A while back when the HD-DVD player came out i read an article about the drive having the capability and enough bandwidth with that USB cable to be able to play games if Microsoft wanted to, and HD-DVD is a lot of data being sent along that cable already when playing the movie. So it could be something that can happen, all they would have to do is release an update that makes it so, and by then i bet the HD-DVD drive would cost around $100 making it worth getting. But more than likely they would make the Hard Drive mandatory for certain games and ship games on 2 DVD's one is an install disc the other is the play disc and the space problem is solved.
I'm not talking about the technical end. It's obviously a possibility to do it, by integrating into new consoles and/or possibly a firmware update to current external HD-DVD units.
As I stated in my post, it becomes a logistical problem that contradicts the benefit of consoles. While not the only benefit, one thing that's a big win for consoles is you can just pick up a game and play it. A PS2 game plays on a PS2, PS2-Slim, etc. A Gamecube game plays on all Gamecubes (orange, platinum, purple, etc). No hastle, just pick and buy.
Unlike a computer where you have to know "will my computer play this game?" Do I have the right hardware? Is it fast enough? etc.
If they allow for HD-DVD games then the average user will have to figure out if game X plays on their nephew's console. It becomes a question of "will it work?" a complicates the issue. People not knowing if their relative has the right component, trying to figure out if it will work, or just buying incompatible games for the holidays. And console makers are trying not to do that.
The Xbox 360 on sale in 3 years time won't look a bit like the one on sale now though. It will have a new set of outputs for whatever standards they have then as well as a much bigger hard drive and (possibly) a compulsory HD-DVD drive for bigger games. It hasn't even lasted 2 years without that black one coming out with a few extra features. Possibly like the PC, the future will be incremental rather than major leaps.
Unfortunately they don't really want to go down that road, it would be a fiasco. Re: compulsory HD-DVD.
If they start forking the XBox 360 even more then it gets too complicated for the user. If the HDDVD drive becomes mandatory then what are publishers to do. Madden 2009 for XBox-360-with-HD-DVD edition?
Sure they can make some changes: slim it down, add some new output options, etc. But the instant they make it different it falls into the PC realm and wondering if your "rig" will be able to play game-X.
Heck, for all of the iterations that the PS2 went through it was always a PS2. It wasn't a PS2.5 or anything.
I guess I'm one of the lucky few. It hasn't been bad at all for me. Install went well, everything I needed to install right away worked, etc. There are a few apps I'm holding off on installing because I hear they aren't Leopard-ready, but they're not that critical.
Honestly, you can't expect any new commercial OS version to be flawless.
But let the flame wars commence.
Anti-Mac zealots will point-and-laugh, though they usually fair just as poorly.
Mac-Zealots will beat their chests and defend their platform to the point of pig-headed-ness.
Linux-Zealots will talk down to everyone else, stating that using a non-open OS is a war crime or some nonsense.
OS X isn't significantly more stable than Linux and the BSDs (or even Windows NT), so that argument is just another lie from the Apple fanboys.
You are correct, as an OS it's no more stable than any of the *nix variants out there. As an OS it's not super-stable, though as a package it's pretty good.
In the end it's more about control and the dollar. They are a hardware/solution company, and NOT a Software company. The percentage they make of OS X sales is not their cup of tea, they rely on their hardware sales.
However there are some CR@PPY PCs out there, things that make even a good distro of Linux cringe. Most notably poor components that have poor support for drivers and don't work well with generic drivers, let alone have decent Windows drivers. I've received some of these and tried resurrecting them via Ubuntu or what-not and encountered a lot of problems to the point that I gave up.
Unfortuantely, these are the PCs Joe Sixpack buys at discount: desktop+monitor+inkjet for $150 after rebates. These are the ones that manage to bring down XP and Vista a couple of times per week. And these are the ones Apple wants no part in.
If they open it up, then every Joe Sixpack out there will give it a go to try on their junk-Machine-5000 to see what all of the fuss is about. When it starts dying 10x more than Windows, they start yelling loudly that OS X runs horrible and has poor support, neglecting to add the fact that Windows runs almost as poorly on those rigs.
Then Apple's image for quality products go down the drain. So, might as well do what they can to keep it off everything they can't control.
Well, they can make their way up along the coast a fair amount. I recall my old place getting hit once or twice really hard in the past, to the point that we didn't have power for 1-2 days. And I was a lot further up the coast than DC.
