. I'm not quite sure where they all came from but I'm a fan of the "XBox theory", that those who weren't around in the bad old days think Microsoft have always had decent to good products and that they somehow beat everyone else out of the market by having superior technology...
Wait... is the XBox line in the "decent to good product" category? RROD anybody?
Don't get me wrong; I own one, but it's despite the problems. It has some decent games and the hardware capabilities are alright, but the device itself isn't good.
It used to be that a matte screen was the *default*. Then Apple started making everything with a glossy screen and sold it as a "feature". In the showroom, glossy screens look better, so everybody started selling glossy screens to look sexy. Now, matte is an upgrade -- if it's even available *at all*.
Neither do you, your Smugness. I'll place the Cyanogen team higher on the pedestal of trustworthiness than Apple, thankyouverymuch. They're customers. They're users. Apple is the seller. They'll do what's good for their bottom line.
Android, as a smartphone platform, has a larger marketshare than iOS, as a smartphone platform.
The iPhone, as a product, has a larger marketshare than any other individual smartphone, as a product. Just like Macbooks, as a product, have a larger marketshare than (I believe) any other individual laptop.
IMO, the only one that matters is the larger platform. If it gives you warm fuzzies to think that you have the most popular individual phone, or that an appeal to some sort of consensus is a good thing in your mind, then that's great -- use your iPhone. Meanwhile, the rest of us will enjoy the results of a highly competitive hardware ecosystem, and enjoy the fruits of the labors of the entire internet in building better features into Android, which can then be "innovated" into IOS later.
Depending on what carrier your on, and what country you're in, it might arrive at different times, via different processes. And this is a phone only 18 months old. iPhone updates all arrive the same day of release, and carry on for at least 3 years.
If Apple couldn't pull this off, it would be pretty pathetic, considering they control both the hardware and the software.
I'll concede the point that only Apple devices get an iOS update on day 1 (if they're still supported) directly from the manufacturer. However, that isn't and never was a selling point to me. When ICS is available for my phone, I'll get it and be happy. Until then, I have other things in my life worth worrying about. I couldn't possibly give less of a shit about what feature is out there on somebody else's phone that OMG MINE DOESN'T HAVE! If I were actually worried about that, I'd be constantly broke because EVERY phone is one-upped usually within a month or two of its release. Same with pretty much every other piece of consumer electronics junk; it's all going to keep getting better constantly.
You know what I do to counter it? How I'm able to retain my serenity despite not having the latest point release? I just buy stuff that does what I need it to do when I buy it. If it gets improvements in the future, hey, that's awesome and I'll take it, but in the present it's doing the job that I bought it for.
I really pity people who have nothing better to do than to worry about consumer electronics release dates. How empty must your life be for that to actually matter to you?
Note that once the government starts restricting who can spend what in politics, it's not long before they're restricting YOU.
Let's apply some "anti-gay-marriage" logic to this; if the government starts allowing non-people to spend money to influence politics, how long until it lets cows and sheep and other animals spend money to influence politics?
With unemployment as high as it is, most would rather collect on benefits (based off their previous income bracket) that payout more than actually working a manual labor job for less or even going so far as to *gasp*, learn an entirely new job
Do you have numbers to back this statement up, or are you just spouting bullshit? Seeing a "now hiring" sign now and again isn't "data".
Yes, when you open a file panel or a network browser under Windows, you are using IE. The desktop is IE. The control panel is IE. Friggin' everything is IE! Even if you install another browser, you CANNOT tell those components to use it.
This whining makes about as much sense as whining that *everything* uses mscorlib, or comctl32. mshtml is just a useful presentation layer library; there's no reason that it shouldn't be used wherever an application is doing, you know, presentation-type stuff.
Have you checked with your college bookstore? There's a very good chance that you're eligible for student pricing for Microsoft products. I was able to abuse it and get several copies of 64-bit Win 7 Ultimate for $10 apiece shortly after it came out.
