Is it okay if I find a better device at a lower price?
Check out the Asus Eee Pad Transformer -- Better specs (I know, you think they don't matter.) 16GB version is $399, the 32GB is $499. Even adding the optional $149 keyboard doc keeps it under the iPad 2's price if you include a BT keyboard. As a bonus, the keyboard dock also extends the battery life.
Did I mention that it also includes an SD card slot and two USB ports?
You know you're in trouble when Apple not only has the most powerful
Not by a long shot.
, "sexiest", "magical" device on the market,
Have you seen the Playbook? Even with it's early flaws, it's still astonishing. Sexy and Magical, I'd say.
but also *the cheapest*.
Only if you deny the existence other comparably priced tablets.:)
When Apple was smartphone king, just a couple of short years ago
It's funny how even people with access to the data still believe this. Apple has never been "king" of the smartphone market -- they've always been behind RIM. Sure, they get all the press and have undoubtedly been responsible for the explosive growth in the smartphone market, but they've never managed to reach the #1 spot.
Call me a heartless bastard, but I don't think the deaf are the real reason it should be more common.
No way. Check out the documentary "Sound and Fury" and you'll no longer think yourself heartless. (It's "watch instant" on netflix)
While I agree that a commonly understood sign language would be very convenient in most the situations you describe, I would be horrid for dictation. Well, if other sign languages are anything like ASL.
ASL reminds me of the primitive speech that you hear from cavemen in cartoons.
Just as an example, take the phrase "Do you want to go to the movies?". Translated into sign, the user makes the following gestures, with eyebrows raised: "movie goto want"
Just for fun, while I have the phrasebook out, the phrase "I bought a new red car" translates to "car red new buy me"
It makes me wonder if ASL is somehow responsible for the astonishingly poor literacy in the deaf community. (Yes, even recently. A study of 17-18y/o deaf high school graduates showed median reading comprehension to be at a 4.0 grade level -- that is, compared to hearing students, about half scored above and half scored below the average hearing student starting 4th grade.)
Would you grant that someday.. not now... but someday, machines will be able to replace all manual labor done by humans?
Sure, why not.
How many humans are suited to "brain" work when that time comes? 5%? 10%?
A little on the high side, but I'll go with you here.
What's the value of a $200k degree when everyone has to have one just to get a job?
$200k. (You practically gave that answer away!)
Not everyone can be a rocket scientist- and... even if they could, the demand for rocket scientists is actually quite low.
Ah, see this is where you're first point comes in. See, as this hypothetical future world filled with unemployed rocket-scientists is teeming with hoards of Robots, the surplus population will rapidly be eliminated by virtue of the robot prime directive: Kill All Humans.
They don't come from thin air, and the iPad doesn't write articles itself. Just because we've moved from brick-and-mortar distribution to digital distribution doesn't mean ANY jobs were lost, they were just MOVED.
Yeah, because the only people involved in the production, distribution, and sale of books were the authors.
No, that's not fair -- there are certainly new jobs, but far fewer than have been displaced. The printers are right out. Publishers are becoming less relevant, so they're partially out. Delivery drivers are out. The staff it takes to run a few online book stores... hey, we found where the jobs "moved". However, the number of staff it takes to run an online bookstore is significantly less than that of the many brick and mortar stores it displaces. Moreover, Physical stores need maintenance, utilities, and other services and supplies to stay in operation -- that means less money moving in the local economies, leading to fewer jobs still.
I guarantee you, if a bunch of factory workers told their corporate bosses that they'd be willing to take a pay cut and work for Chinese wages, iPads would be made here.
Labor cost is only one factor, and not the only one that changes when you move manufacturing overseas (the savings in labor are partially offset by other expenses.)
Still, ignoring your overly-simplistic analysis for the moment, you fail to understand that American workers *can not* work for Chinese wages because they'd starve to death.
See, you don't seem to understand that "standard of living" and "cost of living" are two completely different things.
But those workers don't do that, they prefer their cushy pensions, collective bargaining, benefits, and comfortable wages, so they let their jobs go overseas.
First, collective bargaining is HOW union workers are able to have livable wages and humane working conditions. It's not something that is sought for it's own sake. (I seriously doubt that you knew this.)
