The amusing part is that for some unknown reason we "trust" Apple more than probably any other company to make this work. Heck, I havn't owned an Apple since the 80's and for some reason I just trust that Apple will do the right thing.
Not so hard to understand, really. Humans, believe it or not, are inherently trusting. We tend not to doubt unless there's been repeated infractions against us.
In contrast to, say... Microsoft (heh)... all Apple has to do to retain goodwill is not be utter bastards all the time. MS actually sets the bar pretty low in this regard.
On a personal note you've touched on the reason I always give people who ask Why Mac?.... because, much of the time, I get the distinct impression that Apple is one of the few compaies that tries. Even debacles like the Cube, I give 'em points for trying new things.
On the average, most consumers won't differentiate between $0.89 and $0.99, any more than they'd shop at a different store to pay $11.89 instead of $11.99. Even $0.75 isn't such an improvement over $0.99 psychologically speaking -- a competitor would have to go as low as $0.50, or close to it, to take customers from Apple on price alone.
Oh, I don't know about that... consumers buying gas, to pick an example of penny differences, will often drive miles out of their way to save 2 or 3 cents on the price. In fact they'll burn more gas getting there than they save, and yet people still do it looking for a perceived 'deal'.
It remains to be seen if iTMS and its ilk pans out the same way, but I wouldn't be dismissive of the average consumer's price sensitivity in these situations.
Also,
"Razor-thin margins" don't actually exist with virtual merchandise. Apple's had a nationwide network for distributing media quickly for some time now -- specifically, for QuickTime movie trailers -- and *that* was for zero profits.
Are you sure there's no profits? Its possible, but I also wouldn't be surprised to learn Apple gets paid a little spiff to put up 'featured' posters on the trailer page. They don't own the network, either - they rent it from Akamai usually. So bandwidth does cost them.
Running on the treadmill at the gym, I had my (10GB) iPod on one of those little shelves they provide for whatever player you're toting. I'm going at a pretty good clip when my wildly pistoning arms happen to catch the remote cord - which, very stupidly, I had wrapped around the clip-case to keep the extra cordage out of the way. This had the effect of preventing the minijack from harmlessly disconnecting, as it should have done; instead the iPod goes flying. I'm talking 15-20 feet away, dropping from the elevated platform with the treadmills onto the lower gym floor. Crash.
It's fine. Totally fine, nary a scratch. It was still in the case which helped a bit, but I am still amazed that any kind of hard drive, Apple-designed or no, could survive that sort of fall. Truly a tough little bastard, that iPod. I'll send Ive a nice Christmas ham.
Only two Apple keyboards have ever been good enough for day-to-day usage. One was the Apple Extended Keyboard (the original, not the II), which had good tactile response, though its ergonomic features were slim-to-none. The other was the Apple Ergonomic Keyboard -- you know, the one they released in 1992 which could split into two sections and had a separate numpad.
I am incredibly surprised to read your post. Are you thinking of the old iMac keyboards? The current white keyboards, and their black/clear (nicer, IMHO) counterparts from slightly earlier G4 revs, are practically identical, key-wise, to the old Extended II... except for the addition of volume/eject keys and the removal of the power button... and the removal of the gap under the function keys. But that's pretty much it.
Still using my 400 MHz G4 PowerBook & still loving it more than I ever did any of my PC laptops--no matter how fast they were.It feels so good finally being content with something.
--
"My name is Tres, and I'm never buying another Mac again."
"Okay, okay, cut!... we're going again. Writers, get over here."
$1599US for a powerbook12 is $2451 australian, with a direct currency conversion - something that will always be under the real cost due to importing, our taxes etc.
We're experiencing the same thing in Canada - because of the recent plunge of the US dollar versus our own, prices should have dropped... but they haven't. Apple gear in Canada still costs approximately 10% more than it should, at the current rates.
Now, I have some sympathy as Apple Canada/retail stores probably had to buy all that stuff at the old rate, but still.. I certainly won't buy another Mac until they adjust this discrepancy (and said Mac model starts with the letter 'G' and ends in '5').
Well I don't know about anyone else, but I always thought it would have been much more interesting if Yoda fought Tyranus by just kinda standing there and controlling his lightsabre with the force.
[OT]
Add me to that list. Me friends and I said the same thing coming out of AotC. While I was greatly amused, I thought the 'stoic mind-control fight' would me more appropriate (dignified?)...
Much more like, say, Magneto breaking out of the prison in X2. Yoda should have just stood there serenly concentrating while all hell broke loose around him.
Oh yeah, while we're on it, he should have just force-pulled Anakin + Obi-Wan away from the falling debris, would've been faster.:)
I give MTV more credit these days than the Academy.
