You know, I've been waiting 10 years for something decent like this to come out in mobile pda/phone devices and all I really got was the move from the proprietary home grown to WindowsCE (yuck) in some parts and minikeyboards becoming more abundant. The integration in devices have really started to suck.
This is also hardware (part of which Apple has patented because multitouch is hard and it is not like a trackpad - look up fingerworks which they bought in 2005), not just software, -- at best, in six months, poorly performing knock-offs will be out that look like this phone turned off, perhaps turned on at the home screen and that will be it.
If Apple didn't come to the scene, in six months we'd have the same old crap. Maybe now there will be a couple generic "me too" products that will perform like crap when pushed.
No, better usability is not just a firmware update away - it is the hardware. And the key to Apple's multitouch has been extensively patented by Fingerworks which they bought in 2005 - I know - I have an iGesture pad - those and the Fingerworks keyboards are unlike anything else on the market and is not a mere trackpad like on most laptops. Check out fingerworks yourself (though you won't be getting any of their keyboards - they ceased business upon being bought).
Anyway, I think people are missing the forest for the trees - this phone is damn good for a first generation product, especially in a niche Apple has no expertise in. Like Microsoft's Zune, this is just an initial iteration but has way more potential because it isn't a crippled me-too product - and like the iPod, with success - it will come down in price in further generations - I predict I will be buying mine in 2 years at $299 (I don't buy Monday morning engineering jobs and I'm locked in a 2 year contract with a Razr right now - which isn't spectacular nor integrated that great at the software level but does the job).
At first, I thought partnering exclusively with Cingular was a mistake - until I ran into my local Walmart and lo and behold, their cell phone display is Cingular. If the rest of their distribution network is this extensive, Apple has nothing to worry about unless Cingular has a crappy price model people don't like.
Also, the benefit with sticking only with Cingular is that they can have Cingular adapt to their phone and integrate it further. If the iPhone is a hit, Apple can strongarm the other providers into the same system once the exclusivitey contract expires because everyone would want a piece of that pie - they could not do this if the phone was completely open to every provider - simply because Apple would find themselves adapting to their service and eventually just having the Lowest Common Demoninator in integration.
(BTW, I agree with you that they should have gone 3G instead of 2G but this is not a deal breaker. Next generation probably. This phone has so much potential that competitors won't know where to begin while Apple will just have to work on some specs and prices to reach an ever wider market with each release.)
Hmm, I have seen a lot of iPhones mockups and they seem to have missed the mark..... all I'm saying is that the devil is in the details:)
Anyway, did people predict the multitouch functionality? I don't know if they did because I don't follow the scene too much - it comes from their purchase of Fingerworks (which was several years back, done in private) - only reason I know that is that I own an iGesture pad and the editing feature (pinching on the iPhone) was possible thank to this tech. Of course, I'm not into all of Mac's products so perhaps they used multitouch before hand.
Present them with the two (or 3?) most popular distros and let them choose on look and feel - according to distrowatch.com those two would be Ubuntu and OpenSuse right now.
Instead of asking that there be fewer distros, just realize that non-geeky newbs are not going to choose Gentoo or Damn Small Linux anyway and take it out of the mix until they are more comfortable.
Anyway, I think the number of distros is a non-starter. Go into any cell phone store and you'll find at least 20 different models doing different niches and no one complains (aside how crappy they all are.)
So you are essentially because that the people pissing in the wind, speculating every which way, that we knew what was coming because a couple of broad predictions were correct.
Cool!
Computers are going to be faster this decade! With more cores! It may or may not integrate the GPU. I just accurately predicted the entire intel/AMD roadmap for the next five years. Nothing is a surprise or secret!
Since consoles are usually at a set definition (and none are or will be higher than 1080p for the next decade at least) it'll make little difference versus a regular HDTV - all other things being equal.
It'd be a cool computer monitor though:)
But sadly, this thing is insane as a TV anyways - asides a computer - no media can take advantage of it and the channels are already slow as it is to adopt HDTV programming. Maybe I'll have one by the time I'm a grandpa in 30 years....
