Yeah of course. Once every teacher is used to (read: locked-in), once the IT department is sold to and once the administrators have been bought by Apple, it's very easy to switch from the iPad to a competitor.
If you really believe that I have a bridge to sell you. Vendor lock-in is a real problem for schools. Most of them just don't know it yet.
No problem with having only one flavor of device. As long as you can easily switch to another vendor if that flavor of device no longer suits your needs in one or ten years. That's the problem with Apple. The cost to switch out is too high. And that cost should be taken into account BEFORE choosing Apple.
No school should accept to be vendor locked-in. Making all students to buy a device from a single vendor, buying (and maybe even developing) applications for that platform, and not being able to switch easily to another hardware provider is dumb.
At least with chromebooks and Windows PCs, you have plenty of choice of hardware vendors, which is a huge step above Apple. You remain locked-in to a software OS, but especially for the chromebook I expect most applications to be web based and should work on any OS.
Yeah, but at this point you are just making electronic transactions, and in the end nobody really knows if there really is gold in the vault as it is going to stay there forever. Gold has other (industrial, jewelry) more important purposes.
The problem with your gold (especially small quantities) is that it looses a big part of its value as soon as you get it out of the vault since it would need to be re-certified to re-enter the vault from where it can be electronically traded. Let's face it. A lot of that gold is staying in an underground forever.
How is that different from a $20 bill? Its paper value is pretty damn close to $0 to you and me. And yet you are using it. Why? Because its "worth" is $20, which means you can trade it for $20 of goods.
It can easily cost more than $20 to add unlimited to your phone plan, and it's not unlimited anyway.
There is no free lunch. You are missing my point that you are paying the true cost for that unlimited data plan one way or another, most probably through a more expensive car.
The reception of the car's antenna is much better than that of your handheld phone
This is a good point however in that case I'd get a booster instead. Could be nice if they integrated that option to the car. If there is really a market for this, cell phones could also have external antenna connector.
Either you can get the same $20/month plan on a standalone device (hotspot, smartphone, you can get a cheap used one if you want), or you get a more expensive plan which is subsidized through your car payment. Either way, you are paying for it, but you are stuck on using it in the car instead of everywhere.
Just because it doesn't make sense for your usage patterns doesn't mean it doesn't make sense for others.
Yeah, we could also add a hotspot to skateboards. I am sure at least one person will find it useful.
Because kids. And better reception. We're on a shared data plan. Road trips can use a lot. If I can have them use wifi in my truck from an unlimited plan, then I don't have to worry they'll burn through our shared data and we will *all* be on 2G speeds until the bill resets. Also, I've found the hotspot in my Silverado gets better reception in low/spotty reception areas then my phone does.
Then why don't you get an unlimited data plan on your cell phone? Either way you are paying for it when you buy your car.
PS/2 is no longer useful but it was a good idea to keep it for a while on desktop PCs (where you have plenty of space for ports) in order to do a smooth transition to USB.
ADB always sucked and was never used outside Apple so it's not a valid comparison.
It doesn't matter. My point is that standard connectors existed, they could have used one, and if they needed more function they could add a second port or extend the standard port while remaining backward compatible.
People like you would have bitched to high-heaven if they'd suddenly switched for no apparent reason
What are you talking about? I am glad they are (if the rumors are true) for no apparent reason to USB-C because it's a standard connector.
There was mini USB before that, which again, was fine and could have been expanded by Apple. No excuse for their lame connectors. When they launched the first iPhone they didn't have to re-use the same crappy proprietary connector as the iPod.
And Apple created the Lightning connector NOT for vendor lock-in
No excuse. They could have designed a connector which is backward compatible with micro USB instead of their 30 pin connector. And they could never have used the crappy lightning connector.
A proprietary standard doesn't exist. There are standard connectors and proprietary connectors. Apple connectors are proprietary, non-standard by definition. The only thing worse than a proprietary connector is a single-vendor proprietary connector, like Apple's.
Having to change connector is bad but we have to do it at some point for many different reasons. When we do, we should make sure to switch for something much better, standard, and usable by many vendors so that we don't get vendor locked-in.
No, proprietary isn't as good, but sometimes if you want innovation, you have to allow it.
Oh it's allowed. We (as customers) should just make sure they don't get any significant market share.
If we stuck to "standard connectors" we'd still be using micro USB
I disagree, but even if true, it would have been better if Apple used micro USB instead of their crappy 30-pins and lightning connectors. USB-C is not only reversible. Both ends use the same connector that's probably the main innovation, as well as high power charging, two things Apple proprietary connectors from above always lacked.
They should have kept the 3.5mm jack at least until they switch to USB-C (and I would argue even after that). But dropping the 3.5mm jack before switching to a standard digital connector was stupid.
There are two parts to the distribution of the video to a cell phone.
The wired part from say, Netflix to the carrier. And then the wireless part from the carrier to your phone. What is currently limited/expensive and the reason why carriers limit speed and/or put monthly cap is the wireless part. Placing a Netflix data center within a carrier's facility won't save them more than say, 1% of the total cost of delivering the video. It's marginal. So the small startup with a single server for the whole world can still compete, in theory.
Indeed. The first portable device (iPod, iPhone, iPad) from Apple with a standard connector. Hell is really freezing over. What's next? They will have removable batteries?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah of course. Once every teacher is used to (read: locked-in), once the IT department is sold to and once the administrators have been bought by Apple, it's very easy to switch from the iPad to a competitor.
If you really believe that I have a bridge to sell you. Vendor lock-in is a real problem for schools. Most of them just don't know it yet.
Yeah, of course they will give you a really good price once every school in your district is vendor locked-in to their ecosystem.
