in order to save money. 500k were exposed, anywhere from 4k to 20k have died, and up to 120k have problems. The people sued and won. In 1989 they won $470 million in compensation, which the government has been slow to distribute (years and years).
The ongoing complaint seems to be: 1. $470 million wasn't enough. In particular, it covered (some) medical claims but not the full environmental cleanup. Considering that the case was already decided in the Indian Supreme Court and that Dow has said repeatedly that Bhopal was settled when they bought Union Carbide, nothing further is likely to happen. 2. While some executives have faced trial, others (particularly Warren Anderson, who was Union Carbide CEO) have avoided it. Warren lives in the US and has not been extradited. Also not likely to happen.
Mandatory reading for all those history-challenged individuals who believe government knows best! As compared to whom? The history challenged individuals who think corporations know best?
Why do people reduce everything to A versus B? ("false dichotomy") It's not "govt or corps, choose one" - how about they both have good and bad qualities, and we need to reign in BOTH of them so that we can enjoy their good qualities while not suffering their ill effects?
Corporations allow for pooling of capital to achieve great efficiencies and new products. Abusive corporations can squeeze out competitors, raise prices, and prevent new products from challenging their dominance.
Government allows for a fair system of law and order. Abuse of governmental authority allow for repression and deprivation of life and liberty.
Thinking the either govt or business (or even the people) always know best is silly. All three are both right and wrong quite often.
And the Calendar is what? The Contacts/addressbook is what? The Todo list is what format? The notebook is what format?
Calendar - iCal/CalDAV (open standard, same as Mozilla's Sunbird) Contacts - vCard, open standard Todo - iCal again Notebook - on the iPod, the notebook is a directory of regular text (.txt) files - I imagine iPhone will do the same.
And it'll cost you about £20 in the UK, without a contract, with £10 call time thrown in.
In the US, it's uncommon to buy your own phone. You can:
1. Buy a phone for $x 2. Pay $30 to have it "activated" (i.e. have them give you a SIM card) 3. Sign a contract
or
1. Get the free phone they offer (usually crappy radio and extra useless features, where the complaining comes from) 2. No activation fee; free phone comes with SIM card 3. Sign the exact same contract
I bought an unlocked RAZR when they were new, and when I signed up for service for Cingular, I let them give me a free crappy phone because it was cheaper than telling them I had my own phone. I just took the SIM card out and put it in my RAZR.
business people, most of whole will be using Blackberrys anyway (sic)
Wow, you really don't know a whole lot of "business people", do you?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here - are you saying Blackberries are unpopular? They're ridiculously common in the financial industry (I work in IT at a large, large bank).
I plan to buy an iPhone on the 29th, because they're cool and I have a spare $500, and don't current have/need/want a Blackberry. But most business smartphone users I've seen have Blackberries.
The biggest limitation I see is not the lack of a killer app(s), but the lack of free, easily accessible WiFi everywhere. You'll need a connection to something to use these apps, and with only a few cities and towns in US with decent WiFi blanketing, this may end up being a huge problem.
No problem - "linksys" on channel 6 seems to be everywhere
Circa 2004 G5 Tower. Circa 2005 Mac Mini. Circa 2006 MacBook.
Two of those - Mac Mini and MacBook - have horrible, horrible integrated Intel graphics instead of a discrete graphics card like Nvidia or ATI. My brand new Dell work computer also has Intel integrated graphics, and despite being super-fast in every other respect, also gets like 5fps in any 3d game.
Integrated graphics suck, on PC or Mac.
Macbook Pro, most of the iMac models, and Mac Pro have decent graphics cards.
Perhaps someone out there can answer this for me, but what is to stop some company in China, or Europe, or somewhere else where US laws apply in name only (i.e. there is some trade agreement or treaty on 'intellectual property' but the foreign producers simply ignore it when it is inconvenient) from producing and selling third party hardware which does not recognize a 'broadcast flag' or any other junk that the government and the cable monopoly lobbyists come up with?
