I used to watch Doctor Who up until David Tennant left and it can be quite enjoyably, if a little silly & contrived at times.
However, I stopped watching a couple of years back because I was sick of the constant spoilers. If a main character is going to die (or regenerate) then I don't want to know about it months in advance. I want to find out during the show itself and to experience the suspense of not knowing how the episode/season is going to end, until it does.
It's easy enough to avoid spoilers for most shows, as I can just avoid visiting the IMDB forums, but here in the UK it's hard to avoid the press announcements because they plaster them across the front page of the BBC News website and they get picked up by the other news media.
Look at this upcoming 50th anniversary special, for example. We already know certain people and species who will be in the show. There would be a far bigger wow factor if they just showed the episode and let viewers be amazed by what happens.
A study one year on is useful, but what would be even more interesting would be a longer term study focusing on the experiences of students as they grow up and leave school.
It would be interesting to see whether using Linux and a non-MS office suite affected them academically, and as they start to look for work - particularly with many jobs coming with a requirement to be proficient in Microsoft Office (try getting Libre Office past those HR drones). Perhaps a higher proportion of students than is normal at a girls' school will end up working in the tech industry, having had more experience at school using a Linux system.
You call it coercion, but others might simply call it entering into a mutually beneficial agreement with the store.
So long as it is optional and you have the choice not to lose your privacy, I don't see what your complaint is. Other shoppers, obviously, have the choice to give up their shopping habits to the store and get cheaper prices as a result. As we have seen from store loyalty cards, it is clearly a very attractive proposition to many people.
I can totally recommend the WDTV Live. I have one and so do my parents (in their late 50s). It works with SMB network shares so you don't even need to setup a DLNA server. Or you can go the old fashioned way and play stuff off a USB stick.
I don't think it's a reasonable comparison as it doesn't take into account all the considerations.
I have a 23" on my desktop at home and a 20" in the office, both widescreens. I wouldn't want to go any smaller or go back to 4:3.
OTOH, I used to own a 9.7" iPad and now I own a Nexus 7. I would consider something iPad Mini sized if they can make the bezel a bit smaller, but I certainly wouldn't go any bigger. In this scenario, the benefits of a smaller device (portability & comfort of holding) outweigh the benefits of a larger screen.
In my shirt pocket, I have an iPhone 5 at 4". It fits comfortably without feeling too big and bulky. Its location in my shirt pocket is non-negotiable btw - I feel secure with it being there and it's easy to access so putting it in my trouser pocket is not an option. Also, I can just about operate it one-handed - any bigger and I would need to use two hands to operate it. That's fine if I'm on the train for example and am happy to use it in two-handed mode, but that should be my decision and not forced upon me by the size of the device.
It's great that you're happy with a larger screen on your mobile device, and I see a lot of people every day who have made the same decision as you, but I think it's a fallacy to suggest that bigger must always equal better.
For not much more than the cost of a Pi (plus all the required accessories), if not the same cost, there are plenty of alternatives on the market that do a far better job.
I love tinkering with hardware and software as much as the next guy, but when I come home from work I enjoy the ease of use my WDTV Live provides. It's simple to use and supports Netflix along with various other streaming services. And the OP could even provide USB sticks now and again loaded with MKVs for his grandparents to view.
I subscribe to Spotify and I'm well aware of the consequences of its DRM; if I stop paying the monthly fee, I don't get access to any music I may have listened to during my time as a customer.
My question is - what is the alternative to DRM for services like Spotify? It seems to me that for such a service to exist, DRM must exist unless you choose to rely on an honour system.
As long as I pay them £10 per month, I get unlimited access to a massive library of tunes on my PC, as well as my phone. I can be on the train home and decide I want to listen to song x by artist y, and within seconds it is streaming to me. Best of all, it doesn't cost me whatever the going rate for an MP3 is these days.
If we lose the DRM, the proposition changes quite significantly. It becomes £10 for unlimited music with no DRM - why would I do anything other than subscribe for one month and download their entire library onto a massive hard drive, for later playback at my leisure?
