Apple got it's dominant position largely through a clever (and cool, and the early) advertising campaign.
Apple got its position by having the foresight to think of their product as a "premium" device. They put in lots of storage capacity, made the thing as small as possible, made more than half the case out of metal, and designed an interface very carefully. When that was done that had a player that was much more expensive than the competing players but much more useful, and the market responded.
Consider that the supposed "iPod killers" today still often have plastic-only cases, are often twice the volume, and usually have a confusing interface (see the Zen Vision:M).
tried to differentiate themselves through technological features (doesn't work 'cause most people don't understand)
Nonsense; people know quite well what an FM tuner and a stopwatch and a voice recorder are. They just don't care, or not in large numbers (and various add-ons exist for the iPod anyway). I told my dad that other players included a built-in radio, and he told me that the reason he wanted an iPod was that radio now sucks.
Security isn't like a commodity that can only be measured in amount. Users were clamoring for security, sure, and Microsoft added "more". The problem is that Microsoft's security isn't so well designed.
It's like if drivers thought a car was a little underpowered, so the next model had three times the horsepower -- but ran only on jet fuel. It's silly to say that users are getting what they asked for.
I think that Nintendo's success here is in seeing beyond the supposed "adult" market to the "new" adult market. I feel like in the last generation, "adult" meant age 17-24 males; people who tend to like violence, explosions, intense graphics, etc; people who are "afraid that playing a game with colors in it will make them look like a dork."* In analogy to movies, think the Matrix, Mission: Impossible, or XXX. The new adult market is 25+; people who are interested in good gameplay but have less time, have families, etc and while they might still enjoy a game like GTA, they might find it easier to make time for a session of Mario Kart.
If these impressions are correct, it's not that the PS3 will fail as such; it may be the best system for people who enjoy what it offers. But Nintendo's strategy is still brilliant. Sony may not be wrong as such, but I am afraid that their overall corporate strategy will fail if they lose more than a little market share.
The PSP, I think, is criticized for size because it has the largest single dimension of any of the handhelds, and that makes it look larger visually. I suspect also that the hinged aspect of the DS makes its width seem more appropriate, whereas the PSP, though thinner, seems like a solid thick brick.
Certainly the dollar has had better days; I think the major reason it's maintained value as well as it has is that big investors are having trouble finding great non-dollar investments.
The price of the PS3, though, has nothing to do with your income or my income. Sony's target market doesn't think in gold, and they have experienced a significant drop in gold-standard wages since 2000. Not that the value of gold is "real", either, but it gives you some idea.
That's the reason I cite the median. Even Warren Buffet is unlikely to purchase more than 15 or so PS3s, so Sony needs to sell these things to the mass market. If they price out everyone who got a pittance of a raise last year, they will have trouble.
Personally, I make the most money I can every year (within the limitations of my chosen lifestyle). I'm not a gold mine, so my market value isn't tied to fluctuations in the value of gold. Of course, much of my pay comes in the form of health care; that "kidney transplant for $300" deal was a real lifesaver.
We should all recognize, though, that when the government squanders a large percentage of economic resources on a basically destructive activity, they lower the real value of the nation overall and therefore its citizens' labor. No amount of gold will change that.
It's useless to value an entertainment item in relation to the price of gold for two reasons: the price of gold relative to other commodities is not stable and nobody buys consoles with gold. Try comparing the prices based on growth in expendable income instead.
I doubt you will find a 200% increase in median expendable income between 2000 and 2006.
Fading in and out was possibly Macrovision (as another poster suggested), but the quiet audio problem was a well known issue with the PS2. Possibly it was fixed with a later revision.
You forgot to mention that laptops from all manufacturers tend to be made in China. It's silly to think that Apple or Dell carefully examines all their laptops shipped from China to make sure they don't contain some kind of spy hardware or software.
I'd just like to chime in that it's clear Nintendo has captured the imagination of many people with this new console and it's not surprising that some people are excited. Doesn't mean they're shills.
