People forget, though, that buying a 360 gives you access to dozens of downloadable game demos that will give you a pretty sick amount of playtime for the price (free). Frankly, I'd rather have access to a single level of 70-80 games of my choice than any single game in its entirety.
Not sure if you've tried the latest beta, but it would probably disabuse you of both of those notions. It needs a lot of work and there isn't a lot of new functionality.
That entirely depends on the hardware, state of the OS installation. I often encounter issues where I am waiting over a entire minute for the dialog to actually display content (usually on 2ghz proc systems with 512MB RAM -- even happens when there is no anti-virus software installed).
This is not normal behavior. I've run XP in many different states on significantly lesser hardware, and dialogs that take an entire minute to open are indicative of something borked in the system (trying to access a dodgy network volume, maybe?). This is by no means typical behavior.
Microsoft are using undocumented features and undocumented APIs in these alternative UIs they are making. I know this just from looking at debugging outputs in Wine, notifying me whenever a NativeAPI is called.
I'm not denying that they may be doing so, but my point was that they're not doing anything that other application authors couldn't replicate. Dreamweaver uses common controls, Office 2007 uses custom -- they both present the "Open" dialog box in a comparable amount of time.
Writing a application that relies ontop of win32 functions that are more limited in functionality than their NativeAPI equivalents can cause a lot of mucking about to get around the lack of functionality additionally there is some execution cost for the extra layer of code to pass data through, you cannot deny that.
I think we're down to talking angels on the head of a pin here. There will be execution cost no matter what you're doing. Sure, it's easier to use the common controls -- that's why they're there. Sure, writing your own controls will be more complicated and potentially will have an execution cost. What I'm not convinced of is that any of it will actually be noticable to the user.
Besides, the original point of this thread was whether "hidden APIs" were responsible for the success of Office and the failure of its competitors, which I think is patently false. It was an original concept that saved businesses a bunch of headaches and money (from buying individual apps and hoping they worked together), and I think that has a lot more to do with why Office took over the market.
Heres one for you. I'm not impressed with the file->open/save dialogs, they seem slow etc.
Perhaps it's not so important now, but I still get really irritated over these things.
I hear what you're saying, but are you honestly suggesting that people buy Office because of the speed of the Open/Save dialogs? There's nothing wrong with MS writing custom Open/Save dialogs for Office if there's functionality they want to add. Adobe does the same thing with Photoshop (though, oddly, they give you the option of using the MS or the Adobe dialog, which I think is kind of dumb).
I just invoked the "Open..." dialog in Dreamweaver. It's the standard MS dialog and it took maybe half a second to load and populate.
Office barely ever uses win32 if it can, it's UIs are mostly written from scratch using alternative reimplementations. So now, I don't agree that it was a common interface, Office tends to even look and behave somewhat different from most normal win32 applications.
There's a big difference between saying that "MS custom-codes its UIs for its apps" and "MS codes its apps in a way that other apps can't replicate." The first is certainly true, though it's true of many applications. Roxio apps, for example, use very few native controls. The common controls are there for a baseline level of functionality. If you need something better, write it. Other people are doing it. There's no undocumented makeUIWorkFaster() function that's holding you back.
To my last point, the original versions of Office were the first place that you could get a suite of related desktop business products that used a common installer and a similar (to each other) interface. SmartSuite and the WordPerfect Suite came much later and were much less integrated. I was an Ami Pro user at the time, but the Office package was really compelling and novel -- all of the applications worked together fairly seamlessly. Again, I think that has a lot more to do with the success of Office than any "hidden" functionality.
It's just a bunch of hoo-hah, dedazo. There's no magic APIs in Windows that magically make Word run better than WordPerfect or Excel run better than 1-2-3. It's just FUD that doesn't ever seem to die. I mean, seriously, do people believe that there are APIs in Windows that make Office run better than, say, SmartSuite? It's wishful thinking. If that was the case, MS would have crippled Adobe and Macromedia (yeah, yeah, they're the same company now) long ago so that Photoshop and Dreamweaver don't lead their very lucrative markets. MS had tried to unseat them many times and failed because -- get this -- their products haven't been as compelling.
