Yes, it's very abundant as an element but it is very expensive to extract - 1% of the UK's entire electricity capacity is used by a single plant that extracts aluminium by electrolysis. It's cheaper when it's recycled, since you already have the metal, but it all has to come from somewhere.
Elemental abundance is no guarantee of being cheap.
You're simply ignoring that brand loyalty is made up of a lot of things and, in many cases, quality and consumer advantages are down at the bottom of the list. In general, people are like sheep, they don't think a lot and are are generally under-educated. It just takes repeating messages, showing shiny bells and whistels and "group thinking" (or should I say un-thinking?). This is well-known since decades. Go, figure, try to find some dusty books, err sorry an App, with Noam Chomsky writings.
So, I'll reply to that with your own quote:
But we are lucky because we can read you profund and enlighted thoughts and explanations, strictly facts-based. Not.
It doesn't have the ability to play Blu-Ray because Apple said "no way" to all the DRM nonsense they'd have to build in to make a "trusted video path".
I thought slashdot was all about trying to eliminate these anti-consumer practices?
They still have DRM on the iTunes store for movies and TV, but it's not as bad as blu-ray for what it requires of the underlying hardware and software being "trusted".
You're being disingenuous if you are claiming that the long term history of a company's share price and its overall market cap are "meaningless" in determining how it performs.
It is certainly not the be all and end all, but calling it meaningless is laughable.
It's not a conspiracy as such, but but there are an awful lot of people on here and other sites - including some who register specifically on Mac-centric sites - in order to base their self worth on telling Mac users what "sheep" they are and how we're all "fanbois" and that our intelligence and sexuality is defined by our choice of operating system.
Back in the early days, as I said, before Apple was the behemoth it is today, it was often called "dying" due to its share price and stock performance.
Now that it's become big, you have a flurry of posts calling the entire stock market a "poor indicator of a company's performance" because they don't like the company with the big market cap.
In the Samsung lawsuit threads I have people telling me that "well, Samsung could just buy Apple a few times over! Apple are messing with the wrong guys!" and linking to stock market sites and market cap lists etc, so it seems like an ok metric to use to gauge Samsung's size and performance, but not Apple?
Oh, you'll also get the "Apple's share price is massively overvalued and they don;t pay dividends!" line too, despite people pointing out their their P/E ratio is actually pretty reasonable compared to other technology companies.
Like I say, I'm not "feeling violated" for any perceived or actual attacks on Apple - I don;t base my well being on whether people on the internet think my choice of operating system sucks and it is entirely too tiring to have to change sexuality and intelligence level when I switch between my OS X and Ubuntu machines. I'm not sure how anyone manages that!
In other words "now that Apple is on top, the metric is meaningless". In the years when Apple was still a modest size (in terms of market cap) it was always touted as how much they "didn't matter" on the world stage.
Funny how the perceived value of a yardstick changes depending on which measurement comes out on top, isn't it?
Because for some reason everyone else thinks that they way to be successful is to make their laptops as cheap as possible in a race to the bottom. There are some other nice laptops out there, but almost no (none?) other all-metal case laptops - it's seen as too expensive.
The Xoom was never a competitor to the iPad. I was playing on the "just wait, any day there will be a cheaper, faster, better Android tablet... any day now.... next month..... the month after that" for 9 months since the release (and leading up to the iPad release), and what did we finally get? The Xoom, which was more expensive than 5 of the 6 available iPad models, and shipped with the two most touted "missing essential features" (flash and external SD card) not working "to be fixed with an update 'soon'" - in a clear indication that it was rushed because the iPad 2 came out and totally took any possible breath of wind out of its sails.
As I remember, the Xoom came out and it *crushed* the iPad 1 for the same money... but they had to rush it to market and it was still beaten by the iPad 2, which was feature comparable.
The OP's response is why other tablets are failing.
If you think it's all about "Apple loyalty" and "fanbois buying iPads" then you've already missed the boat.
The iPad is a genuinely good tablet and it has carved a niche for itself (and other god tablets) with a demographic that are not typically nerdy tech users.
The problem with many of the supposed "iPad killers" is that they've been marketing to the wrong user group.
Again, more evidence of slashdot simply not getting it.
When you get the user experience right, the hardware doesn't matter. It's not just "marketing" and "being duped into buying inferior hardware" here - the iPad works very well for what it does. Companies that try to market on "it has a faster processor than the iPad, so it's better!" are missing the point and aren;t going to attract the audience.