By comfortable wages, you mean a living wage -- you know, so that their families can eat every day and sleep inside.
Benefits are important for every working family -- it's often the only way they can get health insurance thanks to our broken private system. They could pay out of pocket, sure, but they'd be lucky to afford a box of band-aids on the Chinese wages you seem to think they should be working for.
If you think most pensions are "cushy" I defy you to live on the income the average pensioner brings in every month.
Moreover, why do you suggest workers bargain collectively when you seem to think it's some unnecessary evil?
I guarantee you, if a bunch of factory workers told their corporate bosses that they'd be willing to take a pay cut
Hmmm... Workers banding together to collectively bargain...
I'd comment further, but there wouldn't be any point. There is nothing redeemable in your post. It's complete and total uninformed nonsense untainted by any hint of truth or reason.
I find that I earn more money by charging users for individual features than I would if I only offered a 'free' and 'premium' version of my app. You know, that App I wrote. I advertise it in my Slashdot sig. It's a calculator. You should buy it. I mean, no one else have ever written such an awesome calculator app! It literally took me an entire Saturday to write.
I'll even pretend that paying separately for each feature is *great* because it allows the end user to "customize the app" by giving me more money. It's the Apple way. Apple is awesome, therefore, my calculator app is awesome. You should totally buy my app, then a bunch of features. It's really like 5 calculators in one, once you buy all the add-ons. My app is so great.
While I doubt the parents question was asked sincerely (it was just an excuse to pimp his app), I'll answer it anyway.
What is stupid about in app purchases?
In your case, it doesn't benefit the end-user in any way. Apps like yours just make it more difficult to buy the 'full' app. In app purchases are good for things like new content, which is not what you're selling.
Imagine if Documents To Go were broken up this way so that individual features needed to be purchased separately. Right now, for <$20 or whatever I can buy the full premium suite with all the features. In your model, I'd get the trial, and pay 5 or 6 times before I managed to get the whole suite with all the features -- possibly per application. Send as email? That's a buck. Spell check? $1.99. Want those for presentations and spreadsheets and not just word docs? Pony up again. Total cost in the end? Could easily end up $50 or more -- and it took lots of extra steps.
In app purchases for features may be good for the developer, but it isn't good for the end user at all.
Why should we be forced to enter our password each and every single time we want to buy something?
The horror!
That aside, you failed to comprehend the parents suggestion:
The more simple and more sane solution would have been a simple option to disable password caching
Option. A choice the user can make.
I know how much you Apple folks despise options and would prefer that Apple made all those complicated decisions for you, but options aren't always bad.
If the best way to build a craft that can travel through both outer space and all layers of a planetary atmosphere is to make it in the shape of a big disc, why have none of Earth's aerospace engineers ever built a craft using that shape?
What next, will we have to climb trees to use computers?
Don't be ridiculous. The most obvious UI evolution, to be pioneered by Apple, allows you to perform all of your favorite computing tasks by stuffing your face with Doritio's and sweating.
I could comfortably run Office 97 on a 100 MHz Pentium with 8 megs of RAM and have several other programs, including Photoshop, open at the same time with little or no noticeable lag. The resource requirements have grown much, much faster than the functionality.
This drives me absolutely mad. I'm doing so little different now that I was on my 66mhz Aptiva with (expensive) 32mb of RAM 12 years ago. (I got a lot of mileage out of that one, for sure). Surely, things should have only improved!
Even my old linux box from 10 years ago (333mhz w/ 64mb RAM) ran better than my wifes 2 year old netbook.
To my right is an old 800mhz w/ 512mb of ram running Ubuntu 10.1... slower than my old linux box from the last paragraph. The only question is WHY? It's a much better machine, why is it so much slower?
I personally blame so-called modern programming languages. Many of which encourage astonishingly bad practices once though inconceivable not long ago. Yesterday's WTF is today's Best Practice. Efficiency be damned, RAM and CPU cycles are cheap.
