I'm sorry. But for small, and high drain devices AAs won't work. You'd only get an hour or so with AAs in a cellphone, and my entire phone is about as thick as a single AA battery.
The thing is, products that work are fine for dull. boring people like us, but special people need to have an apple product to reassure them that they are special and unique.
Don't be silly. If you buy a sony you can feel l33t and replace the battery.
in all fairness, your minidisc player a) doesn't power a harddrive, flash memory, an LCD, backlight, and the electronics that go with it. It's clearly a more complicated piece of machinery. b) hold an entire music collection.
Yeah, but it does have to spin the, uh, actual minidisk. Which probably takes more work to spin then hard drive platters (no barings, balancing, etc. this is a $2 disk)
Blaming Apple's engineers or design staff is at most a reach, because they didn't manufacture every piece of the iPod, they spec'd out the available technologies and then put them together with some creative hardware and software to (undeniably) create the best mp3 player currently available.
Yes, but they designed it and they designed it with a shitty, non-serviceable battery. Audio hardware isn't like PC hardware. It should last a decade at least.
Apple has learned their lesson. Macs still last longer than PCs and don't devaluate as quickly, but for "low cost" electronics there's no point making something that'll last 4 years and costs three times more than the competitor's product, which are replaced after 2 years.
1) $500 is not "low cost".
2) Most electronics will still work long, long after they are obsolite.
In a couple years, I'm sure you'll be able to buy something super-awesome, but why would you if your iPod still worked. Ultimately, how much storage space do you need for MP3s? Once you have 30 gigs, who needs more?
Unless you're a gadget head, the only feature that would really warrant another purchase ever would be a smaller form factor. Of course, the hard drive will eventually crap out, and since that's 90% of the hardware, you might as well get new one.
It was "just plain wrong" for them to get pissed off that they were told to simply throw away a $300 gadget? WTF? Think about your average user, you think they're not going to believe apples support people when they tell them to "just buy a new one" and that they should simply buy an off-brand battery and hack open their system to try to replace a battery that wasn't designed to be replaced? That's ridiculous.
Sure, some people figured out how to hack in a replacement battery, but that doesn't mean that you're average joe could do it. I mean apple is supposed to be all "user friendly."
My music player weighs 64 grams, is a two thirds as think as the iPod, and it has a replaceable $10 battery. Not much storage, but there's no reason you couldn't use a Cell phone/PDA style battery to run a hard drive.
This is because you were a nerd. No matter what close you wore, you weren't getting laid. But that oscilloscope could make you rich some day...and then the pussy comes ROLLING in.
Okay then, convincing a teen that Actual old faded t-shirts from goodwill are as good as pseudo-faded t-shirts from American Eagle for 5 times as much.
I have to agree with your complaints, but I don't think they're that important to Apple. After all, how many other people have come close to making a similar device?
A lack of user-serviceability in likely fail points is a severe engineering flaw in and of itself. Most people wouldn't even consider a dead battery a "failure".
Why not use gumstick batteries?? Sony has been using them for years in their minidisk players, which are mostly smaller then iPods. When my memory-stick media player battery died, I just poped in a new gumstick from best buy for $10. The thing is about a 1/10th the size of an iPod.
Shun expensive labels or corporate identity?!? What is Apple if not an expensive label or a corporate identity? Don't misunderstand, I kinda like Apple, but I've never understood the way they managed to get people to believe that they were anything other than the BMW or Mercedes of computers: good quality but ultimately too pricey for anybody but yuppies.
Heh, it's funny. The "Apple : Computers:: BMW : cars" is actualy one of their marketing Memes. They want people to think that. You don't need to be a Yuppy to spend an extra $500 or so on a computer, unlike spending an extra $10k on a car. So it works out really well for them.
The iPod charges off the firewire connection to the computer. Most people wouldn't think to make sure their iPod is disconnected from their machine once the thing has been charged up enough, they'll probably leave it connected so that they can synch up their songs whenever they change their playlist.
In fact, if they do need to take care of that, it's a product design failure in and of itself. Users shouldn't need to worry about how long the thing is plugged in, that's just ridiculous. It's easy to have the charger stop charging when it's done. Even my $20 car starter can do this. So can the charger for my camera, my cell phone, my little memory stick music player, the PDAs I never use... I mean come on. Apple fucked this up, there's no getting around it.
You're right. It's completely their responsibility...for the one year period of their warranty. Then you have to fix it your damn self, pay them to do it, or shell out the $150 for ipod 3 year warranty.
