I like two parts. Where the MS exec, describes MS as the innovator, not copying technologies, then listed a few which aren't due until about 2006/2007. (Technologies that are already available in Apple's Mac OS 10.3 & 10.4 Dev Preview.)
Then also asks what linux can deliver that MS can't. I think the short answer to that would be that linux has a social conscience of infinite magnitude in comparison to the 'black hearted' MS corp. MS offer plenty of stuff, patent lawsuits after agreements that read something like 'we can steal your patents, but don't touch ours'. Also MS can give you all the security updates you need.. 3 weeks after the internet slows to a crawl with Windows worm traffic. MS can also give you a hefty priced lock in cycle.
MS's fear seems to come from the fact that you can get equal functionality and better quality from something that is free.(With acknowledgment that alot of users aren't interested in buying new hardware, with that, old hardware does exist.)
Why pay excessive amounts of money to fund a company running it's own agenda? Or using that money to unfairly, and with questionable ethics, nail out competition?
MS don't seem interested in developing a better product+service package that compels users to pay for it, rather they look for each companies funny bone and strike at it with lawyers and/or software contamination.
So combining these business 'values' that MS have(in contrast to social values), it becomes clear to me that users would still run linux even if it ran at a fraction of the speed of MS software. The real world difference, (even in MS funded benchmarking) shows minimal difference between the speed of both platforms. This leaving the user to make an ethical choice. This is why MS miss out on future opportunities from the user bases of companies they've assassinated over the years. Note MS's failure to recognise that when they kill a company, it angers that companies user base(creating them more work plus a costly turn over program), who in return will endeavour to not use MS products.)
In Australia we don't have fair use, making it technically illegal to copy music from a cd onto our computers and onto a 3rd party device... however what we don't have is the ARIA suing music listeners, or trying to get products taken off shelves.
We also have compulsory voting, which does a pretty good job of putting fear in our politicians.
Coincidently there is an article on smh.com.au detailing how the only legal music we can put on iPod at the moment is the music a user has created. No iTunes music store, and Rip. Burn. Mix. isn't legal here. (With no enforcers.)
I like their PR wording, keep up with volume... it's a nice way of saying (that just like everyone else in the industry) "We've hit a wall at 90nm that we weren't expecting, and it's minimised volume output"
It seems alot of people spill drinks into their laptops, the result of this is often them completing their home cookery by 'drying out' their iBook/Powerbook/etc in the oven... and then forgetting about it. Frying the plastic excessively
Here is one example:
http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=1341
There are a few other examples out there where they've molten the system alot more than the above example. Interestingly though, of all the Apples I've heard this story about, they all still work, with the seldom exception of the lcd screen being molten.
Microsoft lured developers to produce "Java" applications with their tools, the result of using their market dominance to produce an off-spec half breed, which essentially dented java cross platform compatibility earlier on, and hindered it's acceptance, ensuring legal battles kept the delay for quite a while.
With Macromedia promising full SVGT support in Flash Lite, yet showing they really don't know much about the standard; is this just the same trick all over again? You'll have SVGT and Macromedia SVGT, and they'll be mostly compatible, but not have a consistent experience due to Macromedia "bugs". One thing about the mobile industry I have noticed, is they have been alot smarter than PC makers when it comes to deploying technologies on their platforms. I suspect mobile makers will see this problem in advance and opt away from Flash Lite's SVGT support.
(Historically mobile makers have tested each platform in a small number of phones, such as Windows CE for mobiles, they are generally smart enough to market test products to see how they are adopted, rather than attempt to force new standards down throats. This is why competition is a good thing, with competition it's the consumers that dictate product direction through sales.)
Camera's in sydney city have been there for many years. We just ignore them. They serve as an advantage as generally there is video evidence for street crimes such as the occasional mugging.
Also street cameras are hardly invasive, cameras are usually installed all over the city to monitor traffic, no one cries about that, and the reason is that they are pointed at traffice and the streets. What they aren't doing is lingering into people's apartment windows.
I wouldn't cry foul about your city's police finding new ways to deter crime, and to follow up crimes committed.
