ok, after uninstalling iTunes, the CD is listed as Unknown. A quick 'update driver' found the cdrom inf file and updated it, but didn't repair the unknown listing, so I guess it's back to the registry to fix by hand.
Microsoft actually developed a Flash-like product a few years ago that went just about nowhere.
This, on the other hand, just looks like some tools to do Flash-like animations with the new interface built into Longhorn (which of course will render in the browser as well as the desktop). Personally, I thought it was focused a bit too much on business use to appeal to the most popular uses of Flash, especially when the business users would probably just use PowerPoint and think it's close enough to the same thing.
Of course, it might also have just been a program they picked up when they bought out another developer and then dropped when it didn't take off, like PhotoDraw (or whatever that app was called).
While that may have been true in the past, might I point you to our current president, who I believe ran as the party of smaller government, and is now working overtime to force the nanny state down our throats and expand medicare. This after nationalizing the airport security industry and spending $70+ billion in Iraq.
Government spending under Bush is basically extremely high (I would say an all-time high, but someone with more time to look it up and do calculations might point out that someone spent more money a long time ago adjusted for inflation). That, of course, has a lot to do with him being a very 'middle' politician, as he was in Texas, as well.
There's also the new gov of California, the self proclaimed fiscal conservative, who wants to expand the welfare system. "Everything is for the children. Schwarzenegger keeps talking about taking care of the children. As though children would die in the streets if the government didn't spend lots of money on them." - Harry Browne [harrybrowne.org], former LP candidate.
A Republican getting any state-wide office in California makes them very liberal compared to the majority of the Republican party. Not to mention that the Democrats didn't have much in the way of solid candidates, considering the closest one already had an office with the recalled governor.
I find no difference between the reps and dems of today, both are hell bent on expanding government as quickly as possible.
I find very little difference, and most of it is in the social side rather than the fiscal side, and perhaps the differences in terms of taxation. That's why, especially now that I don't live in California, I lean more towards the Libertarians.
Note the use of mini-discs. The load times are going to be on par with what you see from the Gamecube, which is not much at all.
Beyond what the previous poster stated, Nintendo has occasionally stated that they try to work around the load times to make them appear much smaller than they actually are (ie pop up something for you to look at like an animation/FMV rather than just a loading screen). Not to mention that the GC discs are written from the outside edge of the disc rather than the inside to make more of the information available at higher speeds (since most optical drives read faster at the outside edge of the disc).
Mini-discs actually cause more problems with loading times than they help, since there isn't as much of a distance between the outside and inside edges of the disc, so you have to spin the disc faster to get the same read-times from the outside edge of a smaller disc that you would get from the outside edge of a normal-sized DVD or CD. The only exception, of course, is that you can't put as much data on a smaller disc, so you can't have as much data to load (though, of course, no current console has enough RAM to buffer an entire GC disc anyway).
1) Try opening your eyes. When an emergency vehicle uses the feature, a strobelight flickers at the tops of the streetlights.
Must be a state/local thing. I work fairly close to a hospital and a fire station and see them coming through intersections all the time. Most of the time they don't even bother changing the light (though they do stop at a red light for a moment before going through the intersection and hit the horn a few times), probably because the traffic is screwed up enough as it is in this area. I'd say about 25% of the time they have to go through the intersections on the wrong side of the road because no one can get out of the way in time (and this might actually be why they don't change the light, since there will be less on-coming traffic and less traffic on the other side of the intersection.
And don't tell me the cop isn't going to notice the light suddenly changing (and the emergency flashing light at the top coming on).
1) I've never seen an 'emergency flashing light at the top [come] on' when an emergency vehicle changes the lights
2) Who would actually use this while a cop was around? Sure, maybe some people won't pay enough attention, but I'd have to say they pretty much deserve to be caught at that point (though, of course, it's not illegal, so...)
3) They do need to find a better way of doing this, such as using an encrypted signal and an identifier (which should match up to the vehicle) so that at the very least they could track uses of devices to change the lights, and determine whether or not it was being used legally (ie the light changed because vehicle XYZ-234 changed it, but that vehicle was sitting in the garage on the other side of town at the time). Maybe they could actually put some of those traffic cameras to good use, although you're probably picking someone out of a crowd at that point.
You're not required to use iTunes with your iPod though; they're simply stating that if you want to use iTunes, then they're going to break Musicmatch for you (temporarily).
Temporarily as in until you uninstall iTunes, repair your registry if they broke it, uninstall MusicMatch, and then reinstall MusicMatch. This is not the way you're supposed to write software.
Musicmatch will work just fine if you don't install iTunes.
You're right, everything's perfectly ok as long as you don't install iTunes.
I don't see how this is any different to any other piece of software that comes with hardware, do you have an alternative to NVidia drivers?
This isn't a case of installing new hardware drivers and complaining that the old ones don't work, this is a case of installing a seperate piece of software with similar functionality and not having the other software work any more. If I install new nVidia drivers and all of my games stop working then I'll revert the drivers. If I install a new game and it installs drivers that only work with it, then the game is doing something completely wrong. If I can't play the game with any drivers other than the ones it installs, then I'm screwed, and that's simply not the way you're supposed to do things.