Office won because it had a coherent (and, at the time, new) concept: all of your office applications in a single box with a common and comprehensible brand and interface. They've always -- except for XP -- launched major new versions of Windows (95, 2000, Vista) with a new version, and they've kept adding functionality that makes their big business customer base happy.
The whole "hidden API" thing is just kerfluffle. WordPerfect runs fine, as do any number of other third party office products. People just don't spend money on them.
Frankly, unless HDMI is a deal-maker for you, I'm not sure why you would. I was responding to the GP's post, though, and he was considering giving away a second 360 in order to buy an Elite. In his case, not having to re-buy HD-DVD drives and WiFi adapters is potentially a good thing. I like my Premium and have no real desire to buy an Elite (though the HDD space would eventually be nice).
Of course, you're right about the WiFi being external primarily because people will pay for it. That said, it's only marginally more expensive than a third-party wireless bridge, so clearly everyone's keeping prices for this sort of add-on artificially high.
Just to play Devil's advocate (this is/., after all), but seeing as you've given away one Xbox and may be on the verge of giving away a second one, you should probably be glad they're not bundling in HD-DVD, because then you'd have bought three HD-DVD drives instead of one or none. In your case, you can buy one HD-DVD drive and keep it if you decide to upgrade to the Elite or the Elite 2 on down the road. Same deal with the WiFi adapter... even though I think they should probably include it, it's a benefit for those who are upgrading to the Elite that they don't because you're not unnecessarily paying for it again if you have the add-on already.
I don't totally disagree with what you're saying, but just another perspective.
Okay, let's pretend the concert isn't sold out and there are still seats available. If you take my ticket, I still can't get in. You have stolen what I purchased -- the right to attend the concert.
No, it's theft. If you guess at the barcode for a Ticketmaster "print at home" ticket to successfully hijack one I purchased and use it to get into the show before I can scan mine in, you've stolen my ticket. How's this any different?
What you're saying doesn't make sense, because including Windows doesn't cost Dell anything near retail and, in fact, can help them make the machine more profitable.
Seriously, there are laptops running Vista in the Sunday papers for $479. Do you honestly think that $100-150 of that price is the for Windows? Do you think that HP could sell laptops at a profit for $479 if they were paying $150 to Microsoft for Windows? At the volume they sell licenses, I highly doubt they're paying more than $30/unit.
The other thing you're ignoring here is that having an OS on the machine allows the OEM to sell space on the desktop to ISPs, software vendors for trailware, etc. If you don't ship with an OS, that's going to reduce the profit on a given machine and cause the price to increase (which, I suspect, is why OS-less machines cost about the same as Windows machines).
Apple offers a reasonable 5-pack "Family License" for less than the price of two installs, and they don't seem to make you jump through these hoops.
In fairness, though, Apple makes money (lots of it) on the hardware you have to buy to run OS X, so if you pirate the OS, you've already given them several hundred dollars in profit. No one knows exactly how much Dell pays MS for OEM copies of Windows, but we know for sure that it's well under a hundred dollars and if you keep pirating Windows, that's all the money they can ever make off of you. Many people do this; hence, the hoops.
I know, I know... poor Microsoft. I don't like activation anymore than you do, but you can hardly blame them for wanting to keep their software usage somewhat legit.
I'm not convinced this is actually going to be true. Yes, you need higher-resolution art assets for the PS3 and 360, but I imagine that most developers use them anyway for potential PC ports. On the Wii side, you've got to develop and playtest for a very different controller mechanism, which has got to take some significant time and resources.
Good games are going to be expensive to make, no matter what. I'd be curious to know what Zelda cost to develop versus, say, Oblivion.
You can't possibly believe what you're typing. Do you honestly think it doesn't come with a pair of headphones? Do you honestly think it ships with no way to sync and charge? Or are you just trolling?
They don't package it in with the Lite. I don't understand why Nintendo keeps churning out these games that are made more difficult and clumsy by the innovations of the DS hardware. I found Mario 64 and Metroid nearly unplayable with the stylus for all the reasons Starfox sounds like a nightmare.
Everyone makes fun of the PSP nubbin, but I'd rather play a game like this with an analog controller any day than with a pen.