I bought a couple at Wal-mart recently for a couple bucks. Decent ones too. Actually, they are dual system (metric and standard) but that makes it better in some cases, less so in others.
Forgetting for the moment that this starts at $1000, not $3000, and that for $400 you get a truly barebones PC - can you integrate all those devices seamlessly, with minimal cables, and so on?
I believe the Mac has done well with some integrated products (and not so well on others) that were priced more than the sum of the parts alone. People pay for a seamless experience.
I'm not asserting that AMD will deliver on those promises though.
The EU is like that, always getting into things the government (or this quasi non-elected government) agencies have no business being in. But they have too much money (guess the unwilling source) and blow it on all types of stupid crap.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy when the EU levels the playing field for the computer industry against MS (so the others have a fair shot), but that should be it's only job. There are more than enough search engines around. Google is not a monopoly (yet). This is stupid waste of money and will end up as nothing but another expensive bureacratic blunder.
Hello newb, it really seems you don't understand, but this is not an error. At/., we tend to repeat things in all areas because our most of our members (Americans) have ADD and/or short memories. This explains the reelection of our Beloved Leader in 2004 nicely.
Hello newb, it really seems you don't understand, but this is not an error. At/., we tend to repeat things in all areas because our most of our members (Americans) have ADD and/or short memories. This explains the reelection of our Beloved Leader in 2004 nicely.
If you mean iTunes, then it does make sense for the consumer in some cases - buying a single $0.99 song they like versus an entire album which is probably going to mostly suck or just not their thing.
So consumers are actually doing the smart move there though I still buy CDs (just wait a couple months and get them used really cheap.)
I assume you mean the plastic used to build e-readers.
But imagine if e-readers take over. Less newspapers and books. Less logging and distribution of paper products - daily newspapers and magazines. Shipments from Amazon.com. Less factories set to refine paper and recycle it (our biggest export to China is used paper so they can print their newspapers). Less printers to print crap. Less storage cabinets to store paperwork. Less oil and other materials used all around.
I also imagine companies like Amazon.com should be eager to get on the ebook boat early on - they rather missed the chance to have an iTunes like store even though they sell CDs. The writing is on the wall for companies whose business model revolves soley around shipping data on a physical medium - like Netflix. They'll be viable for another 15 years no doubt - but after that, if they haven't set themselves up as the goto place for electronic distribution of the same products early on, they'll won't survive IMO.
Regular bulbs are cheaper to produce - namely because they don't need a ballast (what is hidden in the base in CFLs) like all fluorescents do. Price a replacement ballast at homedepot for a digital (T32?) fluorescent - it costs between $16-25 for four tubes, sometimes more. So I'm surprised they CFLs got so cheap.
BTW, 60 watt equivalent CFLs cost roughly $1.50 a piece (8 pack) at Costco. Much cheaper than Walmart. Nice, bright, instant on.
(A while back, in my dad's new garage, within 3 weeks - 6 of his fluorescent tube fixtures broke. It was a batch of bad ballasts in them. It would have been a bitch replacing just the ballasts - lots of cutting wires, tying the new one together, tearing the fixture apart and putting it back together again - in other words a PITA. We decided to go with regular bulb fixtures with CFLs because we would get the fluorescent cost benefits but the screw in bulb convenience.)
Anyway, the upfront cost is not worth complaining over - with regular use you got your money back within 3-5 months.
Wouldn't using languages like Lisp do basically the same job? I mention lisp, besides it being a favorite language of mine, because I know the end product can be coded/compiled fast and efficiently while maintaining security in many cases. Other more popular languages like Python, while getting more lispish, seem to have a inherent speed penalty that cannot be reduced as easily come compile time though I am not sure, saying this as more of a spectator to that language.
Note: I'm sure other functional languages can do the job of memory management and protect from buffer overflows as well as Lisp, I'm just no expert on them so I can't speak for them.
It's just that over the years, I have seen products come out for C family of languages that protect the programmers from the trickiers parts of C..... which seem to come up again and again even for expert programmers and where there is no bulletproof solution. I'd want to know if another language wouldn't do the job in 90% of the cases.
Theora isn't ready to go, it's not even remotely ready.