For me, it's a trade off between cost and no DRM. Let's say I listen to 50 new tracks each month using Spotify Radio. At the iTunes price of 99p per track, this will cost me just short of £50. It's great that these tracks come without DRM, but for that same £50, I can get a return flight to Europe with a low cost airline. Or feed myself for a week.
There are these pesky little things called consumer rights. In much of the developed world, the Government realises that consumers are often put at a disadvantage because big business is able to dictate terms which are to the detriment to the customer. Often the consumer is simply left to 'take it or leave it'.
I'm from Europe so here are a couple of examples of consumer law which is designed to protect the customer against big business, even if the customer is willing to enter into voluntary agreements with businesses.
- Goods sold must be of merchantable quality and as designed. Typically this means they must last two years without breaking, otherwise the retailer has to replace or refund the purchase. Apple fell foul of this law in the EU. - Companies can't collude to set prices. For example, a mobile phone manufacturer can't say to the networks that they must sell a phone at a certain price point. This is because such actions are to the detriment of customers. - The advertised price of an airline ticket must include all mandatory extra charges. Some of the airlines in Europe (e.g. Ryanair) advertised a really low price to entice customers to their website, then just before checkout taxes and an admin fee were added. This was ruled illegal because it was to the detriment of customers.
I'm sure similar laws also exist in the US, particularly with regards to price collusion. This is what Apple has been found guilty of. The reason they have been found guilty is because consumer rights have been violated as a result of their collusion with publishers.
But the market didn't work it out through competition.
Amazon were quite happy buying ebooks from the publishers at a price the publishers were happy with. Amazon were also quite happy to leverage their low operating cost model to sell books at the minimum markup possible. Amazon's customers benefitted from the resulting low prices and are happy that they don't even need to buy a Kindle to take advantage of them; they can use their ebooks on most of the tablets already out there.
Enter Apple, who want to make 30% margin on everything sold via the iBookstore in order to break even or make a huge profit. They don't want to compete with Amazon on price so they work with the publishers to ensure that Amazon can't undercut Apple anymore, because the prices are now set by publishers.
The end result is that the average price of ebooks goes up and Amazon's customers, who previously enjoyed low prices, must now pay more because the publishers won't let Amazon sell them books at a cheaper price than Apple does.
But this is what menial jobs are like; cashiers scan barcodes all day, warehouse workers pick and pack items all day, etc. And if the people working there didn't want the jobs, they are not forced to continue working there - there is always an out.
Apologies if you were trying to be ironic, but that sounds like a perfect comparison.
How many people disappeared in the night, only to be rendered to random countries around the world to be tortured? How many were sent to Guantanamo? How many were just killed by extra-judicial drone attacks?
Selling the product is not the problem, restricting the distribution is. Are you going to be happy if someone takes your terrible looking product then essentially limits it's distribution because they have just prettied up some css and images? What if this new product becomes more popular than yours, what if this new product starts making lots of money while your project dies in obscurity?
I'm not seeing the issue here.
The distribution of the original product and code will not be limited by this scenario, nor will the opportunity for buyers to buy it, if its the best product on the market.
If the product dies in obscurity because it isn't pretty enough, perhaps the developer needs to brush up on his or her design skills, or hire a professional.
None of the browsers will protect you from surveillance.
Work on the basis that your ISP is compromised and that the web services you use have shared their databases with Government agencies. When you consider this, changing your browser is going to have little to no impact.
I think the only way you can really be secure from surveillance is to use the tor browser and only use web services which can't trace you. So, no Google, Apple, social networking or any of the cool stuff we take for granted these days.
I enjoy marathon sessions of FIFA on the Xbox 360, yet for every 6 hours I play on a Friday night, I spend significantly longer playing With Friends games on my phone.
I would use the term casual gaming to describe most mobile games, but then is playing FIFA not also casual gaming? 6 minute halfs against an opponent, then replay again and again. Is there much of a difference?