I find it strange that Windows users of all people should moan about this sort of thing. In terms of a license it's nothing new. If you do {this} you have to accept {that}, in this case where {this}=install iTunes and {that}=accept that musicmatch will temporarily break and Quicktime will be installed.
I find it strange that anyone believes Windows users will accept this crap after Microsoft's been forced to stop breaking software and bundling software.
In mannerism it's no different to any other license (try subbing in {this}=use our code and {that}=release all your code too, familiar?).
So now I'm accepting the copyright terms for using GPL'd code (in a spastic reactionist language)? There's a vast difference between the terms for copyrights and a software use license. If I use a piece of GPL'd software I don't have to release all of the code I have on my PC, and at least if it's doing something like this I can remove the offending code and redistribute the fixed version. Instead, if I uninstall iTunes there's a vague chance that my CD player won't work and there's no chance of an iPod working on my machine. It's amazing what Apple thinks users will put up with, but it's even more amazing what people will defend them for.
You can make all the excuses you want for why it wasn't that good, including just blaming apple for poorly supporting windows.. but the fact remains..
It is extremely rare for things in windows to integrate as smoothly as they do on the mac.. WHY isn't important.
Why is very important when the problem is fairly limited to one particular vendor. There are many programs from many developers that work very well in Windows, and there is a lot of hardware that works very well in Windows.
Take something as simple as a mouse.. even when you plug a usb mouse into windows XP the first time, it says "Detected new USB device " " initializing " "Detected HID mouse" "initializing " " starting mouse" or whateve.r. then it works. So even though it did't ask for any drivers or anything.. it grinded and flashed several popups of technical info the end user doesn't need...
But the user at least knows it's doing something. On the other hand, I generally find that I can usually use the mouse the whole time it's doing this.
When I plugged a usb mouse into my mac, it just worked,within about 1 second. There were no popups or indicators, other than the mouse now controlled the cursor.
Like I said, I've found that under Windows I can usually use the mouse while the 'popups' are on the screen. The real difference is whether or not the OS informs the user of what it's doing. At best, Microsoft just needs to make the information on the screen more useful to the average user.
IT's hard to design things to work to the level apple wants in windows, simply because windows is so varied.. you don't know what the user already has, so it's hard to decide what will work smoothly.
You start with the assumption that the user has nothing but the base OS, and then once your software is working, you test assuming the user has all kinds of crap on their system. Other people have done this already. I spend a good amount of my day writing software in this environment. Apple even took the additional step of limiting their software to 2k and XP, and still went in directions with their software that caused problems for users and were not required.
You're right, Apple is not a monopoly in the way MS is, because there are two different types of monopolies. It's just a matter of horizontal vs. vertical. Apple's a monopoly in that they tie their hardware and the software needed to run it. MS is a monopoly in that they tie their software to other software they develop. Either way, for each platform there is only one OS with a vast majority of the market share.
So if you download iTunes and decide you would rather use MusicMatch?
Did someone forget to tell Apple that it's possible to write software so that it's backwards compatible?
I don't own an iPod, so I don't know every little detail about how this is happening, but I do know that they have done some things with iTunes and the iPod service that are very much non-standard for Windows applications, and breaking other software tends to look very bad, even if you wrote the functionality that broke yourself. That's sortof why Microsoft is really big on keeping published APIs the same as long as possible, and making announcements when they plan to break them. While Apple may not have published the API that MusicMatch used (because Apple wrote the add-in or whatever), they shouldn't have changed it in such a way that the previous software stopped working even after uninstalling the new software. If you need new interfaces you add them, you don't change the existing ones.
"Companies like EA, Microsoft and Sony don't really need [smaller developers] any more, as large publishers increasingly focus on internal development and suck much of the best talent into themselves. Smaller publishers aren't in a position to take risks on the kind of innovative games that small developers do best." Is the situation really as bleak as this implies?
This situation might be as bleak as implied, if not for the fact that it's just incorrect. Microsoft, for example, owns Zone.com, through which they run most of their PC multiplayer titles, and yet the majority of the content on that site comes from small developers who pump out shareware Java/Flash titles, many of which have become extremely popular (think PopCap Games).
Additionally, many small developers have come up through the mod communities in more complex game types, such as FPS games, where a handful of developers were picked up from various mod groups for Quake and Half-Life, either in new development houses or by companies like id and Valve (and Valve themselves formed a lot of the talent to develop Half-Life from mod developers).
It's a matter of knowing what a small team is capable of and finding practical methods of distributing and marketing your product. Many larger developers and publishers have tried many things to encourage and help this (again, Valve and id with their respective mod communities), while others pretty much strike off on their own (GarageGames).
From the site you referenced: When you purchase an Apple computer from Terra Soft, it will ship with the most current version of Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed. Mac OS X is also pre-installed and may be accessed by holding the OPTION key at boot.
You were close, though, and I would probably amend that statement to 'a percentage that is smaller than the number of x86 desktop PCs shipped without Windows', given that someone out there might offer to strip OS X (and the Apple warranties) from Apple computers before sending them to you.
But this discussion is about software on Windows PCs. How does it leverage their monopoly of MacOS based PCs to gain extra market share in the portable MP3 player and/or online music retail markets?