I just don't think it's enough to tell people they can be safe from phishing if they just check the URL. I believe that the URL format is not clear enough in general as there are too many little mistakes a human can make when parsing one. Defense against phishing needs to be a multi-layered tactic including general suspicion, care with personal information, skepticism of URLs, careful monitoring of financial statements, and good law enforcement.
A user can't be relied upon to parse a URL correctly. How about htt p://www.yahoo.com:776AAAS0ER@1113982867 ? How many users can easily tell that this does not go to Yahoo?
I think the best reason to say it's a bubble is that the Baby Boomers will all run out of money once their bodies start to break down and they can no longer work. They are saving nothing for retirement and the government doesn't have anything for them either.
Perhaps the government will try to divert even more cash from the younger generations, but there is a limit to that.
You sort of see high executive salaries everywhere, but perhaps this is endemic at corporations which have simply been around for a long time. Obviously these corporations are more likely to be unionized.
Overall executive salaries and bonuses are nothing compared to labor costs (GM has over 100,000 union employees), though the cost of executive incompetence is beyond measure. Health insurance costs are huge because everyone wants healthcare that provides any available treatment regardless of cost, and this naturally drives up cost. Of course we are all sympathetic to that as we all want to be alive, but one day someone will invent a machine that can keep anyone alive for a million dollars a day. Naturally, most of the cost will be paperwork...
You did leave out pension costs, which could certainly be called executive incompetence since the executives knew quite well that any market downturn would lead to a huge unfunded liability, and they should have planned for that. Of course, the unions should have known that a retirement system controlled by management would be bungled eventually, just as all young Americans know that there will be no Social Security.
I'm not saying that "unions kill corporations"; my thinking is more that unions cannot solve certain problems. If the tech workers had all joined one big union before the bubble popped, I doubt that they would have been able to reduce the number of people who lost their jobs. If the company that employs you doesn't bring value to the economy (due to management incompetence or employee greed or whatever else), the market will find a way for you to lose your job.
No, you got that impression because you don't read carefully. I don't even conclusively believe it, and I am very interested in arguments on both sides. Perhaps my post was not clear enough for you, but in that case I would appreciate it if you would accept my clarification. We can't have a very productive argument about what *I* meant.
Nice cliche.
Quoting Latin phrases instead of making an argument is the initial cliche, so I gave you a cliche back. I have more in the car.
The fact that there is disagreement on how the unemployment rate is even calcluated makes my point more perfectly than any statistic ever could.
You will need to cite some reason why one would believe that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is lying about how they conduct their OWN research before you can claim that there is meaningful disagreement on the issue. Otherwise this is a very plain non sequitur, as random posters on Slashdot such as yourself could simply be misinformed and careless about facts. I don't need to prove that there is such a thing as disinformation, do I? That would be quite dull.
I took three years of predicate calculus.
I'm sure that's obvious to everyone who reads your posts.
The point with GM, which you seem to have missed, is that it's an example of how unions cannot prevent jobs from moving overseas by preventing a single individual company from outsourcing. The individual company's customers can simply choose to buy from overseas producers.
Also, I did not and do not claim as fact that unionization is what causes unionized businesses to fail at an increased rate; please read my statements more carefully. However, I would be interested in a counter to that point if you have one. Otherwise please look up "quidquid Latine dictum sit altum viditur".
Mostly you haven't taken care to address my points, so I don't have much in the form of rebuttal. However, I must take issue with a factual error:
No. We have low numbers of people collecting unemployment insurance. The "unemployment rate" does not and has not ever measured the true unemployment rate.
This is a lie told by those who wish to portray a failing economy; it's surprising how many people believe it. Snopes has a decent article at http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm, and they link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I'm not sure what picture you're trying to present with your statistics.
Right now nationally, we have low union participation, low unemployment, and most businesses are able to turn a profit. If you focus on heavily unionized businesses like auto production or the airline industry, you see corporate failures and bankruptcy. So there is at least some support for the idea that unions are bad for business overall.
While you won't see much outsourcing at, say, General Motors, it's indisputable that jobs have moved from GM to Toyota. So in that sense the union has completely failed GM employees; you just can't force the market overall to accept your vision of the world, even if you can flex your muscle in a small part of the market.