The DSLR will take better photos every time, even if you use it on auto and don't manipulate the settings. But for most people, the best camera is the one they have in their pocket and this is his point; that a smartphone camera can be "good enough" because the general public doesn't need a DSLR.
It now seems obvious that downloading torrents from a centralised website has had its day.
Countries all over the world are blocking access to trackers and taking away the domain names, and the centralised nature of trackers has always been a weak point.
What we need is for a major player, e.g. TPB, to step up the game and go TOR only (for website access - actual data transfer would still be over clearnet). By providing access via a TOR hidden service, you reduce or remove the possibility of the site being taken down, you provide a degree of anonymity for website operators and you have the added effect of educating the wider public about the private browsing benefits that TOR allows.
To believe in science (and to disbelieve in religion), one needs to believe that the elements needed to create the big bang came into existence of their own accord and that the laws of physics decided to invent themselves.
Science is great up to a point; it can tell us what happened and how it happened. But when you go back far enough, it does requires the belief that everything which set off the chain of events somehow came into being without an intelligent creator.
Are conditions really bad enough to stop people flying? Admittedly, I have little experience of flying within the US (although I am returning from SFO to LHR in three weeks so I will get to experience things first hand).
When I fly from the UK (domestic & international), I'm used to turning up no more than 60 mins before the flight leaves - even if I have hold baggage and don't have fast track security. I'm not going to pretend economy seats are the height of luxury, but in general I try to get the front row or an emergency exit seat so I get a bit more legroom and the person in front can't recline. And it's hardly any worse than my morning & evening commute by train - I even get to sit down on the plane.
Is the US airport/flying experience so terrible? Any particular tips I should consider for my flight out of SFO?
On the subject of the article, I'm inclined to agree with this decision. If you need a pocket knife at your destination, check it in the hold. Do you really need it on the plane? Of course, I'm quite happy to admit that there are plenty of other ways to do damage to someone using permitted items - I reckon you could do far more damage with an aerosol deodorant and cigarette lighter.
Please humour me for a moment and take a look at this photo which shows the iPhone 3GS and Galaxy S side by side. Then try to tell me with a straight face that you can't see the similarity.
A few interesting points/questions:
- The Galaxy S interface looks nothing like stock Android. If they felt it necessary to create their own interface, why create one with similar UI elements such as the shaded area for the four icons at the bottom? - The Galaxy S hardware design has rounded corners with chrome edging. These are not typical features you find on every smartphone, nor are they essential to its operation. How did they coincidentally end up with such a similar design?
The Galaxy S3 and S4, as well as the Nokia Lumia range and HTC's range show that you can make attractive devices with nice UIs. Apart from most HTCs looking the same, and most Lumias looking the same, why is it that no other devices have managed to end up looking like carbon copies of the iPhone?
Do you tell them that by installing XP on your machine, they will lose the use of any RAM over the 3GB limit for 32-bit operating systems? Or that you can install XP 64-bit instead giving them compatibility issues down the line?
Old people and "noobs" might not understand what RAM is, but in my experience, when you tell them your fix will cause them to lose something, it makes them think twice.
Why not take that $65 and give them an hour's tutorial on the key changes and benefits Windows 8 brings, and how these can help them use their computer in ways XP didn't allow them. That will help them in the present and prepare them for whatever lies in store when they next come to upgrade their machine; the longer someone remains tied to XP, the more changes there will be to get used to. You surely can't expect someone to remain stuck on a 12 year old operating system for the rest of their life?
I've never used Windows 8 but my employer is switching in the next few weeks and I attended a 60 minute course like this a couple of weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my keyboard shortcuts still existed, that I can hit Start and being typing the app name and that my area for pinning apps & documents was far larger than what's available on XP's Start Menu.
I have to wear glasses anyway (and don't have the option of contacts). What's so bad about having some electronics built in to the frame that's already on my face?
it's not about being out of the loop or feeling inadequate. It's about using technology and making it work for me.
We had naysayers like yourself before cell phones were popular. It would be difficult to present a convincing argument that the advancement of cellular tech has enabled us to do things we weren't able to do before and that this has had a positive impact on quality of life. Wearables are merely the next step in this evolutionary process.
