Except they weren't really "Apple innovations". Apple did a great job with the design and engineering of the iPhone, and they popularized these ideas and interfaces. But the innovations themselves largely came from Palm, Nokia, and a whole bunch of startups.
Ford didn't invent the car either, but the Model T was certainly innovative and redefined the automotive industry. The same can be said for the iPhone.
This is a brilliant example of how comments don't work. It's emotional, obscene and grammatically incorrect. Comment sections don't foster debate, they tend to foster name calling and repetition of the same damned arguments over and over again.
I bought a deeply discounted PlayBook, and I think they did a lot of things right. The hardware was top-notch and the multitasking OS stood up well against Android and iOS at that point. If BB10 had been released a year earlier with proper core apps (email, contacts, BBM) and attracted top-tier apps, it could well have been a major competitor.
Wild-eyed optimism will do you in every time.
on
How BlackBerry Blew It
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Blackberry blew it the same way many companies do. Their original OS was antiquated, and so they abandoned it and adopted QNX as the foundation of BlackBerry 10.
That required them to write all of their core apps from the ground up, and they dramatically underestimated the effort required. The result was the disastrous release of the Playbook without an email client. Some say that the decision to release the Playbook instead of a BB10-equipped phone was also a critical error, but there's no way that the company could have released a phone instead -- it would have required some significant components that simply didn't exist when the PlayBook was first rolled out: a contact manager, dialing software, BBM, SMS, and of course email.
Speaking as the parent of a former 4-year-old, I don't think this is going to work the way you imagine. You're better off getting an adult to help your son initiate a Skype call on a computer or tablet. A preschooler simply doesn't have the cognitive ability to read and respond appropriately to error messages and prompts, nor will he have the attention span to carry the phone everywhere on the off chance that you'll call. And, once the call comes through, it will be hit and miss as to whether he would actually respond the way you hope (it's not unusual to see a child of that age say "Hi!" to a close relative over Skype and wander off - they don't mean to be offensive, it's just that it's hard for 4" screen to compete with whatever draws their attention in the real world). That said, I understand your desire to be in touch as much as possible and hope you can figure something out.
Samsung offers 31 different smartphone models in my local market alone. They range from awful $79 single core handsets intended for the prepaid market through the S4 and Galaxy Note series. Their shotgun approach guarantees that whatever price range a customer is looking, they're likely to at least consider a Samsung. The problem is that they don't make money on the low end, even though they ship millions of units. It's only the top tier handsets that command the large margins.
Apple is a far smaller company that doesn't have its own manufacturing facilities. That fact alone prevents them from participating in the low end of the smartphone market -- by the time they give Foxconn or Pegatron their cut, the margin on a sub-$100 phone would be unacceptable. It would be a make-work project. By eliminating the iPhone 5 from the lineup and replacing it with the 5C, the company seems to be positioning the 5C to gradually slide into the midrange market in a way that doesn't cannibalize sales from the top of the line glass and pixie dust series.I suspect that it will be under a year before the 5C is available for $0 on contract, with a manufacturing cost that's lower than the 4 that it replaces.
Actually, this isn't the case. A good engineer will do an excellent job of mic'ing instruments and getting good sound recorded for each track. The brick wall mastering mess happens when the final version of the track is mixed to stereo. And, sadly, it occurs for the simple reason that humans trend to perceive louder sounds as better sounds.
Vendors should simply clarify what a "season pass" is by listing the number of shows in the season. It's pretty hard to argue that you were mislead when iTunes tells you in advance that you're purchasing eight shows. I'm somewhat puzzled that this functionality isn't already included in the iTunes, Amazon and Google markets.
Correct. The Sony system was Beta. Mine an integrated single-boxc solution by Toshiba. It still functions perfectly, although the VFD display is beginning to look a little uneven.
The WAV format wasn't released until 1991, and Yamaha's PDS CD Audio recorder cost about $35,000 in 1990. The technologies that you flippantly dismiss as "half-assed proprietary garbage" were actually state-of-the-art semi-pro solutions that enabled us to create award-winning music. Had there been better options, rest assured that we would have used them.
Actually, it was a bridge technology between Sony's PCM-3202 digital stereo mastering deck and affordable modern digital recording systems (DAT, CD-R). There was a short period in the late 1980s when PCM encoders for VHS were extremely popular, because they allowed us to create digital masters for CD replication at a fraction of the cost of having a high-end PCM-3202 in the corner of the studio. Back then, recording and mixing a CD was an expensive proposition that required spending hours or days in a "pro" studio. Mixdown from 16 or 24-track analog tape wasn't automated in the more affordable studios, so the engineer and producer would ride the faders in real-time to produce the final track. It was a complicated dance, and we'd often end up with a handful of slightly different mixes for each song. Being able to take the PCM-encoded VHS tape home and listen to each mix without having to pay for studio time really took the pressure off. Once we selected the best mixes, they'd be digitally duplicated onto a master tape that was used to create the final CD. The other mixes on the VHS tapes were either wiped or put into storage. They're not critically important, but on the off chance that one those acts became incredibly famous, there *might* be value in recovering some of the alternate takes.
