Thick and heavy gadgets won't cut it in today's market. My 1st gen iPhone is at the "barely tolerable" size, weight and thickness -- any bigger and I would be loath to carry it in my pocket when I don't have a shoulder bag with me.
Nobody wants to go back to the 90s when people were carrying around brick phones.
I generally haven't had problems with my Macs except the 13" MacBook Core Duo (1st generation, mid 2006) that I got for my sister, which exhibits the problems that you describe. It really is one of the worst models they came up with. Is yours a 1st gen MB as well? We had to get it repaired under warranty during 2006 due to the random shutdown problems.
My MBP Cure 2 Duo on the other hand, which I bought about 4 months later (October 2006), has been flawless.
I think you'd be surprised to learn that you're pretty much in agreement with Steve Jobs. Design is how it works, not just what it looks like.
Good product design isn't just about a race to cram the most features in. Apple generally errs on the side of minimalism, which tends to annoy geeks who want their device to have everything and the kitchen sink.
It's incredibly ignorant for people to keep claiming that Apple is all style and no substance. It's like the BOFH attitude: claiming that everybody in the world is a sheep and an idiot. People and consumers are smarter than they're given credit for.
If a product sucks and doesn't work as well as others, then its sales will certainly suffer. No amount of superficial bling will turn that around.
Apple is doing incredibly well because they make great products. That's their "secret" to success. I think other companies would do well to emulate them, rather than engaging in silly "races to the bottom" with prices and quality which seems to be all too common nowadays.
Then don't buy it. Just because it doesn't fit your needs doesn't mean you need to put other people down for their choices.
A Mac fills my work/everyday computing requirements a whole lot better than Windows or any flavour of Linux. I still keep a Windows box around for playing games.
People don't just buy Macs and Apple products because they're shiny and sexy, they buy them because they're well designed and easy to use. I know it's trendy for more "technical" types to dismiss and denigrate the value of user experience, but a good user interface is probably the #1 most important factor when it comes to tech product design.
As Steve Jobs said, "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." A product is more than just the sum of its parts.
Maybe not everybody cares for good user interface design, but they shouldn't dismiss people who are prepared to pay to get a device which works better for them and -- god forbid -- makes their computer use more enjoyable and stress-free.
And it's not like Apple products and Macs aren't for the technically inclined. Go to any leading web apps conference and you'll see how Macs totally dominate the field.
Agreed on the Google Talk thing, but this Palm OS Sync isn't an example of anti-competitiveness, it's just dropping support for something that is long past its use-by-date anyway.
And Apple doesn't get away with things -- there's been a lot more bitching about Apple than Microsoft lately. People are even defending MS against the FSF.
It's just good business sense. If they can sell more copies of Windows and Office, that's good for them. It's the same way that Microsoft has interests in the Mac world: the more people buy Windows to run as a VM on their Mac, and the more people buy Office for Mac, the better.
But the moment you're no longer reliant on Windows or Office, that's when MS will start panicking.
I don't know what idiot modded you offtopic, you summed up the situation perfectly.
Apple is a hardware driven company, if they were to sell OS X on its own (like Windows) they would make huge losses. Apple and Microsoft are asymmetric competitors. Microsoft is reliant on 3rd parties to build nice PCs to run its software. Apple does it themselves, and retains full control over all the little details.
If Apple were to start losing money (and I don't think it'll happen anytime soon), it would be a huge mistake to start selling OS X for x86. That would bankrupt the company for sure.
It's just good business sense. It's not in the interests of Apple to shift into primarily selling software, because then they'd be competing directly with Microsoft. Only an idiot would deliberately make it hard for themselves to stay in business.
Sounds like you haven't seen the Mac warez scene. There's heaps of warez, cracks, serials out there for Mac applications -- you can get them as readily as you can get Windows ones.
I do think it's true that Mac users are more likely to buy/pay for "shareware" apps though.
Offtopic, but "shareware" seems like the wrong word for it. Doesn't feel quite right.
Also, I dispute the notion that there's not much open source/freeware on Mac OS X. There is, but like a lot of open source stuff, they're often not the best-of-breed. I'd rather pay some money and get the best there is, like Transmit (for FTP) and CSSEdit/Espresso (for editing HTML and CSS).
The open source apps I use the most on OS X are Firefox and VLC.
Time Machine by itself is an inadequate backup solution. You should be running something like SuperDuper! which creates a fully boootable backup. Time Machine can then be added to provide extra peace of mind and convenience.
I don't think Android would be wise to follow the Microsoft lead.
I think John Gruber (as usual) nails it. Google should follow the Apple model and make one really really good phone. Having the market littered with dozens and dozens of different Android phones only dilutes it and makes it confusing, for consumers as well as developers (imagine all the different featuresets you have to account for).