But if you take away all those things - especially the touch screen - it is no longer an iPod touch and simply becomes a bigger iPod Nano. And I would make the argument that if you do remove all those features, you don't need such a big display so you could even make it the same size as the iPod Nano.
Realistically, in 2013, would you not consider a touch screen as a basic feature? It might have been advanced 6-7 years ago but these days you can pick up cheap Android devices for under £50 which all have touch screens.
WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity these days seem to come as part of the SoC which powers these devices. Same with GPS. I think it would actually turn out more expensive to maintain a separate line producing separate chips - particularly as the incremental cost of WiFi & Bluetooth isn't much.
You probably don't need Apple to convince you to buy one of their iProducts. They aren't going to give you drag & drop nor remove the iTunes requirement. I love my iPhone but I really hate iTunes so much that I subscribe to Spotify instead and only use that for music these days.
If you're happy enough with your Zen, why not look for its natural successor instead? You'll probably appreciate it much more than switching to Apple.
Meeting all your requirements seems to be impossible (I googled) and I don't think the situation will change in the future.
If you can make compromises, it seems that the iPod Classic 160GB plays ALAC files and comes in at £199. Not sure what the dollar price is or whether ALAC is a suitable replacement for FLAC (I'm happy enough with 320kbps Spotify tunes so hardly the right person to ask).
However, the main problem is that we are at the point where the majority want converged devices and this means that, for most people, their phone doubles as a music player, a camera, and everything else.
The market for standalone music players definitely still exists, but don't expect to see much innovation there. In general, the market for these devices is one that wants to load up their MP3/AAC collection and take it with them while out exercising. People with your needs are a minority and in a saturated market, there is little point in companies developing such a device for marginal profit gains.
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I used to watch Doctor Who up until David Tennant left and it can be quite enjoyably, if a little silly & contrived at times.
However, I stopped watching a couple of years back because I was sick of the constant spoilers. If a main character is going to die (or regenerate) then I don't want to know about it months in advance. I want to find out during the show itself and to experience the suspense of not knowing how the episode/season is going to end, until it does.
It's easy enough to avoid spoilers for most shows, as I can just avoid visiting the IMDB forums, but here in the UK it's hard to avoid the press announcements because they plaster them across the front page of the BBC News website and they get picked up by the other news media.
Look at this upcoming 50th anniversary special, for example. We already know certain people and species who will be in the show. There would be a far bigger wow factor if they just showed the episode and let viewers be amazed by what happens.
A study one year on is useful, but what would be even more interesting would be a longer term study focusing on the experiences of students as they grow up and leave school.
It would be interesting to see whether using Linux and a non-MS office suite affected them academically, and as they start to look for work - particularly with many jobs coming with a requirement to be proficient in Microsoft Office (try getting Libre Office past those HR drones). Perhaps a higher proportion of students than is normal at a girls' school will end up working in the tech industry, having had more experience at school using a Linux system.
Yep, I have one. So do the millions of other iPhone users.
You call it coercion, but others might simply call it entering into a mutually beneficial agreement with the store.
So long as it is optional and you have the choice not to lose your privacy, I don't see what your complaint is. Other shoppers, obviously, have the choice to give up their shopping habits to the store and get cheaper prices as a result. As we have seen from store loyalty cards, it is clearly a very attractive proposition to many people.
I can totally recommend the WDTV Live. I have one and so do my parents (in their late 50s). It works with SMB network shares so you don't even need to setup a DLNA server. Or you can go the old fashioned way and play stuff off a USB stick.
I don't think it's a reasonable comparison as it doesn't take into account all the considerations.
I have a 23" on my desktop at home and a 20" in the office, both widescreens. I wouldn't want to go any smaller or go back to 4:3.
OTOH, I used to own a 9.7" iPad and now I own a Nexus 7. I would consider something iPad Mini sized if they can make the bezel a bit smaller, but I certainly wouldn't go any bigger. In this scenario, the benefits of a smaller device (portability & comfort of holding) outweigh the benefits of a larger screen.
