Or Oakley, which regularly refuses to let its retailers discount its products; it occassionally happens, but is almost never advertised and the discount rarely exceeds 20%.
Patagonia lets retailers discount, but they generally have to: a) notify the rep first b) not discount stuff that they're told not to discount!
It's really a pretty common practice with high-leverage brands.
FWIW I was told - and I don't work the retail channel, so have no way of confirming this (but not reason not to believe it) that the profit on the CRT iMac (and probably the current eMac) was CDN$20
So while you complain about price gouging on the high end, remember the non-existent profit margins on the low. Keep in mind too that those customers buying the CDN$20 computers ('cause that's what they're worth to me) are the biggest pains - they're going to take forever to make a decision, ask you to explain why your iMac is better than a Dell at $50 less, come back regularly and ask questions which you think should be obvious.
So basically, you make no money off your low-end customers.
So I got no problem with Apple fixing prices and retailers making decent markups - as long as it's backed with reasonable warranties and decent products.
And there's where the iPod fails: 90 days is a joke, and a battery that's not changeable by the user is a travesty of epic proportions. Why anybody's buying this thing, I don't know.
While I love OS X, and use it as my day to day OS on a Powerbook, the original post's basic assertion - that it's a nice OS that doesn't incorporate a number of advancements in user interface design - is correct. This is sold, stable, Unix with a pretty face.
OpenDoc running on Classic was more innovative - as was the original NeXT interface. Both of these benefitted from the ability to either jettison the past or start from scratch. I regret that I've never used the now dead Be OS, as I had no Wintel hardware at the time.
A basic flaw in OS X: when doing web work and creating new folders, I often find myself creating a folder and copying a file from another directory then renaming it. This is instead of launching BBEdit and doing a save as -> create new folder. It's faster.
Even KDE gives me a menu that allows me to create a new file in a folder without having to launch an application. This is pretty basic, and it's missing.
I still think OS X was hobbled by hundreds of thousands of screaming, whining Mac users wanting the interface to be like it had been for years - most of them were oblivious to the fact that the core of their OS was so crippled and hobbled it needed to be put out of its misery.
Nah - there's a huge difference between not wanting something to be public, and being smart enough to prevent it from being so.
So this guy's an idiot: there's not need to cause him to suffer more than he needs to.
A couple of years ago Scott McNealy said "Face it: you have Zero privacy. Get used to it." or something similar.
Protect what's left, 'cause it's a precious resource.
wow - this is a brave comment to make, especially hiding behind the mask that is 'anonymous coward'.
There's ample ammunition for the argument that FreeBSD is dead, but there's equally ample ammunition to support the view that FreeBSD development is strong. Given that it sits at the core of Apple's OS X, there is substantial opportunity to gain from this.
I think that the death of FreeBSD as an OS is premature: the death of commercial releases may be real.
I vastly prefer messing around with FreeBSD: faster, more stable and equally productive when compared to most Linux releases.
And Red Hat? Well, they've done a great job commercializing the thing, but does anybody actually like using it? It's a compromise - albeit a good one for some purposes. If I were installing desktops, it'd probably be my FreeOS of choice.
Using your arguments you could argue that installing Outlook on a machine is the same thing as putting a destructive virus...
And really, you're arguing there is a difference?
This hits the P2P nail on the head, and the broader issue of modern technology and the law.
I suppose one way to put it would be: if a bit transfers across a network, does anybody hear?
Arguably, your Ogg-Vorbis file collection is not music until you run it through your speakers: it's data. Not only that but because your encoder has different settings than mine, it's potentially quite a different set of data than anything I might produce.
This leads to an (admittedly dubious) argument that you own the copyright on the data set which you created, while the original artist owns the copyright on the 'played through the speakers' version, which is audibly identical to the one created by my encoder.
No matter what the case, I still strongly resent the recordable media levy, which I just had to pay on a set of cassettes which I still use in my Volvo.
I recall a very enlightening story a few years ago involving a Norton product for the Macintosh - can't remember which one.
Guy buys the product and uses it for a while until a hurricane hits his house and whisks everything away, including his Norton CD. Thing is, he had his serial number or something stored somewhere else and still had it.
So the guy calls Norton and says "I need a copy of the CD so I can reinstall it" and Norton says, "No, your insurance company should buy you a new one."
So the guy says "But I still have the serial number and your licence says that I don't own the software, I just have the right to use it." He wasn't expecting to get it free either: he fully expected to have to pay reasonable costs for, say, shipping and production.
Norton says, yes that's true but you still have to get your insurance company to buy you a new one.
In the end, my recollection is he caved because his insurance company bought him the new one but it points out the problem: software companys keep trying to have it both ways. If I have a licence, replacing the physical media shouldn't be a problem. If I own it then it's up to me to keep it operating.
Right now, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
It's true that this move won't immediately reduce fraud; this is a tough job, with all kinds of snake oil salesmen promising solutions to desperate merchants.
This centralizes control to where it should be though, which makes fraud reduction more possible. If Mastercard doesn't control how PayPal hands out accounts, they can't effectively reduce fraud that's happening through PayPal accounts.
PayPal is an intermediary, adding a layer of additional weakness to the system. I've never really understood the appeal from either a buyer or merchant perspective.
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Or Oakley, which regularly refuses to let its retailers discount its products; it occassionally happens, but is almost never advertised and the discount rarely exceeds 20%.
