This isn't the first time I've seen something like this. Back in the heyday of Palm, if you had a reseller agreement with them, you had to agree to the same condition: no "buy a computer, get a free Palm" type giveaways.
I agree with the others that said that Apple (and Palm) are just trying to avoid devaluing the product in the eyes of consumers. And I'm sure, like Palm, they couldn't and wouldn't try to enforce this on anyone who wasn't an authorized reseller.
300m is the minimum requirement - many, probably most phones are much more accurate than that. I worked for a cell phone manufacturer back when the requirement was put in place and helped get their first prototypes together. A barebones implementation of GPS was definitely involved, and it was assisted by the information that could be gleaned from the tower(s) the phone was talking to.
I don't know what ordinary non-smarthphones are doing to cover E911 requirements these days, but yes, GPS is probably involved even if GPS information is not accessible to the user.
If your friend is in the US, the location information is automatically sent. This has been a legal requirement for some years as part of E911. Cell phones are required to be able to determine their location within 300m and report it to the 911 center, even if the phone doesn't have user-accesible GPS features.
This is just another nice income stream for Apple. Does anyone really think that Apple would remove every other way of installing software from the Mac? They'd have to deny shell usage, direct access to the file system, prevent browsers from downloading executables, etc. I can't see it happening on OS X- they need something for developers to develop on, after all.
But, if they started to make larger iOS devices (as the rumor mill is saying lately) I'm sure they'll be as locked down as an iPhone.
I see what you mean. Maybe I spend too much time shoving CDs into a CD player and thusly can often see its display just fine. I have to tell myself that there's no reason for me to be standing next to my MP3 stream receiver.:-)
I ran across the cd3o support forums on their site. It's good to know they publish their protocol and at least have a place for feature requests to be submitted (hopefully they'll answer some of those requests).
Okay, that's pretty good. Hide a server somwhere else, and put this nice quiet fanless thing in the stereo rack. I'm not sure about the voice prompts, though. I think that that could be annoying. I'd rather have a display, buttons and an OSD to resort to for complicated operations.
For such a relatively cheap price, I might give it a try and see how it works for me.
Yeah, I have been playing with a fanless Mini-ITX system with some decent results. I've been having trouble finding a case that has two 5 1/4" drive bays (one for CD-RW, one for Matrix Orbital display plus keypad). The other problem is that it's a hell of a lot of work to get it all doing what I want. None of the projects I've seen out there are doing what I want, so I've had to start writing it myself. When I think of all the hours I've put into the project that I could've been doing something (profitable and/or more fun), maybe a couple grand isn't so bad.
I guess I'm in the minority because I just can't agree with the "just use a PC" crowd. PCs are noisy (unless you throw a lot of money at the problem), ugly (ditto) and just don't belong in a home theater rack IMHO.
I like this idea because it looks and operates like a home theater component as well as acting as a server. For example, I can use a remote control, and it has a display and buttons ON THE UNIT so I don't necessarily need to use a TV/monitor in order to use the box.
Aside from the fact that it is overpriced, the only thing that kills it for me is that you need one of their clients to access it remotely. If the box had some sort of remote filesystem support, I could use PCs as clients, and I wouldn't have to re-rip my 350+ disc CD collection - just copy the files over.
If they give it remote filesystem support and perhaps drop the price (or at least don't force me to buy one client with it - which I believe is the source of the $2200/$2800 MSRP confusion), then I'm sold.
Did the guy (seller) have many positive recommendations? I have to ask because I've been wanting to buy things from Ebay and I never got around to it. Is there any way for me to avoid this kind of problem by only chosing the sellers with the highest ratio of positive recommendations?
Judging from most posts I've seen here, people will think I'm insane, but I've made probably 80 or so transactions on eBay - some for $1k+ - and only one has gone bad. The item turned out to be defective and I could no longer contact the guy because he had an @home e-mail address and @home went under shortly after the auction ended. Excellent timing, no? I could never find out whether it was really fraud or damage in transit.
Anyway, I find that eBay's point system generally works for me. I think that anyone who was screwed over by a seller would take the 30 seconds needed to post negative feedback. As such, I don't buy from anyone who has ANY negative feedback and if it's expensive, I make sure they have a high positive feedback rating.