After all what are you really losing? When you walk down a street hundreds of people can see you, some even taking photos that you may get caught in, you don't cry privacy fears then.
This was the only good idea to come about from the colour screen. After all with the belkin photo card reader adapter for the ipod, many were left curious if the ipod would in the future be able to view these photos.
The problem here is that it begins to turn the iPod into an all in one convergence device. All in one devices are generally a pretty bad idea, when you can just make a PDA instead. Now since the PDA market appears to be shrinking, this isn't really the direction the player should be making. Alot of extra cost, for very little benefit and only marginally more sales (or possibly: less)
I disagree, to update an iPod, you plug it in, do nothing and unplug it. No need to find a music file, drag and drop it into a folder on a mounted drive. With iTunes you can go from doing nothing and have it automatically update all your new songs, then to making automatic playlists which will search through your music to fit categories and update those, to finally totally custom playlists, which you can then additionally have shuffle. After all those much simplier methods, dragging and dropping is ancient and clumbsy.
The thickness and power requirements of a colour screen make it a poor choice for a device that is designed to play music. What use is colour? Perhaps some minimal labelling or to flitter visualisations at me here and there?
When you see people using their iPods, the behaviour is that the interface lets them choose music quickly, with little/or no need to look at the screen after this.
A colour screen would be nothing more than an eyecandy waste. Reality is most of an iPod's life is to live in someone's pocket. Apple realise this, moving the buttons back to a previous arrangement where a user does not need to look at the iPod to press each button, which was a common UI issue with the former generation iPod.
The sensible (and arguably the best) method of putting tracks on it is iTunes, even when music match for the PC was responsible for this, it too did a fine job. iTunes is available for Windows & Mac, linux programmers have also created similar music syncing software.
To address your format concerns, the iPod plays AIFF, WAV, MP3, Audiobooks and AAC. The first three of those are DRM free. Additionally the rights management on AAC is hardly limiting, the rights are static and unable to be changed by a 3rd party over time.
The price argument is negotiable, with 3Million sales, it couldn't be too limiting a price.
I think this article legitimately makes it to the front page. The reason for that is, slashdot is about technology, the iPod happens to be an example of technology that has become a growing cultural icon. When the three headlines for a huge publication are "9/11", "Iraq", and "iPod", with the "iPod" leading. It's almost surprising that slashdot doesn't have _more_ articles about it.
Despite the lack of significance (it is, after all, simply a music player), there are many surrounding wider effects that have come from it, and this is where the publicity is deserved.
This is interesting news. I mentioned earlier that in Australia the price gap between the low end iPod and iPod mini is negligible ($50 AUD isn't much in USD about $35). It proves that consumers are interested in aesthetics with feasible capacity in preference to just raw storage capacity. After all alot of consumers don't have more than 4GB of songs.
Additionally iTunes makes it easy to make good use of that 4GB. Good options to automatically control what music is placed on the device.
Of particular interest will be the sale of the iPod mini in Australia, the price gap here, is identical to the USA price gap... Except our dollar is worth significantly less. (The american price gap with a currency converter is about $90-$100 Australian dollars [depending on the current rate]) That's about a $25 USD difference between the two. I'm suspecting this is a tactic to keep 15GB iPods selling over the iPod mini, which is still not in a production to meet demand. So those that really want it, can still get it without the wider appeal.
I feel Apple will price adjust when 4gb players are being produced to adequet capacity, and simultaneously introduce a larger model.
Similiarly there was no 2GB iPod mini, despite the available HD because it would be the same price as the 4GB.
Re:Many people feel Expose serves well enough
on
Hacking Quartz
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet in the post, Expose has an hidden feature which does this window wells idea that you are talking about. It'll shrink the desktop+windows into a small portion of the screen, clicking it brings it back. It's not totally elegant yet, so i can see why apple have it disabled.
Employers that won't pay for company owned/employer held equipment are cheap, they most likely are also not interested in giving raises so don't think that this will lead you onto a better career path. Also forget company sponsored courses if this is their attitude.
It's the out-of-touch upper hierarchy that make these cut backs. They normally receive corporate level kick backs/bonuses for culling expenditure.