Y'know, it's funny. I completely misread the gist of your comment the first time. I actually thought you were arguing for the benefits of commuting to work in a Viper. Reading, as they say, is truly fundamental.
Why does everyone forget the massive R&D for the Wiimote and the production costs for it and the motion sensor bar?
Why does everyone presume that there was a massive R&D effort for the remote controller? I don't doubt that there was some significant effort involved, but it's not like no one's ever done anything like this before. MS had a tilt controller way back when, Gyration mice (in whom Nintendo is a major investor) have tilt functionality... there's some interesting technology there, but I'm not convinced it took the videogame equivalent of the Manhattan Project to get it all working.
With a Gamecube priced at about $100 (if not less), I think Nintendo has plenty of room in the $250 cost of the Wii to make up for the sensor bar, the remote and the moderately improved processor and graphics chipset.
The same logic applies either way. You don't have to buy Vista either. If you're comparing upgrade costs, though, it seems wrong to compare the cost of upgrading Windows with the cost of not upgrading Mac OS.
The XCode argument, too, I don't totally get. OS X doesn't come with iPhoto, iDVD or iMovie either -- you'll need to buy a new machine or buy iLife. That's another $80ish upgrade every year. I'm not even bringing up.Mac.
But assuming that a development environment is a minimal requirement for you, you can get the Visual Studio Express Editions for free (or Eclipse or NetBeans). I think we're pretty far afield from the operating system cost comparison at this point, though. By the logic you're using here, we should add in the cost of Final Cut Pro into your upgrade costs since it's what you need to make your system do what you want it to.
Please understand what I'm saying -- I'm not saying that either OS is overpriced. I actually think that, for what you get, Windows and Mac OS are both pretty cheap. But, if you keep your machine up-to-date, you'll pay more over time for OS X licenses than for Windows licenses.
You're right -- if you choose not to upgrade, then both OS's are equally cheap. My comment was written assuming you're like most people and want to keep your system up-to-date.
You can't have it both ways. You can have an OS that has some major, some minor updates every 18 months and costs you $129 each time, or you can have one that has major updates every five years and costs you $100-200. I'm not sure how you could argue that OS X is cheaper than XP. You're better off arguing that you like it more.
First, you're comparing Canadian Vista prices to US OS X prices. US prices will almost definitely be less (it's lower in TFA).
Second, how many times will you buy OS X in between releases of Windows? Since XP came out, you've likely bought OS X three times (10.2, 10.3, 10.4) at $129 apiece and soon a fourth. The copy of XP you bought or, more likely, got from an OEM in 2001 is only now getting a pay-for update.
OS X is more expensive. If you like it more, that's cool, but your argument that it's cheaper doesn't hold up.
Is this the same Nintendo that was charging $20 for GBA ports of ExciteBike, Ice Climbers and the NES version of Xevious? The Nintendo download service isn't going to be free, and I wouldn't get too excited before you see some pricing.
What's funny is, I was going to mention Yahoo as a great, cheap way of finding new music (I'll leave it to others to argue about how obscure it is, but if you have heard it, it's new to you), but I was afraid I'd be modded down for recommending teh proprietary WMA music service.
eMusic is great too, though their "buy a fixed number of downloads in advance" pricing model is a little bizarre.
Believe it or not, apparently there are people who want to buy the Beatles catalog and haven't bought the CDs.
All I'm saying is that if anyone wants the Beatles catalog albums and hasn't bought them, it's not because the CDs are too hard to find. I don't honestly believe that the P2P folks are holding out on buying them because they're not on iTunes -- they wouldn't buy them anyway.
It's not like Beatles and Radiohead albums are hard to come by, both new and used -- who cares if they're sold on iTunes or not? Is there anyone who wants to buy the Beatles catalog who hasn't already purchased them on CD?
Online music stores (especially the subscription ones) are great for discovering new or obscure music, and they're ideal for buying a single on an album that's otherwise lousy, but the Beatles and Radiohead -- the most common holdout examples used -- don't fit any of those descriptions.
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People forget, though, that buying a 360 gives you access to dozens of downloadable game demos that will give you a pretty sick amount of playtime for the price (free). Frankly, I'd rather have access to a single level of 70-80 games of my choice than any single game in its entirety.