Yeah, but for a well designed product, a dead battery does not require "fixing" or "service", it requires a trip to Target, pushing in a button, and popping in new batteries.
On the other hand, Lithium Ion batteries last a long time in a small footprint, but they do die. And to replace them for ANYTHING is expensive, for whatever reason, it's why i made sure my latest digital camera ran off AAs. The $99 (you know, i heard $79 when I looked into it...it s inevitable with these things) upgrade includes some guy taking apart your ipod and replacing the battery,
This is just ridiculous. Lithium Ion batteries will fail and fail within a year or two of constant use. It's just the way they are. Batteries aren't like solid state electronics, which pretty much work forever, or even hard drives (which have a constant failure probability, meaning that it's as likely to break down 20 years after you buy it as the day you bought it).
An irreplaceable battery is simply a horrible design decision, and very poor engineering. Any other company, and people would be screaming to the sky at how shitty a job they've done. But since it's apple, they get a pass from all the people who worship the company.
Mac zealots go on and on about how superior apples engineering is, but this really illustrates that it's not. If it was well designed, it would be user serviceable, certainly for something as simple as replacing the battery. Simply planning to have people trash their $300+ investment every 18 months is certainly not an example of good planning or good engineering.
Sure, you can buy batteries from unofficial online retailers, but supposedly its extremely difficult. If the product had been well designed you'd simply be able to pop in a new cellphone style battery when the old one stopped working.
In fact, I think it stands for the Gimp Toolkit and came out of the gimp project, although I could be wrong. The real question is, why hasn't anyone made an OSS implementation of the Qt API. Dosn't seem like it'd be that hard.
Why hasn't anyone made an OSS implementation of Qt? I don't see why it would be to hard to come up with a drop-in replacement, maybe even based on GTK, (though hopefully more low level).
Isn't KDE a lot smoother and more consistent over all then Gnome? I mean Linus uses it. Especially for business apps, KDE seems like a more natural choice.
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Most of the money for the big-dig is comming from the federal government. Even then, Mass pays more in federal taxes then they get back in pork.
Larger then it would be if used something like this
I'm sorry. But for small, and high drain devices AAs won't work. You'd only get an hour or so with AAs in a cellphone, and my entire phone is about as thick as a single AA battery.
The thing is, products that work are fine for dull. boring people like us, but special people need to have an apple product to reassure them that they are special and unique.
Don't be silly. If you buy a sony you can feel l33t and replace the battery.
in all fairness, your minidisc player a) doesn't power a harddrive, flash memory, an LCD, backlight, and the electronics that go with it. It's clearly a more complicated piece of machinery. b) hold an entire music collection.
Yeah, but it does have to spin the, uh, actual minidisk. Which probably takes more work to spin then hard drive platters (no barings, balancing, etc. this is a $2 disk)
Blaming Apple's engineers or design staff is at most a reach, because they didn't manufacture every piece of the iPod, they spec'd out the available technologies and then put them together with some creative hardware and software to (undeniably) create the best mp3 player currently available.
Yes, but they designed it and they designed it with a shitty, non-serviceable battery. Audio hardware isn't like PC hardware. It should last a decade at least.
Apple has learned their lesson. Macs still last longer than PCs and don't devaluate as quickly, but for "low cost" electronics there's no point making something that'll last 4 years and costs three times more than the competitor's product, which are replaced after 2 years.
1) $500 is not "low cost".
2) Most electronics will still work long, long after they are obsolite.
In a couple years, I'm sure you'll be able to buy something super-awesome, but why would you if your iPod still worked. Ultimately, how much storage space do you need for MP3s? Once you have 30 gigs, who needs more?
Unless you're a gadget head, the only feature that would really warrant another purchase ever would be a smaller form factor. Of course, the hard drive will eventually crap out, and since that's 90% of the hardware, you might as well get new one.
Not to nitpic, but iPods are charged by Firewire, so you charge it by using it.
It was "just plain wrong" for them to get pissed off that they were told to simply throw away a $300 gadget? WTF? Think about your average user, you think they're not going to believe apples support people when they tell them to "just buy a new one" and that they should simply buy an off-brand battery and hack open their system to try to replace a battery that wasn't designed to be replaced? That's ridiculous.
Sure, some people figured out how to hack in a replacement battery, but that doesn't mean that you're average joe could do it. I mean apple is supposed to be all "user friendly."
My music player weighs 64 grams, is a two thirds as think as the iPod, and it has a replaceable $10 battery. Not much storage, but there's no reason you couldn't use a Cell phone/PDA style battery to run a hard drive.