Meanwhile what's next, pay for our webservers.. as a committed and thoughtful employee you understand our need for a prescence on the world wide web...
as a considerate and thoughtful employee you will now receive no income, in exchange for happy thoughts, sunshine and farts.
If you implement some old apple technology, you're on the road to disaster.
A good example was the LabelsX software for 10.2, giving the 10.2 finder labels support, however it was obvious labels would be added in eventually, and hence the labelsX software was made redundant by 10.3. Apple simply reimplementing something they already had.
Application switching, same story, OSX already had it, giving it a gui was an obvious direction, an utter no-brainer, every other OS has a very similar looking app swapper. Apple's implementation is not a copy of the 3rd party app as it's the same design theme apple use for all their instant menus (50% transparent black square with rounded edges, containing an item at 128x128 pixels with a drop shadow) same as eject, volume & brightness. You can't accuse apple of copying the look of a piece of software when this software was immitating the look of Apple's own OS X. Many other applications also implement these design cues, such as Synergy an iTunes addition. (Rating popups etc are all in this theme.)
Now come konfabulator, which found it's way into my trash can due to the widgets filling the screen with info that doesn't need to be cluttering my desktop 24/7, the programmer has confused quick access with desktop persistance. It was natural for apple to take some more of their older technology, in this case Desk Accessories and reimplement it (down to using the same accessories as seen in screenshots from builds from 1984). While some might find this convenient that apple chose to implement something that is known to be popular, I point you to apple's introduction of handwriting recognition from the newton into 10.2. This wasn't a popular 3rd party app, and no 3rd party application was trampled by this feature which would be used significantly less than dashboard. Yet apple introduced it anyway, why, because they have the technology and might as well use it. I can't make it clear enough that apple has a trend of reimplementing all their older features into new versions of OS X. It gives users no reason to stay on any older Mac OS, and we all know that the transition to X was a big deal for Jobs. Dashboard's implementation, specifically the use of making it one-button accessible is apple's understanding that accessibility is not the result of placing things on the desktop, they had learnt this earlier on(alot of windows on the desktop, and they can still be difficult to access) and from this knowledge came exposé, naturally dashboard is an extension of exposé.
Arlo has basically duplicated the original desktop accessories, with no innovation(only modernisation), they behaved the same way as the originals, they just sat there on the desktop. As a minimum, apple have added some innovation by giving the user control of their appearance and disappearance through exposé
I feel Arlo gives himself too much credit with konfabulator, not only was the idea not new, but neither was the concept of using Javascript to power small simple desktop features. This was also completed on numerous platforms long before the release of konfabulator, to insinuate that his idea was original is flattery, and an explaination of how the patent system gives out tech patents despite endless streams of prior art.
The visual resemblence is the result of what happens when you duplicate the look and feel of OS X in your applications. He did after all work for Apple in the UI dept.
So now take Apple, reimplementing yet another older feature into OS X, why shouldn't they license it, simply, because they already made this feature long before konfabulator, albeit OS X even existed. How insulting to the original inventor, to pay money for an idea he had implemented some 20 years ago. If anyone should be paying royalties, it's Arlo. If he had a case for a patent, then he'd already have it, but due to the loads of prior art, he doesn't. (plenty of patent sponsors out there wanting only a %.)
So what we see in the end, is not a corporate giant mugging the little guy, closer inspection shows that it's actually just a case of arlo taking something old making it shiny(literally, that's all he did), then pretending he owned the concept+idea all along.
It doesn't work with the easiest online music store, that has the best restrictions (or lack thereof), that are the same for every single song & album, that I purchase. I like to be in reasonable control and "own" my music.
I'd rather die before using the visual abortion that is windows media player. (pre iTunes, i muchly perferred winamp, as it wasn't a under optimised clutterific splendor of crap that WMP has built itself to be.)
Also i'd like a product that actually has a continuing development cycle, that has shown that customer feedback, technological advances and hardware flaw identification make design changes in new revisions. Not just a competitors fickle attempt at duplicating a market.