To make matters worse, "modern" languages have actually added additional complexity to development rather than remove it -- we don't even reap any of the supposed benefits from the performance hit we thought we exchanged for simplicity! To combat complexity, the horror of the framework has been thrust upon us. API too complex? Use this framework. Framework too complex? Use this framework on top of it. Need that call that was abstracted away layers ago? Use this library, it adds that feature.
Why is the iTunes installer almost 100mb? WTF does that program do that warrants that obscene size? It's not alone in this sin, just about every other application you can think of has also inexplicably grown in size and system requirements without adding much, if any, new functionality. (A quick trip to oldversion.com will help show the extent of this "growing" problem.) Bad languages breeding bad programmers -- I can think of no other possible explanation.
It makes we WISH for the ease of use and efficiency of VB6 -- things have really become that ridiculous.
Yes, out of date -- as I said. Interesting that you object to the advertised figure as not being independently verified, but you accept this much older also unverified number as correct. Even worse, your number is a completely sourceless and unsubstantiated rumor : "Wu says in a note picked up at All Things D he is hearing from sources the battery on the PlayBook only lasts a few hours."
Yeah, some says he saw a note on a website that says someone heard that the battery life sucked...
I think the published figure from the manufacture is likely the more accurate of the two -- especially considering the company's history with respect to accurately advertising battery-life figures. (RIM has never, to my knowledge, over stated battery life on any of their previous products.)
And I have found no new articles of first hand accounts.
You're not looking very hard then. There are tons of new articles from independent sources who have hands-on experience with the device. I should also restate here, that your article is not even close to a first hand account -- it's not even third-hand!
So the Playbook doesn't "have" 10 hours but is advertised that it will have 10 hours. There's a slight difference in the two.
You can't say that it doesn't have 10 hours of in-use battery life just because it's advertised as having 10 hours of in-use battery life. That doesn't make any sense. As stated earlier, RIM hasn't exaggerated battery life in the past -- I have no reason to suspect that they would start now.
You've seen videos and some demos of a not yet released system but you don't have first hand knowledge of its use.
So what? I don't see how this makes any difference. Did you complain about all the fawning over the iPad2 when no one had any first-hand experience and we knew even less about it than we know about the PlayBook?
There is more than enough independent first-hand video for me to make an assessment. There are also countless reviews from independent sources with first-hand experience. We're bordering on a discussion about qualia here.
For what it's worth, I have played a bit with the simulator -- not that that would make any difference to you.
Anybody who thought the iPad 2 was going to be a monumental upgrade was delusional.
People STILL think that the iPad2 is a monumental upgrade. I agree, they're still delusional.
That article is a little out of date. RIM's currently advertising 10 hours of continuous use, though no independent confirmation just yet. I don't really have any reason to doubt the claim, as RIM has a history of providing mobile products with long, dependable, battery life.
The device has been released, just for early developers. We should start seeing independent battery life tests this week or next week -- assuming early recipients aren't under any special obligation to keep quiet, and feel compelled to offer up a review.
There are innumerable independent video demos online which show off the interface, and lot's of people have been able to play with it at various cons this year (e.g. CTIA 2011). So, yes, I can (with considerable confidence) call it incredibly easy to use.:)
As for the mobility and power efficiency of QNX, remember that it's used just about everywhere -- including many mobile medical devices where portability and wireless connectivity are important considerations. I'm going to guess that power efficiency has been a priority.
Sure, what I wrote was speculative, but it was grounded more firmly in reality than the ridiculous claims made about the iPad2 on March 1st, or the equally ridiculous things said about it between then and March 11th.
Slashdot Mirror
Find a comparable device for a lower price.
Is it okay if I find a better device at a lower price?
Check out the Asus Eee Pad Transformer -- Better specs (I know, you think they don't matter.) 16GB version is $399, the 32GB is $499. Even adding the optional $149 keyboard doc keeps it under the iPad 2's price if you include a BT keyboard. As a bonus, the keyboard dock also extends the battery life.
Did I mention that it also includes an SD card slot and two USB ports?
You know you're in trouble when Apple not only has the most powerful
Not by a long shot.
, "sexiest", "magical" device on the market,
Have you seen the Playbook? Even with it's early flaws, it's still astonishing. Sexy and Magical, I'd say.
but also *the cheapest*.