Since when did this exact reason stop Microsoft or other software solution providers from pushing their products?
Sorry, just had to say - this is a chicken and the egg problem. Reminds me of Linux "not being ready for the desktop." If no one picked it up to use on the desktop when it wasn't ready, it will likely never be ready. OTOH, the more people use an open piece of software, the more development it attracts.
It could also be a blacklight and they showered them with something beforehand. Hell, even human skin glows slightly under blacklight (as does urine).
Either theory could be valid - it's weird how the pigs seem to glow only in a certain radius - like a light (not necessarily visible to humans) was shown on them - they have dark spots.
In any case I won't rule anything out - it's possible. Watches used to have dials that glowed fluorescent in the dark after a decent exposure to light (phosporus?). Submarines too - WW2 era. I'll read the article to see if the pigs have to be exposed to light beforehand.
The problem is, if I'm paying the same price or more, I'd take the one with Vista simply because I sometimes need Windows. (And it gives me an excuse to install proprietary codecs on my linux computer - I can point to the fact that otherwise I'd have those codecs anyway if I were running Windows and since I paid for Windows I just transferring the codecs to a new platform in end effect. I don't know if this position is 100% but I'm just a private person not a business.)
Vista will be a "success" simply because it comes pre-loaded with all new PCs and releases like this will keep the corps buying the steady income support licenses from MS.
It is MS's game to screw up and that ain't happening soon. (Though I prefer Ubuntu and that Windows has truly become a little bitch to run at home, the OS itself bringing up more pop-ups of various types than some of the worst websites - asking every 3 minutes for input over some bullshit.)
This leaves me with either Linux or Mac OS X. I like Linux, but it may not work with my laptop, so I don't really want to risk it.
And OS X will? (Legally?)
Anyway, Linux or BSD is guaranteed freedom while OS X you have to trust a company. It's that simple. We can analyze Apple all we want but in the end it is a company that can decide to turn one way or the other at any moment. Not so with your average Linux distro.
Or play both sides and get a Mac and dual-boot. Keep your files in open or standard formats so you can easily move to other OSes.
that allows kids 18 years old to be sent to areas they never heard of (Iraq) to fight and die and get mangled/permanently disabled for a cause that has little to do with self-defense (or anything rational, really).
But god forbid that they have any alcohol before they are 21. Or see a violent movie or play a violent game before they are 18 (and get a taste of the hell that is war/violence. Even if they think it is fun at the time).
I sometimes think our culture and priorities are schizophrenic. Sometimes I know it is.
No real point, just a rant, asides the fact that maybe we oughta see video games as the advanced pretend violence it replaces - playing cowboys and indians with replica guns, and later GI Joes or comics. Maybe it is bad, but don't make a medium the culprit with something that has been ingrained in us for a long time. I have to laugh when the crappy 11 o-clock news reporter with his/her seriousness put on the for the camera earnestly "reports" about the dreaded violence in these games, just after the same channel showed blood/guts/gore on CSI or some cops show.
I don't get why these anti-video_game forces get the powerful voice they do, other than the TV channels themselves hating videogames since it is conditioning a generation of kids to prefer active entertainment over passive entertainment, or so my theory goes.
But then, internet > games in this arena (as far as time consumed per average person), and maybe that is why there are the number of TV news scares about the internet is far higher than on games lately.
Screw that, I'd consider suing the warden or the state for reckless endangerment if they put it on the side of the road.
What a great idea! Goading hunters to shoot at a target just a few feet/meters of the road where cars pass.
Ironically enough, one of the fine they (hunter) would incur would be shooting too close to the road. The wardens here are little better than the shooters IMO.
Having all the bloated cons of a regular computer with none of the pros of any other PDA (once the battery ran dry in a measly 2-3 days even when the thing was off, you could kiss your data goodbye).
(2-3 years back, I bought a navigation system once which used a Windows PDA as it's hardware/software base. I couldn't quite get why anyone wouldn't buy a Palm over the PITA and POS that was WindowsCE. Still, I suppose it has a few uses.)