I'd imagine controlling a viciously-strong storm up the coast could have some devastating consequences. Sure, it wouldn't hit the intended target at full force but if an enemy controlled enough of them during a bad hurricane season they'd wear down the area a little.
Tell me about it. My parents have a hard enough time with a cable box.
Toshiba and company try to do something though, you can contact them to get the latest firmware update on a disc. I guess it's kind of a bootdisk type of thing.
Well, I caved and got an HD-DVD player for the Heroes Season 1 box set.
In my case, it has an Ethernet port in the back. Once you hook it up and go to the settings screen you can download the latest update. While I had no problem with it, I was kind of surprised how difficult they made my player to setup online. It's not like a plug and play: you have to specify if you want DHCP or static, which right away screws over anyone not computer-savvy.
Funny, 1 person mods my previous post as Informative, and another as Flamebait. I don't really see my post as qualifying for that.
I kept it balanced, I said Apple is no saint and definitely has things they need to improve if they want gaming. But some of the things from the article did sound like whining on Valve's part. They went in and suggested things that (in Valve's opinion) Apple could do, and they didn't get done. Yet other companies have done fine with what Apple has, usually those that work with more with OpenGL.
In the end, it comes down to effort vs reward: Apple gaming market is small, so why bother. Nothing is stopping Valve from developing Apple games except their view that the effort isn't worth the reward, which I can't blame them for since that's the feelings for most publishers and developers.
But in the end, it's just Valve's side of the story and their PoV tends to have an odd skew to it.
Sounds like whining from Valve to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Apple is a saint or anything. They should probably make things easier and up the hardware a little more.
Other game companies have made games for Apple no problem: ID, EA, Blizzard, etc. The difference is they accept that they have to go with OpenGL. Some of them are fairly recent ones too. Apple has even made 1-2 updates that include fixes for a game, so they "care." I've always seen it as an effort vs reward type of thing: a bunch of work for a smaller audience makes it less likely to happen.
My guess is they're asking Apple to do something along the lines of Direct-X, to make it easy to adapt an DX game for some mythical Apple architecture. They probably want big architecture changes or additions, things they aren't just going to do on a whim because of Valve.
After the things Valve did, it's hard for me to take their side after just hearing their claim. Heck, even against MS I'd have a hard time just believing Valve.
Where did you get your assumption that "high definition" should be defined as "1920x1080 native resolution, progressive scan, 60 frames per second"?
That bugs me. I know people that think that unless it's 1080p it's not true HD.
I once told a pal my 2 year old TV was a 720p digital projection. He responded saying "that's not HD." He then went on and on about 1080p and such and how this show is so great. I told him the show was being broadcast at 720p like most of that network's shows. Then he said "Well others show 1080p" and I said "No, they show 1080i which takes up about the same bandwidth as 720p."
I don't care "how many lines" my TV renders: it's a 42" TV that didn't break my account (even back then) and looks sharp. My next TV will either be another 42" Digital projector or something else around that price point.
I don't know much about electronics, but not everything scales linearly. Perhaps out of that 11W there is a baseline, like a processors + red LED light (showing it's on) + infrared sensor + etc. So maybe only portion would have to increase x-times as the size increases?
Agreed. It's probably illegal and an insane suggestion.
However, to play devil's advocate, I'm sure the label probably figured "well, if they don't have the exp date or the owner's name they should be OK." I mean, I can guess any 16-digit Visa number and probably guess one correctly. Without a name or expiration date it would be pretty useless.
Again, horribly wrong on so many levels. However I can probably see their train of logic
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it optional to accept a firmware update through iTunes? I thought it was just something that comes up in iTunes much like an iPod firmware update. If that's the case, any user with an unlocked iPhone could/should choose to ignore it, thus it is not mandatory.
If they made it a background/transparent upgrade over-the-air without the user's knowledge then I could see it being a legal issue since it would unknowingly stop their service and potentially leave them stranded in an emergency. An iTunes update just makes it an annoyance, so long as they prompt you saying "Warning: if you unlocked your iPhone this will disable it."
Anybody that unlocked their iPhone must have known there'd be fallout, and that the future would probably turn into a game of cat-and-mouse. They unlock the phone, Apple brick the phone, they unbrick it, etc.
I personally think all phones should be sold unlocked, but it's rare to find them. The fact that Apple is reactively fighting back is a little new, but not unseen.
