I'm just guessing, but I don't think that mouse cords are really that big a bother for most people compared with the hassle of having to keep a wireless mouse powered and/or charged. The cord helps you keep it oriented and prevents it from falling off of the desk. If you're on a plane, it's generally easier to use a small travel mouse or just use the trackpad.
Though DR-DOS was almost 100% binary compatible with applications written for MS-DOS, Microsoft nevertheless expended considerable effort in attempts to break compatibility. In one example, they inserted code into the beta version of Windows 3.1 to return a non-fatal error message if it detected a non-Microsoft DOS. With the detection code disabled (or if the user canceled the error message), Windows ran perfectly under DR-DOS. [1] This code was removed from final release of Windows 3.1 and all subsequent versions, however.
Memory usage: Less than firefox (not that that is difficult), more than opera
Opera and Firefox both suck on memory usage. Opera 9 freshly opened with three tabs was taking 150MB+ last night. Nice program, but I wish they could get the freaking memory usage under control.
And Netscape was a 'Pay For' browser. In much the same way that Opera is now.
Netscape was licensed as a 'pay for' browser, but it was purely by license. Most people (and businesses) ran the freely downloadable version and very, very few people ever paid for Netscape (unless they bought it with a book). It's like saying that WinZip is a 'pay for' product -- what you're saying is factual, but in practice most people who use it aren't paying customers.
Netscape's business model was to sell server software, not browsers. IIS and Apache did them more damage than IE did.
Are there any free DVDs? Is there any completely free music? Any free Xbox games?
Sure! Google Video/YouTube will give you as many free movies as you can watch. There's broadcast television (free). There's the radio (free). There are shareware and freeware games out the wazoo.
We're talking about computing in developing nations. You may be able to spend hundreds on music, DVDs and videogames and then use it to justify spending hundreds more on Microsoft software, but your whole point is alien to people who can't do any of that.
True, but I think you were ignoring the context of my post. I was responding to the GP's post that was suggesting that spending money on software for a machine that doesn't cost very much is ridiculous, and my whole point is that, in almost every imaginable case, software always costs more in hardware.
But it's simply ridicolous to suggest people should buy a $100 computer, and then add $600 in software.
Why? My DVD player cost $100, but I've spent many, many times over that in software. My portable CD player cost less than $50, but tally up what I've spent in music and it dwarfs that. Xbox cost $299, but the software cost is much higher.
When hardware is commodified, the software is naturally the most expensive part.
There are some notable recent examples of $2 mods that have sold 400,000 copies in the first two days. What's the profit margin there? And that's if you assume there are no further sales after the first few days.
The situation you describe is, though, a best-case scenario for the publisher. In your example, they've sunk a quarter-million dollars in the thing before they have any idea who'll buy it or how many copies they'll sell. I'm sure that the two dollar mod that sells 400,000 copies is a highly atypical example.
Its the Bioware/Bethseda type sandbox fantasy games that typically have weak or no stories.
You've clearly not played KOTOR 1 or 2, or Morrowind or Oblivion. The KOTOR stories were great and the Bethesda games had, if anything, too much story. Sure, you can ignore it, but there's a completely plotted story in both games.
Once the third-party providers go away, the price of OneCare Live will skyrocket just like Office did.
Methinks you should look again. In 1997 (grabbed an old magazine off the shelf), Word 97 cost $337. Office 97 standard cost $499. Today you can get the home edition of Office 2003 for $149 or the standard version for $399. Prices for Office have been trending down, especially for the small business or home user.
It's really not fair to treat monopoly activity the same way you'd treat other "crimes." Monopoly law is really curious in that monopoly status is typically only applied after you've already broken the law, which is somewhat antithetical to our legal system. Monopoly law is one of the somewhat unusual cases where the law is very fuzzy and you can be doing "illegal" activity without being aware that it's illegal.
What makes you a monopolist? What's the exact point where you become one? Is Windows a monopoly today? If so, what marketshare from a competitor is required to cease to be one? It's all subjective!
I think your suggestion that he's like a "mob boss" is really unfair. Gates plays hard, there's no doubt, but so does anyone in his position (you think Jobs doesn't?). Gates' people negotiated contracts with OEMs that his competitors didn't like (Jobs, by comparison, doesn't allow anyone to license his OS).
I'm not saying that Gates' hands are completely clean, but it's kinda lazy to just say "MS is a convicted monopolist end of story" because the actual situation is much more nuanced.
3. Apple knows how to market to consumers. "iMac" gains more traction that the new "HP Pavilion dv1000." The "iMac" is a product even my parents can name. The HP Pavilion dv1000 is just another part number nobody ever remembers.