LOL! Yea, I suppose they are going to build a stone tower to the Moon, perhaps they can mine the stones from that big tourist-trap wall (that CAN NOT be seen from orbit)? Or perhaps a big giant paper bottle rocket?
Hey - Snarky McFlamey - you have a problem with China going to the moon? What's with the vitriol?
There is certainly not anything wrong with any other nation going to the Moon, planets, etc. I say it's about freakin' time too! I also hope, but don't expect, that these other nations actually SHARE their findings with others to the extent the US does.
Oh, oh, I get it. They won't share. They might spend all that money and effort and not share everything with us.
However, every single estimate of modern Chinese (People's Republic) technological prowess has been wrong ever since that nation was formed.
Ooooo kay. So its not sharing, its that they can't do it. By the way, please post every single estimate of Chinese tech for me, I'm interested in verifying that claim.
Look, this is flamebait, dude. You said nothing other than "they suck, everyone says their great but they suck, they won't share if it turns out they don't suck, but they suck."
I'm with the others that would like to see *anybody* go to the moon. Anyone at all. It's been too long. It's worth going just for the hell of it. It's worth going to stop hearing about how we can't go anymore.
I've always taken it as rote that my years and years of video game playing have had nothing but a good effect on my reflexes and hand-eye coordination. I would parrot what many others have already posted; there have been very close near-accidents that I dodged successfully; I didn't even have time to think, but I did move. It startled me afterwards, not just the adrenaline spike that accompanies such events, but the fact that I really didn't think - I just did.
One factor I wonder about in these experiments is the fact that endomorphs and ectomorphs have different nerve lengths in their bodies. Ectomorphs - the skinny beanpole types - actually have nerves that fire slower than those of an endomorph. Supposedly Endomorphs (and mesomorphs I believe.. I hope) have shorter nerve endings, thus faster signals, but they deplete more rapidly. Ectomorphs are built better for things like a marathon, long-term nerve firing with consistency, but with a loss in reaction time. Could be bullshit, but I definitely remember reading that somewhere.
As for tracking multiple objects... that almost seems to be a function of some lingering 'prey drive' in humans. I've just gotten a dog a little while ago, a kind with a high prey drive, and I have to remember to satisfy this desire in him with appropriate games (ball, frisbee, etc.) Humans are predators after all; stereo vision, incisors, etc. Dodging and rapid problem-solving in three dimensional space probably serves to satisfy a much older, darker part of our hindbrains.
After you play WipeOut Fusion for several weeks, all traffic looks damn slow. Makes you feel like you've got Bullet Time on your side.
Oh one last OT note: I just turned off Light Mode after using it for almost this whole year, and woooo! This colour scheme! Where's my bong?
"Non-linear storytelling" is an oxymoron... and a red herring
I disagree. However I will say that I went through the same thing. After one plays around with trying to develop a nonlinear storyline for awhile, one quickly realizes how bloody difficult it is to find something compelling.... let me put forth the notion that knowing the idea is sound is much easier than executing it.
An example: the film TimeCode. In case you haven't seen it, TimeCode is a 4:3 ratio film consisting of four separate panels, each of which contains a continuous 'shot' of video. All four are locked together time-wise, and there are no traditional edits (as such). It was a very clever work, and a new way of looking at a series of sequential events. At first I found it weird, but it only took 5 minutes or so to draw me in. A truly unique film experience, and one that was nonlinear in the shallowest sense; you directed your attention where you wanted it to go, rather than being forced by the director's camera.... or at least between the four shots offered by the director. It did subtly direct your attention through the use of the separate audio track volumes, however.
A more engaging/interactive example of nonlinear storytelling would be Grand Theft Auto. Even though the story itself is on rails, it is definitely mixed with totally freeform gameplay and exploration that has the interesting characteristic of mixing itself with linear plot, in intervals. One can imagine a just-slightly branching verison of a GTA storyline, and you'd end up with a lot of possibilities.
So, my point is, I think there is such a thing as nonlinear storytelling, it's just hard to get to. Don't give up on the notion.
Do they still publish "Choose Your Own Adventure" books?
That was the idea, yeah. I think they do still publish them too. This was a little different insofar as you couldn't guess your fate based on page numbers, though.:)
The way I see it, video games are in an era right now comparable to the state of cinema in the 20s and 30s. We've figured out the basic language of the format, and are only now starting to wade into the deeper waters of narrative-driven game-creation technique.
When films first appeared, the very idea of editing was radical; to cut the film into chunks that somehow approximated a jilted eye-movement that had narrative power. Then the rules about editing -- breaking the axis, 90-degree flips, screen-facing, etc. Once we had a credible language for the format, there was a period of stagnation, when we thought this is how films would be... lots of locked-off tripods, static shots, clearly framed heads speaking to the camera, etc. Sound, a technological innovation, pushed the format in new directions ("Who on earth wants to hear actors talk?). Now, look at what we do in films: swooping cameras, crazy filters, surround-sound, virtual cinematography... not to mention the arsenal of tricks given to us by the Leans, Hitchcocks, Spielbergs, etc. of the world.
