"This was because of internal turf wars over which division is responsible for it and because of internal confusion over how to market something in a new category, compound by the similar confusion of their retail partners."
That's one thing at which Apple has excelled. They'll make iPod nanos that steal sales from iPods, shuffles that steal from nanos, notebooks that steal sales from desktops, iPhones that cannabilize sales from iPods, and iPads that could cannabilize sales of notebooks.
Too many businesses fail to realize that it's better to cannabilize your own sales than to let someone else do it.
"Pixel density is an instant design decision where higher = less SNR but more resolution. "
Had a longer response, but web ate it.
Anyway, the answer is not always. Read the following on backside-illumination technology....
"The ability to collect more light meant that a similarly-sized sensor array could offer higher resolution without the drop in low-light performance otherwise associated with the megapixel race. Alternately, the same resolution and low-light capability could be offered on a smaller chip, lowering costs. Key to attaining these advantages would be an improved process that addressed the yield problems, largely through improving the uniformity of an active layer on the front of the detectors.[3]
A major step in the adoption of BI sensors was made when OmniVision Technologies sampled their first sensors using the technique in 2007.[4] However, these did not see widespread use due to their high costs. Sony's work on new photo diode materials and processes allowed them to introduce the first consumer back-illuminated sensor as their CMOS-based "Exmor R" in August 2009.[2] According to Sony, the new material offered +8 dB signaling. When combined with the new back-illuminated layout, the sensor improved low-light performance by as much as two times.[2]
Competitors followed suit, and by the end of the year most companies were offering a version in their high-end products. OmniVision has continued to push the technology down their product lines. In 2010, back-illumination came to the low-end of the market when Apple included a 5 Mpx OmniVision detector in the latest revision of the mobile phone, the iPhone 4.[1] Another example is the HTC EVO 4G which equipped with a 8 Mpx OmniVision detector. In 2011, Sony implemented their Exmor R sensor in their flagship smartphone Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc[5]."
So. With better tech, it's entirely possible that an iPhone 5 8MP image could be better than an iPhone 4 5MP image. You can argue if you want, but really, you're arguing without facts. You don't know which sensor (maybe Sony, maybe not). You don't know what kind of tech. You don't know sensor size. You don't know lens size. You don't know optical quality.
In short, as far as I can tell, you don't know ANYTHING, so you're ragging on them just to be ragging on them, with a bunch of "in theory" nonsense that may or may not have any bearing whatsoever to the subject at hand.
Let Apple ship the silly thing, then we can compare images side-by-side.
"All other things being equal a lower megapixel sensor has far better noise characteristics than a high megapixels sensor...."
The iPhone 3GS had a 3MP camera. The iPhone 4 has a 5MP camera, one that's acknowledged by many to be one of the best on the market, and much, much better than the one in the 3GS.
Of course, the camera technology had improved, so all other things "weren't equal". But it also shows that that you can increase pixel counts AND increase quality at the same time. Which means that Apple could, with better sensor technology, increase the count to 8MP and STILL get a better image than that of the 5MP camera that preceded it.
There's also more to image quality than just sensor sensitivity. Most P&Ss, for example, are priced too cheaply to throw a multi-core A5 processor and full-scale graphics chip into the mix for post image processing.
Low-light sensitivity is import, but it's not the sine qua non of digital photography.
The very idea of "standardization" could backfire. Badly.
We have precedent for this, because Microsoft did the same thing with Windows, dictating ever stricter hardware standards and forbidding OS changes (though you were apparently free to install as much bloatware as you liked).
And the result? Hardware among vendors was effectively identical. The software WAS identical. And manufacturers well left with little to differentiate a Dell PC from an HP PC from an Acer PC. Change the beige plastic to black plastic? Add some trim? Dell and Gateway tried to make a go of it via the customization route, but faced increased competition from manufacturers who were left with just a single weapon in their toolkit.
What happens when dozens of companies are producing identical products? You end up with a commodity. And how are commodities traded and sold?
On price.
And so manufacturers did the only thing they could do: undercut each other on price, to the point where PC profit margins were things best measured in dimes, not dollars.
I predict the same thing happening to Android. With no significant differentiation, the majority of Android devices will end up being heavily discounted, or even given away as loss leaders by carriers and others attempting to lock subscribers into subscription plans. (Think Amazon and B&N.)
But look at it this way. Finally, Android will be "free".
A VAT on ALL purchases, including business related purchases.