Apple is using iTunes to disable access to the iPod from other programs as well as to install QuickTime on the PCs. Essentially they're trying to leverage the popularity of the iPod (which I believe is one of the best-selling portable MP3 players available) to force these other products (iTunes, QuickTime, ITunes Music Service) on end-users. A savvy user can easily get around much of the behavior of iTunes and QuickTime in taking over media functionality on Windows machines, and Microsoft was forced to make this slightly easier for users (adding in the 'Set Program Access and Defaults' item in the 'Add/Remove Programs' Control Panel entry), but the only way for the average user to really stop this behavior is to uninstall the Apple software and reinstall the pre-existing software.
Breaking other people's software and bundling software together is exactly the behavior Microsoft was accused of in the antitrust trial. In the case of iTunes, the biggest offense comes to users of Apple's hardware (the iPod), which means they're leveraging a user's choice in hardware to force a software choice on them (assuming they've made the decision to try iTunes, they don't get the choice to use the software side-by-side with other software to access their hardware).
Apple has no monopoly positions in the Windows based PC market.
Apple doesn't need a monopoly position in the Windows-based PC market. They are attempting to create a monopoly in software for synchronizing the iPod on Windows by breaking software that previously worked, and then further trying to extend that monopoly into other areas by taking over the functions of all other media players on the system.
Remember that at the time the antitrust trial was brought against Microsoft they didn't have anything resembling a monopoly in either Internet browsers or media players, either, but were accused of using an OS monopoly (over a very limited market) to push out competition in these areas. During the trial they gained a majority market share in the browser space and a fair amount of market share in media players and other 'middleware' applications, but this wasn't the case when the trial started (before Windows 98 was released).
As far as leveraging a monopoly on MacOS based PCs, it was simply that monopoly that allowed them to market the iPod and iTunes to the point where the platform had enough strength to leverage it's way into the Windows-based PC space. Apple is now simply leveraging the popularity of the iPod to push iTunes into the Windows space, though iTunes also gained some reputation of it's own on the MacOS that made some Windows users curious as to what the big deal was (and frankly, the only thing I see as a big deal in it is solid seperation of the interface and playback functionality, because the thing won't miss a beat playing a song even if it's redrawing at a piss-poor rate and half-frozen).
except that you can just reinstall musicmatch (unplug and replug) and use it like you did before.
Only after you uninstall iTunes, according to the previous post.
Unless I have an extremely crappy receiver I never have to unplug my CD player, cassette player, or record player, and even then I could buy a cheap switch that would allow me to use them without unplugging them all the time (hey, just like the switch I have on top of my TV so I can use my PS2, GameCube, DreamCast, and XBox without plugging and unplugging each of them, and it's even got a splitter on it so that the sound goes into the aux input on my stereo receiver and I get sound from both the stereo and the TV at the same time).
I've got a Dell here with no Dell mouse or keyboard, but that may have been IT's doing, since I told them I wasn't getting rid of the keyboard and mouse I already had.
Whether or not the big companies would do this for home users I do not know, since I don't buy computers from them. I do know that I can go down to almost any local computer shop and buy a computer with Windows installed on it without a keyboard and mouse (and completely to my specs in terms of what parts are used) if I choose to do so. Actually, that makes me wonder if the Apple stores might do the same, as I've never seen one of those stores, yet, and don't remember if the local Apple retailers did it before Apple opened their own stores.
Why? Cause Joe Public needs one.
If Joe Public bought a computer 3 years ago and is buying a new one to replace it, he certainly does not need a new mouse and keyboard. Of course, he probably doesn't need most of what he's buying, but then he's Joe Public, so unless he knows John Geek next door, he's SOL because he bent over for Jim Dell.
Actually, I haven't tried CD audio yet, but the drive is still listed correctly in Device Manager. Perhaps I'll try the audio tomorrow, as I don't have a music CD here at the moment.
Maybe it's not "monoplistic", but its still a crap way of advancing your products over competitors.
If you look at it in the exact same way that the court looked at Microsoft, then you'll find it is monopolistic: Number of Apple computers shipped without Mac OS X: 0
Percentage of Apple computers running an operating system not developed by Apple: (slightly larger than 0)
Competitors' software broken by Apple software when installed to use with Apple hardware:...
Remember that in the last anti-trust case against Microsoft Apple was ruled to not even be a competitor in the OS space because they didn't run on x86 (Microsoft wanted Apple to be considered a competitor, of course, whether or not they actually see them this way). This is how Microsoft suddenly had a 95+% market share when before the trial the numbers tended to be in the 80-85% range, because the market was limited to a very specific area (primarily x86-based desktop PCs). Not to mention the portions of the case regarding forced bundling of Windows, requiring OEMs to buy a copy for every PC they shipped, meaning that OEMs wouldn't sell PCs without Windows (notably, though, the fact that many OEMs offered Linux before the case even went to court was omitted).
There are 2 different types of monopoly at hand here, and the only reason people overlook (or even deny) Apple's monopoly is because it's in a relatively small market. When Apple extends their practices into larger markets, there are a lot more people to take notice, and this is just that. (I'd also add that when Microsoft made Office look the same on the Mac as it did on Windows, Mac users cried foul, and even Apple cried a bit, but most of the applications Apple releases for Windows look like they are Mac OS apps, rather than Windows apps).
Instead of a system perference panel, developers wanted to be able to switch this within each application. Hence the new API.