Video games will go forward once we begin to truly master the art of nonlinear storytelling. I often suspect that our film past, while necessary to arrive where we are now, hamstrings us a bit in terms of expectations. People like to just turn their brains off and be entertained, and any sort of interactive medium is bound to be more work than that.
I once had an idea for a DVD 'film' that would just be scraps of video, selected at the user's whim, constructed in just such a way that you could do your own sleuthing and piece together the film in your own way. That's much more amorphous than what people are willing to go through. It smacks of work to many people.
Don't worry. We'll get there eventually. I do agree with the poster in terms of lamenting the current period, though. The video game industry now makes more money than the film industry and sequels to hit games will sell. It's a given. However, sooner or later, someone will come up with the video game equivalent of something like Memento or 2001, and things will shuffle again.
It literally isn't costing Bill anything to buy your admiration here. So he goes out back and shovels a load of thousand dollar bills into a wheelbarrow and gives them to charity in a box with his return address on it. Call me when he gives until it at least itches, ok.
Just... hold on a second. Listen, I used to think exactly that same way, and there's obvious tax advantages, etc. in what Gates does with his charity work.
Having said that, did you happen to catch the recent Salon article about the Gates Foundation? The man is planning to give away 98% of his wealth. Just ponder that a moment.
You can yell about Microsoft's business practices all you want - and I'll agree with practically every nasty thing spoken about them - but Bill is a different story. When I read about Bill Gates, I don't agree with a lot of what he has to say about technology, but he is a man who has clearly understood that his position in the world is unique. He speaks quite a bit about poverty in the 3rd world and particularly about hunger and disease control. He is probably already the single biggest money donator in history in terms of pure monetary value.
Now, as I understand it, the physical limit of wealth is somewhere around a hundred million dollars. That's literally the breaking point where, short of creating orbiting death platforms or underwater citites, you cannot spend more money and see a difference in your lifestyle. Perhaps Bill recognizes this and has decided to put the rest in places where its needed most.
Perhaps, this merits a little better mention than "call me when he gives until it at least itches". I hate sounding so preachy, I'm sorry about that, but it bears mentioning. Look into the Gates Foundation, you'd be really surprised. I was.
Nintendo's sales have picked up dramatically in the last 6 months... I just don't like seeing raw hype and biased opinions posted as fact.
Neither do I. You know, we were just discussing this article just a little while ago. Nintendo may be shipping lots of units, but their second-half profits are down by a third. Which is not good at all. Remember many units does not necessarily equate to profits, they have to manage other costs as well.
I do with Nintendo luck though, generally they produce some great stuff. I think their self-proclaimed new direction in software excellence is a good step.
Like many on this forum I've often pondered the ideal marriage between PDA and mobile phone; everyone seems to agree that they would make a great combination, if only we could somehow find that balance between PDA and phone functionality.
The salient points are these:
- Phones are more important to more people than organizers. That's the one overriding rule. Organizers are very handy, and even indispensable for a very small percentage of people.. but everyone needs a phone. Everyone. Soon 'mobile phone' will seem redundant I think as everyone will just get used to nearly all phones being some sort of wireless handset.
- PDAs are better at hand-driven input. I preferred the pen/stylus thing myself but the thumb keyboard (ala RIM) actually works surprisingly well for many people, and is actually a shallower curve than Graffiti.
So in the end I think you basically end up with people who have major organizational needs carrying both, and some getting by with the phone organizer because their needs are modest (me = T68i w/Bluetooth does nicely), and most of the rest will just use their phones, period (see point 1 above).
I used to think something like a Treo was pretty ideal until I realized that a human habit comes into play. A phone is, technically, more adaptable; all you need is a mic and a speaker somewhere near your head. This is easily accomplished via your standard hands-free Jabra or whatever. So a PDA with phone capability makes more sense logically, as you cannot surf or check your info with the device pressed up against your head! The phone can shrink to go inside your ear.
But... people don't like doing that. They don't like the little dangly thing, they'd rather just hold a phone up to their head like they've always done. It's habit. The problem is, it is this very thing that separates the phone form-factors from the PDAs; this head-centric interface that percludes a lot of other simultaneous activities that you might perform with the device.
But it doesn't matter. Habit wins out, and phones (or the phone part) is always more important in the end.
What we really need: voice-to-text translation in the phones. If my phone could write down for me 'lunch with Dave on Tuesday' as I simply spoke the words, that would really leapfrog a lot of organizer functionality (not necessarily PDA functionality, but for calendars, notes, etc. it would be killer).