In my shirt pocket, I have an iPhone 5 at 4". It fits comfortably without feeling too big and bulky. Its location in my shirt pocket is non-negotiable btw - I feel secure with it being there and it's easy to access so putting it in my trouser pocket is not an option. Also, I can just about operate it one-handed - any bigger and I would need to use two hands to operate it. That's fine if I'm on the train for example and am happy to use it in two-handed mode, but that should be my decision and not forced upon me by the size of the device.
It's great that you're happy with a larger screen on your mobile device, and I see a lot of people every day who have made the same decision as you, but I think it's a fallacy to suggest that bigger must always equal better.
For not much more than the cost of a Pi (plus all the required accessories), if not the same cost, there are plenty of alternatives on the market that do a far better job.
I love tinkering with hardware and software as much as the next guy, but when I come home from work I enjoy the ease of use my WDTV Live provides. It's simple to use and supports Netflix along with various other streaming services. And the OP could even provide USB sticks now and again loaded with MKVs for his grandparents to view.
I subscribe to Spotify and I'm well aware of the consequences of its DRM; if I stop paying the monthly fee, I don't get access to any music I may have listened to during my time as a customer.
My question is - what is the alternative to DRM for services like Spotify? It seems to me that for such a service to exist, DRM must exist unless you choose to rely on an honour system.
As long as I pay them £10 per month, I get unlimited access to a massive library of tunes on my PC, as well as my phone. I can be on the train home and decide I want to listen to song x by artist y, and within seconds it is streaming to me. Best of all, it doesn't cost me whatever the going rate for an MP3 is these days.
If we lose the DRM, the proposition changes quite significantly. It becomes £10 for unlimited music with no DRM - why would I do anything other than subscribe for one month and download their entire library onto a massive hard drive, for later playback at my leisure?
For me, it's a trade off between cost and no DRM. Let's say I listen to 50 new tracks each month using Spotify Radio. At the iTunes price of 99p per track, this will cost me just short of £50. It's great that these tracks come without DRM, but for that same £50, I can get a return flight to Europe with a low cost airline. Or feed myself for a week.
There are these pesky little things called consumer rights. In much of the developed world, the Government realises that consumers are often put at a disadvantage because big business is able to dictate terms which are to the detriment to the customer. Often the consumer is simply left to 'take it or leave it'.
I'm from Europe so here are a couple of examples of consumer law which is designed to protect the customer against big business, even if the customer is willing to enter into voluntary agreements with businesses.
- Goods sold must be of merchantable quality and as designed. Typically this means they must last two years without breaking, otherwise the retailer has to replace or refund the purchase. Apple fell foul of this law in the EU.
- Companies can't collude to set prices. For example, a mobile phone manufacturer can't say to the networks that they must sell a phone at a certain price point. This is because such actions are to the detriment of customers.
- The advertised price of an airline ticket must include all mandatory extra charges. Some of the airlines in Europe (e.g. Ryanair) advertised a really low price to entice customers to their website, then just before checkout taxes and an admin fee were added. This was ruled illegal because it was to the detriment of customers.
I'm sure similar laws also exist in the US, particularly with regards to price collusion. This is what Apple has been found guilty of. The reason they have been found guilty is because consumer rights have been violated as a result of their collusion with publishers.
But the market didn't work it out through competition.
Amazon were quite happy buying ebooks from the publishers at a price the publishers were happy with. Amazon were also quite happy to leverage their low operating cost model to sell books at the minimum markup possible. Amazon's customers benefitted from the resulting low prices and are happy that they don't even need to buy a Kindle to take advantage of them; they can use their ebooks on most of the tablets already out there.
Enter Apple, who want to make 30% margin on everything sold via the iBookstore in order to break even or make a huge profit. They don't want to compete with Amazon on price so they work with the publishers to ensure that Amazon can't undercut Apple anymore, because the prices are now set by publishers.