Not sure if you've tried the latest beta, but it would probably disabuse you of both of those notions. It needs a lot of work and there isn't a lot of new functionality.
That entirely depends on the hardware, state of the OS installation. I often encounter issues where I am waiting over a entire minute for the dialog to actually display content (usually on 2ghz proc systems with 512MB RAM -- even happens when there is no anti-virus software installed).
This is not normal behavior. I've run XP in many different states on significantly lesser hardware, and dialogs that take an entire minute to open are indicative of something borked in the system (trying to access a dodgy network volume, maybe?). This is by no means typical behavior.
Microsoft are using undocumented features and undocumented APIs in these alternative UIs they are making. I know this just from looking at debugging outputs in Wine, notifying me whenever a NativeAPI is called.
I'm not denying that they may be doing so, but my point was that they're not doing anything that other application authors couldn't replicate. Dreamweaver uses common controls, Office 2007 uses custom -- they both present the "Open" dialog box in a comparable amount of time.
Writing a application that relies ontop of win32 functions that are more limited in functionality than their NativeAPI equivalents can cause a lot of mucking about to get around the lack of functionality additionally there is some execution cost for the extra layer of code to pass data through, you cannot deny that.
I think we're down to talking angels on the head of a pin here. There will be execution cost no matter what you're doing. Sure, it's easier to use the common controls -- that's why they're there. Sure, writing your own controls will be more complicated and potentially will have an execution cost. What I'm not convinced of is that any of it will actually be noticable to the user.
Besides, the original point of this thread was whether "hidden APIs" were responsible for the success of Office and the failure of its competitors, which I think is patently false. It was an original concept that saved businesses a bunch of headaches and money (from buying individual apps and hoping they worked together), and I think that has a lot more to do with why Office took over the market.
Heres one for you. I'm not impressed with the file->open/save dialogs, they seem slow etc.
Perhaps it's not so important now, but I still get really irritated over these things.
I hear what you're saying, but are you honestly suggesting that people buy Office because of the speed of the Open/Save dialogs? There's nothing wrong with MS writing custom Open/Save dialogs for Office if there's functionality they want to add. Adobe does the same thing with Photoshop (though, oddly, they give you the option of using the MS or the Adobe dialog, which I think is kind of dumb).
I just invoked the "Open..." dialog in Dreamweaver. It's the standard MS dialog and it took maybe half a second to load and populate.
Office barely ever uses win32 if it can, it's UIs are mostly written from scratch using alternative reimplementations. So now, I don't agree that it was a common interface, Office tends to even look and behave somewhat different from most normal win32 applications.
There's a big difference between saying that "MS custom-codes its UIs for its apps" and "MS codes its apps in a way that other apps can't replicate." The first is certainly true, though it's true of many applications. Roxio apps, for example, use very few native controls. The common controls are there for a baseline level of functionality. If you need something better, write it. Other people are doing it. There's no undocumented makeUIWorkFaster() function that's holding you back.
To my last point, the original versions of Office were the first place that you could get a suite of related desktop business products that used a common installer and a similar (to each other) interface. SmartSuite and the WordPerfect Suite came much later and were much less integrated. I was an Ami Pro user at the time, but the Office package was really compelling and novel -- all of the applications worked together fairly seamlessly. Again, I think that has a lot more to do with the success of Office than any "hidden" functionality.
It's just a bunch of hoo-hah, dedazo. There's no magic APIs in Windows that magically make Word run better than WordPerfect or Excel run better than 1-2-3. It's just FUD that doesn't ever seem to die. I mean, seriously, do people believe that there are APIs in Windows that make Office run better than, say, SmartSuite? It's wishful thinking. If that was the case, MS would have crippled Adobe and Macromedia (yeah, yeah, they're the same company now) long ago so that Photoshop and Dreamweaver don't lead their very lucrative markets. MS had tried to unseat them many times and failed because -- get this -- their products haven't been as compelling.