I think that's a cool idea but don't just stop there. Your implementation immediately made me think of the 'status' mode you see in an IM app.
For instance, if you set your state to 'Busy' or 'Occupied' in some central way, the PVR wouldn't stop for phone calls, the phone would take messages rather than ring, your doorbell would be turned off and your computer would hide the WarCraft icon.:) Or something. I like it though.
You do know that advertising is what pays for TV programming, broadcasting, etc., in the USofA, don't you?
Would you rather have cat^H^H^HTV detector vans running around?
Not really, but I don't think that's necessary. Look at HBO's model, or any other specialzied subscription-based channel.
I've been dying to select exactly the cable channels I want for years. It seems vastly preferable - to me, anyways - to pay $40/month for 8-12 channels that I actually like, through and through. Of course the media giants are all-too aware of this; after all, they watch TV too. You can't shovel your pap in with the good stuff if people have the power to only receive the good stuff, and filter out the pap.
As for Replay... these companies have got to stop with the fucking bait-and-switch routine. This is the precise reason I'll never consider a subscription-based PVR. It was too easy to see it coming. It's also too easy to just buy the parts for the computer that I need to make it happen there. (Where it belongs, IMHO.)
Look, I sympathize a bit with the broadcasters, they have some tough questions and sitations to answer. But that's the extent: a bit. I don't care a lot, nor should you. TV will not 'go away' any more than music will. The presupposition that without this one specific economic model for media dissemination, we'll all be without any art whatsoever, is ludicrous.
The reason I ended up dumping a Palm entirely? Simple. It's way more convenient and fast to pick up a pencil and write down an appointment/number in an organizer than to power up a Palm and tap in the info. But that's just me.:)
Not just you, either... you nailed it. Palm's big advantage is that its much smaller than a regular DayRunner (or whatever), you can back up the info in case you lose it, and it's fast to whip out and jot something down.
Having said that, my T68i w/bluetooth happily supplanted the capabilities I used to need from my Visor Edge... so my girlfriend has it now. (Speaking of which, have you guys noticed a lot more women with Palms these days? I think the geek set is slowly 'handing them down' as they upgrade... women are a lot less picky.:)
Anyways. I think Palm-type devices will enjoy a renaissance once a common ubiquitous way of accessing the wireless internet appears. The Blackberries were absolutely nothing special other than the fact that they fetched email. That alone was a killer feature. But who knows; Palm has seemed utterly braindead from an R&D point of view for years now. Handspring had the right idea but I think they're barely keeping alive in this economy right now.
Maybe we can convince Apple to launch a PDA and kill it right away, just so we can get some new ideas in the space.
... which I can already tell is happening... why not?
I mean, I tend to agree that really astonishing works - like Evangelion - do not really 'need' to be re-made in a new way, but at the same time, I don't think it hurts anything. The Gus van Sant remake of Psycho, for instance, was nothing special at all, and not as good as the original... but who cares? I could have ignored it. It's not like it *replaces* the old film.
Besides, WETA kicks heroic amounts of ass, and they get an automatic vote as far as I'm concerned for the top-notch work in LOTR. They deserve some credit.
My question is, how 'live-action' can it really be? Live actors surely, but I'm guessing the bulk of the action will be CG... and do I want to see a top-quality CG adaptation of an Evangelion battle sequence? Hell yeah.
The fact that Macs have a reputation for good integration is mostly marketing - if you go down to your local PC World and walk out with a new box, that'll work just fine too.
While I agree with you if we're talking about established brands (Dell et. al), there is a signifcant chunk of sales that goes to the smaller shops who cobble the things together themselves, and problems are very common in this regard still. As usual, of course the experts need no help. People buy Dells - and Apples - partially because there's an 800 number to call when you're confused.
No they aren't. Everybody I've seen who has been sat down in front of a Mac found it hopelessly confusing and non-intuitive. The only people I know who stuck with them, are those who bought them personally (they would, wouldn't they). I know I had to have the owner of said Mac sit next to me and guide me when I was trying to use his machine, and I'm far from being a neophyte. Stupid differences from Windows and idiotic conventions that had seemingly no basis in actual usability just pissed me off.
Yes, they are. And it's not just a matter of opinion. There are tangible, measurable advantages in usability with Mac OS vs Windows. Check any TCO study on the matter, or any actual usability study (lost my Carnegie Mellon bookmarks for this but its there). Too numerous to list here.
You give yourself away with that last line - Mac OS can be frustrating if you are coming from Windows. Any transition is painful, from anything different. In fact the level of pain is often overlooked.
Trust me, put someone with little-to-no computer experience in front of the Mac and they will have a much, much easier time of it. I mean, c'mon, honestly, do you think that Windows conventions - still having to click Start to Shut Down comes to mind - are better? Things like that make no fucking sense to a newbie, because they make no fucking sense whatsoever - but we're used to that.