Only if you deny the existence other comparably priced tablets. :)
Why does AT&T constantly drop calls?
Apparently so that people like me have better service. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a dropped call. Maybe it's your phone, not AT&T?
Hurray, networks and computers full of no USEFUL information!
The internet is almost there now.
GP was talking about the Smartphone market.
When Apple was smartphone king, just a couple of short years ago
It's funny how even people with access to the data still believe this. Apple has never been "king" of the smartphone market -- they've always been behind RIM. Sure, they get all the press and have undoubtedly been responsible for the explosive growth in the smartphone market, but they've never managed to reach the #1 spot.
Call me a heartless bastard, but I don't think the deaf are the real reason it should be more common.
No way. Check out the documentary "Sound and Fury" and you'll no longer think yourself heartless. (It's "watch instant" on netflix)
While I agree that a commonly understood sign language would be very convenient in most the situations you describe, I would be horrid for dictation. Well, if other sign languages are anything like ASL.
ASL reminds me of the primitive speech that you hear from cavemen in cartoons.
Just as an example, take the phrase "Do you want to go to the movies?". Translated into sign, the user makes the following gestures, with eyebrows raised: "movie goto want"
Just for fun, while I have the phrasebook out, the phrase "I bought a new red car" translates to "car red new buy me"
It makes me wonder if ASL is somehow responsible for the astonishingly poor literacy in the deaf community. (Yes, even recently. A study of 17-18y/o deaf high school graduates showed median reading comprehension to be at a 4.0 grade level -- that is, compared to hearing students, about half scored above and half scored below the average hearing student starting 4th grade.)
Would you grant that someday.. not now... but someday, machines will be able to replace all manual labor done by humans?
Sure, why not.
How many humans are suited to "brain" work when that time comes? 5%? 10%?
A little on the high side, but I'll go with you here.
What's the value of a $200k degree when everyone has to have one just to get a job?
$200k. (You practically gave that answer away!)
Not everyone can be a rocket scientist- and... even if they could, the demand for rocket scientists is actually quite low.
Ah, see this is where you're first point comes in. See, as this hypothetical future world filled with unemployed rocket-scientists is teeming with hoards of Robots, the surplus population will rapidly be eliminated by virtue of the robot prime directive: Kill All Humans.
They don't come from thin air, and the iPad doesn't write articles itself. Just because we've moved from brick-and-mortar distribution to digital distribution doesn't mean ANY jobs were lost, they were just MOVED.
Yeah, because the only people involved in the production, distribution, and sale of books were the authors.
No, that's not fair -- there are certainly new jobs, but far fewer than have been displaced. The printers are right out. Publishers are becoming less relevant, so they're partially out. Delivery drivers are out. The staff it takes to run a few online book stores ... hey, we found where the jobs "moved". However, the number of staff it takes to run an online bookstore is significantly less than that of the many brick and mortar stores it displaces. Moreover, Physical stores need maintenance, utilities, and other services and supplies to stay in operation -- that means less money moving in the local economies, leading to fewer jobs still.
Yeah, I don't think you've thought this through.
I guarantee you, if a bunch of factory workers told their corporate bosses that they'd be willing to take a pay cut and work for Chinese wages, iPads would be made here.
Labor cost is only one factor, and not the only one that changes when you move manufacturing overseas (the savings in labor are partially offset by other expenses.)
Still, ignoring your overly-simplistic analysis for the moment, you fail to understand that American workers *can not* work for Chinese wages because they'd starve to death.
See, you don't seem to understand that "standard of living" and "cost of living" are two completely different things.
But those workers don't do that, they prefer their cushy pensions, collective bargaining, benefits, and comfortable wages, so they let their jobs go overseas.
First, collective bargaining is HOW union workers are able to have livable wages and humane working conditions. It's not something that is sought for it's own sake. (I seriously doubt that you knew this.)
By comfortable wages, you mean a living wage -- you know, so that their families can eat every day and sleep inside.
Benefits are important for every working family -- it's often the only way they can get health insurance thanks to our broken private system. They could pay out of pocket, sure, but they'd be lucky to afford a box of band-aids on the Chinese wages you seem to think they should be working for.
If you think most pensions are "cushy" I defy you to live on the income the average pensioner brings in every month.