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I've been waiting 10 years for something decent like this to come out in mobile pda/phone devices and all I really got was the move from the proprietary home grown to WindowsCE (yuck) in some parts and minikeyboards becoming more abundant. The integration in devices have really started to suck.
This is also hardware (part of which Apple has patented because multitouch is hard and it is not like a trackpad - look up fingerworks which they bought in 2005), not just software, -- at best, in six months, poorly performing knock-offs will be out that look like this phone turned off, perhaps turned on at the home screen and that will be it.
If Apple didn't come to the scene, in six months we'd have the same old crap. Maybe now there will be a couple generic "me too" products that will perform like crap when pushed.
No, better usability is not just a firmware update away - it is the hardware. And the key to Apple's multitouch has been extensively patented by Fingerworks which they bought in 2005 - I know - I have an iGesture pad - those and the Fingerworks keyboards are unlike anything else on the market and is not a mere trackpad like on most laptops. Check out fingerworks yourself (though you won't be getting any of their keyboards - they ceased business upon being bought).
Anyway, I think people are missing the forest for the trees - this phone is damn good for a first generation product, especially in a niche Apple has no expertise in. Like Microsoft's Zune, this is just an initial iteration but has way more potential because it isn't a crippled me-too product - and like the iPod, with success - it will come down in price in further generations - I predict I will be buying mine in 2 years at $299 (I don't buy Monday morning engineering jobs and I'm locked in a 2 year contract with a Razr right now - which isn't spectacular nor integrated that great at the software level but does the job).
At first, I thought partnering exclusively with Cingular was a mistake - until I ran into my local Walmart and lo and behold, their cell phone display is Cingular. If the rest of their distribution network is this extensive, Apple has nothing to worry about unless Cingular has a crappy price model people don't like.
Also, the benefit with sticking only with Cingular is that they can have Cingular adapt to their phone and integrate it further. If the iPhone is a hit, Apple can strongarm the other providers into the same system once the exclusivitey contract expires because everyone would want a piece of that pie - they could not do this if the phone was completely open to every provider - simply because Apple would find themselves adapting to their service and eventually just having the Lowest Common Demoninator in integration.
(BTW, I agree with you that they should have gone 3G instead of 2G but this is not a deal breaker. Next generation probably. This phone has so much potential that competitors won't know where to begin while Apple will just have to work on some specs and prices to reach an ever wider market with each release.)
Hmm, I have seen a lot of iPhones mockups and they seem to have missed the mark..... all I'm saying is that the devil is in the details:)
Anyway, did people predict the multitouch functionality? I don't know if they did because I don't follow the scene too much - it comes from their purchase of Fingerworks (which was several years back, done in private) - only reason I know that is that I own an iGesture pad and the editing feature (pinching on the iPhone) was possible thank to this tech. Of course, I'm not into all of Mac's products so perhaps they used multitouch before hand.
Carmack is working on space stuff now as a side project. He's hardly getting lazy, though perhaps he's bored with programming shooters.
But I take his word seriously - if he says it was a mistake, it probably was in many respects knowing atypical programmers.
It's not as if this opinion was not said before by others.
Present them with the two (or 3?) most popular distros and let them choose on look and feel - according to distrowatch.com those two would be Ubuntu and OpenSuse right now.
Instead of asking that there be fewer distros, just realize that non-geeky newbs are not going to choose Gentoo or Damn Small Linux anyway and take it out of the mix until they are more comfortable.
Anyway, I think the number of distros is a non-starter. Go into any cell phone store and you'll find at least 20 different models doing different niches and no one complains (aside how crappy they all are.)
So you are essentially because that the people pissing in the wind, speculating every which way, that we knew what was coming because a couple of broad predictions were correct.
Cool!
Computers are going to be faster this decade! With more cores! It may or may not integrate the GPU. I just accurately predicted the entire intel/AMD roadmap for the next five years. Nothing is a surprise or secret!
Since consoles are usually at a set definition (and none are or will be higher than 1080p for the next decade at least) it'll make little difference versus a regular HDTV - all other things being equal.
It'd be a cool computer monitor though:)
But sadly, this thing is insane as a TV anyways - asides a computer - no media can take advantage of it and the channels are already slow as it is to adopt HDTV programming. Maybe I'll have one by the time I'm a grandpa in 30 years....