I have a number of digital recordings in a 14-bit stereo format that encoded the digital signal into the video portion of a VHS tape. Decoding them requires either a standalone Sony PCM decoder or a VHS deck with integrated PCM decoder. There is a very real risk that master tapes recorded in this manner will be unreadable in half a century.
I'm not a shill, and definitely not a Microsoft fan. You need to get it into your head that companies you don't like which sometimes engage in unethical or monopolistic practices can be extremely successful in the marketplace. Just because someone says, "They have been able to come from behind in the past and they might be able to do it again" doesn't mean that person likes the company or approves of the way it runs.
Sure. Currently, only Apple and Samsung are making money in this market. Google plans to join them. And now Microsoft is moi ing the party. This wouldn't be the first time that MS has come from behind: Word utterly crushed Word Perfect to become the standard in the early 90s, Excel pushed Lotus 1-2-3 into has-been status, Internet Explorer killed Netscape as a viable company, and people were surprised when MS released the Xbox and went on to make a fortune in the console industry. Now, they're trailing in the mobile market. They have $68 billion in the bank, a solid hardware manufacturer in their back pocket. Next up? My guess is that they'll take a page out of Google's Nexus playbook (ugh, bad pun) and release surprisingly solid mid-range handsets at very good prices until things stick.
Suddenly, the big money is being earned from hardware (a reversal of the PC industry, where hardware companies slugged it out for razor thin margins and software makers raked in billions). Both Google and Microsoft recently purchased established phone hardware manufacturers. While many hypothesized that they did it to compete with Apple, I think they did it to combat the threat from companies like Samsung, LG and HTC. If you look at Apple's sales figures, the reason is crystal clear: the iPhone is both their highest margin and most profitable product.
There is no point in Google and Microsoft doing all the hard work to build and maintain a mobile operating system only to have companies like Samsung walk away with tens of billions of dollars in profit from premium handset sales each quarter.
Google, Apple and Microsoft want to dominate the flagship handset market with a handful of must-have devices each year, forcing Korean and Taiwanese companies into the low end.
There is an entire professional sub-specialty dedicated to product life cycle management. Do you honestly believe that no one at Apple has the slightest inkling of how products mature, resulting in increased competition and dramatically lower profit margins? Apple faces a different set of problems. They don't own their manufacturing facilities, yet they have to profitably produce tens of millions of some of the most popular handsets in the world. That's why they've kept their iPhone line so streamlined, and why they've focused only on the high end. And, yes, the smartphone market is reaching the saturation point. It's time for the Next Big Thing. I vote for life-like humanoid robots.;)
Unless the sender is holding a gun to your head, there should be no reasonable expectation that a text message will be acted on immediately. As others in this thread have noted, SMS is asynchronous and there is no social expectation of immediate response. Even in the case of your fictitious trucking company, it is doubtful that a prosecutor could demonstrate that the company expects drivers to break the law and read texts while piloting a heavily laden vehicle.
By this logic, you could also be held responsible for an accident after emailing, tweeting or mentioning someone in a Facebook status while they're driving. Come to think of it, phoning someone while they're driving (even if they have handsfree) could be construed as deliberate distraction, as could texting a passenger with important news that might interest the driver. This is bonkers; you can't control how and when someone else uses their phone, nor should you be responsible for their poor choices while driving.
I checked the stats, and you're simply making stuff up. In 2010, there were indeed 19,392 firearm-related suicides in the USA - 62% of all firearm fatalities. However, there were also 11,078 homicides - accounting for about 35% of all firearm deaths. You appear to be equating homicide to shooting a criminal, which is nonsense.
You're making the assumption that many of the people shot in the US are criminals. How many of those deaths were legitimate lethal-force defence by police? How many were simply civilians shooting someone they don't recognize in their driveway, losing their temper, road rage, or incorrect assumptions? Possessing a firearm should not give people the right to behave as judge, jury and executioner.
Kodak exited the consumer digital camera market in 2006 when they handed over the design, manufacturing and distribution of camera equipment to Flextronics.
Lead isn't magnetic, so you wouldn't accomplish much with a giant magnet. You'll be lucky to get 50 cents a pound from scrap dealers, so recovery isn't highly profitable.