This is because you were a nerd. No matter what close you wore, you weren't getting laid. But that oscilloscope could make you rich some day...and then the pussy comes ROLLING in.
Okay then, convincing a teen that Actual old faded t-shirts from goodwill are as good as pseudo-faded t-shirts from American Eagle for 5 times as much.
I have to agree with your complaints, but I don't think they're that important to Apple. After all, how many other people have come close to making a similar device?
Um, a lot of people. Creative, for one..
A lack of user-serviceability in likely fail points is a severe engineering flaw in and of itself. Most people wouldn't even consider a dead battery a "failure".
Why not use gumstick batteries?? Sony has been using them for years in their minidisk players, which are mostly smaller then iPods. When my memory-stick media player battery died, I just poped in a new gumstick from best buy for $10. The thing is about a 1/10th the size of an iPod.
Does that mean people are still going to be driving their Escalades with 20" "Bling bling" rims in 20 years?
Fuck.
Shun expensive labels or corporate identity?!? What is Apple if not an expensive label or a corporate identity? Don't misunderstand, I kinda like Apple, but I've never understood the way they managed to get people to believe that they were anything other than the BMW or Mercedes of computers: good quality but ultimately too pricey for anybody but yuppies.
:: BMW : cars" is actualy one of their marketing Memes. They want people to think that. You don't need to be a Yuppy to spend an extra $500 or so on a computer, unlike spending an extra $10k on a car. So it works out really well for them.
Heh, it's funny. The "Apple : Computers
The iPod charges off the firewire connection to the computer. Most people wouldn't think to make sure their iPod is disconnected from their machine once the thing has been charged up enough, they'll probably leave it connected so that they can synch up their songs whenever they change their playlist.
In fact, if they do need to take care of that, it's a product design failure in and of itself. Users shouldn't need to worry about how long the thing is plugged in, that's just ridiculous. It's easy to have the charger stop charging when it's done. Even my $20 car starter can do this. So can the charger for my camera, my cell phone, my little memory stick music player, the PDAs I never use... I mean come on. Apple fucked this up, there's no getting around it.
You're right. It's completely their responsibility...for the one year period of their warranty. Then you have to fix it your damn self, pay them to do it, or shell out the $150 for ipod 3 year warranty.
Yeah, but for a well designed product, a dead battery does not require "fixing" or "service", it requires a trip to Target, pushing in a button, and popping in new batteries.
On the other hand, Lithium Ion batteries last a long time in a small footprint, but they do die. And to replace them for ANYTHING is expensive, for whatever reason, it's why i made sure my latest digital camera ran off AAs. The $99 (you know, i heard $79 when I looked into it...it s inevitable with these things) upgrade includes some guy taking apart your ipod and replacing the battery,
This is just ridiculous. Lithium Ion batteries will fail and fail within a year or two of constant use. It's just the way they are. Batteries aren't like solid state electronics, which pretty much work forever, or even hard drives (which have a constant failure probability, meaning that it's as likely to break down 20 years after you buy it as the day you bought it).
An irreplaceable battery is simply a horrible design decision, and very poor engineering. Any other company, and people would be screaming to the sky at how shitty a job they've done. But since it's apple, they get a pass from all the people who worship the company.
Mac zealots go on and on about how superior apples engineering is, but this really illustrates that it's not. If it was well designed, it would be user serviceable, certainly for something as simple as replacing the battery. Simply planning to have people trash their $300+ investment every 18 months is certainly not an example of good planning or good engineering.
Sure, you can buy batteries from unofficial online retailers, but supposedly its extremely difficult. If the product had been well designed you'd simply be able to pop in a new cellphone style battery when the old one stopped working.
In fact, I think it stands for the Gimp Toolkit and came out of the gimp project, although I could be wrong. The real question is, why hasn't anyone made an OSS implementation of the Qt API. Dosn't seem like it'd be that hard.
Why hasn't anyone made an OSS implementation of Qt? I don't see why it would be to hard to come up with a drop-in replacement, maybe even based on GTK, (though hopefully more low level).
Isn't KDE a lot smoother and more consistent over all then Gnome? I mean Linus uses it. Especially for business apps, KDE seems like a more natural choice.
Come on, who amoung us would to the same amount of work we are currently doing for half, or even 20% of what we currently make for the same person?
Walmart censors the music they sell in their store. I don't see why they wouldn't do the same thing online.
Count me out.