That's not to say that Ubuntu won't meet your needs; for most applications it will be fine. But most software companies do have heavy student discounts -- I'd definitely recommend taking advantage of them while you can.
I think a bigger part of the anti-competitive thing was that IE was a shitty browser that did things in divergent ways, but its market share threatened to steer the development of third party Web sites and applications toward an IE-only Web.
Back in the late '90s when this all took place? Back when our choices were Communicator (please god no), IE5.5, or IIRC, a paid version of Opera? While it's true that IE did offer an ActiveX container to let sites run custom controls, it's not like that couldn't have been implemented by anyone else (whether it would have been a good idea or not is an entirely different story.) Linux and MacOS (pre-OSX even) would have been out of luck until someone ported the custom controls to their environment, but that's not significantly different than the plug-in architecture we have today for things like Java and Flash.
I always thought the IE issue was pretty dumb. There are (or were) any number of things that the DOJ case could have focused on in terms of anti-competitive actions by Microsoft -- like forcing Windows to be installed on every computer shipped -- and instead they took issue with Microsoft providing an internet browser out of the box with their operating system. Something that *every* competitor was doing at the time.
And if you are in that position, you are no longer able to make an objective judgement on the matter. Just like all of these "vote no on 1183" ads I'm seeing in Washington that start with "my brother died in an alcohol related accident and that's why I'm voting against 1183." Makes it easy to ignore the rest of what they say.
This isn't a defensive patent. It's purely offensive, and there was tons of prior art. (My girlfriend's phone with a touchscreen and sliding keyboard had drag-to-unlock years before the first iPhone).
I've been playing PC games since the early 90s and I've never had hardware go totally out of date in less than 3 years.
Well I've been playing PC and console games since the mid 80s and I've never had a console go out of date until the console that's built to replace it comes out, which is typically 5-6 years. Any PC I've built will be lucky to support the latest graphics cards to come out in 2-3 years (VLB->PCI->AGP->AGP2X->AGP4X->PCIE), let alone a processor or RAM upgrade to something current.
Of course, I also didn't buy a Dreamcast until they went into fire sale mode and never bought a Jaguar or any other failed console, so my results may not be typical. However, in my experience as somebody who doesn't give a shit about polygon counts, PC gaming is decent despite its flaws, whereas console gaming is a generally more pleasant experience.
And those 10-100-1000 people you listed are able to produce tens of thousands of machines that displace hundreds of thousands of workers, who now have to find a new source of income.
Automation is great, but don't pretend that it doesn't have costs that need to be dealt with somehow.
Why, just the other day my company bought some better equipment that reduced my team's workload by 50%, and there is absolutely no other slack anywhere else in the company for us to pick up during the downtime. So my boss came in to tell us, "great news! You only have to work half as much, but because you've been loyal and hard working and we're such generous people we're still going to pay you your original full-time salary!" It was awesome how that worked out, and I'm sure that's how it plays out *every* time a company can cut its labor requirements by 50%.
It was also half the cost of its competitors and introduced actual new technology into the arena, rather than just being an overclocked XBox or overclocked PS2.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a nice rationalization.
--Jeremy
From where I sit it's a lot of fanboi Apple apologists. Guess everything's relative and we all suffer from confirmation bias.
--Jeremy
. I'm not quite sure where they all came from but I'm a fan of the "XBox theory", that those who weren't around in the bad old days think Microsoft have always had decent to good products and that they somehow beat everyone else out of the market by having superior technology...
Wait ... is the XBox line in the "decent to good product" category? RROD anybody?
Don't get me wrong; I own one, but it's despite the problems. It has some decent games and the hardware capabilities are alright, but the device itself isn't good.
--Jeremy
It used to be that a matte screen was the *default*. Then Apple started making everything with a glossy screen and sold it as a "feature". In the showroom, glossy screens look better, so everybody started selling glossy screens to look sexy. Now, matte is an upgrade -- if it's even available *at all*.