You buy ore to make metal, you pay VAT on the ore. I buy metal to make parts, I pay VAT on the metal. Sam buys my parts to make cars, he pays VAT on the parts. Joe buys a car, he pays a VAT on the car.
An incremental cost on every paid transaction. No exceptions.
It's not about moving jobs. It's about shuffling your earnings around in offshore accounts so that you pay NO income tax whatsoever. And it wouldn't matter if our rate was half what it was. Someone else would reduce theirs (Ireland) and they'd still use the loopholes to move money there.
"Go out of business, because your foreign competitors have lower costs (in the form of taxes) which means you can't win in the competition for customers, investors, etc."
BS. Or perhaps you'd like to explain how Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and others manage to operate manufacturing plants right here in the US? And sell here?
There was an article I did a while ago in regard to using Parallels on OS X to run Windows Server and ColdFusion (don't ask).
The point was that you can have many different configurations of VM's. VM's running Windows and SQL Server. VM's running Linux and Apache and MySQL. VM's with Windows and Oracle. You do your development under Dreamweaver or Eclipse or Coda or whatever, then configure things so that saving a file automatically uploads it to the "server" for testing. All your browsers under OS X talk to the VM's.
This works especially well if different clients use different versions of MySQL, or JQuery, or need different environment variables.
Keep the Mac as your primary development platform, and let the VM servers be just that... servers.
"The Japanese might have been able to dig in deeper and establish better air superiority and supply routes if that had happened."
They also missed their second-best target. The second wave was supposed to hit auxiliary targets, including the island's military fuel dumps and supplies. If they'ed simply carried through with that then the carriers wouldn't have mattered, as carriers without fuel aren't going anywhere.
Study the Battle of Okinawa, and you'll see what happened to innocent civilians during a conventional invasion.
"Okinawan civilian losses in the campaign were estimated to be between 42,000 and 150,000 dead (more than 100,000 according to Okinawa Prefecture). The U.S. Army figures for the campaign showed a total figure of 142,058 civilian casualties, including those who were pressed into service by the Japanese Imperial Army."
Some were killed accidentally, some because Allied forces had trouble telling military from civilians, many committed mass suicide, as they told by the Japanese military that they would suffer rape, torture and murder at the hands of the Americans, and many were pressed into service.
"Remember that *ALL* ad revenue, *ALL* store purchases, and *ALL* subscription based purchases must go through them."
Ummm... don't think so. Apple would prefer that you use iAds, but it's not the only choice. And existing subscribers or subscriptions purchased outside of the store are valid.
"...minus a 30% fee..."
Again with the fee. Don't people have any idea what fees people were charging application developers prior to the App Store for sales and marketplace services? 50% and 70% of the cut were common.
"Google can't claim the same because nobody forces apps to do anything..."
Given what I've heard about the quality of applications on the Android Marketplace, that sounds about right.
BSD/Mach was a large portion of the NeXTSTEP OS. Apple acquired the company and used NeXTSTEP as the base for OS X (which is why a large number of the APIs are NSSomethingOrOther).
Have to totally disagree with this. Carpel tunnel is exacerbated by trying to perform fine hand and wrist motion while simultaneously applying pressing with your fingers to a mouse or trackpad button or scroll-wheel.
The touch interface (tap and tap lock and gestures) on a Mac trackpad require no such pressure. The lightest tap or finger flick will click or scroll anything as needed.
It's such a marked improvement that I no longer suffer from carpel tunnel symptoms at all...
SAMBA changed the terms of their license. It's like Apache changing their terms after the fact and requiring that any website built using Apache be completely and totally free. No paywalls. No ads. No sales. Zip.
Slashdot Mirror
Basic set theory. Everything UP TO the Zune, not up to and INCLUDING the Zune.
"The Zune UI is far more iPod-like..."
And as such was a late-commer that brought little new to the party.
"This was because of internal turf wars over which division is responsible for it and because of internal confusion over how to market something in a new category, compound by the similar confusion of their retail partners."
That's one thing at which Apple has excelled. They'll make iPod nanos that steal sales from iPods, shuffles that steal from nanos, notebooks that steal sales from desktops, iPhones that cannabilize sales from iPods, and iPads that could cannabilize sales of notebooks.
Too many businesses fail to realize that it's better to cannabilize your own sales than to let someone else do it.
"Yes, because none of them are anything important, and can be cut on a whim, without any thought, because it won't cause any harm."
Without any thought? No. But why, pray tell, must the US pay more for "defense" than the next six countries in the world, including China... combined?