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This isn't the first time I've seen something like this. Back in the heyday of Palm, if you had a reseller agreement with them, you had to agree to the same condition: no "buy a computer, get a free Palm" type giveaways.
I agree with the others that said that Apple (and Palm) are just trying to avoid devaluing the product in the eyes of consumers. And I'm sure, like Palm, they couldn't and wouldn't try to enforce this on anyone who wasn't an authorized reseller.
300m is the minimum requirement - many, probably most phones are much more accurate than that. I worked for a cell phone manufacturer back when the requirement was put in place and helped get their first prototypes together. A barebones implementation of GPS was definitely involved, and it was assisted by the information that could be gleaned from the tower(s) the phone was talking to.
I don't know what ordinary non-smarthphones are doing to cover E911 requirements these days, but yes, GPS is probably involved even if GPS information is not accessible to the user.
If your friend is in the US, the location information is automatically sent. This has been a legal requirement for some years as part of E911. Cell phones are required to be able to determine their location within 300m and report it to the 911 center, even if the phone doesn't have user-accesible GPS features.
This is just another nice income stream for Apple. Does anyone really think that Apple would remove every other way of installing software from the Mac? They'd have to deny shell usage, direct access to the file system, prevent browsers from downloading executables, etc. I can't see it happening on OS X- they need something for developers to develop on, after all.
But, if they started to make larger iOS devices (as the rumor mill is saying lately) I'm sure they'll be as locked down as an iPhone.
I see what you mean. Maybe I spend too much time shoving CDs into a CD player and thusly can often see its display just fine. I have to tell myself that there's no reason for me to be standing next to my MP3 stream receiver. :-)
I ran across the cd3o support forums on their site. It's good to know they publish their protocol and at least have a place for feature requests to be submitted (hopefully they'll answer some of those requests).
I think I'll be picking one of these up soon.
Okay, that's pretty good. Hide a server somwhere else, and put this nice quiet fanless thing in the stereo rack. I'm not sure about the voice prompts, though. I think that that could be annoying. I'd rather have a display, buttons and an OSD to resort to for complicated operations.
For such a relatively cheap price, I might give it a try and see how it works for me.
Yeah, I have been playing with a fanless Mini-ITX system with some decent results. I've been having trouble finding a case that has two 5 1/4" drive bays (one for CD-RW, one for Matrix Orbital display plus keypad). The other problem is that it's a hell of a lot of work to get it all doing what I want. None of the projects I've seen out there are doing what I want, so I've had to start writing it myself. When I think of all the hours I've put into the project that I could've been doing something (profitable and/or more fun), maybe a couple grand isn't so bad.
I guess I'm in the minority because I just can't agree with the "just use a PC" crowd. PCs are noisy (unless you throw a lot of money at the problem), ugly (ditto) and just don't belong in a home theater rack IMHO.
I like this idea because it looks and operates like a home theater component as well as acting as a server. For example, I can use a remote control, and it has a display and buttons ON THE UNIT so I don't necessarily need to use a TV/monitor in order to use the box.
Aside from the fact that it is overpriced, the only thing that kills it for me is that you need one of their clients to access it remotely. If the box had some sort of remote filesystem support, I could use PCs as clients, and I wouldn't have to re-rip my 350+ disc CD collection - just copy the files over.
If they give it remote filesystem support and perhaps drop the price (or at least don't force me to buy one client with it - which I believe is the source of the $2200/$2800 MSRP confusion), then I'm sold.
Judging from most posts I've seen here, people will think I'm insane, but I've made probably 80 or so transactions on eBay - some for $1k+ - and only one has gone bad. The item turned out to be defective and I could no longer contact the guy because he had an @home e-mail address and @home went under shortly after the auction ended. Excellent timing, no? I could never find out whether it was really fraud or damage in transit.
Anyway, I find that eBay's point system generally works for me. I think that anyone who was screwed over by a seller would take the 30 seconds needed to post negative feedback. As such, I don't buy from anyone who has ANY negative feedback and if it's expensive, I make sure they have a high positive feedback rating.