Maybe this is just because I'm a developer, but what the hell does an API change have to do with changing the location of a preference?
If the API changes, you update the code behind the existing UI so that it still functions as expected. If there are more options that you want exposed to the user, you add to the UI accordingly. Changing an API doesn't force a change in the UI, though.
On the other hand, if you move an API from the system level to the application level, it should no longer have system-wide effects. The location of the UI elements should generally reflect the level at which it has effect, in other words system-level settings should be set in a system-level interface, while application settings should be set in an application-level interface.
Just because Microsoft thinks it's a good idea to put a bunch of system-wide preferences in Internet Explorer and Outlook doesn't mean they belong there (on the other hand, what Microsoft does in many cases is actually use system-level interfaces in applications, the same dialogues can be found in the system's control panel).
By the way, these ATi drivers work great with my nVidia card. I don't know why I didn't think to try this years ago.
More like 'Half-Life 2 disabled my GeForce card' or 'Doom 3 disabled my ATI card', or, even more accurate (though still not true, just an example that would be closer to what's happening here): Doom 3 replaced DirectX on my system with a game-specific OpenGL wrapper and now Half-Life 2 doesn't work.
How are customers locked? If anything, it's an expression of choice that you have the opportunity to buy an Apple computer.
Yes, but when I buy an Apple computer, I have to buy an Apple keyboard, an Apple mouse, and an Apple OS (and a modem, wi-fi adapter, and ethernet adapter though I may only use 1 or 2 of them). Sure, I can use a different keyboard, mouse, and OS, but I can't buy the computer without them. As the prices of hardware have come down, they've started adding more to their base models, meaning that you get devices you don't necessarily want and the base model is more expensive than it would've been with less of the expensive hardware (yay, SuperDrives for everyone, even though their cost is 25-50% of the total cost of the computer). If I don't want to pay the premium on RAM from Apple, I can't buy a computer with no RAM, or with someone else's RAM (though I can buy one with whatever their current minimum is and buy more and/or replace it from someone else). There's nothing keeping you from changing a lot of things once you have the computer, but actually getting the computer means buying a lot of things you might not actually want. On the x86 side, if one OEM doesn't give me the choices I want, I go to another, or I buy the parts myself.
Yes, I use a Microsoft mouse and keyboard, but it's certainly not because it came with something else I bought from Microsoft, or because the software only works with the Microsoft hardware, it just happened to be the best choice for my requirements (and they're lagging on wireless trackballs, so I'm starting to look around for another brand that I can use, and bundling mice with their good wireless keyboards, so I will be looking around in that department, too).
IT took us an hour or so of futzing around to get my co-workers to work.
This is because Apple made a choice to go with a program that isn't normally used in this manner by most Windows users. If they had chosen to let the iPod synch with WMP instead, it shouldn't have been any harder to use than any other media player that synchs with WMP (namely the items listed here: http://windowsmedia.com/9series/Personalization/Co olDevices.asp?page=4&lookup=CoolDevices ), though it may not have been the same experience that Mac users have, it would have been more consistent with the Windows environment. Or perhaps they could've chosen WinAmp, which more people already have installed on their Windows boxes.
It's no different from the design choices they made with iTunes for Windows, making the design more consistent with the OS X version of the application than with the environment in which it is used.
when was the last time your cd player disabled your tape deck or your record player?
umm in my car or at home?
At home, never, in my car, depends on the setup.
On the other hand, actually listening to both the casette and the CD or record player at home would require a second receiver, for fairly obvious reasons, but I'm sure if I really wanted to I could make the receiver play back multiple inputs at the same time.
On the other hand, this particular story is more akin to the CD player making it impossible for you to ever use your record player again.
Just a quick note: my Win2k Pro (SP4) box doesn't have this problem with iTunes installed. I haven't checked my XP box yet, but the thread states it's only a 2k problem. Then again, I have disabled the iPod and QuickTime services as well...
I wonder if disabling the iPod service would make MusicMatch function properly again. Since I have neither an iPod nor MusicMatch, I can't really check this for myself, but I noticed the iPod service running on both of the machines I installed iTunes on and quickly disabled the service (simply because I don't have an iPod, so have no reason to run the service). iTunes seems to work perfectly fine for me with the service disabled, but I'm sure I'd have to manually start the service if I wanted to use an iPod with it.
my only problem with the article is that it is based on USER REVIEWS (the term he keeps using), and not the SITE REVIEWS, when the article was stated to be about whether or the SITES are biased and not if their READERS were biased
The article uses 2 sets of user reviews and 3 sets of site reviews and clearly distinguishes between the 2, as well as having some discussion of the differences between site and user reviews. It uses the GameRankings compilation and averaging of reviews as the basis against which these are compared, but it should be noted that the GameRankings compilation is a compilation of sites and magazines, and does not take into consideration it's own users' reviews any more than the GameSpot reviews take into consideration the GameSpot user reviews.
The article pretty much concluded that they couldn't find significant bias from the data collected in site reviews, but that user reviews in general tended to be lower than site reviews, and did some further analysis showing that users will sometimes shake this trend for particular games.
Overall, the article needs some more work to include a larger data set, but I thought it was a nice start, especially since all of the data is easily available to everyone reading it, as are the sources of the data.