Here's a fact: 50% of working-age adults are NOT employed in full-time, salaried jobs.
This fact seems important to you but I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. There isn't anything wrong with being an hourly worker without a union.
I appreciate the debt I owe to the American military; that doesn't mean I'm ready to up and join them.
Lots of us are concerned that unions cause the downfall of corporations and the loss of massive number of jobs to foreign countries. Bringing out Ayn Rand (for most purposes a straw man) and telling us we'll understand if we lose OUR jobs does nothing to address that issue.
Really, this is almost a retread of the analog button story. The analog buttons on the Dual Shock have a completely digital feel, and you get the feeling that the feature was only added because it was planned for other consoles. If you ever try making use of the analog button feature in Gran Turismo on the PS2, all you get in return is very sore hands from the reinforcement of the natural tendency to push the button REALLY HARD.
Whether the motion detection in the Dual Shake is implemented well or not is irrelevant -- it's still a two-handed controller. When I imagine playing a game with one, I think of simple tilting motions to steer or control an airplane, and that's about it.
On the other hand, when I imagine playing a game with the Wiimote, I can see myself cutting people open in Trauma Center, or swinging a sword around, or learning the proper gestures to cast spells in some spiffy new Harry Potter game. The gesturing power of my right hand alone simply dwarfs that of both hands tied together.
And I think that the PS3 motion detection will be seen by everyone as completely useless and will be abandoned by developers within a year, just like the lame analog buttons on the Dual Shock 2.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple got it's dominant position largely through a clever (and cool, and the early) advertising campaign.
Apple got its position by having the foresight to think of their product as a "premium" device. They put in lots of storage capacity, made the thing as small as possible, made more than half the case out of metal, and designed an interface very carefully. When that was done that had a player that was much more expensive than the competing players but much more useful, and the market responded.
Consider that the supposed "iPod killers" today still often have plastic-only cases, are often twice the volume, and usually have a confusing interface (see the Zen Vision:M).
tried to differentiate themselves through technological features (doesn't work 'cause most people don't understand)
Nonsense; people know quite well what an FM tuner and a stopwatch and a voice recorder are. They just don't care, or not in large numbers (and various add-ons exist for the iPod anyway). I told my dad that other players included a built-in radio, and he told me that the reason he wanted an iPod was that radio now sucks.
Security isn't like a commodity that can only be measured in amount. Users were clamoring for security, sure, and Microsoft added "more". The problem is that Microsoft's security isn't so well designed.
It's like if drivers thought a car was a little underpowered, so the next model had three times the horsepower -- but ran only on jet fuel. It's silly to say that users are getting what they asked for.
I think that Nintendo's success here is in seeing beyond the supposed "adult" market to the "new" adult market. I feel like in the last generation, "adult" meant age 17-24 males; people who tend to like violence, explosions, intense graphics, etc; people who are "afraid that playing a game with colors in it will make them look like a dork."* In analogy to movies, think the Matrix, Mission: Impossible, or XXX. The new adult market is 25+; people who are interested in good gameplay but have less time, have families, etc and while they might still enjoy a game like GTA, they might find it easier to make time for a session of Mario Kart.
If these impressions are correct, it's not that the PS3 will fail as such; it may be the best system for people who enjoy what it offers. But Nintendo's strategy is still brilliant. Sony may not be wrong as such, but I am afraid that their overall corporate strategy will fail if they lose more than a little market share.
* - Penny Arcade, "I Think Our Time Is Up"
PSP: 170x74x23 (mm), 289cm3
DS: 149x85x29, 367cm3
DS Lite: 133x74x22, 217cm3
The PSP, I think, is criticized for size because it has the largest single dimension of any of the handhelds, and that makes it look larger visually. I suspect also that the hinged aspect of the DS makes its width seem more appropriate, whereas the PSP, though thinner, seems like a solid thick brick.
Certainly the dollar has had better days; I think the major reason it's maintained value as well as it has is that big investors are having trouble finding great non-dollar investments.