Blaming Apple for the majority of people having a lousy experience at their usual computers is nonsensical. Adjusting habits can be painful, but productivity is a highly personal thing. I use Windows XP all day and when I come home to my Mac.. it's like comfy slippers. WinXP is like a hard hat. I have no inherent reason to prefer one or the other frankly; I wish I could buy a cheap PC and be happy with how it works. But I can't. They aren't the same.
People don't upgrade their hardware because they like screwing about with drivers, they do it because they want to play Doom 3 but they don't want to buy a whole new machine when 80% of it is still just fine. If they don't know what they're doing the end result is mess and instability, but pretending people don't want to do that is the reason PCs dominated in the first place.
Ah, but you answered your own question. People playing Doom 3 might want to upgrade their CPU, but that's a vanishing percentage of the whole... I asked my dad if he ever used his PCI slots in his IBM machine and he really had to think about what I was talking about for a few seconds. Don't think that these silly upgrades are what drives the PC market, they are a sideline business. (Video cards possibly being the sole exception.) PCs are entirely commodity parts, that's all.
Frankly I think we need more Apples. More vertically-integrated computer companies who adhere to standards would be a good thing. Imagine such a company pumping out fantastic case designs for PPC970-based Linux boxen. That would rock.
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Not so hard to understand, really. Humans, believe it or not, are inherently trusting. We tend not to doubt unless there's been repeated infractions against us.
In contrast to, say... Microsoft (heh)... all Apple has to do to retain goodwill is not be utter bastards all the time. MS actually sets the bar pretty low in this regard.
On a personal note you've touched on the reason I always give people who ask Why Mac?.... because, much of the time, I get the distinct impression that Apple is one of the few compaies that tries. Even debacles like the Cube, I give 'em points for trying new things.
Oh, I don't know about that... consumers buying gas, to pick an example of penny differences, will often drive miles out of their way to save 2 or 3 cents on the price. In fact they'll burn more gas getting there than they save, and yet people still do it looking for a perceived 'deal'.
It remains to be seen if iTMS and its ilk pans out the same way, but I wouldn't be dismissive of the average consumer's price sensitivity in these situations.
Also,
"Razor-thin margins" don't actually exist with virtual merchandise. Apple's had a nationwide network for distributing media quickly for some time now -- specifically, for QuickTime movie trailers -- and *that* was for zero profits.
Are you sure there's no profits? Its possible, but I also wouldn't be surprised to learn Apple gets paid a little spiff to put up 'featured' posters on the trailer page. They don't own the network, either - they rent it from Akamai usually. So bandwidth does cost them.
Running on the treadmill at the gym, I had my (10GB) iPod on one of those little shelves they provide for whatever player you're toting. I'm going at a pretty good clip when my wildly pistoning arms happen to catch the remote cord - which, very stupidly, I had wrapped around the clip-case to keep the extra cordage out of the way. This had the effect of preventing the minijack from harmlessly disconnecting, as it should have done; instead the iPod goes flying. I'm talking 15-20 feet away, dropping from the elevated platform with the treadmills onto the lower gym floor. Crash.
It's fine. Totally fine, nary a scratch. It was still in the case which helped a bit, but I am still amazed that any kind of hard drive, Apple-designed or no, could survive that sort of fall. Truly a tough little bastard, that iPod. I'll send Ive a nice Christmas ham.
I am incredibly surprised to read your post. Are you thinking of the old iMac keyboards? The current white keyboards, and their black/clear (nicer, IMHO) counterparts from slightly earlier G4 revs, are practically identical, key-wise, to the old Extended II... except for the addition of volume/eject keys and the removal of the power button... and the removal of the gap under the function keys. But that's pretty much it.
Here is the old Apple Extended keyboard, next to a PC keyboard.
Here's the current keyboard in its black incarnation.
Pretty similar key layout if you ask me. I suppose you could argue about the key action being better on the old ones. Honestly I can't remember.
--
"My name is Tres, and I'm never buying another Mac again."
"Okay, okay, cut!... we're going again. Writers, get over here."
"What did I say?"
We're experiencing the same thing in Canada - because of the recent plunge of the US dollar versus our own, prices should have dropped... but they haven't. Apple gear in Canada still costs approximately 10% more than it should, at the current rates.
Now, I have some sympathy as Apple Canada/retail stores probably had to buy all that stuff at the old rate, but still.. I certainly won't buy another Mac until they adjust this discrepancy (and said Mac model starts with the letter 'G' and ends in '5').
Er... what? :)
Oh..... sorry.
[OT] Add me to that list. Me friends and I said the same thing coming out of AotC. While I was greatly amused, I thought the 'stoic mind-control fight' would me more appropriate (dignified?)...