Dell's philosophy to market research is seeing what other people are doing that makes money and photocopying it. So as proven by history, they'll have whatever new toys other companies have.. just 2 years later, and in some cheap metallic or blue plastic
The final problem is that I'd have to actually use a Dell DJ, ever used one? It's a nuclear winter of discontentment.
Finally since I've had my iPod for several years now fault free I don't see any reason to give it up.
(10GB model..) I was even using it on my old PC with XPod software for windows. I've personally had no battery issues with mine. Out of 3 Million iPods sold, a very small % happen to have the dreaded battery issue, hardly a reason to jump ship to a product still in it's first (and probably last) cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
5 months later it'll be deemed that our eye sight can be tapped under the PATRIOT act and similar.
http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/ The link in the title article copy is a link to the apple store (to a timed out session)
Then also asks what linux can deliver that MS can't. I think the short answer to that would be that linux has a social conscience of infinite magnitude in comparison to the 'black hearted' MS corp.
MS offer plenty of stuff, patent lawsuits after agreements that read something like 'we can steal your patents, but don't touch ours'. Also MS can give you all the security updates you need.. 3 weeks after the internet slows to a crawl with Windows worm traffic.
MS can also give you a hefty priced lock in cycle.
MS's fear seems to come from the fact that you can get equal functionality and better quality from something that is free.(With acknowledgment that alot of users aren't interested in buying new hardware, with that, old hardware does exist.)
Why pay excessive amounts of money to fund a company running it's own agenda? Or using that money to unfairly, and with questionable ethics, nail out competition?
MS don't seem interested in developing a better product+service package that compels users to pay for it, rather they look for each companies funny bone and strike at it with lawyers and/or software contamination.
So combining these business 'values' that MS have(in contrast to social values), it becomes clear to me that users would still run linux even if it ran at a fraction of the speed of MS software. The real world difference, (even in MS funded benchmarking) shows minimal difference between the speed of both platforms. This leaving the user to make an ethical choice. This is why MS miss out on future opportunities from the user bases of companies they've assassinated over the years. Note MS's failure to recognise that when they kill a company, it angers that companies user base(creating them more work plus a costly turn over program), who in return will endeavour to not use MS products.)
We also have compulsory voting, which does a pretty good job of putting fear in our politicians.
Coincidently there is an article on smh.com.au detailing how the only legal music we can put on iPod at the moment is the music a user has created. No iTunes music store, and Rip. Burn. Mix. isn't legal here. (With no enforcers.)
I like their PR wording, keep up with volume... it's a nice way of saying (that just like everyone else in the industry) "We've hit a wall at 90nm that we weren't expecting, and it's minimised volume output"
Just a note, in the URL of that linked website, that iBook was the result of a house fire. Not an oven drying attempt gone wrong.
Here is one example: http://www.mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=1341
There are a few other examples out there where they've molten the system alot more than the above example. Interestingly though, of all the Apples I've heard this story about, they all still work, with the seldom exception of the lcd screen being molten.
With Macromedia promising full SVGT support in Flash Lite, yet showing they really don't know much about the standard; is this just the same trick all over again?
You'll have SVGT and Macromedia SVGT, and they'll be mostly compatible, but not have a consistent experience due to Macromedia "bugs".
One thing about the mobile industry I have noticed, is they have been alot smarter than PC makers when it comes to deploying technologies on their platforms. I suspect mobile makers will see this problem in advance and opt away from Flash Lite's SVGT support.
(Historically mobile makers have tested each platform in a small number of phones, such as Windows CE for mobiles, they are generally smart enough to market test products to see how they are adopted, rather than attempt to force new standards down throats. This is why competition is a good thing, with competition it's the consumers that dictate product direction through sales.)
Other music services should sue for anticompetitive behaviour, probably the source of the gag order on each contract.
Also street cameras are hardly invasive, cameras are usually installed all over the city to monitor traffic, no one cries about that, and the reason is that they are pointed at traffice and the streets. What they aren't doing is lingering into people's apartment windows.
I wouldn't cry foul about your city's police finding new ways to deter crime, and to follow up crimes committed.