I think the mobile phone market at large nowadays is pretty ridiculous -- there's hundreds of different new models coming out all the time, most of which are crap. if they just made a handful of really good ones, the makers and the consumers would both be better off.
Oh, and a sexy interface isn't terribly hard to create, but an intuitive and user-friendly interface is *hard*.
As for an open marketplace, I think it's a good idea in theory, but in practice you have to be able to police it somehow. People complain that there's lots of crap on Apple's App Store, but an open marketplace would be worse.
Exactly right. I think the cameras in London are largely ineffective for actually preventing crime, and not always helpful when solving crimes after the fact either.
My friend has been burgled twice and each time he caught some fantastically clear 640x480 frontal and side-on shots of the goblins in the act (he leaves the webcam running and uploading captures via FTP). He was even running Adeona and got the IP addresses of the perps who stole his laptops and gear, but the police never did solve the cases.
Seems to me that the only thing you can do is set up an immediate notification service to alert you when webcam movement is detected, and then call the police or immediately run home with a baseball bat.
It's a media beat-up over nothing. The media are turning this into a "win" for the "hackers", whereas in reality nothing happened. It was a honeypot computer that was isolated according to standard operating procedures. It wasn't connected to the rest of the police network.
By "hackers", we mean criminals: these guys steal credit cards, people's identities, bank login information, and ultimately make life living hell for the people they rip off.
And for your information, these police and civilian techs work hard and are highly competent. They're not clueless idiots, although in some instances it would be advantageous for them if people did view them as clueless idiots.
I look forward to them busting more doors down and nailing 20 year-old punks sitting in their mothers' basements extorting and terrorising innocent people around the world.
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Thick and heavy gadgets won't cut it in today's market. My 1st gen iPhone is at the "barely tolerable" size, weight and thickness -- any bigger and I would be loath to carry it in my pocket when I don't have a shoulder bag with me.
Nobody wants to go back to the 90s when people were carrying around brick phones.
I generally haven't had problems with my Macs except the 13" MacBook Core Duo (1st generation, mid 2006) that I got for my sister, which exhibits the problems that you describe. It really is one of the worst models they came up with. Is yours a 1st gen MB as well? We had to get it repaired under warranty during 2006 due to the random shutdown problems.
My MBP Cure 2 Duo on the other hand, which I bought about 4 months later (October 2006), has been flawless.
What did the president of the college say? Did they admit that they erred?
I think you'd be surprised to learn that you're pretty much in agreement with Steve Jobs. Design is how it works, not just what it looks like.
Good product design isn't just about a race to cram the most features in. Apple generally errs on the side of minimalism, which tends to annoy geeks who want their device to have everything and the kitchen sink.
And yes, the iPod touch does have wireless.
It's incredibly ignorant for people to keep claiming that Apple is all style and no substance. It's like the BOFH attitude: claiming that everybody in the world is a sheep and an idiot. People and consumers are smarter than they're given credit for.
If a product sucks and doesn't work as well as others, then its sales will certainly suffer. No amount of superficial bling will turn that around.
Apple is doing incredibly well because they make great products. That's their "secret" to success. I think other companies would do well to emulate them, rather than engaging in silly "races to the bottom" with prices and quality which seems to be all too common nowadays.
Then don't buy it. Just because it doesn't fit your needs doesn't mean you need to put other people down for their choices.
A Mac fills my work/everyday computing requirements a whole lot better than Windows or any flavour of Linux. I still keep a Windows box around for playing games.
Isn't having a variety of choices grand?
People don't just buy Macs and Apple products because they're shiny and sexy, they buy them because they're well designed and easy to use. I know it's trendy for more "technical" types to dismiss and denigrate the value of user experience, but a good user interface is probably the #1 most important factor when it comes to tech product design.
As Steve Jobs said, "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
A product is more than just the sum of its parts.
Maybe not everybody cares for good user interface design, but they shouldn't dismiss people who are prepared to pay to get a device which works better for them and -- god forbid -- makes their computer use more enjoyable and stress-free.
And it's not like Apple products and Macs aren't for the technically inclined. Go to any leading web apps conference and you'll see how Macs totally dominate the field.
Agreed on the Google Talk thing, but this Palm OS Sync isn't an example of anti-competitiveness, it's just dropping support for something that is long past its use-by-date anyway.
And Apple doesn't get away with things -- there's been a lot more bitching about Apple than Microsoft lately. People are even defending MS against the FSF.
It's just good business sense. If they can sell more copies of Windows and Office, that's good for them. It's the same way that Microsoft has interests in the Mac world: the more people buy Windows to run as a VM on their Mac, and the more people buy Office for Mac, the better.
But the moment you're no longer reliant on Windows or Office, that's when MS will start panicking.
I don't know what idiot modded you offtopic, you summed up the situation perfectly.