Slashdot Mirror
ok, after uninstalling iTunes, the CD is listed as Unknown. A quick 'update driver' found the cdrom inf file and updated it, but didn't repair the unknown listing, so I guess it's back to the registry to fix by hand.
Microsoft actually developed a Flash-like product a few years ago that went just about nowhere.
This, on the other hand, just looks like some tools to do Flash-like animations with the new interface built into Longhorn (which of course will render in the browser as well as the desktop). Personally, I thought it was focused a bit too much on business use to appeal to the most popular uses of Flash, especially when the business users would probably just use PowerPoint and think it's close enough to the same thing.
Of course, it might also have just been a program they picked up when they bought out another developer and then dropped when it didn't take off, like PhotoDraw (or whatever that app was called).
While that may have been true in the past, might I point you to our current president, who I believe ran as the party of smaller government, and is now working overtime to force the nanny state down our throats and expand medicare. This after nationalizing the airport security industry and spending $70+ billion in Iraq.
Government spending under Bush is basically extremely high (I would say an all-time high, but someone with more time to look it up and do calculations might point out that someone spent more money a long time ago adjusted for inflation). That, of course, has a lot to do with him being a very 'middle' politician, as he was in Texas, as well.
There's also the new gov of California, the self proclaimed fiscal conservative, who wants to expand the welfare system. "Everything is for the children. Schwarzenegger keeps talking about taking care of the children. As though children would die in the streets if the government didn't spend lots of money on them." - Harry Browne [harrybrowne.org], former LP candidate.
A Republican getting any state-wide office in California makes them very liberal compared to the majority of the Republican party. Not to mention that the Democrats didn't have much in the way of solid candidates, considering the closest one already had an office with the recalled governor.
I find no difference between the reps and dems of today, both are hell bent on expanding government as quickly as possible.
I find very little difference, and most of it is in the social side rather than the fiscal side, and perhaps the differences in terms of taxation. That's why, especially now that I don't live in California, I lean more towards the Libertarians.
Note the use of mini-discs. The load times are going to be on par with what you see from the Gamecube, which is not much at all.
Beyond what the previous poster stated, Nintendo has occasionally stated that they try to work around the load times to make them appear much smaller than they actually are (ie pop up something for you to look at like an animation/FMV rather than just a loading screen). Not to mention that the GC discs are written from the outside edge of the disc rather than the inside to make more of the information available at higher speeds (since most optical drives read faster at the outside edge of the disc).
Mini-discs actually cause more problems with loading times than they help, since there isn't as much of a distance between the outside and inside edges of the disc, so you have to spin the disc faster to get the same read-times from the outside edge of a smaller disc that you would get from the outside edge of a normal-sized DVD or CD. The only exception, of course, is that you can't put as much data on a smaller disc, so you can't have as much data to load (though, of course, no current console has enough RAM to buffer an entire GC disc anyway).
1) Try opening your eyes. When an emergency vehicle uses the feature, a strobelight flickers at the tops of the streetlights.
Must be a state/local thing. I work fairly close to a hospital and a fire station and see them coming through intersections all the time. Most of the time they don't even bother changing the light (though they do stop at a red light for a moment before going through the intersection and hit the horn a few times), probably because the traffic is screwed up enough as it is in this area. I'd say about 25% of the time they have to go through the intersections on the wrong side of the road because no one can get out of the way in time (and this might actually be why they don't change the light, since there will be less on-coming traffic and less traffic on the other side of the intersection.
And don't tell me the cop isn't going to notice the light suddenly changing (and the emergency flashing light at the top coming on).
1) I've never seen an 'emergency flashing light at the top [come] on' when an emergency vehicle changes the lights
2) Who would actually use this while a cop was around? Sure, maybe some people won't pay enough attention, but I'd have to say they pretty much deserve to be caught at that point (though, of course, it's not illegal, so...)
3) They do need to find a better way of doing this, such as using an encrypted signal and an identifier (which should match up to the vehicle) so that at the very least they could track uses of devices to change the lights, and determine whether or not it was being used legally (ie the light changed because vehicle XYZ-234 changed it, but that vehicle was sitting in the garage on the other side of town at the time). Maybe they could actually put some of those traffic cameras to good use, although you're probably picking someone out of a crowd at that point.
You're not required to use iTunes with your iPod though; they're simply stating that if you want to use iTunes, then they're going to break Musicmatch for you (temporarily).
Temporarily as in until you uninstall iTunes, repair your registry if they broke it, uninstall MusicMatch, and then reinstall MusicMatch. This is not the way you're supposed to write software.
Musicmatch will work just fine if you don't install iTunes.
You're right, everything's perfectly ok as long as you don't install iTunes.
I don't see how this is any different to any other piece of software that comes with hardware, do you have an alternative to NVidia drivers?
This isn't a case of installing new hardware drivers and complaining that the old ones don't work, this is a case of installing a seperate piece of software with similar functionality and not having the other software work any more. If I install new nVidia drivers and all of my games stop working then I'll revert the drivers. If I install a new game and it installs drivers that only work with it, then the game is doing something completely wrong. If I can't play the game with any drivers other than the ones it installs, then I'm screwed, and that's simply not the way you're supposed to do things.