Obviously hardware plays a part, but the days of "the CPU is faster, so it's better!" are gone.
So you didn't read my post then, obviously, since I mentioned those.
DisplayPort is also not an Apple connector - it's a VESA port and Apple has never used it. Apple's port is Mini-DisplayPort and it's not a proprietary port (they designed it and it's standard and royalty free).
Thunderbolt is the same physical port as Mini-DisplayPort, and the interface is Intel's, not Apple. But good try. The port is still standard.
The new upcoming "proprietary" headphone connector is 100% backwards compatible with current 3.5mm headphones - it mentions that *in the actual patent application* but you clearly did not bother to read that either.
30 pin Dock connector that offers much more than just USB - Apple proprietary - I already mentioned this in my post that you obviously didn't read.
Firewire is not proprietary, both the alpha and beta ports (for 400 and 800) are standards, as is Sony's implementation of the 4 pin "mini" port that they brand as "i-Link". The mini port is compatible with the 6 pin alpha port, but just lacks power connectors. As to "who uses it" - a great deal of people, especially in the audio and video field. Sony also uses it, as well as many other PC laptop makers.
Apple Desktop Bus - Wow, you're really struggling for relevant examples! ADB was used on the old 603e and earlier PowerMacs, before the G3 era. It's ancient tech by any standard of modern discussion. Yes, it was proprietary but they dumped it for USB before Windows had reliable USB drivers. It hasn't been a factor in connectivity for over a decade.
Mini-DVI - I mentioned this in my post that you didn't read. Yes, proprietary to Apple and used briefly before being replaced with Mini-Displayport.
Localtalk (and by extension, the AppleTalk protocol it uses, I assume) - I mean seriously?! This was released *in 1985*. What were they meant to do? Use someone else's non-existant networking technology? I was designed to hook up to the old school Apple LaserWriter as I remember, or to other Apple units. There weren't many other computers around at that time, so calling this proprietary is accurate but entirely irrelevant.
You seem to be suggesting that because Apple used LocalTalk networking back in 1985 that you'll have trouble hooking a modern computer up to a Mac network. AppleTalk as a protocol is dead as of Snow Leopard. It was long ago made obsolete by standard networking protocols, that the Apple Mac fully supported *when they were invented*.
Proprietary CD format - what was this? Do you mean the ISO 99660 Extensions to the CD format? These don't make the CD format in question incompatible with a standard CDROM. You will need to qualify this further.
So, you included a connector that Apple has never used, you included two examples from the early computing era, and all of your other examples are flat out wrong, except for the dock connector and the mini-DVI - both off which I already addressed as proprietary connectors. The former I even used to kick off my original argument. Oh, and the ADC used on the original Cinema Displays and the last CRT displays.
Sorry, but *you* are wrong. The AdBlock Plus extension, as written for FF but ported to Chrome, runs on Chrome just fine.
There's another blocker called "AdBlock" that is different, but AdBlock Plus is on Chrome and works fine. And yes, it does actually block the ads in the way you suggest it cannot do on Chrome.
And no, a buggy addon that I have to update every few weeks when the update inevitably breaks it does not count.
Beyond that, the wider developer mentality that led them to take out the status bar completely and not even have it as an optional feature. The reason suggested was "we are all facing screen-real estate problems, especially vertically, so we got rid of it so you have more space for your content!", but what if I don't have screen real estate problems and *want* the status bar - I should just be able to turn it back on right... oh wait.
I was a FF user for years (started way back in the day running Mozilla from a Zip Disk on college machines since Netscape 4 was the only built-in choice), but it dropped the ball big time.
Apple's display connectors (on anything modern enough to have an intel CPU) are proprietary?
News to me.
And as for storage, I wasn't aware that SATA was proprietary.
I'm going to be generous and assume the troll was talking about the 2011 iMacs, but they use the same SATA connectors as everyone else - the drive firmware is just different. You can get around it (in an Apple-approved-in-the-manual-way) if you want to install a different drive, and you can do so because it uses a normal SATA port. Funny that.
I'm struggling to think of a proprietary port that Apple uses *other* than the 30-pin Dock Connector on the iPod/iPhone.