After all what are you really losing? When you walk down a street hundreds of people can see you, some even taking photos that you may get caught in, you don't cry privacy fears then.
I really don't see how this can be a bad thing.
The problem here is that it begins to turn the iPod into an all in one convergence device. All in one devices are generally a pretty bad idea, when you can just make a PDA instead. Now since the PDA market appears to be shrinking, this isn't really the direction the player should be making. Alot of extra cost, for very little benefit and only marginally more sales (or possibly: less)
I disagree, to update an iPod, you plug it in, do nothing and unplug it.
No need to find a music file, drag and drop it into a folder on a mounted drive. With iTunes you can go from doing nothing and have it automatically update all your new songs, then to making automatic playlists which will search through your music to fit categories and update those, to finally totally custom playlists, which you can then additionally have shuffle.
After all those much simplier methods, dragging and dropping is ancient and clumbsy.
When you see people using their iPods, the behaviour is that the interface lets them choose music quickly, with little/or no need to look at the screen after this.
A colour screen would be nothing more than an eyecandy waste.
Reality is most of an iPod's life is to live in someone's pocket. Apple realise this, moving the buttons back to a previous arrangement where a user does not need to look at the iPod to press each button, which was a common UI issue with the former generation iPod.
The sensible (and arguably the best) method of putting tracks on it is iTunes, even when music match for the PC was responsible for this, it too did a fine job. iTunes is available for Windows & Mac, linux programmers have also created similar music syncing software.
To address your format concerns, the iPod plays AIFF, WAV, MP3, Audiobooks and AAC. The first three of those are DRM free. Additionally the rights management on AAC is hardly limiting, the rights are static and unable to be changed by a 3rd party over time.
The price argument is negotiable, with 3Million sales, it couldn't be too limiting a price.
The reason for that is, slashdot is about technology, the iPod happens to be an example of technology that has become a growing cultural icon.
When the three headlines for a huge publication are "9/11", "Iraq", and "iPod", with the "iPod" leading. It's almost surprising that slashdot doesn't have _more_ articles about it.
Despite the lack of significance (it is, after all, simply a music player), there are many surrounding wider effects that have come from it, and this is where the publicity is deserved.
It looks like spymac.com block referred URLs, copy/paste into a new browser window to get the image.
i'm sure this is going to flood someone badly, but here is a close up http://www.spymac.com/upload/gallery/f_0/user_117/ medium/upload_200466.jpg
Additionally a higher setting can be used to totally vapourise your opponents creating real suspense in those show down situations.
It proves that consumers are interested in aesthetics with feasible capacity in preference to just raw storage capacity. After all alot of consumers don't have more than 4GB of songs.
Additionally iTunes makes it easy to make good use of that 4GB. Good options to automatically control what music is placed on the device.
Apple like playing with names BHA.
Except our dollar is worth significantly less. (The american price gap with a currency converter is about $90-$100 Australian dollars [depending on the current rate]) That's about a $25 USD difference between the two.
I'm suspecting this is a tactic to keep 15GB iPods selling over the iPod mini, which is still not in a production to meet demand. So those that really want it, can still get it without the wider appeal.
I feel Apple will price adjust when 4gb players are being produced to adequet capacity, and simultaneously introduce a larger model.
Similiarly there was no 2GB iPod mini, despite the available HD because it would be the same price as the 4GB.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet in the post, Expose has an hidden feature which does this window wells idea that you are talking about. It'll shrink the desktop+windows into a small portion of the screen, clicking it brings it back. It's not totally elegant yet, so i can see why apple have it disabled.
It's the out-of-touch upper hierarchy that make these cut backs. They normally receive corporate level kick backs/bonuses for culling expenditure.
Meanwhile what's next, pay for our webservers.. as a committed and thoughtful employee you understand our need for a prescence on the world wide web...
as a considerate and thoughtful employee you will now receive no income, in exchange for happy thoughts, sunshine and farts.
Money talks, Bulls#it walks.
Look for a new job.
A good example was the LabelsX software for 10.2, giving the 10.2 finder labels support, however it was obvious labels would be added in eventually, and hence the labelsX software was made redundant by 10.3. Apple simply reimplementing something they already had.
