It's not just multi touch that they're after though - it was just one example.
It's not in Apple's interests to fight against this, as people have said, it is surely easier to just pay for use of the GSM patents - no one is questioning Nokia's R&D or ownership or validity of the patents in question, and Apple obviously doesn't want to just *not* pay for patents (as a large company with its own patents, it simply cannot be pursuing this angle). The question entirely comes down to what is "fair" - which ordinarily doesn't matter, but since GSM is a standard, Nokia has certain obligations with regard to licencing the patents that are involved in it, in exchange for it being ratified as a standard and Apple are claiming (not sure how accurately) that Nokia are not in keeping with that obligation.
I'm not sure how it will play out, but I don't think Apple are going to go this far into a litigation battle rather than simply cross licencing with Nokia unless they have serious concerns with it (or think they genuinely have something that need addressing). They may be a big and litigious company, but they're ultimately not stupid (in a business sense).
I have posted a lot in this discussion and it seems like (or can be read) that I am just blindly siding with Apple - I'm actually not trying to take sides. If Apple are in the wrong here they will eventually be forced into a settlement that they may not want, but the general tone of all the comments has been "Nokia = can do no wrong", Apple = evil, wants-its-own-way, wants-to-ignore-the-rules" when I just don't think it is that simple. I very much doubt the comments would have played out the way they did if this was Nokia vs RIM, for example - it would have been much more balanced between pro-Nokia, pro-RIM and those in the middle who have no bias one way or the other.
I don't normally reply to AC, but perhaps you accidentally checked the post anon box - there are actual sentences in this reply.
I'm not taking sides either way here, it's just that everyone seems to be immediately siding with Nokia here, without even looking at the nature of the dispute.
Apple has cross licenced before, and will do so again, but they are equally not just going to accept any terms Nokia holds them to ransom for since they *need* Nokia's patents to use GSM. Apple's complaint is that as a standard holder they are being discriminatory by attempting to bar entry to the standard in order to get more patents/more cash out of Apple.
I'm not saying Apple doesn't want to cross licence, but you seem to be trying to paint this as all Apple's fault - both companies are negotiating the value of the patents they hold and are not agreeing.
Apple is willing to pay what other third parties are paying, Nokia wants more (allegedly). The bracketed word is what all the fuss is about. That's what the litigation is all about.
My point was that Greenpeace nailed Apple for all sorts of things that Apple very easily and demonstrably proved were not the case, while HP and Dell were giving good marks by Greenpeace for much less.
It's only relevant in regard to the way people scrutinize Apple. Greenpeace heavily criticised Apple for BFRs, and awarded HP a higher score for "planning make a plan to eliminate BFRs" (ie, not even actually doing much) where Apple had already removed the bulk of BFRs from their products several years before and was almost totally done - years and years ahead of HP, yet they were scored lower by Greenpeace.
I'm not saying that Apple is not at fault, or that they should be trusted implicitly, but you can't always believe everything you read, even if it is negative.
Apple also contributed to the USB protocol as part of the USB-IF, and were active in the creation of firewire right up to its current inception, not just in 1986 when it was first proposed (Sony and TI also featured heavily in the creation of what eventually became the 1394 standard).
I know you said it was a good implementation, you also claimed that Apple does "no R&D", which is demonstrably false.
Of course Apple want to play by the rules - they are not simply saying "nah nah we don't have to licence Nokia's patents". They are arguing about the nature of Nokia's strong arming (that under the rules that Nokia agreed to when their patented tech became part of the GSM standard they would not be discriminatory in their cross licencing or charging of fees). Apple are claiming that Nokia are breaking those rules and are after far more from Apple than anyone else they licence their patents to. Nokia are, of course, saying that it's all fair and fine. The two don't agree, thus courts get involved. It's not rocket surgery. They will eventually settle and the patents will be cross licenced. Apple aren't seeking to just *not pay* - they just don;t want to be bullied into paying much more than anyone else Nokia has dealt with (and while that in itself is not ordinarily something they can moan about, it is when Nokia created the GSM standard with their patents).
I'd be interested to hear how Apple have "lawyer mobbed" their way out of playing by the rules - do you have any specific citations? I am genuinely curious, although since you seem to think are not held to the same standard as any company in the eyes of the law, I suspect it's just biased ranting.
Disclaimer: I am not rabidly "pro-apple" or "anti-anyone-who-goes-against-apple" - I just tend to actually look at what is being discussed and try not to make sweeping generalisations based on my own bias. I have no idea which way this one will come out - clearly Nokia has put a great deal of R&D into GSM and mobil tech and obviously Apple needs to pay to use that tech. We do not know Nokia's terms though. Apple are claiming that they are (contractually enforceable) unfair - are they? Who knows. That's what the courts are for, as well as some unpleasant grandstanding from both sides.