The end result is that the average price of ebooks goes up and Amazon's customers, who previously enjoyed low prices, must now pay more because the publishers won't let Amazon sell them books at a cheaper price than Apple does.
Sounds like a model of efficiency.
But this is what menial jobs are like; cashiers scan barcodes all day, warehouse workers pick and pack items all day, etc. And if the people working there didn't want the jobs, they are not forced to continue working there - there is always an out.
Apologies if you were trying to be ironic, but that sounds like a perfect comparison.
How many people disappeared in the night, only to be rendered to random countries around the world to be tortured?
How many were sent to Guantanamo?
How many were just killed by extra-judicial drone attacks?
Selling the product is not the problem, restricting the distribution is. Are you going to be happy if someone takes your terrible looking product then essentially limits it's distribution because they have just prettied up some css and images? What if this new product becomes more popular than yours, what if this new product starts making lots of money while your project dies in obscurity?
I'm not seeing the issue here.
The distribution of the original product and code will not be limited by this scenario, nor will the opportunity for buyers to buy it, if its the best product on the market.
If the product dies in obscurity because it isn't pretty enough, perhaps the developer needs to brush up on his or her design skills, or hire a professional.
None of the browsers will protect you from surveillance.
Work on the basis that your ISP is compromised and that the web services you use have shared their databases with Government agencies. When you consider this, changing your browser is going to have little to no impact.
I think the only way you can really be secure from surveillance is to use the tor browser and only use web services which can't trace you. So, no Google, Apple, social networking or any of the cool stuff we take for granted these days.
What is "serious gaming" though?
I enjoy marathon sessions of FIFA on the Xbox 360, yet for every 6 hours I play on a Friday night, I spend significantly longer playing With Friends games on my phone.
I would use the term casual gaming to describe most mobile games, but then is playing FIFA not also casual gaming? 6 minute halfs against an opponent, then replay again and again. Is there much of a difference?
I think he did mean DSLR.
The DSLR will take better photos every time, even if you use it on auto and don't manipulate the settings. But for most people, the best camera is the one they have in their pocket and this is his point; that a smartphone camera can be "good enough" because the general public doesn't need a DSLR.
WhatsApp immediately springs to mind, although Apple's implementation, while more elegant, has fewer features than the original.
You could also argue that they copied Kindle too, with their iBookstore and iBooks.
Not that I think anything is wrong with either of these examples, nor the rest that I haven't been able to think of.
It now seems obvious that downloading torrents from a centralised website has had its day.
Countries all over the world are blocking access to trackers and taking away the domain names, and the centralised nature of trackers has always been a weak point.
What we need is for a major player, e.g. TPB, to step up the game and go TOR only (for website access - actual data transfer would still be over clearnet). By providing access via a TOR hidden service, you reduce or remove the possibility of the site being taken down, you provide a degree of anonymity for website operators and you have the added effect of educating the wider public about the private browsing benefits that TOR allows.
I don't think that's strictly true.
To believe in science (and to disbelieve in religion), one needs to believe that the elements needed to create the big bang came into existence of their own accord and that the laws of physics decided to invent themselves.
Science is great up to a point; it can tell us what happened and how it happened. But when you go back far enough, it does requires the belief that everything which set off the chain of events somehow came into being without an intelligent creator.
Are conditions really bad enough to stop people flying? Admittedly, I have little experience of flying within the US (although I am returning from SFO to LHR in three weeks so I will get to experience things first hand).
When I fly from the UK (domestic & international), I'm used to turning up no more than 60 mins before the flight leaves - even if I have hold baggage and don't have fast track security. I'm not going to pretend economy seats are the height of luxury, but in general I try to get the front row or an emergency exit seat so I get a bit more legroom and the person in front can't recline. And it's hardly any worse than my morning & evening commute by train - I even get to sit down on the plane.
Is the US airport/flying experience so terrible? Any particular tips I should consider for my flight out of SFO?
On the subject of the article, I'm inclined to agree with this decision. If you need a pocket knife at your destination, check it in the hold. Do you really need it on the plane? Of course, I'm quite happy to admit that there are plenty of other ways to do damage to someone using permitted items - I reckon you could do far more damage with an aerosol deodorant and cigarette lighter.