Apple is a hardware driven company, if they were to sell OS X on its own (like Windows) they would make huge losses. Apple and Microsoft are asymmetric competitors. Microsoft is reliant on 3rd parties to build nice PCs to run its software. Apple does it themselves, and retains full control over all the little details.
If Apple were to start losing money (and I don't think it'll happen anytime soon), it would be a huge mistake to start selling OS X for x86. That would bankrupt the company for sure.
It's just good business sense. It's not in the interests of Apple to shift into primarily selling software, because then they'd be competing directly with Microsoft. Only an idiot would deliberately make it hard for themselves to stay in business.
Sounds like you haven't seen the Mac warez scene. There's heaps of warez, cracks, serials out there for Mac applications -- you can get them as readily as you can get Windows ones.
I do think it's true that Mac users are more likely to buy/pay for "shareware" apps though.
Offtopic, but "shareware" seems like the wrong word for it. Doesn't feel quite right.
Also, I dispute the notion that there's not much open source/freeware on Mac OS X. There is, but like a lot of open source stuff, they're often not the best-of-breed. I'd rather pay some money and get the best there is, like Transmit (for FTP) and CSSEdit/Espresso (for editing HTML and CSS).
The open source apps I use the most on OS X are Firefox and VLC.
Time Machine by itself is an inadequate backup solution. You should be running something like SuperDuper! which creates a fully boootable backup. Time Machine can then be added to provide extra peace of mind and convenience.
How about Wikipedia stick to the facts? There's truth, or there's falsehood.
Waterboarding is torture. That's the truth. I'm glad the current revision gets it right.
I don't get why people consider Flash as a "killer app". What does Flash actually add in meaningful terms?
Mini games?
I don't think Android would be wise to follow the Microsoft lead.
I think John Gruber (as usual) nails it. Google should follow the Apple model and make one really really good phone. Having the market littered with dozens and dozens of different Android phones only dilutes it and makes it confusing, for consumers as well as developers (imagine all the different featuresets you have to account for).
I think the mobile phone market at large nowadays is pretty ridiculous -- there's hundreds of different new models coming out all the time, most of which are crap. if they just made a handful of really good ones, the makers and the consumers would both be better off.
Oh, and a sexy interface isn't terribly hard to create, but an intuitive and user-friendly interface is *hard*.
As for an open marketplace, I think it's a good idea in theory, but in practice you have to be able to police it somehow. People complain that there's lots of crap on Apple's App Store, but an open marketplace would be worse.
Exactly right. I think the cameras in London are largely ineffective for actually preventing crime, and not always helpful when solving crimes after the fact either.
My friend has been burgled twice and each time he caught some fantastically clear 640x480 frontal and side-on shots of the goblins in the act (he leaves the webcam running and uploading captures via FTP). He was even running Adeona and got the IP addresses of the perps who stole his laptops and gear, but the police never did solve the cases.
Seems to me that the only thing you can do is set up an immediate notification service to alert you when webcam movement is detected, and then call the police or immediately run home with a baseball bat.
You don't have to pay for a new OS X when you get a new Mac either. That's hardly a revelation.
It is very strange, isn't it? The unashamed Apple bashing continues in true Slashdot style.
With that kind of mindset, I hope you don't start a tech business, because you'll fail utterly. You just don't get it.
Apple designs and makes great products that people actually want to use. That's why the iPod is so successful.
You can dwell in your ignorance as long as you want, or you could pay attention and learn something useful.
Actually, making products with too many buttons isn't an example of "function over form", it's just plain bad design. It's lazy design.
Because making products that are intuitive and easy to use is damn difficult. Those who don't understand this love to hate on companies like Apple.
So the homeowner got arrested, did he actually get charged with anything?
And anybody can sue, but did the thief actually win the lawsuit?
Any more fantastical stories you'd like to tell us?
Not sure why your post was modded insightful. He didn't say his only precaution was to turn the PC off.
Besides, when his PC is off, then the script kiddy can't get to it. Makes sense to me. And saves a bucketload of electricity.
Yours is one of the less plausible excuses I've heard for keeping desktop PCs on 24 hours a day.
It's probably an entry-level position. Apparently the NSW police pay around $75-80K per year, but I'm not sure what the upper limit is.
It's a media beat-up over nothing. The media are turning this into a "win" for the "hackers", whereas in reality nothing happened. It was a honeypot computer that was isolated according to standard operating procedures. It wasn't connected to the rest of the police network.
By "hackers", we mean criminals: these guys steal credit cards, people's identities, bank login information, and ultimately make life living hell for the people they rip off.
And for your information, these police and civilian techs work hard and are highly competent. They're not clueless idiots, although in some instances it would be advantageous for them if people did view them as clueless idiots.
I look forward to them busting more doors down and nailing 20 year-old punks sitting in their mothers' basements extorting and terrorising innocent people around the world.
Well said.