I find it strange that Windows users of all people should moan about this sort of thing. In terms of a license it's nothing new. If you do {this} you have to accept {that}, in this case where {this}=install iTunes and {that}=accept that musicmatch will temporarily break and Quicktime will be installed.
I find it strange that anyone believes Windows users will accept this crap after Microsoft's been forced to stop breaking software and bundling software.
In mannerism it's no different to any other license (try subbing in {this}=use our code and {that}=release all your code too, familiar?).
So now I'm accepting the copyright terms for using GPL'd code (in a spastic reactionist language)? There's a vast difference between the terms for copyrights and a software use license. If I use a piece of GPL'd software I don't have to release all of the code I have on my PC, and at least if it's doing something like this I can remove the offending code and redistribute the fixed version. Instead, if I uninstall iTunes there's a vague chance that my CD player won't work and there's no chance of an iPod working on my machine. It's amazing what Apple thinks users will put up with, but it's even more amazing what people will defend them for.
You can make all the excuses you want for why it wasn't that good, including just blaming apple for poorly supporting windows.. but the fact remains..
It is extremely rare for things in windows to integrate as smoothly as they do on the mac.. WHY isn't important.
Why is very important when the problem is fairly limited to one particular vendor. There are many programs from many developers that work very well in Windows, and there is a lot of hardware that works very well in Windows.
Take something as simple as a mouse.. even when you plug a usb mouse into windows XP the first time, it says "Detected new USB device " " initializing " "Detected HID mouse" "initializing " " starting mouse" or whateve.r. then it works.
So even though it did't ask for any drivers or anything.. it grinded and flashed several popups of technical info the end user doesn't need...
But the user at least knows it's doing something. On the other hand, I generally find that I can usually use the mouse the whole time it's doing this.
When I plugged a usb mouse into my mac, it just worked,within about 1 second. There were no popups or indicators, other than the mouse now controlled the cursor.
Like I said, I've found that under Windows I can usually use the mouse while the 'popups' are on the screen. The real difference is whether or not the OS informs the user of what it's doing. At best, Microsoft just needs to make the information on the screen more useful to the average user.
IT's hard to design things to work to the level apple wants in windows, simply because windows is so varied.. you don't know what the user already has, so it's hard to decide what will work smoothly.
You start with the assumption that the user has nothing but the base OS, and then once your software is working, you test assuming the user has all kinds of crap on their system. Other people have done this already. I spend a good amount of my day writing software in this environment. Apple even took the additional step of limiting their software to 2k and XP, and still went in directions with their software that caused problems for users and were not required.
You're right, Apple is not a monopoly in the way MS is, because there are two different types of monopolies. It's just a matter of horizontal vs. vertical. Apple's a monopoly in that they tie their hardware and the software needed to run it. MS is a monopoly in that they tie their software to other software they develop. Either way, for each platform there is only one OS with a vast majority of the market share.
So if you download iTunes and decide you would rather use MusicMatch?
Did someone forget to tell Apple that it's possible to write software so that it's backwards compatible?
I don't own an iPod, so I don't know every little detail about how this is happening, but I do know that they have done some things with iTunes and the iPod service that are very much non-standard for Windows applications, and breaking other software tends to look very bad, even if you wrote the functionality that broke yourself. That's sortof why Microsoft is really big on keeping published APIs the same as long as possible, and making announcements when they plan to break them. While Apple may not have published the API that MusicMatch used (because Apple wrote the add-in or whatever), they shouldn't have changed it in such a way that the previous software stopped working even after uninstalling the new software. If you need new interfaces you add them, you don't change the existing ones.
"Companies like EA, Microsoft and Sony don't really need [smaller developers] any more, as large publishers increasingly focus on internal development and suck much of the best talent into themselves. Smaller publishers aren't in a position to take risks on the kind of innovative games that small developers do best." Is the situation really as bleak as this implies?
This situation might be as bleak as implied, if not for the fact that it's just incorrect. Microsoft, for example, owns Zone.com, through which they run most of their PC multiplayer titles, and yet the majority of the content on that site comes from small developers who pump out shareware Java/Flash titles, many of which have become extremely popular (think PopCap Games).
Additionally, many small developers have come up through the mod communities in more complex game types, such as FPS games, where a handful of developers were picked up from various mod groups for Quake and Half-Life, either in new development houses or by companies like id and Valve (and Valve themselves formed a lot of the talent to develop Half-Life from mod developers).
It's a matter of knowing what a small team is capable of and finding practical methods of distributing and marketing your product. Many larger developers and publishers have tried many things to encourage and help this (again, Valve and id with their respective mod communities), while others pretty much strike off on their own (GarageGames).
From the site you referenced:
When you purchase an Apple computer from Terra Soft, it will ship with the most current version of Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed. Mac OS X is also pre-installed and may be accessed by holding the OPTION key at boot.
You were close, though, and I would probably amend that statement to 'a percentage that is smaller than the number of x86 desktop PCs shipped without Windows', given that someone out there might offer to strip OS X (and the Apple warranties) from Apple computers before sending them to you.
But this discussion is about software on Windows PCs. How does it leverage their monopoly of MacOS based PCs to gain extra market share in the portable MP3 player and/or online music retail markets?