Office won because it had a coherent (and, at the time, new) concept: all of your office applications in a single box with a common and comprehensible brand and interface. They've always -- except for XP -- launched major new versions of Windows (95, 2000, Vista) with a new version, and they've kept adding functionality that makes their big business customer base happy.
The whole "hidden API" thing is just kerfluffle. WordPerfect runs fine, as do any number of other third party office products. People just don't spend money on them.
Frankly, unless HDMI is a deal-maker for you, I'm not sure why you would. I was responding to the GP's post, though, and he was considering giving away a second 360 in order to buy an Elite. In his case, not having to re-buy HD-DVD drives and WiFi adapters is potentially a good thing. I like my Premium and have no real desire to buy an Elite (though the HDD space would eventually be nice).
Of course, you're right about the WiFi being external primarily because people will pay for it. That said, it's only marginally more expensive than a third-party wireless bridge, so clearly everyone's keeping prices for this sort of add-on artificially high.
Just to play Devil's advocate (this is /., after all), but seeing as you've given away one Xbox and may be on the verge of giving away a second one, you should probably be glad they're not bundling in HD-DVD, because then you'd have bought three HD-DVD drives instead of one or none. In your case, you can buy one HD-DVD drive and keep it if you decide to upgrade to the Elite or the Elite 2 on down the road. Same deal with the WiFi adapter... even though I think they should probably include it, it's a benefit for those who are upgrading to the Elite that they don't because you're not unnecessarily paying for it again if you have the add-on already.
I don't totally disagree with what you're saying, but just another perspective.
Okay, let's pretend the concert isn't sold out and there are still seats available. If you take my ticket, I still can't get in. You have stolen what I purchased -- the right to attend the concert.
No, it's theft. If you guess at the barcode for a Ticketmaster "print at home" ticket to successfully hijack one I purchased and use it to get into the show before I can scan mine in, you've stolen my ticket. How's this any different?
What you're saying doesn't make sense, because including Windows doesn't cost Dell anything near retail and, in fact, can help them make the machine more profitable.
Seriously, there are laptops running Vista in the Sunday papers for $479. Do you honestly think that $100-150 of that price is the for Windows? Do you think that HP could sell laptops at a profit for $479 if they were paying $150 to Microsoft for Windows? At the volume they sell licenses, I highly doubt they're paying more than $30/unit.
The other thing you're ignoring here is that having an OS on the machine allows the OEM to sell space on the desktop to ISPs, software vendors for trailware, etc. If you don't ship with an OS, that's going to reduce the profit on a given machine and cause the price to increase (which, I suspect, is why OS-less machines cost about the same as Windows machines).
They do, however, require that your hardware have a shiny Apple logo on the outside, so let's not get too excited.
Apple offers a reasonable 5-pack "Family License" for less than the price of two installs, and they don't seem to make you jump through these hoops.
In fairness, though, Apple makes money (lots of it) on the hardware you have to buy to run OS X, so if you pirate the OS, you've already given them several hundred dollars in profit. No one knows exactly how much Dell pays MS for OEM copies of Windows, but we know for sure that it's well under a hundred dollars and if you keep pirating Windows, that's all the money they can ever make off of you. Many people do this; hence, the hoops.
I know, I know... poor Microsoft. I don't like activation anymore than you do, but you can hardly blame them for wanting to keep their software usage somewhat legit.
I'm not convinced this is actually going to be true. Yes, you need higher-resolution art assets for the PS3 and 360, but I imagine that most developers use them anyway for potential PC ports. On the Wii side, you've got to develop and playtest for a very different controller mechanism, which has got to take some significant time and resources.
Good games are going to be expensive to make, no matter what. I'd be curious to know what Zelda cost to develop versus, say, Oblivion.
You can't possibly believe what you're typing. Do you honestly think it doesn't come with a pair of headphones? Do you honestly think it ships with no way to sync and charge? Or are you just trolling?
They don't package it in with the Lite. I don't understand why Nintendo keeps churning out these games that are made more difficult and clumsy by the innovations of the DS hardware. I found Mario 64 and Metroid nearly unplayable with the stylus for all the reasons Starfox sounds like a nightmare.
Everyone makes fun of the PSP nubbin, but I'd rather play a game like this with an analog controller any day than with a pen.