That can bite you in the ass, though. Seem Apple's iPod update software lately? You basically have to identify your iPod by the configuration of the buttons and the aspect ratio of its screen to tell which generation you have (presuming you don't already know such things). I was trying to find some support for my old G4 the other day (it's a QuickSilver, but how would your parents know that?) and the support documents were different if it was a "Mirrored door" G4 vs. a "PCI Graphics" G4 vs. an "AGP Graphics" G4.
God help you if you're trying to support an iMac. "Gumdrop, lamp or flat? What color? Does it have a DVI port? Does it have a screen that can swivel? Does it come with a remote?"
Having a single name for your products is great for marketing, but sucks for support.
Seriously, how many of those PS2 games were worth a damn (ignoring the fact that many of them didn't ship day-and-date with the PS2)? If the only one you can find that was notable was SSX, you're kinda making my point.
Same thing with the Dreamcast. I had a Dreamcast and I loved the thing, but the best games on it at launch were NFL 2k and SoulCalibur. Outside of that, there was a bunch of mediocrity. X360 is going to have DOA4 in two weeks and Madden 06. It has a couple of very good FPS's, a fighter, several racers, a very good platformer and a bunch of sports games: about the same mix as most other consoles at launch.
And before you comment on the Gamecube, I've found that it has more games I want to play than what the xbox has to offer.
Way to change the subject.
I'm not saying that the other consoles don't have good games, but you can't argue the same isn't true for the Xbox. The Gamecube, except for Zelda, is dying quickly and the PS2 lags pretty significantly in its technology (long loading times, framerates, jaggies).
Not trying to get into a fanboy war here (I had a Gamecube at one point), but the old saw that the Xbox doesn't have good games just isn't true and hasn't been for a long time.
Agreed. It's funny how many people turn into market analysts when it comes to a product they're trying to diss. Was it successful? Yes, enough to sell 20+M consoles, dozens of millions of games and spawn a sequel. Did it make a profit for MS? Apparently they made enough money that they didn't abandon the market altogether.
But who cares? There are some great games and a cool online service, which is all I care about as a gamer.
The 360 has a disastrous lack of solid launch titles. Nothing is revolutionary.
Launch titles have never been revolutionary. What revolutionary title did the PS2 launch with? The Gamecube? The Dreamcast?
360 is launching with a very competent lineup, though no (as the CNN article pointed out) killer app. It's hard to imagine that the same people who bought the original Xbox for Halo and PGR aren't going to buy the 360 for Perfect Dark and PGR3.
Revolutionary games will come in the second year and beyond, as they always do.
It's odd that CNN headlines this "Xbox 360: Good, but not Great." He's saying that there's no killer app launch title, but he has many good things to say about the actual hardware. Launch titles are rarely an indication of what's to come, and with the juice that the 360 is packing, there'll be some great stuff over the next six months.
In the meantime, you'll have to make do with Perfect Dark, Project Gotham, next-gen Madden, Kameo and Call of Duty. Systems have been launched with far less (I'm looking you, Fantavision).
It's really simple: subscriptions are great if you like to try out a lot of new music. If there's something you find that you really like, you can either buy it burnable on Yahoo for $8 or buy a used copy on Amazon for $4. The great thing about Yahoo is that if someone recommends an artist or CD to you, you can listen to it in its entirety without having to wrangle with 30 second snippets or borrowing their copy.
I wouldn't say that Yahoo is a replacement for buying music -- you'll probably still buy the things you really like to listen to in the car or to have a permanent copy -- but it makes finding new things that you like very, very easy. The other nice thing is that you can listen to a huge library of music at work or wherever you are without having to transport your MP3 library.
Once you've tried it, $5 a month seems like a real bargain.
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Citrix and Microsoft have licensing arrangements, so it's very likely that MS is just using Citrix's technology for Remote Desktop.
t rix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_Services#Ci
I'm just guessing, but I don't think that mouse cords are really that big a bother for most people compared with the hassle of having to keep a wireless mouse powered and/or charged. The cord helps you keep it oriented and prevents it from falling off of the desk. If you're on a plane, it's generally easier to use a small travel mouse or just use the trackpad.
You are mistaken. It was only in a beta of Windows 3.1 that they did this check; it wasn't in a shipping version.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS
Though DR-DOS was almost 100% binary compatible with applications written for MS-DOS, Microsoft nevertheless expended considerable effort in attempts to break compatibility. In one example, they inserted code into the beta version of Windows 3.1 to return a non-fatal error message if it detected a non-Microsoft DOS. With the detection code disabled (or if the user canceled the error message), Windows ran perfectly under DR-DOS. [1] This code was removed from final release of Windows 3.1 and all subsequent versions, however.