I bought a couple at Wal-mart recently for a couple bucks. Decent ones too. Actually, they are dual system (metric and standard) but that makes it better in some cases, less so in others.
Forgetting for the moment that this starts at $1000, not $3000, and that for $400 you get a truly barebones PC - can you integrate all those devices seamlessly, with minimal cables, and so on?
I believe the Mac has done well with some integrated products (and not so well on others) that were priced more than the sum of the parts alone. People pay for a seamless experience.
I'm not asserting that AMD will deliver on those promises though.
The EU is like that, always getting into things the government (or this quasi non-elected government) agencies have no business being in. But they have too much money (guess the unwilling source) and blow it on all types of stupid crap.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy when the EU levels the playing field for the computer industry against MS (so the others have a fair shot), but that should be it's only job. There are more than enough search engines around. Google is not a monopoly (yet). This is stupid waste of money and will end up as nothing but another expensive bureacratic blunder.
It looks like they are taking the Ubuntu look... though it could just be the single webpage.
Hello newb, it really seems you don't understand, but this is not an error. At /., we tend to repeat things in all areas because our most of our members (Americans) have ADD and/or short memories. This explains the reelection of our Beloved Leader in 2004 nicely.
/., we tend to repeat things in all areas because our most of our members (Americans) have ADD and/or short memories. This explains the reelection of our Beloved Leader in 2004 nicely.
Hello newb, it really seems you don't understand, but this is not an error. At
If you mean iTunes, then it does make sense for the consumer in some cases - buying a single $0.99 song they like versus an entire album which is probably going to mostly suck or just not their thing.
So consumers are actually doing the smart move there though I still buy CDs (just wait a couple months and get them used really cheap.)
I assume you mean the plastic used to build e-readers.
But imagine if e-readers take over. Less newspapers and books. Less logging and distribution of paper products - daily newspapers and magazines. Shipments from Amazon.com. Less factories set to refine paper and recycle it (our biggest export to China is used paper so they can print their newspapers). Less printers to print crap. Less storage cabinets to store paperwork. Less oil and other materials used all around.
I also imagine companies like Amazon.com should be eager to get on the ebook boat early on - they rather missed the chance to have an iTunes like store even though they sell CDs. The writing is on the wall for companies whose business model revolves soley around shipping data on a physical medium - like Netflix. They'll be viable for another 15 years no doubt - but after that, if they haven't set themselves up as the goto place for electronic distribution of the same products early on, they'll won't survive IMO.
Regular bulbs are cheaper to produce - namely because they don't need a ballast (what is hidden in the base in CFLs) like all fluorescents do. Price a replacement ballast at homedepot for a digital (T32?) fluorescent - it costs between $16-25 for four tubes, sometimes more. So I'm surprised they CFLs got so cheap.
BTW, 60 watt equivalent CFLs cost roughly $1.50 a piece (8 pack) at Costco. Much cheaper than Walmart. Nice, bright, instant on.
(A while back, in my dad's new garage, within 3 weeks - 6 of his fluorescent tube fixtures broke. It was a batch of bad ballasts in them. It would have been a bitch replacing just the ballasts - lots of cutting wires, tying the new one together, tearing the fixture apart and putting it back together again - in other words a PITA. We decided to go with regular bulb fixtures with CFLs because we would get the fluorescent cost benefits but the screw in bulb convenience.)
Anyway, the upfront cost is not worth complaining over - with regular use you got your money back within 3-5 months.
Wouldn't using languages like Lisp do basically the same job? I mention lisp, besides it being a favorite language of mine, because I know the end product can be coded/compiled fast and efficiently while maintaining security in many cases. Other more popular languages like Python, while getting more lispish, seem to have a inherent speed penalty that cannot be reduced as easily come compile time though I am not sure, saying this as more of a spectator to that language.
Note: I'm sure other functional languages can do the job of memory management and protect from buffer overflows as well as Lisp, I'm just no expert on them so I can't speak for them.