My old school became pretty bad about this after I left.
In the store, they wrap each book with shrink wrap and place a big opaque sticker over where the ISBN is.
They have guys walking around to make sure you're not trying to circumvent their sticker-protector.
I believe they also did something to prevent you from looking through the used books to find the info.
The online store only lists the author+title. It does not list the ISBN, edition, year, or have a picture.
It was kind of sad, they were annoying back when I attended but at least they posted the ISBNs on their website and didn't cover them in the store with stickers. I guess they became overcome by greed.
I did that back when I was in college too. However the school wised up, my brother went there some years later and they had updated their online book store. Now when you select the course, it only shows you the author and title of the book: ISBN, edition, or year. Kind of sucks, they could at least pretend to be not-for-profit.
Ah, but with the Wii they've untapped that market. They now sell their old games, not all but a lot.
So, they have a leg to stand on. Sites like that potentially take away from current sales.
Agreed. I tried doing the whole laptop thing towards the end of college using different methods, and in the end my hand-written notes were always better and stuck with me. Plus the teacher would get annoyed and I'd be too tempted to browse the Net or do some coursework for another class during an easy lecture.
The only thing I liked about it was a few teachers asked that we follow with a printout of PowerPoint slides. In those cases I'd view them on my laptop because printing out 50 page presentations 3 nights a week was such a pain.
While I don't think Jobs will go after the Linux hack, I wouldn't be surprised even for a second if he does: he's pretty aggressive about protecting Apple IP as you know (even from random bloggers out there).
I agree that Jobs is big on protecting his IP. But people need to cut some slack on the whole blogging thing.
Apple likes to keep things a secret until the show so they get the "oh my gosh" factor going.
As such they have tight NDAs.
Someone broke their NDA and gave info to a blogger.
Blogger posted the "secret" details.
Apple is ticked, and wants the NDA violator's head on a stick for being in breach of contract and spoiling the "oh my gosh" moment.
Blogger refuses to tell them who violated the NDA, and tries to hide behind the rights given to the press.
Apple puts pressure on blogger, which turns into PR fiasco.
What makes Apple's offering any better than anyone else's?
It isn't that they're the best at any one thing, but it's that they manage to combine a whole lot of things together really well. Though I hate the analogy, let's look at a car. You don't pick one simply because it has the best engine, you try to get one that's put together well and scores high on all major categories: safety, handling, stability, etc.
That, and iTunes lock-in.
All in all, they're decent pieces of hardware. I finally broke down and bought myself my first iPod a couple of weeks ago (the new Nano, super-thin flash-based). My entire music collection is either ripped from old CDs or purchased via iTunes, and I wanted to start listening to my purchased stuff at work without worrying about breaking company policy by installing iTunes at work.
Other companies, like iRiver, offer a couple of superior units while others sell trash. So, I guess the draw of Apple of the other good ones is simply iTunes.
Well, if you were helping distribute anime fansubs, then I take it you were doing a lot of uploading. Is the 20GB/month referring to the uploading or downloading?
I know for 100% sure on the component cable angle, which is why some people are hesitant about using older XBox 360's and the HDDVD addon since older 360s only support component. You can look that issue up on any page that discusses the issue. If you trust Wikipedia enough I'm sure you can look there.
As for DVI, I'm just going by what an IT specialist told me. So it's possible that he was wrong, he's into TVs and Satellites but his true expertise is computers.
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As I stated in my post, it becomes a logistical problem that contradicts the benefit of consoles. While not the only benefit, one thing that's a big win for consoles is you can just pick up a game and play it. A PS2 game plays on a PS2, PS2-Slim, etc. A Gamecube game plays on all Gamecubes (orange, platinum, purple, etc). No hastle, just pick and buy.
Unlike a computer where you have to know "will my computer play this game?" Do I have the right hardware? Is it fast enough? etc.
If they allow for HD-DVD games then the average user will have to figure out if game X plays on their nephew's console. It becomes a question of "will it work?" a complicates the issue. People not knowing if their relative has the right component, trying to figure out if it will work, or just buying incompatible games for the holidays. And console makers are trying not to do that.
If they start forking the XBox 360 even more then it gets too complicated for the user. If the HDDVD drive becomes mandatory then what are publishers to do. Madden 2009 for XBox-360-with-HD-DVD edition?
Sure they can make some changes: slim it down, add some new output options, etc. But the instant they make it different it falls into the PC realm and wondering if your "rig" will be able to play game-X.