Nothing prevents them from producing something like this overseas. Good luck getting it past customs in any quantity, however. You could probably bring in one or two devices, as a passenger - but a cargo container full of them will definitely get seized. No major manufacturer would bother, since there's probably little profit in such a venture.
The iPhone is another apple trick - take existing tech, repackage and advertise to people who like form over substance and like to feel smug about it. They'll claim innovation, style, reliability (all things that Nokia have been doing really well for a long time) when actually delivering a shiny box that can do less than older devices.
How is selling people what they want a "trick"? Apple does one thing really well - interface/experience - and people are willing to pay for good design.
I actually built my own car MP3 player. It was more functional than, and had more storage than an iPod. I replaced it with an iPod and car kit. I wanted my trunk back, and the form factor and interface does make a huge difference in small quarters like a car. Other solutions are more functional - making playlists on the fly, for example - but I never use that. I just wanted something nice, neat, and simple to play music.
Back to phones, I have a RAZR. Who decided that buttons on the outside should work when it's closed? I'm forever changing the ring volume by accidentally hitting those buttons. The soft buttons drive me nuts - if I dial an 800 number, then punch in a passcode, I can't press the Speakerphone or Mute buttons, because they've changed to Store and something else, I forget. I have to either wait 15 seconds for it to time out somehow and give me my buttons back, or search through the menu for both those buttons. The form of the device is great, but the interface blows.
Anyways, the point is that interface and design matter. I don't really care how much memory my phone has, as long as it's "enough". I do care about how easy (or annoying) it is to use every day.
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For counting hosts, yes IP is better.
For counting popularity of Apache vs IIS with customers, sites is better.
Think of this example:
20 IPs are IIS, with 40 sites
10 IPs are Apache, with 80 sites
That means that although there are twice as many machines running IIS, it also means that there are twice as many customers that chose an Apache-based hosting provider.
It really depends on what you want to measure.
Cisco, Foundry, and several other vendors make load balancing devices that allow you to have one public-facing IP distributed to dozens of back-end machines. If you connect to 1.2.3.4 on port 80, you can actually be connected to machine A, B, C, etc.. these machines not necessarily running the same web server software or operating system. In this case the actual public-facing IP is often called a VIP (Virtual IP) since it's not assigned anywhere except on the load balancer.
You're right, it depends what you're counting. If you're counting the number of boxes that run a particular web server, then IPs will probably be more accurate, although load balancing will skew this. If you're counting the number of customers those chose IIS vs. Apache, whether or not they are jammed onto a large hosting server with other customers? Counting by sites will be more accurate there, although skewed by domain parking.
I love you too man!
I'm guessing 121 of those sites are SSL? Name-based multihosting and load-balancers mean you normally only ever need one public-facing IP for non-SSL sites. Better yet, all your back-end boxes can be configured identically, with all of the sites on every box, so you can spread the load evenly. Even if your application needs to keep the user on a particular box during a session, the load balancer can be directed to do so.
I agree (see above about skewing).
Many legitimate hosting sites use a handful of IPs for hundreds or thousands of sites. Counting by IP isn't valid.
Why? How is a group of drunks/fundies gathering to hear people speak different from a group of hackers gathering to hear people speak? You don't have to sign up to go to a church, so it's even more public than a security conference.
Sigh. It's a conference on security, which is useful to security professionals to test and defend their own networks. I've been sent by two different employers (both financial institutions).
Oh, I don't know - government proceedings?
"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while Congress is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker of New York, 1866
You mean "give away the RAZR and sell the blades"
The fact that different carbs affect glucose and insulin levels differently, while still having the same amount of calories, isn't useful? Many people in this thread seem to think that 500 calories of fructose will affect the body the same way as 500 calories of sucrose, which isn't true.
Ahh, argumentum ad hominem. If you have information about GI's effectiveness, I'd love to hear it. Insults, not so much.
http://www.glycemicindex.com
What is the Glycemic Index?