Patagonia lets retailers discount, but they generally have to:
a) notify the rep first
b) not discount stuff that they're told not to discount!
It's really a pretty common practice with high-leverage brands.
FWIW I was told - and I don't work the retail channel, so have no way of confirming this (but not reason not to believe it) that the profit on the CRT iMac (and probably the current eMac) was CDN$20
So while you complain about price gouging on the high end, remember the non-existent profit margins on the low. Keep in mind too that those customers buying the CDN$20 computers ('cause that's what they're worth to me) are the biggest pains - they're going to take forever to make a decision, ask you to explain why your iMac is better than a Dell at $50 less, come back regularly and ask questions which you think should be obvious.
So basically, you make no money off your low-end customers.
So I got no problem with Apple fixing prices and retailers making decent markups - as long as it's backed with reasonable warranties and decent products.
And there's where the iPod fails: 90 days is a joke, and a battery that's not changeable by the user is a travesty of epic proportions. Why anybody's buying this thing, I don't know.
But I want one...my precious.
Yeah, but why did they care about this case?
e d.php?i d=12_0_1_0_C
There was a story a while ago here:
http://macscripter.net/unscripted/unscript
which basically netted very little response, although the guy did get the computer back eventually.
So would the FBI have cared if it had been your laptop?
While I love OS X, and use it as my day to day OS on a Powerbook, the original post's basic assertion - that it's a nice OS that doesn't incorporate a number of advancements in user interface design - is correct. This is sold, stable, Unix with a pretty face. OpenDoc running on Classic was more innovative - as was the original NeXT interface. Both of these benefitted from the ability to either jettison the past or start from scratch. I regret that I've never used the now dead Be OS, as I had no Wintel hardware at the time. A basic flaw in OS X: when doing web work and creating new folders, I often find myself creating a folder and copying a file from another directory then renaming it. This is instead of launching BBEdit and doing a save as -> create new folder. It's faster. Even KDE gives me a menu that allows me to create a new file in a folder without having to launch an application. This is pretty basic, and it's missing. I still think OS X was hobbled by hundreds of thousands of screaming, whining Mac users wanting the interface to be like it had been for years - most of them were oblivious to the fact that the core of their OS was so crippled and hobbled it needed to be put out of its misery.
Nah - there's a huge difference between not wanting something to be public, and being smart enough to prevent it from being so. So this guy's an idiot: there's not need to cause him to suffer more than he needs to. A couple of years ago Scott McNealy said "Face it: you have Zero privacy. Get used to it." or something similar. Protect what's left, 'cause it's a precious resource.
wow - this is a brave comment to make, especially hiding behind the mask that is 'anonymous coward'.
There's ample ammunition for the argument that FreeBSD is dead, but there's equally ample ammunition to support the view that FreeBSD development is strong. Given that it sits at the core of Apple's OS X, there is substantial opportunity to gain from this.
I think that the death of FreeBSD as an OS is premature: the death of commercial releases may be real.
I vastly prefer messing around with FreeBSD: faster, more stable and equally productive when compared to most Linux releases.
And Red Hat? Well, they've done a great job commercializing the thing, but does anybody actually like using it? It's a compromise - albeit a good one for some purposes. If I were installing desktops, it'd probably be my FreeOS of choice.
Using your arguments you could argue that installing Outlook on a machine is the same thing as putting a destructive virus... And really, you're arguing there is a difference?
This hits the P2P nail on the head, and the broader issue of modern technology and the law.
I suppose one way to put it would be: if a bit transfers across a network, does anybody hear?
Arguably, your Ogg-Vorbis file collection is not music until you run it through your speakers: it's data. Not only that but because your encoder has different settings than mine, it's potentially quite a different set of data than anything I might produce.
This leads to an (admittedly dubious) argument that you own the copyright on the data set which you created, while the original artist owns the copyright on the 'played through the speakers' version, which is audibly identical to the one created by my encoder.
No matter what the case, I still strongly resent the recordable media levy, which I just had to pay on a set of cassettes which I still use in my Volvo.
I recall a very enlightening story a few years ago involving a Norton product for the Macintosh - can't remember which one.
Guy buys the product and uses it for a while until a hurricane hits his house and whisks everything away, including his Norton CD. Thing is, he had his serial number or something stored somewhere else and still had it.
So the guy calls Norton and says "I need a copy of the CD so I can reinstall it" and Norton says, "No, your insurance company should buy you a new one."
So the guy says "But I still have the serial number and your licence says that I don't own the software, I just have the right to use it." He wasn't expecting to get it free either: he fully expected to have to pay reasonable costs for, say, shipping and production.
Norton says, yes that's true but you still have to get your insurance company to buy you a new one.
In the end, my recollection is he caved because his insurance company bought him the new one but it points out the problem: software companys keep trying to have it both ways. If I have a licence, replacing the physical media shouldn't be a problem. If I own it then it's up to me to keep it operating.
Right now, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Is this trolling?
Nothing nibbling here.
It's true that this move won't immediately reduce fraud; this is a tough job, with all kinds of snake oil salesmen promising solutions to desperate merchants. This centralizes control to where it should be though, which makes fraud reduction more possible. If Mastercard doesn't control how PayPal hands out accounts, they can't effectively reduce fraud that's happening through PayPal accounts. PayPal is an intermediary, adding a layer of additional weakness to the system. I've never really understood the appeal from either a buyer or merchant perspective.