Much more like, say, Magneto breaking out of the prison in X2. Yoda should have just stood there serenly concentrating while all hell broke loose around him.
Oh yeah, while we're on it, he should have just force-pulled Anakin + Obi-Wan away from the falling debris, would've been faster. :)
I give MTV more credit these days than the Academy.
Hey - Snarky McFlamey - you have a problem with China going to the moon? What's with the vitriol?
There is certainly not anything wrong with any other nation going to the Moon, planets, etc. I say it's about freakin' time too! I also hope, but don't expect, that these other nations actually SHARE their findings with others to the extent the US does.
Oh, oh, I get it. They won't share. They might spend all that money and effort and not share everything with us.
However, every single estimate of modern Chinese (People's Republic) technological prowess has been wrong ever since that nation was formed.
Ooooo kay. So its not sharing, its that they can't do it. By the way, please post every single estimate of Chinese tech for me, I'm interested in verifying that claim.
Look, this is flamebait, dude. You said nothing other than "they suck, everyone says their great but they suck, they won't share if it turns out they don't suck, but they suck."
I'm with the others that would like to see *anybody* go to the moon. Anyone at all. It's been too long. It's worth going just for the hell of it. It's worth going to stop hearing about how we can't go anymore.
One factor I wonder about in these experiments is the fact that endomorphs and ectomorphs have different nerve lengths in their bodies. Ectomorphs - the skinny beanpole types - actually have nerves that fire slower than those of an endomorph. Supposedly Endomorphs (and mesomorphs I believe.. I hope) have shorter nerve endings, thus faster signals, but they deplete more rapidly. Ectomorphs are built better for things like a marathon, long-term nerve firing with consistency, but with a loss in reaction time. Could be bullshit, but I definitely remember reading that somewhere.
As for tracking multiple objects... that almost seems to be a function of some lingering 'prey drive' in humans. I've just gotten a dog a little while ago, a kind with a high prey drive, and I have to remember to satisfy this desire in him with appropriate games (ball, frisbee, etc.) Humans are predators after all; stereo vision, incisors, etc. Dodging and rapid problem-solving in three dimensional space probably serves to satisfy a much older, darker part of our hindbrains.
After you play WipeOut Fusion for several weeks, all traffic looks damn slow. Makes you feel like you've got Bullet Time on your side.
Oh one last OT note: I just turned off Light Mode after using it for almost this whole year, and woooo! This colour scheme! Where's my bong?
Well, that's just really bloody Insightful. Kudos all around.
You're point - which I can only guess at - is, Apple stuff is great, it costs money, you don't like that, and somehow you feel sodomized by that.
Words escape me.
I disagree. However I will say that I went through the same thing. After one plays around with trying to develop a nonlinear storyline for awhile, one quickly realizes how bloody difficult it is to find something compelling.... let me put forth the notion that knowing the idea is sound is much easier than executing it.
An example: the film TimeCode . In case you haven't seen it, TimeCode is a 4:3 ratio film consisting of four separate panels, each of which contains a continuous 'shot' of video. All four are locked together time-wise, and there are no traditional edits (as such). It was a very clever work, and a new way of looking at a series of sequential events. At first I found it weird, but it only took 5 minutes or so to draw me in. A truly unique film experience, and one that was nonlinear in the shallowest sense; you directed your attention where you wanted it to go, rather than being forced by the director's camera.... or at least between the four shots offered by the director. It did subtly direct your attention through the use of the separate audio track volumes, however.
A more engaging/interactive example of nonlinear storytelling would be Grand Theft Auto . Even though the story itself is on rails, it is definitely mixed with totally freeform gameplay and exploration that has the interesting characteristic of mixing itself with linear plot, in intervals. One can imagine a just-slightly branching verison of a GTA storyline, and you'd end up with a lot of possibilities.
So, my point is, I think there is such a thing as nonlinear storytelling, it's just hard to get to. Don't give up on the notion.
That was the idea, yeah. I think they do still publish them too. This was a little different insofar as you couldn't guess your fate based on page numbers, though. :)
When films first appeared, the very idea of editing was radical; to cut the film into chunks that somehow approximated a jilted eye-movement that had narrative power. Then the rules about editing -- breaking the axis, 90-degree flips, screen-facing, etc. Once we had a credible language for the format, there was a period of stagnation, when we thought this is how films would be... lots of locked-off tripods, static shots, clearly framed heads speaking to the camera, etc. Sound, a technological innovation, pushed the format in new directions ("Who on earth wants to hear actors talk?). Now, look at what we do in films: swooping cameras, crazy filters, surround-sound, virtual cinematography... not to mention the arsenal of tricks given to us by the Leans, Hitchcocks, Spielbergs, etc. of the world.