Y'know, it's funny. I completely misread the gist of your comment the first time. I actually thought you were arguing for the benefits of commuting to work in a Viper. Reading, as they say, is truly fundamental.
Sorry if I came off like a tool.
I've got to ask... what can the PS3 do that the 360 "can't dream of doing"? Real-time weapon change?
Why does everyone forget the massive R&D for the Wiimote and the production costs for it and the motion sensor bar?
Why does everyone presume that there was a massive R&D effort for the remote controller? I don't doubt that there was some significant effort involved, but it's not like no one's ever done anything like this before. MS had a tilt controller way back when, Gyration mice (in whom Nintendo is a major investor) have tilt functionality... there's some interesting technology there, but I'm not convinced it took the videogame equivalent of the Manhattan Project to get it all working.
With a Gamecube priced at about $100 (if not less), I think Nintendo has plenty of room in the $250 cost of the Wii to make up for the sensor bar, the remote and the moderately improved processor and graphics chipset.
The same logic applies either way. You don't have to buy Vista either. If you're comparing upgrade costs, though, it seems wrong to compare the cost of upgrading Windows with the cost of not upgrading Mac OS.
.Mac.
The XCode argument, too, I don't totally get. OS X doesn't come with iPhoto, iDVD or iMovie either -- you'll need to buy a new machine or buy iLife. That's another $80ish upgrade every year. I'm not even bringing up
But assuming that a development environment is a minimal requirement for you, you can get the Visual Studio Express Editions for free (or Eclipse or NetBeans). I think we're pretty far afield from the operating system cost comparison at this point, though. By the logic you're using here, we should add in the cost of Final Cut Pro into your upgrade costs since it's what you need to make your system do what you want it to.
Please understand what I'm saying -- I'm not saying that either OS is overpriced. I actually think that, for what you get, Windows and Mac OS are both pretty cheap. But, if you keep your machine up-to-date, you'll pay more over time for OS X licenses than for Windows licenses.
You're right -- if you choose not to upgrade, then both OS's are equally cheap. My comment was written assuming you're like most people and want to keep your system up-to-date.
You can't have it both ways. You can have an OS that has some major, some minor updates every 18 months and costs you $129 each time, or you can have one that has major updates every five years and costs you $100-200. I'm not sure how you could argue that OS X is cheaper than XP. You're better off arguing that you like it more.
First, you're comparing Canadian Vista prices to US OS X prices. US prices will almost definitely be less (it's lower in TFA).
Second, how many times will you buy OS X in between releases of Windows? Since XP came out, you've likely bought OS X three times (10.2, 10.3, 10.4) at $129 apiece and soon a fourth. The copy of XP you bought or, more likely, got from an OEM in 2001 is only now getting a pay-for update.
OS X is more expensive. If you like it more, that's cool, but your argument that it's cheaper doesn't hold up.
Is this the same Nintendo that was charging $20 for GBA ports of ExciteBike, Ice Climbers and the NES version of Xevious? The Nintendo download service isn't going to be free, and I wouldn't get too excited before you see some pricing.
What's funny is, I was going to mention Yahoo as a great, cheap way of finding new music (I'll leave it to others to argue about how obscure it is, but if you have heard it, it's new to you), but I was afraid I'd be modded down for recommending teh proprietary WMA music service.
eMusic is great too, though their "buy a fixed number of downloads in advance" pricing model is a little bizarre.
Believe it or not, apparently there are people who want to buy the Beatles catalog and haven't bought the CDs.
All I'm saying is that if anyone wants the Beatles catalog albums and hasn't bought them, it's not because the CDs are too hard to find. I don't honestly believe that the P2P folks are holding out on buying them because they're not on iTunes -- they wouldn't buy them anyway.
It's not like Beatles and Radiohead albums are hard to come by, both new and used -- who cares if they're sold on iTunes or not? Is there anyone who wants to buy the Beatles catalog who hasn't already purchased them on CD?
Online music stores (especially the subscription ones) are great for discovering new or obscure music, and they're ideal for buying a single on an album that's otherwise lousy, but the Beatles and Radiohead -- the most common holdout examples used -- don't fit any of those descriptions.