Slashdot Mirror
Ford didn't invent the car either, but the Model T was certainly innovative and redefined the automotive industry. The same can be said for the iPhone.
This is a brilliant example of how comments don't work. It's emotional, obscene and grammatically incorrect. Comment sections don't foster debate, they tend to foster name calling and repetition of the same damned arguments over and over again.
I bought a deeply discounted PlayBook, and I think they did a lot of things right. The hardware was top-notch and the multitasking OS stood up well against Android and iOS at that point. If BB10 had been released a year earlier with proper core apps (email, contacts, BBM) and attracted top-tier apps, it could well have been a major competitor.
That required them to write all of their core apps from the ground up, and they dramatically underestimated the effort required. The result was the disastrous release of the Playbook without an email client. Some say that the decision to release the Playbook instead of a BB10-equipped phone was also a critical error, but there's no way that the company could have released a phone instead -- it would have required some significant components that simply didn't exist when the PlayBook was first rolled out: a contact manager, dialing software, BBM, SMS, and of course email.
Speaking as the parent of a former 4-year-old, I don't think this is going to work the way you imagine. You're better off getting an adult to help your son initiate a Skype call on a computer or tablet. A preschooler simply doesn't have the cognitive ability to read and respond appropriately to error messages and prompts, nor will he have the attention span to carry the phone everywhere on the off chance that you'll call. And, once the call comes through, it will be hit and miss as to whether he would actually respond the way you hope (it's not unusual to see a child of that age say "Hi!" to a close relative over Skype and wander off - they don't mean to be offensive, it's just that it's hard for 4" screen to compete with whatever draws their attention in the real world). That said, I understand your desire to be in touch as much as possible and hope you can figure something out.
Samsung offers 31 different smartphone models in my local market alone. They range from awful $79 single core handsets intended for the prepaid market through the S4 and Galaxy Note series. Their shotgun approach guarantees that whatever price range a customer is looking, they're likely to at least consider a Samsung. The problem is that they don't make money on the low end, even though they ship millions of units. It's only the top tier handsets that command the large margins.
Apple is a far smaller company that doesn't have its own manufacturing facilities. That fact alone prevents them from participating in the low end of the smartphone market -- by the time they give Foxconn or Pegatron their cut, the margin on a sub-$100 phone would be unacceptable. It would be a make-work project. By eliminating the iPhone 5 from the lineup and replacing it with the 5C, the company seems to be positioning the 5C to gradually slide into the midrange market in a way that doesn't cannibalize sales from the top of the line glass and pixie dust series.I suspect that it will be under a year before the 5C is available for $0 on contract, with a manufacturing cost that's lower than the 4 that it replaces.
Actually, this isn't the case. A good engineer will do an excellent job of mic'ing instruments and getting good sound recorded for each track. The brick wall mastering mess happens when the final version of the track is mixed to stereo. And, sadly, it occurs for the simple reason that humans trend to perceive louder sounds as better sounds.
I dunno, but the fillings in my mouth are tingling.
Is to convince people to BUY PS Vita and it's games. It has the worst adoption rate of ALL handheld games, Even the out of date PSP still outsells it.
Then it's a good thing that the Vita TV will also play PSP and PSOne games.
Vendors should simply clarify what a "season pass" is by listing the number of shows in the season. It's pretty hard to argue that you were mislead when iTunes tells you in advance that you're purchasing eight shows. I'm somewhat puzzled that this functionality isn't already included in the iTunes, Amazon and Google markets.
Correct. The Sony system was Beta. Mine an integrated single-boxc solution by Toshiba. It still functions perfectly, although the VFD display is beginning to look a little uneven.
The WAV format wasn't released until 1991, and Yamaha's PDS CD Audio recorder cost about $35,000 in 1990. The technologies that you flippantly dismiss as "half-assed proprietary garbage" were actually state-of-the-art semi-pro solutions that enabled us to create award-winning music. Had there been better options, rest assured that we would have used them.
Actually, it was a bridge technology between Sony's PCM-3202 digital stereo mastering deck and affordable modern digital recording systems (DAT, CD-R). There was a short period in the late 1980s when PCM encoders for VHS were extremely popular, because they allowed us to create digital masters for CD replication at a fraction of the cost of having a high-end PCM-3202 in the corner of the studio. Back then, recording and mixing a CD was an expensive proposition that required spending hours or days in a "pro" studio. Mixdown from 16 or 24-track analog tape wasn't automated in the more affordable studios, so the engineer and producer would ride the faders in real-time to produce the final track. It was a complicated dance, and we'd often end up with a handful of slightly different mixes for each song. Being able to take the PCM-encoded VHS tape home and listen to each mix without having to pay for studio time really took the pressure off. Once we selected the best mixes, they'd be digitally duplicated onto a master tape that was used to create the final CD. The other mixes on the VHS tapes were either wiped or put into storage. They're not critically important, but on the off chance that one those acts became incredibly famous, there *might* be value in recovering some of the alternate takes.