Not all carbohydrate foods are created equal, in fact they behave quite differently in our bodies. The glycemic index or GI describes this difference by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. Choosing low GI carbs - the ones that produce only small fluctuations in our blood glucose and insulin levels - is the secret to long-term health reducing your risk of heart disease and diabetes and is the key to sustainable weight loss.
In other words - it's not just counting calories. Some calories are actually worse for you. Sucrose is better for you than fructose, for example.
The scroll wheel is easy to turn by accident, agreed. Clicking the menu button? People can hit the wrong button on any device and screw it up.
It sounds like you're using a tape adapter. If you use line-out instead of the headphone jack, then the volume on the iPod doesn't matter (and you get better sound). Some FM adapters use line out, and I've got a cradle/dock type thing in my car that pretends it's a CD changer to the deck.
Indeed, I think volume buttons could be a good addition. But the point was that is currently possible to operate the iPod without looking at it, even without volume buttons.
I personally don't. I only own one live album (a gift), and I'm not really sure what a "concept album" is. I do agree that live albums (or a ripped book-on-tape CD) are a great reason to toggle shuffle.. but I can't imagine people switching back and forth between them often enough to expose the shuffle option more. If you do, you can move the shuffle option to the main menu (it's customizable).
Hiding the on-the-go playlist feature on a menu because it's not used often is a decision; whether or not that playlist feature sucks is another story.
I either let it play my whole library on shuffle, or pick an specific album/artist and let that play - approximately the same way I used to use CDs. I really never think to myself "I want to listen to A, then B, then C". I do have a few static playlists.
Changing tracks, play/pause, seeking, and volume can all be done without looking. Hold down fast forward/rewind instead of using the scroll wheel to seek, and then you can still change volume with scroll wheel.
There are also nifty remotes you can use with iPods with separate volume buttons. I have a wireless remote strapped to my handlebars on my bike, which works great.
These are not often-used functions for most people (I turned on both shuffle and repeat, then never returned to those functions), so making them a little harder to get to in order to make the most-often-used functions easy, clean, and accessible is a conscious design decision. I happen to agree with their design; it sounds like you don't. Different products for different customer desires.
I'm not aware of any copyright violation with Mickey Mouse. Disney had a fight over Winnie the Pooh's ownership; last I heard Disney had won. They also have a large history of taking free fairy tales and locking them up under copyright and trademark.
During the US portion of my trip last week, I was told that simply congregating in the aisle or galley was prohibited, regardless if you were near the front.
In your example, the 25 years would be the "later" event, and so the copyright would continue through death. (Unless the artist has made the work 25 years ago, then died, *then* it became popular)
It was, originally. However, corporations making money off old creations lobbied to have it extended. For example, Disney is still pimping out a 1920s creation - Mickey Mouse.
I see a new advertising campaign! "Myspace - built by morons, for morons".
I've used Windows on Intel emulated under PPC (the old VirtualPC for Mac). At that point you're translating the entire instruction set. It was acceptable for web browsing and Quicken. QEMU emulates an x86 chip on multiple platforms, and can either translate instructions (for like x86 on PPC or SPARC) or virtualize them (x86 on x86).
Computers these days have a lot of power left over - it wouldn't surprise me to see a DRM video running realtime on an emulated CPU.
I've read about Bhopal before. BBC link, Wikipedia, and Union Carbide's account, Bhopal Medical Appeal's account. It's a terrible tragedy, but I think "kill hundreds of thousands of people" would be an exaggeration that detracts from the story, unless you're counting future deaths that may or may not be traceable to the accident.
What I got out of it: in 1984 was an accident at the plant, most likely due to skimping on safety controls in order to save money. 500k were exposed, anywhere from 4k to 20k have died, and up to 120k have problems. The people sued and won. In 1989 they won $470 million in compensation, which the government has been slow to distribute (years and years).