Moreover, why do you suggest workers bargain collectively when you seem to think it's some unnecessary evil?
I guarantee you, if a bunch of factory workers told their corporate bosses that they'd be willing to take a pay cut
Hmmm... Workers banding together to collectively bargain...
I'd comment further, but there wouldn't be any point. There is nothing redeemable in your post. It's complete and total uninformed nonsense untainted by any hint of truth or reason.
You'll have to forgive me for not getting your "joke". When your post contains gems like this:
It's a good thing for you that Apple has better things to do that sue people like you for libel and slander
It makes it really easy to assume that the error was unintentional.
Next time, instead of spreading FUD to all those around you, why don't you become EDUTATED?
Ha-Ha!
Translation:
I find that I earn more money by charging users for individual features than I would if I only offered a 'free' and 'premium' version of my app. You know, that App I wrote. I advertise it in my Slashdot sig. It's a calculator. You should buy it. I mean, no one else have ever written such an awesome calculator app! It literally took me an entire Saturday to write.
I'll even pretend that paying separately for each feature is *great* because it allows the end user to "customize the app" by giving me more money. It's the Apple way. Apple is awesome, therefore, my calculator app is awesome. You should totally buy my app, then a bunch of features. It's really like 5 calculators in one, once you buy all the add-ons. My app is so great.
While I doubt the parents question was asked sincerely (it was just an excuse to pimp his app), I'll answer it anyway.
What is stupid about in app purchases?
In your case, it doesn't benefit the end-user in any way. Apps like yours just make it more difficult to buy the 'full' app. In app purchases are good for things like new content, which is not what you're selling.
Imagine if Documents To Go were broken up this way so that individual features needed to be purchased separately. Right now, for <$20 or whatever I can buy the full premium suite with all the features. In your model, I'd get the trial, and pay 5 or 6 times before I managed to get the whole suite with all the features -- possibly per application. Send as email? That's a buck. Spell check? $1.99. Want those for presentations and spreadsheets and not just word docs? Pony up again. Total cost in the end? Could easily end up $50 or more -- and it took lots of extra steps.
In app purchases for features may be good for the developer, but it isn't good for the end user at all.
Why should we be forced to enter our password each and every single time we want to buy something?
The horror!
That aside, you failed to comprehend the parents suggestion:
The more simple and more sane solution would have been a simple option to disable password caching
Option. A choice the user can make.
I know how much you Apple folks despise options and would prefer that Apple made all those complicated decisions for you, but options aren't always bad.
We've known for years that three shells is all you need to remove common contaminants. Now, if only someone would post instructions...
modern languages like C#?
You, sir, have a perverse definition of 'modern'.
There are at least two ways to interpret your comment:
1) C# has been around about 10 years and is too old to be considered 'modern'
2) C# is not characteristic of the state-of-the-art.
Are there no prisons? And the union workhouses - are they still in operation?
From what you said at first I was afraid that something had happened to stop them in their useful course.
If the best way to build a craft that can travel through both outer space and all layers of a planetary atmosphere is to make it in the shape of a big disc, why have none of Earth's aerospace engineers ever built a craft using that shape?
Umm... They have. Some pictures
Just google "disk shaped aircraft".
No problem at all ... millions of iPad users who rely on dropbox are totally capable of understanding what that means.
Neat. I'll be watching for that now!
Big yawn to your solipsism. Philosophy moved on a long time ago.
What next, will we have to climb trees to use computers?
Don't be ridiculous. The most obvious UI evolution, to be pioneered by Apple, allows you to perform all of your favorite computing tasks by stuffing your face with Doritio's and sweating.
What's really impressive are the psychic doors!
Boy are you going to be amazed when you return from the 1970's
I could comfortably run Office 97 on a 100 MHz Pentium with 8 megs of RAM and have several other programs, including Photoshop, open at the same time with little or no noticeable lag. The resource requirements have grown much, much faster than the functionality.
This drives me absolutely mad. I'm doing so little different now that I was on my 66mhz Aptiva with (expensive) 32mb of RAM 12 years ago. (I got a lot of mileage out of that one, for sure). Surely, things should have only improved!