Heck, for all of the iterations that the PS2 went through it was always a PS2. It wasn't a PS2.5 or anything.
Honestly, you can't expect any new commercial OS version to be flawless.
But let the flame wars commence.
- Anti-Mac zealots will point-and-laugh, though they usually fair just as poorly.
- Mac-Zealots will beat their chests and defend their platform to the point of pig-headed-ness.
- Linux-Zealots will talk down to everyone else, stating that using a non-open OS is a war crime or some nonsense.
Why can't people be more moderate?In the end it's more about control and the dollar. They are a hardware/solution company, and NOT a Software company. The percentage they make of OS X sales is not their cup of tea, they rely on their hardware sales.
However there are some CR@PPY PCs out there, things that make even a good distro of Linux cringe. Most notably poor components that have poor support for drivers and don't work well with generic drivers, let alone have decent Windows drivers. I've received some of these and tried resurrecting them via Ubuntu or what-not and encountered a lot of problems to the point that I gave up.
Unfortuantely, these are the PCs Joe Sixpack buys at discount: desktop+monitor+inkjet for $150 after rebates. These are the ones that manage to bring down XP and Vista a couple of times per week. And these are the ones Apple wants no part in.
If they open it up, then every Joe Sixpack out there will give it a go to try on their junk-Machine-5000 to see what all of the fuss is about. When it starts dying 10x more than Windows, they start yelling loudly that OS X runs horrible and has poor support, neglecting to add the fact that Windows runs almost as poorly on those rigs.
Then Apple's image for quality products go down the drain. So, might as well do what they can to keep it off everything they can't control.
Well, they can make their way up along the coast a fair amount. I recall my old place getting hit once or twice really hard in the past, to the point that we didn't have power for 1-2 days. And I was a lot further up the coast than DC.
I'd imagine controlling a viciously-strong storm up the coast could have some devastating consequences. Sure, it wouldn't hit the intended target at full force but if an enemy controlled enough of them during a bad hurricane season they'd wear down the area a little.
Tell me about it. My parents have a hard enough time with a cable box.
Toshiba and company try to do something though, you can contact them to get the latest firmware update on a disc. I guess it's kind of a bootdisk type of thing.
Well, I caved and got an HD-DVD player for the Heroes Season 1 box set. In my case, it has an Ethernet port in the back. Once you hook it up and go to the settings screen you can download the latest update. While I had no problem with it, I was kind of surprised how difficult they made my player to setup online. It's not like a plug and play: you have to specify if you want DHCP or static, which right away screws over anyone not computer-savvy.
Funny, 1 person mods my previous post as Informative, and another as Flamebait. I don't really see my post as qualifying for that.
I kept it balanced, I said Apple is no saint and definitely has things they need to improve if they want gaming. But some of the things from the article did sound like whining on Valve's part. They went in and suggested things that (in Valve's opinion) Apple could do, and they didn't get done. Yet other companies have done fine with what Apple has, usually those that work with more with OpenGL.
In the end, it comes down to effort vs reward: Apple gaming market is small, so why bother. Nothing is stopping Valve from developing Apple games except their view that the effort isn't worth the reward, which I can't blame them for since that's the feelings for most publishers and developers.
But in the end, it's just Valve's side of the story and their PoV tends to have an odd skew to it.
Sounds like whining from Valve to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Apple is a saint or anything. They should probably make things easier and up the hardware a little more.
Other game companies have made games for Apple no problem: ID, EA, Blizzard, etc. The difference is they accept that they have to go with OpenGL. Some of them are fairly recent ones too. Apple has even made 1-2 updates that include fixes for a game, so they "care." I've always seen it as an effort vs reward type of thing: a bunch of work for a smaller audience makes it less likely to happen.
My guess is they're asking Apple to do something along the lines of Direct-X, to make it easy to adapt an DX game for some mythical Apple architecture. They probably want big architecture changes or additions, things they aren't just going to do on a whim because of Valve.
After the things Valve did, it's hard for me to take their side after just hearing their claim. Heck, even against MS I'd have a hard time just believing Valve.
I once told a pal my 2 year old TV was a 720p digital projection. He responded saying "that's not HD." He then went on and on about 1080p and such and how this show is so great. I told him the show was being broadcast at 720p like most of that network's shows. Then he said "Well others show 1080p" and I said "No, they show 1080i which takes up about the same bandwidth as 720p."