Video games will go forward once we begin to truly master the art of nonlinear storytelling. I often suspect that our film past, while necessary to arrive where we are now, hamstrings us a bit in terms of expectations. People like to just turn their brains off and be entertained, and any sort of interactive medium is bound to be more work than that.
I once had an idea for a DVD 'film' that would just be scraps of video, selected at the user's whim, constructed in just such a way that you could do your own sleuthing and piece together the film in your own way. That's much more amorphous than what people are willing to go through. It smacks of work to many people.
Don't worry. We'll get there eventually. I do agree with the poster in terms of lamenting the current period, though. The video game industry now makes more money than the film industry and sequels to hit games will sell. It's a given. However, sooner or later, someone will come up with the video game equivalent of something like Memento or 2001, and things will shuffle again.
Just... hold on a second. Listen, I used to think exactly that same way, and there's obvious tax advantages, etc. in what Gates does with his charity work.
Having said that, did you happen to catch the recent Salon article about the Gates Foundation? The man is planning to give away 98% of his wealth. Just ponder that a moment.
You can yell about Microsoft's business practices all you want - and I'll agree with practically every nasty thing spoken about them - but Bill is a different story. When I read about Bill Gates, I don't agree with a lot of what he has to say about technology, but he is a man who has clearly understood that his position in the world is unique. He speaks quite a bit about poverty in the 3rd world and particularly about hunger and disease control. He is probably already the single biggest money donator in history in terms of pure monetary value.
Now, as I understand it, the physical limit of wealth is somewhere around a hundred million dollars. That's literally the breaking point where, short of creating orbiting death platforms or underwater citites, you cannot spend more money and see a difference in your lifestyle. Perhaps Bill recognizes this and has decided to put the rest in places where its needed most. Perhaps, this merits a little better mention than "call me when he gives until it at least itches". I hate sounding so preachy, I'm sorry about that, but it bears mentioning. Look into the Gates Foundation, you'd be really surprised. I was.
Neither do I. You know, we were just discussing this article just a little while ago. Nintendo may be shipping lots of units, but their second-half profits are down by a third. Which is not good at all. Remember many units does not necessarily equate to profits, they have to manage other costs as well.
I do with Nintendo luck though, generally they produce some great stuff. I think their self-proclaimed new direction in software excellence is a good step.
The salient points are these:
- Phones are more important to more people than organizers. That's the one overriding rule. Organizers are very handy, and even indispensable for a very small percentage of people.. but everyone needs a phone. Everyone. Soon 'mobile phone' will seem redundant I think as everyone will just get used to nearly all phones being some sort of wireless handset.
- PDAs are better at hand-driven input. I preferred the pen/stylus thing myself but the thumb keyboard (ala RIM) actually works surprisingly well for many people, and is actually a shallower curve than Graffiti.
So in the end I think you basically end up with people who have major organizational needs carrying both, and some getting by with the phone organizer because their needs are modest (me = T68i w/Bluetooth does nicely), and most of the rest will just use their phones, period (see point 1 above).
I used to think something like a Treo was pretty ideal until I realized that a human habit comes into play. A phone is, technically, more adaptable; all you need is a mic and a speaker somewhere near your head. This is easily accomplished via your standard hands-free Jabra or whatever. So a PDA with phone capability makes more sense logically, as you cannot surf or check your info with the device pressed up against your head! The phone can shrink to go inside your ear.
But... people don't like doing that. They don't like the little dangly thing, they'd rather just hold a phone up to their head like they've always done. It's habit. The problem is, it is this very thing that separates the phone form-factors from the PDAs; this head-centric interface that percludes a lot of other simultaneous activities that you might perform with the device.
But it doesn't matter. Habit wins out, and phones (or the phone part) is always more important in the end.
What we really need: voice-to-text translation in the phones. If my phone could write down for me 'lunch with Dave on Tuesday' as I simply spoke the words, that would really leapfrog a lot of organizer functionality (not necessarily PDA functionality, but for calendars, notes, etc. it would be killer).
For instance, if you set your state to 'Busy' or 'Occupied' in some central way, the PVR wouldn't stop for phone calls, the phone would take messages rather than ring, your doorbell would be turned off and your computer would hide the WarCraft icon. :) Or something. I like it though.
Not really, but I don't think that's necessary. Look at HBO's model, or any other specialzied subscription-based channel.
I've been dying to select exactly the cable channels I want for years. It seems vastly preferable - to me, anyways - to pay $40/month for 8-12 channels that I actually like, through and through. Of course the media giants are all-too aware of this; after all, they watch TV too. You can't shovel your pap in with the good stuff if people have the power to only receive the good stuff, and filter out the pap.