Even my old linux box from 10 years ago (333mhz w/ 64mb RAM) ran better than my wifes 2 year old netbook.
To my right is an old 800mhz w/ 512mb of ram running Ubuntu 10.1 ... slower than my old linux box from the last paragraph. The only question is WHY? It's a much better machine, why is it so much slower?
I personally blame so-called modern programming languages. Many of which encourage astonishingly bad practices once though inconceivable not long ago. Yesterday's WTF is today's Best Practice. Efficiency be damned, RAM and CPU cycles are cheap.
To make matters worse, "modern" languages have actually added additional complexity to development rather than remove it -- we don't even reap any of the supposed benefits from the performance hit we thought we exchanged for simplicity! To combat complexity, the horror of the framework has been thrust upon us. API too complex? Use this framework. Framework too complex? Use this framework on top of it. Need that call that was abstracted away layers ago? Use this library, it adds that feature.
Why is the iTunes installer almost 100mb? WTF does that program do that warrants that obscene size? It's not alone in this sin, just about every other application you can think of has also inexplicably grown in size and system requirements without adding much, if any, new functionality. (A quick trip to oldversion.com will help show the extent of this "growing" problem.) Bad languages breeding bad programmers -- I can think of no other possible explanation.
It makes we WISH for the ease of use and efficiency of VB6 -- things have really become that ridiculous.
The article is a little more than 4 months old.
Yes, out of date -- as I said. Interesting that you object to the advertised figure as not being independently verified, but you accept this much older also unverified number as correct. Even worse, your number is a completely sourceless and unsubstantiated rumor : "Wu says in a note picked up at All Things D he is hearing from sources the battery on the PlayBook only lasts a few hours."
Yeah, some says he saw a note on a website that says someone heard that the battery life sucked...
I think the published figure from the manufacture is likely the more accurate of the two -- especially considering the company's history with respect to accurately advertising battery-life figures. (RIM has never, to my knowledge, over stated battery life on any of their previous products.)
And I have found no new articles of first hand accounts.
You're not looking very hard then. There are tons of new articles from independent sources who have hands-on experience with the device. I should also restate here, that your article is not even close to a first hand account -- it's not even third-hand!
So the Playbook doesn't "have" 10 hours but is advertised that it will have 10 hours. There's a slight difference in the two.
You can't say that it doesn't have 10 hours of in-use battery life just because it's advertised as having 10 hours of in-use battery life. That doesn't make any sense. As stated earlier, RIM hasn't exaggerated battery life in the past -- I have no reason to suspect that they would start now.
You've seen videos and some demos of a not yet released system but you don't have first hand knowledge of its use.
So what? I don't see how this makes any difference. Did you complain about all the fawning over the iPad2 when no one had any first-hand experience and we knew even less about it than we know about the PlayBook?
There is more than enough independent first-hand video for me to make an assessment. There are also countless reviews from independent sources with first-hand experience. We're bordering on a discussion about qualia here.
For what it's worth, I have played a bit with the simulator -- not that that would make any difference to you.
Anybody who thought the iPad 2 was going to be a monumental upgrade was delusional.
People STILL think that the iPad2 is a monumental upgrade. I agree, they're still delusional.
That article is a little out of date. RIM's currently advertising 10 hours of continuous use, though no independent confirmation just yet. I don't really have any reason to doubt the claim, as RIM has a history of providing mobile products with long, dependable, battery life.
The device has been released, just for early developers. We should start seeing independent battery life tests this week or next week -- assuming early recipients aren't under any special obligation to keep quiet, and feel compelled to offer up a review.
There are innumerable independent video demos online which show off the interface, and lot's of people have been able to play with it at various cons this year (e.g. CTIA 2011). So, yes, I can (with considerable confidence) call it incredibly easy to use. :)
As for the mobility and power efficiency of QNX, remember that it's used just about everywhere -- including many mobile medical devices where portability and wireless connectivity are important considerations. I'm going to guess that power efficiency has been a priority.
Sure, what I wrote was speculative, but it was grounded more firmly in reality than the ridiculous claims made about the iPad2 on March 1st, or the equally ridiculous things said about it between then and March 11th.