Memory usage: Less than firefox (not that that is difficult), more than opera
Opera and Firefox both suck on memory usage. Opera 9 freshly opened with three tabs was taking 150MB+ last night. Nice program, but I wish they could get the freaking memory usage under control.
And Netscape was a 'Pay For' browser. In much the same way that Opera is now.
Netscape was licensed as a 'pay for' browser, but it was purely by license. Most people (and businesses) ran the freely downloadable version and very, very few people ever paid for Netscape (unless they bought it with a book). It's like saying that WinZip is a 'pay for' product -- what you're saying is factual, but in practice most people who use it aren't paying customers.
Netscape's business model was to sell server software, not browsers. IIS and Apache did them more damage than IE did.
Also, Opera's completely free now.
Are there any free DVDs? Is there any completely free music? Any free Xbox games?
Sure! Google Video/YouTube will give you as many free movies as you can watch. There's broadcast television (free). There's the radio (free). There are shareware and freeware games out the wazoo.
We're talking about computing in developing nations. You may be able to spend hundreds on music, DVDs and videogames and then use it to justify spending hundreds more on Microsoft software, but your whole point is alien to people who can't do any of that.
True, but I think you were ignoring the context of my post. I was responding to the GP's post that was suggesting that spending money on software for a machine that doesn't cost very much is ridiculous, and my whole point is that, in almost every imaginable case, software always costs more in hardware.
But it's simply ridicolous to suggest people should buy a $100 computer, and then add $600 in software.
Why? My DVD player cost $100, but I've spent many, many times over that in software. My portable CD player cost less than $50, but tally up what I've spent in music and it dwarfs that. Xbox cost $299, but the software cost is much higher.
When hardware is commodified, the software is naturally the most expensive part.
There are some notable recent examples of $2 mods that have sold 400,000 copies in the first two days. What's the profit margin there? And that's if you assume there are no further sales after the first few days.
The situation you describe is, though, a best-case scenario for the publisher. In your example, they've sunk a quarter-million dollars in the thing before they have any idea who'll buy it or how many copies they'll sell. I'm sure that the two dollar mod that sells 400,000 copies is a highly atypical example.
Did they yank them off the market? I bought Phantasm 1 several years ago in a U.S. edition.
Its the Bioware/Bethseda type sandbox fantasy games that typically have weak or no stories.
You've clearly not played KOTOR 1 or 2, or Morrowind or Oblivion. The KOTOR stories were great and the Bethesda games had, if anything, too much story. Sure, you can ignore it, but there's a completely plotted story in both games.
Sorry, but you're just wrong. From a review of Office 95 at the time:
If you don't own Office it's cheaper to buy Office Pro for $548.99 (PC Mall again) than Excel and Word for $298.99 apiece. Go for it.
That's in 1995 dollars. Either way, MS Office prices have come down over the years.
Once the third-party providers go away, the price of OneCare Live will skyrocket just like Office did.
Methinks you should look again. In 1997 (grabbed an old magazine off the shelf), Word 97 cost $337. Office 97 standard cost $499. Today you can get the home edition of Office 2003 for $149 or the standard version for $399. Prices for Office have been trending down, especially for the small business or home user.
It's really not fair to treat monopoly activity the same way you'd treat other "crimes." Monopoly law is really curious in that monopoly status is typically only applied after you've already broken the law, which is somewhat antithetical to our legal system. Monopoly law is one of the somewhat unusual cases where the law is very fuzzy and you can be doing "illegal" activity without being aware that it's illegal.
What makes you a monopolist? What's the exact point where you become one? Is Windows a monopoly today? If so, what marketshare from a competitor is required to cease to be one? It's all subjective!
I think your suggestion that he's like a "mob boss" is really unfair. Gates plays hard, there's no doubt, but so does anyone in his position (you think Jobs doesn't?). Gates' people negotiated contracts with OEMs that his competitors didn't like (Jobs, by comparison, doesn't allow anyone to license his OS).
I'm not saying that Gates' hands are completely clean, but it's kinda lazy to just say "MS is a convicted monopolist end of story" because the actual situation is much more nuanced.
Except for the fact that Mario Kart DS isn't a port.
Neither is GTA, neither is SOCOM, neither are any of the PSP games the OP had broadly suggested were "pointless ports."