"Pixel density is an instant design decision where higher = less SNR but more resolution. "
Had a longer response, but web ate it.
Anyway, the answer is not always. Read the following on backside-illumination technology....
"The ability to collect more light meant that a similarly-sized sensor array could offer higher resolution without the drop in low-light performance otherwise associated with the megapixel race. Alternately, the same resolution and low-light capability could be offered on a smaller chip, lowering costs. Key to attaining these advantages would be an improved process that addressed the yield problems, largely through improving the uniformity of an active layer on the front of the detectors.[3]
A major step in the adoption of BI sensors was made when OmniVision Technologies sampled their first sensors using the technique in 2007.[4] However, these did not see widespread use due to their high costs. Sony's work on new photo diode materials and processes allowed them to introduce the first consumer back-illuminated sensor as their CMOS-based "Exmor R" in August 2009.[2] According to Sony, the new material offered +8 dB signaling. When combined with the new back-illuminated layout, the sensor improved low-light performance by as much as two times.[2]
Competitors followed suit, and by the end of the year most companies were offering a version in their high-end products. OmniVision has continued to push the technology down their product lines. In 2010, back-illumination came to the low-end of the market when Apple included a 5 Mpx OmniVision detector in the latest revision of the mobile phone, the iPhone 4.[1] Another example is the HTC EVO 4G which equipped with a 8 Mpx OmniVision detector. In 2011, Sony implemented their Exmor R sensor in their flagship smartphone Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc[5]."
So. With better tech, it's entirely possible that an iPhone 5 8MP image could be better than an iPhone 4 5MP image. You can argue if you want, but really, you're arguing without facts. You don't know which sensor (maybe Sony, maybe not). You don't know what kind of tech. You don't know sensor size. You don't know lens size. You don't know optical quality.
In short, as far as I can tell, you don't know ANYTHING, so you're ragging on them just to be ragging on them, with a bunch of "in theory" nonsense that may or may not have any bearing whatsoever to the subject at hand.
Let Apple ship the silly thing, then we can compare images side-by-side.
Until then...
The rich aren't paying anyway. This way, if they buy something, they pay.
Various forms of the "fair tax" however, had exemptions for food and medicine.
"All other things being equal a lower megapixel sensor has far better noise characteristics than a high megapixels sensor...."
The iPhone 3GS had a 3MP camera. The iPhone 4 has a 5MP camera, one that's acknowledged by many to be one of the best on the market, and much, much better than the one in the 3GS.
Of course, the camera technology had improved, so all other things "weren't equal". But it also shows that that you can increase pixel counts AND increase quality at the same time. Which means that Apple could, with better sensor technology, increase the count to 8MP and STILL get a better image than that of the 5MP camera that preceded it.
There's also more to image quality than just sensor sensitivity. Most P&Ss, for example, are priced too cheaply to throw a multi-core A5 processor and full-scale graphics chip into the mix for post image processing.
Low-light sensitivity is import, but it's not the sine qua non of digital photography.
"Then again, what is a article about a phone of a company that employs totalitarian control...."
That's right. Let's talk about Google instead....
Wait.
They're there for Facetime support. That's it.
You mean the way we fenced off Hiroshima and Nagasaki for 600 years?
The very idea of "standardization" could backfire. Badly.
We have precedent for this, because Microsoft did the same thing with Windows, dictating ever stricter hardware standards and forbidding OS changes (though you were apparently free to install as much bloatware as you liked).
And the result? Hardware among vendors was effectively identical. The software WAS identical. And manufacturers well left with little to differentiate a Dell PC from an HP PC from an Acer PC. Change the beige plastic to black plastic? Add some trim? Dell and Gateway tried to make a go of it via the customization route, but faced increased competition from manufacturers who were left with just a single weapon in their toolkit.
What happens when dozens of companies are producing identical products? You end up with a commodity. And how are commodities traded and sold?
On price.
And so manufacturers did the only thing they could do: undercut each other on price, to the point where PC profit margins were things best measured in dimes, not dollars.
I predict the same thing happening to Android. With no significant differentiation, the majority of Android devices will end up being heavily discounted, or even given away as loss leaders by carriers and others attempting to lock subscribers into subscription plans. (Think Amazon and B&N.)
But look at it this way. Finally, Android will be "free".
A VAT on ALL purchases, including business related purchases.
You buy ore to make metal, you pay VAT on the ore. I buy metal to make parts, I pay VAT on the metal. Sam buys my parts to make cars, he pays VAT on the parts. Joe buys a car, he pays a VAT on the car.