The ongoing complaint seems to be:
1. $470 million wasn't enough. In particular, it covered (some) medical claims but not the full environmental cleanup. Considering that the case was already decided in the Indian Supreme Court and that Dow has said repeatedly that Bhopal was settled when they bought Union Carbide, nothing further is likely to happen.
2. While some executives have faced trial, others (particularly Warren Anderson, who was Union Carbide CEO) have avoided it. Warren lives in the US and has not been extradited. Also not likely to happen.
Why do people reduce everything to A versus B? ("false dichotomy") It's not "govt or corps, choose one" - how about they both have good and bad qualities, and we need to reign in BOTH of them so that we can enjoy their good qualities while not suffering their ill effects?
Corporations allow for pooling of capital to achieve great efficiencies and new products. Abusive corporations can squeeze out competitors, raise prices, and prevent new products from challenging their dominance.
Government allows for a fair system of law and order. Abuse of governmental authority allow for repression and deprivation of life and liberty.
Thinking the either govt or business (or even the people) always know best is silly. All three are both right and wrong quite often.
Calendar - iCal/CalDAV (open standard, same as Mozilla's Sunbird)
Contacts - vCard, open standard
Todo - iCal again
Notebook - on the iPod, the notebook is a directory of regular text (.txt) files - I imagine iPhone will do the same.
In the US, it's uncommon to buy your own phone. You can:
1. Buy a phone for $x
2. Pay $30 to have it "activated" (i.e. have them give you a SIM card)
3. Sign a contract
or
1. Get the free phone they offer (usually crappy radio and extra useless features, where the complaining comes from)
2. No activation fee; free phone comes with SIM card
3. Sign the exact same contract
I bought an unlocked RAZR when they were new, and when I signed up for service for Cingular, I let them give me a free crappy phone because it was cheaper than telling them I had my own phone. I just took the SIM card out and put it in my RAZR.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here - are you saying Blackberries are unpopular? They're ridiculously common in the financial industry (I work in IT at a large, large bank).
I plan to buy an iPhone on the 29th, because they're cool and I have a spare $500, and don't current have/need/want a Blackberry. But most business smartphone users I've seen have Blackberries.
Why? What was your motivation for abandoning these tools?
No problem - "linksys" on channel 6 seems to be everywhere
Two of those - Mac Mini and MacBook - have horrible, horrible integrated Intel graphics instead of a discrete graphics card like Nvidia or ATI. My brand new Dell work computer also has Intel integrated graphics, and despite being super-fast in every other respect, also gets like 5fps in any 3d game.
Integrated graphics suck, on PC or Mac.
Macbook Pro, most of the iMac models, and Mac Pro have decent graphics cards.
Nothing prevents them from producing something like this overseas. Good luck getting it past customs in any quantity, however. You could probably bring in one or two devices, as a passenger - but a cargo container full of them will definitely get seized. No major manufacturer would bother, since there's probably little profit in such a venture.
How is selling people what they want a "trick"? Apple does one thing really well - interface/experience - and people are willing to pay for good design.
I actually built my own car MP3 player. It was more functional than, and had more storage than an iPod. I replaced it with an iPod and car kit. I wanted my trunk back, and the form factor and interface does make a huge difference in small quarters like a car. Other solutions are more functional - making playlists on the fly, for example - but I never use that. I just wanted something nice, neat, and simple to play music.
Back to phones, I have a RAZR. Who decided that buttons on the outside should work when it's closed? I'm forever changing the ring volume by accidentally hitting those buttons. The soft buttons drive me nuts - if I dial an 800 number, then punch in a passcode, I can't press the Speakerphone or Mute buttons, because they've changed to Store and something else, I forget. I have to either wait 15 seconds for it to time out somehow and give me my buttons back, or search through the menu for both those buttons. The form of the device is great, but the interface blows.
Anyways, the point is that interface and design matter. I don't really care how much memory my phone has, as long as it's "enough". I do care about how easy (or annoying) it is to use every day.