Apple is using iTunes to disable access to the iPod from other programs as well as to install QuickTime on the PCs. Essentially they're trying to leverage the popularity of the iPod (which I believe is one of the best-selling portable MP3 players available) to force these other products (iTunes, QuickTime, ITunes Music Service) on end-users. A savvy user can easily get around much of the behavior of iTunes and QuickTime in taking over media functionality on Windows machines, and Microsoft was forced to make this slightly easier for users (adding in the 'Set Program Access and Defaults' item in the 'Add/Remove Programs' Control Panel entry), but the only way for the average user to really stop this behavior is to uninstall the Apple software and reinstall the pre-existing software.
Breaking other people's software and bundling software together is exactly the behavior Microsoft was accused of in the antitrust trial. In the case of iTunes, the biggest offense comes to users of Apple's hardware (the iPod), which means they're leveraging a user's choice in hardware to force a software choice on them (assuming they've made the decision to try iTunes, they don't get the choice to use the software side-by-side with other software to access their hardware).
Apple has no monopoly positions in the Windows based PC market.
Apple doesn't need a monopoly position in the Windows-based PC market. They are attempting to create a monopoly in software for synchronizing the iPod on Windows by breaking software that previously worked, and then further trying to extend that monopoly into other areas by taking over the functions of all other media players on the system.
Remember that at the time the antitrust trial was brought against Microsoft they didn't have anything resembling a monopoly in either Internet browsers or media players, either, but were accused of using an OS monopoly (over a very limited market) to push out competition in these areas. During the trial they gained a majority market share in the browser space and a fair amount of market share in media players and other 'middleware' applications, but this wasn't the case when the trial started (before Windows 98 was released).
As far as leveraging a monopoly on MacOS based PCs, it was simply that monopoly that allowed them to market the iPod and iTunes to the point where the platform had enough strength to leverage it's way into the Windows-based PC space. Apple is now simply leveraging the popularity of the iPod to push iTunes into the Windows space, though iTunes also gained some reputation of it's own on the MacOS that made some Windows users curious as to what the big deal was (and frankly, the only thing I see as a big deal in it is solid seperation of the interface and playback functionality, because the thing won't miss a beat playing a song even if it's redrawing at a piss-poor rate and half-frozen).
except that you can just reinstall musicmatch (unplug and replug) and use it like you did before.
Only after you uninstall iTunes, according to the previous post.
Unless I have an extremely crappy receiver I never have to unplug my CD player, cassette player, or record player, and even then I could buy a cheap switch that would allow me to use them without unplugging them all the time (hey, just like the switch I have on top of my TV so I can use my PS2, GameCube, DreamCast, and XBox without plugging and unplugging each of them, and it's even got a splitter on it so that the sound goes into the aux input on my stereo receiver and I get sound from both the stereo and the TV at the same time).
I've got a Dell here with no Dell mouse or keyboard, but that may have been IT's doing, since I told them I wasn't getting rid of the keyboard and mouse I already had.
Whether or not the big companies would do this for home users I do not know, since I don't buy computers from them. I do know that I can go down to almost any local computer shop and buy a computer with Windows installed on it without a keyboard and mouse (and completely to my specs in terms of what parts are used) if I choose to do so. Actually, that makes me wonder if the Apple stores might do the same, as I've never seen one of those stores, yet, and don't remember if the local Apple retailers did it before Apple opened their own stores.
Why? Cause Joe Public needs one.
If Joe Public bought a computer 3 years ago and is buying a new one to replace it, he certainly does not need a new mouse and keyboard. Of course, he probably doesn't need most of what he's buying, but then he's Joe Public, so unless he knows John Geek next door, he's SOL because he bent over for Jim Dell.
Actually, I haven't tried CD audio yet, but the drive is still listed correctly in Device Manager. Perhaps I'll try the audio tomorrow, as I don't have a music CD here at the moment.
Maybe it's not "monoplistic", but its still a crap way of advancing your products over competitors.
...
If you look at it in the exact same way that the court looked at Microsoft, then you'll find it is monopolistic:
Number of Apple computers shipped without Mac OS X: 0
Percentage of Apple computers running an operating system not developed by Apple: (slightly larger than 0)
Competitors' software broken by Apple software when installed to use with Apple hardware:
Remember that in the last anti-trust case against Microsoft Apple was ruled to not even be a competitor in the OS space because they didn't run on x86 (Microsoft wanted Apple to be considered a competitor, of course, whether or not they actually see them this way). This is how Microsoft suddenly had a 95+% market share when before the trial the numbers tended to be in the 80-85% range, because the market was limited to a very specific area (primarily x86-based desktop PCs). Not to mention the portions of the case regarding forced bundling of Windows, requiring OEMs to buy a copy for every PC they shipped, meaning that OEMs wouldn't sell PCs without Windows (notably, though, the fact that many OEMs offered Linux before the case even went to court was omitted).
There are 2 different types of monopoly at hand here, and the only reason people overlook (or even deny) Apple's monopoly is because it's in a relatively small market. When Apple extends their practices into larger markets, there are a lot more people to take notice, and this is just that. (I'd also add that when Microsoft made Office look the same on the Mac as it did on Windows, Mac users cried foul, and even Apple cried a bit, but most of the applications Apple releases for Windows look like they are Mac OS apps, rather than Windows apps).
Instead of a system perference panel, developers wanted to be able to switch this within each application. Hence the new API.