Thanks Apple!
--Jeremy
Neither do you, your Smugness. I'll place the Cyanogen team higher on the pedestal of trustworthiness than Apple, thankyouverymuch. They're customers. They're users. Apple is the seller. They'll do what's good for their bottom line.
--Jeremy
This isn't rocket science.
Android, as a smartphone platform, has a larger marketshare than iOS, as a smartphone platform.
The iPhone, as a product, has a larger marketshare than any other individual smartphone, as a product. Just like Macbooks, as a product, have a larger marketshare than (I believe) any other individual laptop.
IMO, the only one that matters is the larger platform. If it gives you warm fuzzies to think that you have the most popular individual phone, or that an appeal to some sort of consensus is a good thing in your mind, then that's great -- use your iPhone. Meanwhile, the rest of us will enjoy the results of a highly competitive hardware ecosystem, and enjoy the fruits of the labors of the entire internet in building better features into Android, which can then be "innovated" into IOS later.
--Jeremy
How's that iOS 6 going? Oh? It's not released yet and I'm an idiot for asking how it's going? Sorry, I'll shut up.
--Jeremy
That's the beauty of it; if the software destroys the hardware, you just go in playing dumb. "What's a ROM?"
How do they prove you rooted and reimaged the thing?
--Jeremy
Depending on what carrier your on, and what country you're in, it might arrive at different times, via different processes. And this is a phone only 18 months old. iPhone updates all arrive the same day of release, and carry on for at least 3 years.
If Apple couldn't pull this off, it would be pretty pathetic, considering they control both the hardware and the software.
I'll concede the point that only Apple devices get an iOS update on day 1 (if they're still supported) directly from the manufacturer. However, that isn't and never was a selling point to me. When ICS is available for my phone, I'll get it and be happy. Until then, I have other things in my life worth worrying about. I couldn't possibly give less of a shit about what feature is out there on somebody else's phone that OMG MINE DOESN'T HAVE! If I were actually worried about that, I'd be constantly broke because EVERY phone is one-upped usually within a month or two of its release. Same with pretty much every other piece of consumer electronics junk; it's all going to keep getting better constantly.
You know what I do to counter it? How I'm able to retain my serenity despite not having the latest point release? I just buy stuff that does what I need it to do when I buy it. If it gets improvements in the future, hey, that's awesome and I'll take it, but in the present it's doing the job that I bought it for.
I really pity people who have nothing better to do than to worry about consumer electronics release dates. How empty must your life be for that to actually matter to you?
--Jeremy
Note that once the government starts restricting who can spend what in politics, it's not long before they're restricting YOU.
Let's apply some "anti-gay-marriage" logic to this; if the government starts allowing non-people to spend money to influence politics, how long until it lets cows and sheep and other animals spend money to influence politics?
--Jeremy
They're saying that CU gave corporations more rights to pour money into politics,
You left out "anonymously".
--Jeremy
With unemployment as high as it is, most would rather collect on benefits (based off their previous income bracket) that payout more than actually working a manual labor job for less or even going so far as to *gasp*, learn an entirely new job
Do you have numbers to back this statement up, or are you just spouting bullshit? Seeing a "now hiring" sign now and again isn't "data".
--Jeremy
Yes, when you open a file panel or a network browser under Windows, you are using IE. The desktop is IE. The control panel is IE. Friggin' everything is IE! Even if you install another browser, you CANNOT tell those components to use it.
This whining makes about as much sense as whining that *everything* uses mscorlib, or comctl32. mshtml is just a useful presentation layer library; there's no reason that it shouldn't be used wherever an application is doing, you know, presentation-type stuff.
--Jeremy
Have you checked with your college bookstore? There's a very good chance that you're eligible for student pricing for Microsoft products. I was able to abuse it and get several copies of 64-bit Win 7 Ultimate for $10 apiece shortly after it came out.