It's just that over the years, I have seen products come out for C family of languages that protect the programmers from the trickiers parts of C..... which seem to come up again and again even for expert programmers and where there is no bulletproof solution. I'd want to know if another language wouldn't do the job in 90% of the cases.
Since when did this exact reason stop Microsoft or other software solution providers from pushing their products?
Sorry, just had to say - this is a chicken and the egg problem. Reminds me of Linux "not being ready for the desktop." If no one picked it up to use on the desktop when it wasn't ready, it will likely never be ready. OTOH, the more people use an open piece of software, the more development it attracts.
It could also be a blacklight and they showered them with something beforehand. Hell, even human skin glows slightly under blacklight (as does urine).
Either theory could be valid - it's weird how the pigs seem to glow only in a certain radius - like a light (not necessarily visible to humans) was shown on them - they have dark spots.
In any case I won't rule anything out - it's possible. Watches used to have dials that glowed fluorescent in the dark after a decent exposure to light (phosporus?). Submarines too - WW2 era. I'll read the article to see if the pigs have to be exposed to light beforehand.
The problem is, if I'm paying the same price or more, I'd take the one with Vista simply because I sometimes need Windows. (And it gives me an excuse to install proprietary codecs on my linux computer - I can point to the fact that otherwise I'd have those codecs anyway if I were running Windows and since I paid for Windows I just transferring the codecs to a new platform in end effect. I don't know if this position is 100% but I'm just a private person not a business.)
Also, it would be nice for games.
Vista will be a "success" simply because it comes pre-loaded with all new PCs and releases like this will keep the corps buying the steady income support licenses from MS.
It is MS's game to screw up and that ain't happening soon. (Though I prefer Ubuntu and that Windows has truly become a little bitch to run at home, the OS itself bringing up more pop-ups of various types than some of the worst websites - asking every 3 minutes for input over some bullshit.)
Let us hope so, otherwise he read that joke at least a million times.
And OS X will? (Legally?)
Anyway, Linux or BSD is guaranteed freedom while OS X you have to trust a company. It's that simple. We can analyze Apple all we want but in the end it is a company that can decide to turn one way or the other at any moment. Not so with your average Linux distro.
Or play both sides and get a Mac and dual-boot. Keep your files in open or standard formats so you can easily move to other OSes.
that allows kids 18 years old to be sent to areas they never heard of (Iraq) to fight and die and get mangled/permanently disabled for a cause that has little to do with self-defense (or anything rational, really).
But god forbid that they have any alcohol before they are 21. Or see a violent movie or play a violent game before they are 18 (and get a taste of the hell that is war/violence. Even if they think it is fun at the time).
I sometimes think our culture and priorities are schizophrenic. Sometimes I know it is.
No real point, just a rant, asides the fact that maybe we oughta see video games as the advanced pretend violence it replaces - playing cowboys and indians with replica guns, and later GI Joes or comics. Maybe it is bad, but don't make a medium the culprit with something that has been ingrained in us for a long time. I have to laugh when the crappy 11 o-clock news reporter with his/her seriousness put on the for the camera earnestly "reports" about the dreaded violence in these games, just after the same channel showed blood/guts/gore on CSI or some cops show.
I don't get why these anti-video_game forces get the powerful voice they do, other than the TV channels themselves hating videogames since it is conditioning a generation of kids to prefer active entertainment over passive entertainment, or so my theory goes.
But then, internet > games in this arena (as far as time consumed per average person), and maybe that is why there are the number of TV news scares about the internet is far higher than on games lately.
Screw that, I'd consider suing the warden or the state for reckless endangerment if they put it on the side of the road.
What a great idea! Goading hunters to shoot at a target just a few feet/meters of the road where cars pass.
Ironically enough, one of the fine they (hunter) would incur would be shooting too close to the road. The wardens here are little better than the shooters IMO.
Having all the bloated cons of a regular computer with none of the pros of any other PDA (once the battery ran dry in a measly 2-3 days even when the thing was off, you could kiss your data goodbye).
(2-3 years back, I bought a navigation system once which used a Windows PDA as it's hardware/software base. I couldn't quite get why anyone wouldn't buy a Palm over the PITA and POS that was WindowsCE. Still, I suppose it has a few uses.)