Maybe this is just because I'm a developer, but what the hell does an API change have to do with changing the location of a preference?
If the API changes, you update the code behind the existing UI so that it still functions as expected. If there are more options that you want exposed to the user, you add to the UI accordingly. Changing an API doesn't force a change in the UI, though.
On the other hand, if you move an API from the system level to the application level, it should no longer have system-wide effects. The location of the UI elements should generally reflect the level at which it has effect, in other words system-level settings should be set in a system-level interface, while application settings should be set in an application-level interface.
Just because Microsoft thinks it's a good idea to put a bunch of system-wide preferences in Internet Explorer and Outlook doesn't mean they belong there (on the other hand, what Microsoft does in many cases is actually use system-level interfaces in applications, the same dialogues can be found in the system's control panel).
By the way, these ATi drivers work great with my nVidia card. I don't know why I didn't think to try this years ago.
More like 'Half-Life 2 disabled my GeForce card' or 'Doom 3 disabled my ATI card', or, even more accurate (though still not true, just an example that would be closer to what's happening here): Doom 3 replaced DirectX on my system with a game-specific OpenGL wrapper and now Half-Life 2 doesn't work.
How are customers locked? If anything, it's an expression of choice that you have the opportunity to buy an Apple computer.
Yes, but when I buy an Apple computer, I have to buy an Apple keyboard, an Apple mouse, and an Apple OS (and a modem, wi-fi adapter, and ethernet adapter though I may only use 1 or 2 of them). Sure, I can use a different keyboard, mouse, and OS, but I can't buy the computer without them. As the prices of hardware have come down, they've started adding more to their base models, meaning that you get devices you don't necessarily want and the base model is more expensive than it would've been with less of the expensive hardware (yay, SuperDrives for everyone, even though their cost is 25-50% of the total cost of the computer). If I don't want to pay the premium on RAM from Apple, I can't buy a computer with no RAM, or with someone else's RAM (though I can buy one with whatever their current minimum is and buy more and/or replace it from someone else). There's nothing keeping you from changing a lot of things once you have the computer, but actually getting the computer means buying a lot of things you might not actually want. On the x86 side, if one OEM doesn't give me the choices I want, I go to another, or I buy the parts myself.
Yes, I use a Microsoft mouse and keyboard, but it's certainly not because it came with something else I bought from Microsoft, or because the software only works with the Microsoft hardware, it just happened to be the best choice for my requirements (and they're lagging on wireless trackballs, so I'm starting to look around for another brand that I can use, and bundling mice with their good wireless keyboards, so I will be looking around in that department, too).
IT took us an hour or so of futzing around to get my co-workers to work.
o olDevices.asp?page=4&lookup=CoolDevices ), though it may not have been the same experience that Mac users have, it would have been more consistent with the Windows environment. Or perhaps they could've chosen WinAmp, which more people already have installed on their Windows boxes.
This is because Apple made a choice to go with a program that isn't normally used in this manner by most Windows users. If they had chosen to let the iPod synch with WMP instead, it shouldn't have been any harder to use than any other media player that synchs with WMP (namely the items listed here: http://windowsmedia.com/9series/Personalization/C
It's no different from the design choices they made with iTunes for Windows, making the design more consistent with the OS X version of the application than with the environment in which it is used.
when was the last time your cd player disabled your tape deck or your record player?
umm in my car or at home?
At home, never, in my car, depends on the setup.
On the other hand, actually listening to both the casette and the CD or record player at home would require a second receiver, for fairly obvious reasons, but I'm sure if I really wanted to I could make the receiver play back multiple inputs at the same time.
On the other hand, this particular story is more akin to the CD player making it impossible for you to ever use your record player again.
Just a quick note: my Win2k Pro (SP4) box doesn't have this problem with iTunes installed. I haven't checked my XP box yet, but the thread states it's only a 2k problem. Then again, I have disabled the iPod and QuickTime services as well...
I wonder if disabling the iPod service would make MusicMatch function properly again. Since I have neither an iPod nor MusicMatch, I can't really check this for myself, but I noticed the iPod service running on both of the machines I installed iTunes on and quickly disabled the service (simply because I don't have an iPod, so have no reason to run the service). iTunes seems to work perfectly fine for me with the service disabled, but I'm sure I'd have to manually start the service if I wanted to use an iPod with it.
my only problem with the article is that it is based on USER REVIEWS (the term he keeps using), and not the SITE REVIEWS, when the article was stated to be about whether or the SITES are biased and not if their READERS were biased
The article uses 2 sets of user reviews and 3 sets of site reviews and clearly distinguishes between the 2, as well as having some discussion of the differences between site and user reviews. It uses the GameRankings compilation and averaging of reviews as the basis against which these are compared, but it should be noted that the GameRankings compilation is a compilation of sites and magazines, and does not take into consideration it's own users' reviews any more than the GameSpot reviews take into consideration the GameSpot user reviews.
The article pretty much concluded that they couldn't find significant bias from the data collected in site reviews, but that user reviews in general tended to be lower than site reviews, and did some further analysis showing that users will sometimes shake this trend for particular games.
Overall, the article needs some more work to include a larger data set, but I thought it was a nice start, especially since all of the data is easily available to everyone reading it, as are the sources of the data.