I have a number of digital recordings in a 14-bit stereo format that encoded the digital signal into the video portion of a VHS tape. Decoding them requires either a standalone Sony PCM decoder or a VHS deck with integrated PCM decoder. There is a very real risk that master tapes recorded in this manner will be unreadable in half a century.
The military is marketed to 18-year-olds, and "soldier" is a passive term that simply doesn't convey the thrill and excitement of getting shot at.
I'm not a shill, and definitely not a Microsoft fan. You need to get it into your head that companies you don't like which sometimes engage in unethical or monopolistic practices can be extremely successful in the marketplace. Just because someone says, "They have been able to come from behind in the past and they might be able to do it again" doesn't mean that person likes the company or approves of the way it runs.
Sure. Currently, only Apple and Samsung are making money in this market. Google plans to join them. And now Microsoft is moi ing the party. This wouldn't be the first time that MS has come from behind: Word utterly crushed Word Perfect to become the standard in the early 90s, Excel pushed Lotus 1-2-3 into has-been status, Internet Explorer killed Netscape as a viable company, and people were surprised when MS released the Xbox and went on to make a fortune in the console industry. Now, they're trailing in the mobile market. They have $68 billion in the bank, a solid hardware manufacturer in their back pocket. Next up? My guess is that they'll take a page out of Google's Nexus playbook (ugh, bad pun) and release surprisingly solid mid-range handsets at very good prices until things stick.
Suddenly, the big money is being earned from hardware (a reversal of the PC industry, where hardware companies slugged it out for razor thin margins and software makers raked in billions). Both Google and Microsoft recently purchased established phone hardware manufacturers. While many hypothesized that they did it to compete with Apple, I think they did it to combat the threat from companies like Samsung, LG and HTC. If you look at Apple's sales figures, the reason is crystal clear: the iPhone is both their highest margin and most profitable product. There is no point in Google and Microsoft doing all the hard work to build and maintain a mobile operating system only to have companies like Samsung walk away with tens of billions of dollars in profit from premium handset sales each quarter. Google, Apple and Microsoft want to dominate the flagship handset market with a handful of must-have devices each year, forcing Korean and Taiwanese companies into the low end.
There is an entire professional sub-specialty dedicated to product life cycle management. Do you honestly believe that no one at Apple has the slightest inkling of how products mature, resulting in increased competition and dramatically lower profit margins? Apple faces a different set of problems. They don't own their manufacturing facilities, yet they have to profitably produce tens of millions of some of the most popular handsets in the world. That's why they've kept their iPhone line so streamlined, and why they've focused only on the high end. And, yes, the smartphone market is reaching the saturation point. It's time for the Next Big Thing. I vote for life-like humanoid robots. ;)
Unless the sender is holding a gun to your head, there should be no reasonable expectation that a text message will be acted on immediately. As others in this thread have noted, SMS is asynchronous and there is no social expectation of immediate response. Even in the case of your fictitious trucking company, it is doubtful that a prosecutor could demonstrate that the company expects drivers to break the law and read texts while piloting a heavily laden vehicle.
By this logic, you could also be held responsible for an accident after emailing, tweeting or mentioning someone in a Facebook status while they're driving. Come to think of it, phoning someone while they're driving (even if they have handsfree) could be construed as deliberate distraction, as could texting a passenger with important news that might interest the driver. This is bonkers; you can't control how and when someone else uses their phone, nor should you be responsible for their poor choices while driving.
I checked the stats, and you're simply making stuff up. In 2010, there were indeed 19,392 firearm-related suicides in the USA - 62% of all firearm fatalities. However, there were also 11,078 homicides - accounting for about 35% of all firearm deaths. You appear to be equating homicide to shooting a criminal, which is nonsense.
You're making the assumption that many of the people shot in the US are criminals. How many of those deaths were legitimate lethal-force defence by police? How many were simply civilians shooting someone they don't recognize in their driveway, losing their temper, road rage, or incorrect assumptions? Possessing a firearm should not give people the right to behave as judge, jury and executioner.
Kodak exited the consumer digital camera market in 2006 when they handed over the design, manufacturing and distribution of camera equipment to Flextronics.
Lead isn't magnetic, so you wouldn't accomplish much with a giant magnet. You'll be lucky to get 50 cents a pound from scrap dealers, so recovery isn't highly profitable.