But that was a good try. Go reward yourself with some UMD movies.
I was making a joke, hence the wink. I do think I'll play a little MLB 06 though...
Fail to release any games other than pointless ports of console games I already own.
...
;-)
By the way, the '???' there was caused by my playing a spot of Mario Kart DS
In other words, the flagship game for the DS is a port of a console game you probably own on four other platforms already?
3. Apple knows how to market to consumers. "iMac" gains more traction that the new "HP Pavilion dv1000." The "iMac" is a product even my parents can name. The HP Pavilion dv1000 is just another part number nobody ever remembers.
That can bite you in the ass, though. Seem Apple's iPod update software lately? You basically have to identify your iPod by the configuration of the buttons and the aspect ratio of its screen to tell which generation you have (presuming you don't already know such things). I was trying to find some support for my old G4 the other day (it's a QuickSilver, but how would your parents know that?) and the support documents were different if it was a "Mirrored door" G4 vs. a "PCI Graphics" G4 vs. an "AGP Graphics" G4.
God help you if you're trying to support an iMac. "Gumdrop, lamp or flat? What color? Does it have a DVI port? Does it have a screen that can swivel? Does it come with a remote?"
Having a single name for your products is great for marketing, but sucks for support.
Oops... not Ducknapped! It's on Two Letter Words. My mistake.
Is it possible that this Richard Thompson tune is the song you're looking for? Great live version of it on his Ducknapped! CD.
Seriously, how many of those PS2 games were worth a damn (ignoring the fact that many of them didn't ship day-and-date with the PS2)? If the only one you can find that was notable was SSX, you're kinda making my point.
Same thing with the Dreamcast. I had a Dreamcast and I loved the thing, but the best games on it at launch were NFL 2k and SoulCalibur. Outside of that, there was a bunch of mediocrity. X360 is going to have DOA4 in two weeks and Madden 06. It has a couple of very good FPS's, a fighter, several racers, a very good platformer and a bunch of sports games: about the same mix as most other consoles at launch.
And before you comment on the Gamecube, I've found that it has more games I want to play than what the xbox has to offer.
Way to change the subject.
I'm not saying that the other consoles don't have good games, but you can't argue the same isn't true for the Xbox. The Gamecube, except for Zelda, is dying quickly and the PS2 lags pretty significantly in its technology (long loading times, framerates, jaggies).
Not trying to get into a fanboy war here (I had a Gamecube at one point), but the old saw that the Xbox doesn't have good games just isn't true and hasn't been for a long time.
Agreed. It's funny how many people turn into market analysts when it comes to a product they're trying to diss. Was it successful? Yes, enough to sell 20+M consoles, dozens of millions of games and spawn a sequel. Did it make a profit for MS? Apparently they made enough money that they didn't abandon the market altogether.
But who cares? There are some great games and a cool online service, which is all I care about as a gamer.
Since the Xbox has the best graphics, sound and the best network gameplay, I'm not sure I see your point.
The 360 has a disastrous lack of solid launch titles. Nothing is revolutionary.
Launch titles have never been revolutionary. What revolutionary title did the PS2 launch with? The Gamecube? The Dreamcast?
360 is launching with a very competent lineup, though no (as the CNN article pointed out) killer app. It's hard to imagine that the same people who bought the original Xbox for Halo and PGR aren't going to buy the 360 for Perfect Dark and PGR3.
Revolutionary games will come in the second year and beyond, as they always do.
It's odd that CNN headlines this "Xbox 360: Good, but not Great." He's saying that there's no killer app launch title, but he has many good things to say about the actual hardware. Launch titles are rarely an indication of what's to come, and with the juice that the 360 is packing, there'll be some great stuff over the next six months.
In the meantime, you'll have to make do with Perfect Dark, Project Gotham, next-gen Madden, Kameo and Call of Duty. Systems have been launched with far less (I'm looking you, Fantavision).
It's really simple: subscriptions are great if you like to try out a lot of new music. If there's something you find that you really like, you can either buy it burnable on Yahoo for $8 or buy a used copy on Amazon for $4. The great thing about Yahoo is that if someone recommends an artist or CD to you, you can listen to it in its entirety without having to wrangle with 30 second snippets or borrowing their copy.
I wouldn't say that Yahoo is a replacement for buying music -- you'll probably still buy the things you really like to listen to in the car or to have a permanent copy -- but it makes finding new things that you like very, very easy. The other nice thing is that you can listen to a huge library of music at work or wherever you are without having to transport your MP3 library.
Once you've tried it, $5 a month seems like a real bargain.