Application switching, same story, OSX already had it, giving it a gui was an obvious direction, an utter no-brainer, every other OS has a very similar looking app swapper. Apple's implementation is not a copy of the 3rd party app as it's the same design theme apple use for all their instant menus (50% transparent black square with rounded edges, containing an item at 128x128 pixels with a drop shadow) same as eject, volume & brightness. You can't accuse apple of copying the look of a piece of software when this software was immitating the look of Apple's own OS X. Many other applications also implement these design cues, such as Synergy an iTunes addition. (Rating popups etc are all in this theme.)
Now come konfabulator, which found it's way into my trash can due to the widgets filling the screen with info that doesn't need to be cluttering my desktop 24/7, the programmer has confused quick access with desktop persistance. It was natural for apple to take some more of their older technology, in this case Desk Accessories and reimplement it (down to using the same accessories as seen in screenshots from builds from 1984). While some might find this convenient that apple chose to implement something that is known to be popular, I point you to apple's introduction of handwriting recognition from the newton into 10.2. This wasn't a popular 3rd party app, and no 3rd party application was trampled by this feature which would be used significantly less than dashboard. Yet apple introduced it anyway, why, because they have the technology and might as well use it. I can't make it clear enough that apple has a trend of reimplementing all their older features into new versions of OS X. It gives users no reason to stay on any older Mac OS, and we all know that the transition to X was a big deal for Jobs. Dashboard's implementation, specifically the use of making it one-button accessible is apple's understanding that accessibility is not the result of placing things on the desktop, they had learnt this earlier on(alot of windows on the desktop, and they can still be difficult to access) and from this knowledge came exposé, naturally dashboard is an extension of exposé.
Arlo has basically duplicated the original desktop accessories, with no innovation(only modernisation), they behaved the same way as the originals, they just sat there on the desktop. As a minimum, apple have added some innovation by giving the user control of their appearance and disappearance through exposé
I feel Arlo gives himself too much credit with konfabulator, not only was the idea not new, but neither was the concept of using Javascript to power small simple desktop features. This was also completed on numerous platforms long before the release of konfabulator, to insinuate that his idea was original is flattery, and an explaination of how the patent system gives out tech patents despite endless streams of prior art.
The visual resemblence is the result of what happens when you duplicate the look and feel of OS X in your applications. He did after all work for Apple in the UI dept.
So now take Apple, reimplementing yet another older feature into OS X, why shouldn't they license it, simply, because they already made this feature long before konfabulator, albeit OS X even existed. How insulting to the original inventor, to pay money for an idea he had implemented some 20 years ago. If anyone should be paying royalties, it's Arlo. If he had a case for a patent, then he'd already have it, but due to the loads of prior art, he doesn't. (plenty of patent sponsors out there wanting only a %.)
So what we see in the end, is not a corporate giant mugging the little guy, closer inspection shows that it's actually just a case of arlo taking something old making it shiny(literally, that's all he did), then pretending he owned the concept+idea all along.
I'd rather die before using the visual abortion that is windows media player. (pre iTunes, i muchly perferred winamp, as it wasn't a under optimised clutterific splendor of crap that WMP has built itself to be.)
Also i'd like a product that actually has a continuing development cycle, that has shown that customer feedback, technological advances and hardware flaw identification make design changes in new revisions. Not just a competitors fickle attempt at duplicating a market.
Dell's philosophy to market research is seeing what other people are doing that makes money and photocopying it. So as proven by history, they'll have whatever new toys other companies have.. just 2 years later, and in some cheap metallic or blue plastic
The final problem is that I'd have to actually use a Dell DJ, ever used one? It's a nuclear winter of discontentment.
Finally since I've had my iPod for several years now fault free I don't see any reason to give it up. (10GB model..) I was even using it on my old PC with XPod software for windows. I've personally had no battery issues with mine. Out of 3 Million iPods sold, a very small % happen to have the dreaded battery issue, hardly a reason to jump ship to a product still in it's first (and probably last) cycle.