The price of the PS3, though, has nothing to do with your income or my income. Sony's target market doesn't think in gold, and they have experienced a significant drop in gold-standard wages since 2000. Not that the value of gold is "real", either, but it gives you some idea.
That's the reason I cite the median. Even Warren Buffet is unlikely to purchase more than 15 or so PS3s, so Sony needs to sell these things to the mass market. If they price out everyone who got a pittance of a raise last year, they will have trouble.
Personally, I make the most money I can every year (within the limitations of my chosen lifestyle). I'm not a gold mine, so my market value isn't tied to fluctuations in the value of gold. Of course, much of my pay comes in the form of health care; that "kidney transplant for $300" deal was a real lifesaver.
We should all recognize, though, that when the government squanders a large percentage of economic resources on a basically destructive activity, they lower the real value of the nation overall and therefore its citizens' labor. No amount of gold will change that.
Maybe you are being silly, but at http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/, there is actually a FreeBSD logo.
Why are you replying to me, and not the guy who was complaining about moderation in his initial post in the first place?
It's useless to value an entertainment item in relation to the price of gold for two reasons: the price of gold relative to other commodities is not stable and nobody buys consoles with gold. Try comparing the prices based on growth in expendable income instead.
I doubt you will find a 200% increase in median expendable income between 2000 and 2006.
Making a point that you expect to be modded down is flamebait by definition.
Fading in and out was possibly Macrovision (as another poster suggested), but the quiet audio problem was a well known issue with the PS2. Possibly it was fixed with a later revision.
You forgot to mention that laptops from all manufacturers tend to be made in China. It's silly to think that Apple or Dell carefully examines all their laptops shipped from China to make sure they don't contain some kind of spy hardware or software.
Dude, the post he was replying to said "vanilla X". It said that because it was a joke and a troll.
I'd just like to chime in that it's clear Nintendo has captured the imagination of many people with this new console and it's not surprising that some people are excited. Doesn't mean they're shills.
Flamebait? It's totally true. Nobody is going to pay $600 for a PS3... it only costs $599!
Maybe your users are smarter than mine -- my users can't tell forward slashes from backslashes, so you could get them easily with
ht tp://www.yahoo.com\a\b\c:AUEUREU2342@1113982867
I just don't think it's enough to tell people they can be safe from phishing if they just check the URL. I believe that the URL format is not clear enough in general as there are too many little mistakes a human can make when parsing one. Defense against phishing needs to be a multi-layered tactic including general suspicion, care with personal information, skepticism of URLs, careful monitoring of financial statements, and good law enforcement.
A user can't be relied upon to parse a URL correctly. How about htt p://www.yahoo.com:776AAAS0ER@1113982867 ? How many users can easily tell that this does not go to Yahoo?
If you can get a 4ms ping between, say, Chicago and LA, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I think the best reason to say it's a bubble is that the Baby Boomers will all run out of money once their bodies start to break down and they can no longer work. They are saving nothing for retirement and the government doesn't have anything for them either.
Perhaps the government will try to divert even more cash from the younger generations, but there is a limit to that.
You sort of see high executive salaries everywhere, but perhaps this is endemic at corporations which have simply been around for a long time. Obviously these corporations are more likely to be unionized.
Overall executive salaries and bonuses are nothing compared to labor costs (GM has over 100,000 union employees), though the cost of executive incompetence is beyond measure. Health insurance costs are huge because everyone wants healthcare that provides any available treatment regardless of cost, and this naturally drives up cost. Of course we are all sympathetic to that as we all want to be alive, but one day someone will invent a machine that can keep anyone alive for a million dollars a day. Naturally, most of the cost will be paperwork...
You did leave out pension costs, which could certainly be called executive incompetence since the executives knew quite well that any market downturn would lead to a huge unfunded liability, and they should have planned for that. Of course, the unions should have known that a retirement system controlled by management would be bungled eventually, just as all young Americans know that there will be no Social Security.