That's not to say that Ubuntu won't meet your needs; for most applications it will be fine. But most software companies do have heavy student discounts -- I'd definitely recommend taking advantage of them while you can.
--Jeremy
I think a bigger part of the anti-competitive thing was that IE was a shitty browser that did things in divergent ways, but its market share threatened to steer the development of third party Web sites and applications toward an IE-only Web.
Back in the late '90s when this all took place? Back when our choices were Communicator (please god no), IE5.5, or IIRC, a paid version of Opera? While it's true that IE did offer an ActiveX container to let sites run custom controls, it's not like that couldn't have been implemented by anyone else (whether it would have been a good idea or not is an entirely different story.) Linux and MacOS (pre-OSX even) would have been out of luck until someone ported the custom controls to their environment, but that's not significantly different than the plug-in architecture we have today for things like Java and Flash.
I always thought the IE issue was pretty dumb. There are (or were) any number of things that the DOJ case could have focused on in terms of anti-competitive actions by Microsoft -- like forcing Windows to be installed on every computer shipped -- and instead they took issue with Microsoft providing an internet browser out of the box with their operating system. Something that *every* competitor was doing at the time.
--Jeremy
And if you are in that position, you are no longer able to make an objective judgement on the matter. Just like all of these "vote no on 1183" ads I'm seeing in Washington that start with "my brother died in an alcohol related accident and that's why I'm voting against 1183." Makes it easy to ignore the rest of what they say.
--Jeremy
It amazes me how widespread tunnel vision is among Apple fanbois.
When your only exposure to technology is what you see at Mac World, it's fairly easy to remain ignorant of what the Real World is doing.
--Jeremy
This isn't a defensive patent. It's purely offensive, and there was tons of prior art. (My girlfriend's phone with a touchscreen and sliding keyboard had drag-to-unlock years before the first iPhone).
This is a perfect example of a bad patent.
--Jeremy
Arguing with what the Slashdot summary says is pointless. They're rarely accurate and almost always sensational, and the editors don't give a shit.
--Jeremy
I've been playing PC games since the early 90s and I've never had hardware go totally out of date in less than 3 years.
Well I've been playing PC and console games since the mid 80s and I've never had a console go out of date until the console that's built to replace it comes out, which is typically 5-6 years. Any PC I've built will be lucky to support the latest graphics cards to come out in 2-3 years (VLB->PCI->AGP->AGP2X->AGP4X->PCIE), let alone a processor or RAM upgrade to something current.
Of course, I also didn't buy a Dreamcast until they went into fire sale mode and never bought a Jaguar or any other failed console, so my results may not be typical. However, in my experience as somebody who doesn't give a shit about polygon counts, PC gaming is decent despite its flaws, whereas console gaming is a generally more pleasant experience.
--Jeremy
Final Fantasy VII required multiple discs because of all the FMV, not because of the hours of gameplay.
--Jeremy
And those 10-100-1000 people you listed are able to produce tens of thousands of machines that displace hundreds of thousands of workers, who now have to find a new source of income.
Automation is great, but don't pretend that it doesn't have costs that need to be dealt with somehow.
--Jeremy
You have the audacity to say this in a time of 10% official unemployment, with unemployment terms reaching historically long lengths?
--Jeremy
Why, just the other day my company bought some better equipment that reduced my team's workload by 50%, and there is absolutely no other slack anywhere else in the company for us to pick up during the downtime. So my boss came in to tell us, "great news! You only have to work half as much, but because you've been loyal and hard working and we're such generous people we're still going to pay you your original full-time salary!" It was awesome how that worked out, and I'm sure that's how it plays out *every* time a company can cut its labor requirements by 50%.
Or not, if you're living in the real world.
--Jeremy
It was also half the cost of its competitors and introduced actual new technology into the arena, rather than just being an overclocked XBox or overclocked PS2.
--Jeremy