Quick run down:
External: USB Firewire Mini-Displayport DVI Mini-DVI (unique to Apple) Apple Display Connector (on old hardware, last seen on PowerPC machines) - unique to Apple Thunderbolt RJ-45 ethernet 3.5mm audio (combi with s/pdif optical) ExpressCard slot
Internal: PCI-e SATA (I, II and III) IDE/PATA on older hardware
Non-physical: WiFi (802.11 b/g/n/a) Bluetooth
So, the 30 pin dock connector, the obsolete Apple Display Connector and the mini-DVI port used briefly on the 12" Powerbook, early intel iMac, Xserve and the 2009 Mac Mini.
Not bad I think.
So much for "everything from displays to storage".
Did you read the article? It talks about the energy cost of making the tiles, and the recycled truck tyres that go into them among other things, as well as keeping the production facilities closer together to minimise transportation costs during construction.
It is wildly popular - you only have to look at Apple's in-store lists where you can list the top 20 apps by revenue - a year or so after TomTom satnav came out it was holding second place as the highest revenue generator (it sold for £60 initially in the UK store) with the number one being Angry Birds (at £0.59).
I think pretty much everyone buys it, because it is a very fun game that is easy to pick up and put down - it's pretty much the sweet spot for a mobile game. Certainly other games have managed that, but none have been quite as successful as Angry Birds.
As of today, in the UK store Angry Birds is number 4:
1. Fifa 12 (EA) 2. WhatsApp Messenger (WhatsApp inc) [cross platform messenger system for iOS/Android/BB] 3. Where's My Water (Disney) 4. Angry Birds 5. Flick Champions 6. World of Goo HD
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it's very abundant as an element but it is very expensive to extract - 1% of the UK's entire electricity capacity is used by a single plant that extracts aluminium by electrolysis. It's cheaper when it's recycled, since you already have the metal, but it all has to come from somewhere.
Elemental abundance is no guarantee of being cheap.
Amusing, especially this:
You're simply ignoring that brand loyalty is made up of a lot of things and, in many cases, quality and consumer advantages are down at the bottom of the list. In general, people are like sheep, they don't think a lot and are are generally under-educated. It just takes repeating messages, showing shiny bells and whistels and "group thinking" (or should I say un-thinking?). This is well-known since decades. Go, figure, try to find some dusty books, err sorry an App, with Noam Chomsky writings.
So, I'll reply to that with your own quote:
But we are lucky because we can read you profund and enlighted thoughts and explanations, strictly facts-based. Not.
We are going in circles!
It doesn't have the ability to play Blu-Ray because Apple said "no way" to all the DRM nonsense they'd have to build in to make a "trusted video path".
I thought slashdot was all about trying to eliminate these anti-consumer practices?
They still have DRM on the iTunes store for movies and TV, but it's not as bad as blu-ray for what it requires of the underlying hardware and software being "trusted".
How did you manage to get all those off the shelf parts into the screen and keep it virtually silent and cool running?
I'd imagine the GPU would stick of of the back or something, but I assume you had some sort of plan for that.
You're being disingenuous if you are claiming that the long term history of a company's share price and its overall market cap are "meaningless" in determining how it performs.
It is certainly not the be all and end all, but calling it meaningless is laughable.
It's not a conspiracy as such, but but there are an awful lot of people on here and other sites - including some who register specifically on Mac-centric sites - in order to base their self worth on telling Mac users what "sheep" they are and how we're all "fanbois" and that our intelligence and sexuality is defined by our choice of operating system.
Back in the early days, as I said, before Apple was the behemoth it is today, it was often called "dying" due to its share price and stock performance.
Now that it's become big, you have a flurry of posts calling the entire stock market a "poor indicator of a company's performance" because they don't like the company with the big market cap.
In the Samsung lawsuit threads I have people telling me that "well, Samsung could just buy Apple a few times over! Apple are messing with the wrong guys!" and linking to stock market sites and market cap lists etc, so it seems like an ok metric to use to gauge Samsung's size and performance, but not Apple?
Oh, you'll also get the "Apple's share price is massively overvalued and they don;t pay dividends!" line too, despite people pointing out their their P/E ratio is actually pretty reasonable compared to other technology companies.
Like I say, I'm not "feeling violated" for any perceived or actual attacks on Apple - I don;t base my well being on whether people on the internet think my choice of operating system sucks and it is entirely too tiring to have to change sexuality and intelligence level when I switch between my OS X and Ubuntu machines. I'm not sure how anyone manages that!