I'm not saying that "unions kill corporations"; my thinking is more that unions cannot solve certain problems. If the tech workers had all joined one big union before the bubble popped, I doubt that they would have been able to reduce the number of people who lost their jobs. If the company that employs you doesn't bring value to the economy (due to management incompetence or employee greed or whatever else), the market will find a way for you to lose your job.
No but you implied it
No, you got that impression because you don't read carefully. I don't even conclusively believe it, and I am very interested in arguments on both sides. Perhaps my post was not clear enough for you, but in that case I would appreciate it if you would accept my clarification. We can't have a very productive argument about what *I* meant.
Nice cliche.
Quoting Latin phrases instead of making an argument is the initial cliche, so I gave you a cliche back. I have more in the car.
The fact that there is disagreement on how the unemployment rate is even calcluated makes my point more perfectly than any statistic ever could.
You will need to cite some reason why one would believe that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is lying about how they conduct their OWN research before you can claim that there is meaningful disagreement on the issue. Otherwise this is a very plain non sequitur, as random posters on Slashdot such as yourself could simply be misinformed and careless about facts. I don't need to prove that there is such a thing as disinformation, do I? That would be quite dull.
I took three years of predicate calculus.
I'm sure that's obvious to everyone who reads your posts.
The point with GM, which you seem to have missed, is that it's an example of how unions cannot prevent jobs from moving overseas by preventing a single individual company from outsourcing. The individual company's customers can simply choose to buy from overseas producers.
Also, I did not and do not claim as fact that unionization is what causes unionized businesses to fail at an increased rate; please read my statements more carefully. However, I would be interested in a counter to that point if you have one. Otherwise please look up "quidquid Latine dictum sit altum viditur".
Mostly you haven't taken care to address my points, so I don't have much in the form of rebuttal. However, I must take issue with a factual error:
No. We have low numbers of people collecting unemployment insurance. The "unemployment rate" does not and has not ever measured the true unemployment rate.
This is a lie told by those who wish to portray a failing economy; it's surprising how many people believe it. Snopes has a decent article at http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm, and they link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I'm not sure what picture you're trying to present with your statistics.
Right now nationally, we have low union participation, low unemployment, and most businesses are able to turn a profit. If you focus on heavily unionized businesses like auto production or the airline industry, you see corporate failures and bankruptcy. So there is at least some support for the idea that unions are bad for business overall.
While you won't see much outsourcing at, say, General Motors, it's indisputable that jobs have moved from GM to Toyota. So in that sense the union has completely failed GM employees; you just can't force the market overall to accept your vision of the world, even if you can flex your muscle in a small part of the market.
Here's a fact: 50% of working-age adults are NOT employed in full-time, salaried jobs.
This fact seems important to you but I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. There isn't anything wrong with being an hourly worker without a union.
I appreciate the debt I owe to the American military; that doesn't mean I'm ready to up and join them.
Lots of us are concerned that unions cause the downfall of corporations and the loss of massive number of jobs to foreign countries. Bringing out Ayn Rand (for most purposes a straw man) and telling us we'll understand if we lose OUR jobs does nothing to address that issue.
Really, this is almost a retread of the analog button story. The analog buttons on the Dual Shock have a completely digital feel, and you get the feeling that the feature was only added because it was planned for other consoles. If you ever try making use of the analog button feature in Gran Turismo on the PS2, all you get in return is very sore hands from the reinforcement of the natural tendency to push the button REALLY HARD.
Whether the motion detection in the Dual Shake is implemented well or not is irrelevant -- it's still a two-handed controller. When I imagine playing a game with one, I think of simple tilting motions to steer or control an airplane, and that's about it.
On the other hand, when I imagine playing a game with the Wiimote, I can see myself cutting people open in Trauma Center, or swinging a sword around, or learning the proper gestures to cast spells in some spiffy new Harry Potter game. The gesturing power of my right hand alone simply dwarfs that of both hands tied together.
And I think that the PS3 motion detection will be seen by everyone as completely useless and will be abandoned by developers within a year, just like the lame analog buttons on the Dual Shock 2.