What will you do if Apple decides to double the price of iPads?
No problem with having only one flavor of device. As long as you can easily switch to another vendor if that flavor of device no longer suits your needs in one or ten years. That's the problem with Apple. The cost to switch out is too high. And that cost should be taken into account BEFORE choosing Apple.
And LG G5. Even the Galaxy S7 has a micro SD slot (and IP68 water resistance).
No school should accept to be vendor locked-in. Making all students to buy a device from a single vendor, buying (and maybe even developing) applications for that platform, and not being able to switch easily to another hardware provider is dumb.
At least with chromebooks and Windows PCs, you have plenty of choice of hardware vendors, which is a huge step above Apple.
You remain locked-in to a software OS, but especially for the chromebook I expect most applications to be web based and should work on any OS.
Yeah, but at this point you are just making electronic transactions, and in the end nobody really knows if there really is gold in the vault as it is going to stay there forever. Gold has other (industrial, jewelry) more important purposes.
The problem with your gold (especially small quantities) is that it looses a big part of its value as soon as you get it out of the vault since it would need to be re-certified to re-enter the vault from where it can be electronically traded. Let's face it. A lot of that gold is staying in an underground forever.
How is that different from a $20 bill? Its paper value is pretty damn close to $0 to you and me. And yet you are using it. Why? Because its "worth" is $20, which means you can trade it for $20 of goods.
It can easily cost more than $20 to add unlimited to your phone plan, and it's not unlimited anyway.
There is no free lunch. You are missing my point that you are paying the true cost for that unlimited data plan one way or another, most probably through a more expensive car.
The reception of the car's antenna is much better than that of your handheld phone
This is a good point however in that case I'd get a booster instead. Could be nice if they integrated that option to the car. If there is really a market for this, cell phones could also have external antenna connector.
Either you can get the same $20/month plan on a standalone device (hotspot, smartphone, you can get a cheap used one if you want), or you get a more expensive plan which is subsidized through your car payment. Either way, you are paying for it, but you are stuck on using it in the car instead of everywhere.
Just because it doesn't make sense for your usage patterns doesn't mean it doesn't make sense for others.
Yeah, we could also add a hotspot to skateboards. I am sure at least one person will find it useful.
Because kids.
And better reception.
We're on a shared data plan. Road trips can use a lot. If I can have them use wifi in my truck from an unlimited plan, then I don't have to worry they'll burn through our shared data and we will *all* be on 2G speeds until the bill resets. Also, I've found the hotspot in my Silverado gets better reception in low/spotty reception areas then my phone does.
Then why don't you get an unlimited data plan on your cell phone? Either way you are paying for it when you buy your car.
Why would someone pay for a WiFi hotspot that you can't take out of the car when you can have a smartphone that fits in your pocket?
not until no one wanted them, but long enough to do a smooth transition
PS/2 is no longer useful but it was a good idea to keep it for a while on desktop PCs (where you have plenty of space for ports) in order to do a smooth transition to USB.
ADB always sucked and was never used outside Apple so it's not a valid comparison.
They are not bringing it back, that would be admitting they were wrong in the first place.
It doesn't matter. My point is that standard connectors existed, they could have used one, and if they needed more function they could add a second port or extend the standard port while remaining backward compatible.
People like you would have bitched to high-heaven if they'd suddenly switched for no apparent reason
What are you talking about? I am glad they are (if the rumors are true) for no apparent reason to USB-C because it's a standard connector.
There was mini USB before that, which again, was fine and could have been expanded by Apple. No excuse for their lame connectors.
When they launched the first iPhone they didn't have to re-use the same crappy proprietary connector as the iPod.
And Apple created the Lightning connector NOT for vendor lock-in
Haha good one.
Why didn't Apple use USB-C on the iPhone 7?
No excuse. They could have designed a connector which is backward compatible with micro USB instead of their 30 pin connector. And they could never have used the crappy lightning connector.
A proprietary standard doesn't exist. There are standard connectors and proprietary connectors. Apple connectors are proprietary, non-standard by definition.
The only thing worse than a proprietary connector is a single-vendor proprietary connector, like Apple's.
Having to change connector is bad but we have to do it at some point for many different reasons. When we do, we should make sure to switch for something much better, standard, and usable by many vendors so that we don't get vendor locked-in.
No, proprietary isn't as good, but sometimes if you want innovation, you have to allow it.
Oh it's allowed. We (as customers) should just make sure they don't get any significant market share.
If we stuck to "standard connectors" we'd still be using micro USB
I disagree, but even if true, it would have been better if Apple used micro USB instead of their crappy 30-pins and lightning connectors.
USB-C is not only reversible. Both ends use the same connector that's probably the main innovation, as well as high power charging, two things Apple proprietary connectors from above always lacked.
They should have kept the 3.5mm jack at least until they switch to USB-C (and I would argue even after that). But dropping the 3.5mm jack before switching to a standard digital connector was stupid.
There are two parts to the distribution of the video to a cell phone.
The wired part from say, Netflix to the carrier. And then the wireless part from the carrier to your phone.
What is currently limited/expensive and the reason why carriers limit speed and/or put monthly cap is the wireless part. Placing a Netflix data center within a carrier's facility won't save them more than say, 1% of the total cost of delivering the video. It's marginal. So the small startup with a single server for the whole world can still compete, in theory.
Indeed. The first portable device (iPod, iPhone, iPad) from Apple with a standard connector. Hell is really freezing over.
What's next? They will have removable batteries?
it would be trivial to get rid of the connector, they already have magsafe yet the morons there ditched it for the inferior Usb-C.
USB-C is much superior to mag safe. The fact that it is a standard alone is enough, but as a side bonus you get a port that can carry data.