In other words "now that Apple is on top, the metric is meaningless". In the years when Apple was still a modest size (in terms of market cap) it was always touted as how much they "didn't matter" on the world stage.
Funny how the perceived value of a yardstick changes depending on which measurement comes out on top, isn't it?
Because for some reason everyone else thinks that they way to be successful is to make their laptops as cheap as possible in a race to the bottom. There are some other nice laptops out there, but almost no (none?) other all-metal case laptops - it's seen as too expensive.
It doesn't count because they don't own any of Apple at all.
They did purchase $150 million of non-voting stock as part of a court settlement many, many years ago, but they sold it a long time ago.
Uh huh. Just keep telling yourself it's nothing but marketing.
The point will be over here, as you sail past it.
You missed my sarcasm, evidently.
The Xoom was never a competitor to the iPad. I was playing on the "just wait, any day there will be a cheaper, faster, better Android tablet... any day now.... next month..... the month after that" for 9 months since the release (and leading up to the iPad release), and what did we finally get? The Xoom, which was more expensive than 5 of the 6 available iPad models, and shipped with the two most touted "missing essential features" (flash and external SD card) not working "to be fixed with an update 'soon'" - in a clear indication that it was rushed because the iPad 2 came out and totally took any possible breath of wind out of its sails.
As I remember, the Xoom came out and it *crushed* the iPad 1 for the same money... but they had to rush it to market and it was still beaten by the iPad 2, which was feature comparable.
They got close, but still playing catchup.
The OP's response is why other tablets are failing.
If you think it's all about "Apple loyalty" and "fanbois buying iPads" then you've already missed the boat.
The iPad is a genuinely good tablet and it has carved a niche for itself (and other god tablets) with a demographic that are not typically nerdy tech users.
The problem with many of the supposed "iPad killers" is that they've been marketing to the wrong user group.
Cool story bro.
Macs haven't shipped with a one button mouse for many years, but thanks for playing.
Again, more evidence of slashdot simply not getting it.
When you get the user experience right, the hardware doesn't matter. It's not just "marketing" and "being duped into buying inferior hardware" here - the iPad works very well for what it does. Companies that try to market on "it has a faster processor than the iPad, so it's better!" are missing the point and aren;t going to attract the audience.
Obviously hardware plays a part, but the days of "the CPU is faster, so it's better!" are gone.
Yes, if you have an older version of OS X, the current version of Xcode will cost you $4.99.
So you didn't read my post then, obviously, since I mentioned those.
DisplayPort is also not an Apple connector - it's a VESA port and Apple has never used it. Apple's port is Mini-DisplayPort and it's not a proprietary port (they designed it and it's standard and royalty free).
Thunderbolt is the same physical port as Mini-DisplayPort, and the interface is Intel's, not Apple. But good try. The port is still standard.
The new upcoming "proprietary" headphone connector is 100% backwards compatible with current 3.5mm headphones - it mentions that *in the actual patent application* but you clearly did not bother to read that either.
30 pin Dock connector that offers much more than just USB - Apple proprietary - I already mentioned this in my post that you obviously didn't read.
Firewire is not proprietary, both the alpha and beta ports (for 400 and 800) are standards, as is Sony's implementation of the 4 pin "mini" port that they brand as "i-Link". The mini port is compatible with the 6 pin alpha port, but just lacks power connectors. As to "who uses it" - a great deal of people, especially in the audio and video field. Sony also uses it, as well as many other PC laptop makers.
Apple Desktop Bus - Wow, you're really struggling for relevant examples! ADB was used on the old 603e and earlier PowerMacs, before the G3 era. It's ancient tech by any standard of modern discussion. Yes, it was proprietary but they dumped it for USB before Windows had reliable USB drivers. It hasn't been a factor in connectivity for over a decade.
Mini-DVI - I mentioned this in my post that you didn't read. Yes, proprietary to Apple and used briefly before being replaced with Mini-Displayport.
Localtalk (and by extension, the AppleTalk protocol it uses, I assume) - I mean seriously?! This was released *in 1985*. What were they meant to do? Use someone else's non-existant networking technology? I was designed to hook up to the old school Apple LaserWriter as I remember, or to other Apple units. There weren't many other computers around at that time, so calling this proprietary is accurate but entirely irrelevant.