An incremental cost on every paid transaction. No exceptions.
It's not about moving jobs. It's about shuffling your earnings around in offshore accounts so that you pay NO income tax whatsoever. And it wouldn't matter if our rate was half what it was. Someone else would reduce theirs (Ireland) and they'd still use the loopholes to move money there.
"Go out of business, because your foreign competitors have lower costs (in the form of taxes) which means you can't win in the competition for customers, investors, etc."
BS. Or perhaps you'd like to explain how Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and others manage to operate manufacturing plants right here in the US? And sell here?
If they can do it, we can do it.
Right. Swipe an entire JWM, rewrite a few chunks, and then pretend it's your own engine.
Yep, that's the Open Source way, all right.
There was an article I did a while ago in regard to using Parallels on OS X to run Windows Server and ColdFusion (don't ask).
The point was that you can have many different configurations of VM's. VM's running Windows and SQL Server. VM's running Linux and Apache and MySQL. VM's with Windows and Oracle. You do your development under Dreamweaver or Eclipse or Coda or whatever, then configure things so that saving a file automatically uploads it to the "server" for testing. All your browsers under OS X talk to the VM's.
This works especially well if different clients use different versions of MySQL, or JQuery, or need different environment variables.
Keep the Mac as your primary development platform, and let the VM servers be just that... servers.
"The Japanese might have been able to dig in deeper and establish better air superiority and supply routes if that had happened."
They also missed their second-best target. The second wave was supposed to hit auxiliary targets, including the island's military fuel dumps and supplies. If they'ed simply carried through with that then the carriers wouldn't have mattered, as carriers without fuel aren't going anywhere.
Study the Battle of Okinawa, and you'll see what happened to innocent civilians during a conventional invasion.
"Okinawan civilian losses in the campaign were estimated to be between 42,000 and 150,000 dead (more than 100,000 according to Okinawa Prefecture). The U.S. Army figures for the campaign showed a total figure of 142,058 civilian casualties, including those who were pressed into service by the Japanese Imperial Army."
Some were killed accidentally, some because Allied forces had trouble telling military from civilians, many committed mass suicide, as they told by the Japanese military that they would suffer rape, torture and murder at the hands of the Americans, and many were pressed into service.
There was no "right" answer.
"They want to tie their SW to only their hardware."
I think some people are going to be very, very surprised in the very near future.
"Remember that *ALL* ad revenue, *ALL* store purchases, and *ALL* subscription based purchases must go through them."
Ummm... don't think so. Apple would prefer that you use iAds, but it's not the only choice. And existing subscribers or subscriptions purchased outside of the store are valid.
"...minus a 30% fee..."
Again with the fee. Don't people have any idea what fees people were charging application developers prior to the App Store for sales and marketplace services? 50% and 70% of the cut were common.
"Google can't claim the same because nobody forces apps to do anything..."
Given what I've heard about the quality of applications on the Android Marketplace, that sounds about right.
BSD/Mach was a large portion of the NeXTSTEP OS. Apple acquired the company and used NeXTSTEP as the base for OS X (which is why a large number of the APIs are NSSomethingOrOther).
"Want to avoid carpel tunnel? Don't get a Mac."
Have to totally disagree with this. Carpel tunnel is exacerbated by trying to perform fine hand and wrist motion while simultaneously applying pressing with your fingers to a mouse or trackpad button or scroll-wheel.
The touch interface (tap and tap lock and gestures) on a Mac trackpad require no such pressure. The lightest tap or finger flick will click or scroll anything as needed.
It's such a marked improvement that I no longer suffer from carpel tunnel symptoms at all...
SAMBA changed the terms of their license. It's like Apache changing their terms after the fact and requiring that any website built using Apache be completely and totally free. No paywalls. No ads. No sales. Zip.
Pink. Taligent. OpenDoc. Copeland.
Guess it's a good thing NeXTSTEP was acquired, or Apple would NEVER have developed a new OS.
Or the radioactive carbon and other material that came from the burning graphite in the Chernobyl reactor. That burned for what, two weeks straight?
"...leads to the obvious question of why someone wouldn't just buy your competitors platform in the first place."
Right. "See this, it's the new RIM PlayBook and it can run Android apps!"
"Cool! So I just go to the Android Marketplace and... what?"
"Well. No. It will run some Android apps. Sort of. If they've been ported to the Dingleberry App World and..."
"Stop. If I want to run Android apps, why don't I just buy an Android?"