As for Replay... these companies have got to stop with the fucking bait-and-switch routine. This is the precise reason I'll never consider a subscription-based PVR. It was too easy to see it coming. It's also too easy to just buy the parts for the computer that I need to make it happen there. (Where it belongs, IMHO.)
Look, I sympathize a bit with the broadcasters, they have some tough questions and sitations to answer. But that's the extent: a bit. I don't care a lot, nor should you. TV will not 'go away' any more than music will. The presupposition that without this one specific economic model for media dissemination, we'll all be without any art whatsoever, is ludicrous.
Not just you, either... you nailed it. Palm's big advantage is that its much smaller than a regular DayRunner (or whatever), you can back up the info in case you lose it, and it's fast to whip out and jot something down.
Having said that, my T68i w/bluetooth happily supplanted the capabilities I used to need from my Visor Edge... so my girlfriend has it now. (Speaking of which, have you guys noticed a lot more women with Palms these days? I think the geek set is slowly 'handing them down' as they upgrade... women are a lot less picky. :)
Anyways. I think Palm-type devices will enjoy a renaissance once a common ubiquitous way of accessing the wireless internet appears. The Blackberries were absolutely nothing special other than the fact that they fetched email. That alone was a killer feature. But who knows; Palm has seemed utterly braindead from an R&D point of view for years now. Handspring had the right idea but I think they're barely keeping alive in this economy right now.
Maybe we can convince Apple to launch a PDA and kill it right away, just so we can get some new ideas in the space.
I mean, I tend to agree that really astonishing works - like Evangelion - do not really 'need' to be re-made in a new way, but at the same time, I don't think it hurts anything. The Gus van Sant remake of Psycho, for instance, was nothing special at all, and not as good as the original... but who cares? I could have ignored it. It's not like it *replaces* the old film.
Besides, WETA kicks heroic amounts of ass, and they get an automatic vote as far as I'm concerned for the top-notch work in LOTR. They deserve some credit.
My question is, how 'live-action' can it really be? Live actors surely, but I'm guessing the bulk of the action will be CG... and do I want to see a top-quality CG adaptation of an Evangelion battle sequence? Hell yeah.
While I agree with you if we're talking about established brands (Dell et. al), there is a signifcant chunk of sales that goes to the smaller shops who cobble the things together themselves, and problems are very common in this regard still. As usual, of course the experts need no help. People buy Dells - and Apples - partially because there's an 800 number to call when you're confused.
No they aren't. Everybody I've seen who has been sat down in front of a Mac found it hopelessly confusing and non-intuitive. The only people I know who stuck with them, are those who bought them personally (they would, wouldn't they). I know I had to have the owner of said Mac sit next to me and guide me when I was trying to use his machine, and I'm far from being a neophyte. Stupid differences from Windows and idiotic conventions that had seemingly no basis in actual usability just pissed me off.
Yes, they are. And it's not just a matter of opinion. There are tangible, measurable advantages in usability with Mac OS vs Windows. Check any TCO study on the matter, or any actual usability study (lost my Carnegie Mellon bookmarks for this but its there). Too numerous to list here.
You give yourself away with that last line - Mac OS can be frustrating if you are coming from Windows. Any transition is painful, from anything different. In fact the level of pain is often overlooked.
Trust me, put someone with little-to-no computer experience in front of the Mac and they will have a much, much easier time of it. I mean, c'mon, honestly, do you think that Windows conventions - still having to click Start to Shut Down comes to mind - are better? Things like that make no fucking sense to a newbie, because they make no fucking sense whatsoever - but we're used to that.
Blaming Apple for the majority of people having a lousy experience at their usual computers is nonsensical. Adjusting habits can be painful, but productivity is a highly personal thing. I use Windows XP all day and when I come home to my Mac.. it's like comfy slippers. WinXP is like a hard hat. I have no inherent reason to prefer one or the other frankly; I wish I could buy a cheap PC and be happy with how it works. But I can't. They aren't the same.
People don't upgrade their hardware because they like screwing about with drivers, they do it because they want to play Doom 3 but they don't want to buy a whole new machine when 80% of it is still just fine. If they don't know what they're doing the end result is mess and instability, but pretending people don't want to do that is the reason PCs dominated in the first place.
Ah, but you answered your own question. People playing Doom 3 might want to upgrade their CPU, but that's a vanishing percentage of the whole... I asked my dad if he ever used his PCI slots in his IBM machine and he really had to think about what I was talking about for a few seconds. Don't think that these silly upgrades are what drives the PC market, they are a sideline business. (Video cards possibly being the sole exception.) PCs are entirely commodity parts, that's all.
Frankly I think we need more Apples. More vertically-integrated computer companies who adhere to standards would be a good thing. Imagine such a company pumping out fantastic case designs for PPC970-based Linux boxen. That would rock.