You seem to be suggesting that because Apple used LocalTalk networking back in 1985 that you'll have trouble hooking a modern computer up to a Mac network. AppleTalk as a protocol is dead as of Snow Leopard. It was long ago made obsolete by standard networking protocols, that the Apple Mac fully supported *when they were invented*.
Proprietary CD format - what was this? Do you mean the ISO 99660 Extensions to the CD format? These don't make the CD format in question incompatible with a standard CDROM. You will need to qualify this further.
So, you included a connector that Apple has never used, you included two examples from the early computing era, and all of your other examples are flat out wrong, except for the dock connector and the mini-DVI - both off which I already addressed as proprietary connectors. The former I even used to kick off my original argument. Oh, and the ADC used on the original Cinema Displays and the last CRT displays.
Nice try, but must try harder.
Sorry, but *you* are wrong. The AdBlock Plus extension, as written for FF but ported to Chrome, runs on Chrome just fine.
There's another blocker called "AdBlock" that is different, but AdBlock Plus is on Chrome and works fine. And yes, it does actually block the ads in the way you suggest it cannot do on Chrome.
Chrome has a status bar.
End of argument, at least for me.
And no, a buggy addon that I have to update every few weeks when the update inevitably breaks it does not count.
Beyond that, the wider developer mentality that led them to take out the status bar completely and not even have it as an optional feature. The reason suggested was "we are all facing screen-real estate problems, especially vertically, so we got rid of it so you have more space for your content!", but what if I don't have screen real estate problems and *want* the status bar - I should just be able to turn it back on right... oh wait.
I was a FF user for years (started way back in the day running Mozilla from a Zip Disk on college machines since Netscape 4 was the only built-in choice), but it dropped the ball big time.
Apple's display connectors (on anything modern enough to have an intel CPU) are proprietary?
News to me.
And as for storage, I wasn't aware that SATA was proprietary.
I'm going to be generous and assume the troll was talking about the 2011 iMacs, but they use the same SATA connectors as everyone else - the drive firmware is just different. You can get around it (in an Apple-approved-in-the-manual-way) if you want to install a different drive, and you can do so because it uses a normal SATA port. Funny that.
I'm struggling to think of a proprietary port that Apple uses *other* than the 30-pin Dock Connector on the iPod/iPhone.
Quick run down:
External:
USB
Firewire
Mini-Displayport
DVI
Mini-DVI (unique to Apple)
Apple Display Connector (on old hardware, last seen on PowerPC machines) - unique to Apple
Thunderbolt
RJ-45 ethernet
3.5mm audio (combi with s/pdif optical)
ExpressCard slot
Internal:
PCI-e
SATA (I, II and III)
IDE/PATA on older hardware
Non-physical:
WiFi (802.11 b/g/n/a)
Bluetooth
So, the 30 pin dock connector, the obsolete Apple Display Connector and the mini-DVI port used briefly on the 12" Powerbook, early intel iMac, Xserve and the 2009 Mac Mini.
Not bad I think.
So much for "everything from displays to storage".
How much energy does it take to make the tile that would otherwise be installed?
Make sure you subtract that.
I mean, we solved the green energy problem in the 50s - nuclear reactors. Lots of them. for some foolish reason, people have decided against them.
Did you read the article? It talks about the energy cost of making the tiles, and the recycled truck tyres that go into them among other things, as well as keeping the production facilities closer together to minimise transportation costs during construction.
It is wildly popular - you only have to look at Apple's in-store lists where you can list the top 20 apps by revenue - a year or so after TomTom satnav came out it was holding second place as the highest revenue generator (it sold for £60 initially in the UK store) with the number one being Angry Birds (at £0.59).
I think pretty much everyone buys it, because it is a very fun game that is easy to pick up and put down - it's pretty much the sweet spot for a mobile game. Certainly other games have managed that, but none have been quite as successful as Angry Birds.
As of today, in the UK store Angry Birds is number 4:
1. Fifa 12 (EA)
2. WhatsApp Messenger (WhatsApp inc) [cross platform messenger system for iOS/Android/BB]
3. Where's My Water (Disney)
4. Angry Birds
5. Flick Champions
6. World of Goo HD
We don't even know if we have a problem,
Yes, yes we do. We know that we have a problem.