I don't care "how many lines" my TV renders: it's a 42" TV that didn't break my account (even back then) and looks sharp. My next TV will either be another 42" Digital projector or something else around that price point.
Well, the Oracle did verbally admit that he assumed the ark was a Shield World. That's from Ghosts of Onyx.
I don't know much about electronics, but not everything scales linearly. Perhaps out of that 11W there is a baseline, like a processors + red LED light (showing it's on) + infrared sensor + etc. So maybe only portion would have to increase x-times as the size increases?
Agreed. It's probably illegal and an insane suggestion.
However, to play devil's advocate, I'm sure the label probably figured "well, if they don't have the exp date or the owner's name they should be OK." I mean, I can guess any 16-digit Visa number and probably guess one correctly. Without a name or expiration date it would be pretty useless.
Again, horribly wrong on so many levels. However I can probably see their train of logic
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it optional to accept a firmware update through iTunes? I thought it was just something that comes up in iTunes much like an iPod firmware update. If that's the case, any user with an unlocked iPhone could/should choose to ignore it, thus it is not mandatory.
If they made it a background/transparent upgrade over-the-air without the user's knowledge then I could see it being a legal issue since it would unknowingly stop their service and potentially leave them stranded in an emergency. An iTunes update just makes it an annoyance, so long as they prompt you saying "Warning: if you unlocked your iPhone this will disable it."
Anybody that unlocked their iPhone must have known there'd be fallout, and that the future would probably turn into a game of cat-and-mouse. They unlock the phone, Apple brick the phone, they unbrick it, etc.
I personally think all phones should be sold unlocked, but it's rare to find them. The fact that Apple is reactively fighting back is a little new, but not unseen.
My old school became pretty bad about this after I left.
- In the store, they wrap each book with shrink wrap and place a big opaque sticker over where the ISBN is.
- They have guys walking around to make sure you're not trying to circumvent their sticker-protector.
- I believe they also did something to prevent you from looking through the used books to find the info.
- The online store only lists the author+title. It does not list the ISBN, edition, year, or have a picture.
It was kind of sad, they were annoying back when I attended but at least they posted the ISBNs on their website and didn't cover them in the store with stickers. I guess they became overcome by greed.I did that back when I was in college too. However the school wised up, my brother went there some years later and they had updated their online book store. Now when you select the course, it only shows you the author and title of the book: ISBN, edition, or year. Kind of sucks, they could at least pretend to be not-for-profit.
Ah, but with the Wii they've untapped that market. They now sell their old games, not all but a lot. So, they have a leg to stand on. Sites like that potentially take away from current sales.
Agreed. I tried doing the whole laptop thing towards the end of college using different methods, and in the end my hand-written notes were always better and stuck with me. Plus the teacher would get annoyed and I'd be too tempted to browse the Net or do some coursework for another class during an easy lecture.
The only thing I liked about it was a few teachers asked that we follow with a printout of PowerPoint slides. In those cases I'd view them on my laptop because printing out 50 page presentations 3 nights a week was such a pain.
That, and iTunes lock-in.
All in all, they're decent pieces of hardware. I finally broke down and bought myself my first iPod a couple of weeks ago (the new Nano, super-thin flash-based). My entire music collection is either ripped from old CDs or purchased via iTunes, and I wanted to start listening to my purchased stuff at work without worrying about breaking company policy by installing iTunes at work.
Other companies, like iRiver, offer a couple of superior units while others sell trash. So, I guess the draw of Apple of the other good ones is simply iTunes.
Well, if you were helping distribute anime fansubs, then I take it you were doing a lot of uploading. Is the 20GB/month referring to the uploading or downloading?
I know for 100% sure on the component cable angle, which is why some people are hesitant about using older XBox 360's and the HDDVD addon since older 360s only support component. You can look that issue up on any page that discusses the issue. If you trust Wikipedia enough I'm sure you can look there.
As for DVI, I'm just going by what an IT specialist told me. So it's possible that he was wrong, he's into TVs and Satellites but his true expertise is computers.
For most things I've seen step 1 is only done once, usually around the time you setup your account. After that it's usually 1-2 click downloads.
As someone already mentioned, you're the perfect illustration of this whole situation.
This switchover is to Digital, not HD
The FCC is mandating they go w/ digital broadcasts, they'd still be standard-definition but older TVs will need a settop box to decode them.