Please humour me for a moment and take a look at this photo which shows the iPhone 3GS and Galaxy S side by side. Then try to tell me with a straight face that you can't see the similarity.
A few interesting points/questions:
- The Galaxy S interface looks nothing like stock Android. If they felt it necessary to create their own interface, why create one with similar UI elements such as the shaded area for the four icons at the bottom?
- The Galaxy S hardware design has rounded corners with chrome edging. These are not typical features you find on every smartphone, nor are they essential to its operation. How did they coincidentally end up with such a similar design?
The Galaxy S3 and S4, as well as the Nokia Lumia range and HTC's range show that you can make attractive devices with nice UIs. Apart from most HTCs looking the same, and most Lumias looking the same, why is it that no other devices have managed to end up looking like carbon copies of the iPhone?
Do you tell them that by installing XP on your machine, they will lose the use of any RAM over the 3GB limit for 32-bit operating systems? Or that you can install XP 64-bit instead giving them compatibility issues down the line?
Old people and "noobs" might not understand what RAM is, but in my experience, when you tell them your fix will cause them to lose something, it makes them think twice.
Why not take that $65 and give them an hour's tutorial on the key changes and benefits Windows 8 brings, and how these can help them use their computer in ways XP didn't allow them. That will help them in the present and prepare them for whatever lies in store when they next come to upgrade their machine; the longer someone remains tied to XP, the more changes there will be to get used to. You surely can't expect someone to remain stuck on a 12 year old operating system for the rest of their life?
I've never used Windows 8 but my employer is switching in the next few weeks and I attended a 60 minute course like this a couple of weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my keyboard shortcuts still existed, that I can hit Start and being typing the app name and that my area for pinning apps & documents was far larger than what's available on XP's Start Menu.
I have to wear glasses anyway (and don't have the option of contacts). What's so bad about having some electronics built in to the frame that's already on my face?
it's not about being out of the loop or feeling inadequate. It's about using technology and making it work for me.
We had naysayers like yourself before cell phones were popular. It would be difficult to present a convincing argument that the advancement of cellular tech has enabled us to do things we weren't able to do before and that this has had a positive impact on quality of life. Wearables are merely the next step in this evolutionary process.
But if you take away all those things - especially the touch screen - it is no longer an iPod touch and simply becomes a bigger iPod Nano. And I would make the argument that if you do remove all those features, you don't need such a big display so you could even make it the same size as the iPod Nano.
Realistically, in 2013, would you not consider a touch screen as a basic feature? It might have been advanced 6-7 years ago but these days you can pick up cheap Android devices for under £50 which all have touch screens.
WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity these days seem to come as part of the SoC which powers these devices. Same with GPS. I think it would actually turn out more expensive to maintain a separate line producing separate chips - particularly as the incremental cost of WiFi & Bluetooth isn't much.
You probably don't need Apple to convince you to buy one of their iProducts. They aren't going to give you drag & drop nor remove the iTunes requirement. I love my iPhone but I really hate iTunes so much that I subscribe to Spotify instead and only use that for music these days.
If you're happy enough with your Zen, why not look for its natural successor instead? You'll probably appreciate it much more than switching to Apple.
Meeting all your requirements seems to be impossible (I googled) and I don't think the situation will change in the future.
If you can make compromises, it seems that the iPod Classic 160GB plays ALAC files and comes in at £199. Not sure what the dollar price is or whether ALAC is a suitable replacement for FLAC (I'm happy enough with 320kbps Spotify tunes so hardly the right person to ask).
However, the main problem is that we are at the point where the majority want converged devices and this means that, for most people, their phone doubles as a music player, a camera, and everything else.
The market for standalone music players definitely still exists, but don't expect to see much innovation there. In general, the market for these devices is one that wants to load up their MP3/AAC collection and take it with them while out exercising. People with your needs are a minority and in a saturated market, there is little point in companies developing such a device for marginal profit gains.