Unlikely and unpleasant for all concerned, but forceable. Alternatively and much more likely if Apple simply does not want to play ball is the withdrawal of the iPhone, in much the same way as MS did with Office. MS are obviously going to bring Office back after the patent-infringing material is removed, and potentially Apple would do the same (since the iPhone is a clear money spinner) by either going CDMA only, or releasing some sort of phone that requires a n add-in chip to enable GSM function that can be bought from a third party supplier.
There are always ways around it - the most convenient being to pay whatever Nokia is asking (including licencing other patents unrelated to phones), which they are clearly hoping Apple will do rather than take a major pain in the butt and revenue hit by having to drastically change the iPhone or stop selling it for a certain time frame.
I think you mean "the single GSM chip that gets bolted on to the iPhone to make it talk with the cell tower" where you say "builds heavily on the work of others". The rest of the phone is not the GSM chip.
Also, that chip us manufactured by Qualcomm, who already licences the patents involved from Nokia and and sells a turnkey chip solution to third party manufacturers so they can make phones. Didn't Apple already pay Nokia by proxy? Or does the cost of buying the chips not include the patent cost, that the chip manufacturer has already paid?
The "only thing novel is the interface" is *everything* about the phone - there are only so many ways you can make a candybar phone. You can't really innovate there (well, Nokia has tried with that cube phone that folds out and looks odd, but generally you are limited in what you can do). The interface of most phones is *awful*. If you've ever tried to use some of these phones you wonder who on earth designed it. So Apple comes along with a large touchscreen UI with gestures and multi touch and is simple to operate. It is by no means the first, but in a similar way to the iPod (again, not the first mp3 player) it is one of the first UIs to really work well and is actually pleasant and intuitive to use. Again, it is not the only good UI, but it is a very good one.
If people have already come up with these interface ideas before (and I have no doubt people have thought of them) then why didn't we see them in widescale use on phones and portable electronics (or personal computers) before the iPhone? I'm not disputing that someone in Redmond thought up some cool new UI trick, but if you are suggesting Apple copied it then fair play to them. Some guy describes it in a journal that is open to read (and presumably patents it), and Apple decide to use it. If it's patented, they pay royalties. Isn't that how it;s meant to work?
If creating really good UIs (note: not perfect, I am not saying that OS X and iPhone UI are perfect, just really good) then why don;t we see more of them, if there are so many people innovating in this area? Apple are very good at combining and refining and making things work and it is disingenuous to claim that they do no innovation of their own.
Their track history of products suggests otherwise - if these things are trivial and easy, where is the competition?
Incidentally, the creation of firewire, usb and a few other standards would like to have a word with you about "no research".
You also have to weigh the fact that Apple is a big target and is under much heavier scrutiny - just look at the way Greenpeace treated them in their "well researched" green technology/environmental roundup, where companies like Dell and HP scored much better despite being 20 years behind Apple in several areas related to environmental factors like removal of BFRs from products, removal of particular toxins from packaging, cables, lead free solder, energy use etc etc.
Apple are not blameless by any means, but in general they are not the textbook "evil" company that some people like to make out they are with some of the casual commentary I have seen in these comments so far. Usually little throwaway opinion bits made to look like facts and then used to support a later point, that sort of thing.
Incidentally, what did you really expect them to do regarding Jobs' health? The health of a CEO (even one as pivotal as Steve) is a private matter. They're not just going to tell you "oh yeah, he's touch and go and having treatment for pancreatic cancer...", they are going to remain tight lipped. It's no different from any other large company. You can argue that Jobs is a "special case" because of his "magic touch" at Apple, but that really doesn't hold water. His health issues are private. I didn't like the eventual way he essentially had to come out and openly talk about his condition and treatment in a public setting. He was hounded incessantly until he gave it up.
And Nokia said "give us multi touch for essentially free or we will make it very difficult for you to operate a cellphone because we control the patents on talking to celltowers"
"you can roll your own cell towers of course..."
This is not just all Apple. Both companies are slugging it out here - neither one playing nice. It's not really in Apple's interests (or Nokia's) to have this out in court if they could come to a cross licensing agreement. The only obvious result of this is that they simply don't agree on what each other's patents are worth.
It's cheaper to just cross licence; that is has got this far is an indication that they are fundamentally disagreeing on some serious points, mainly financial ones.
It's not easy to be a new player to a big game that has been sewn up by other companies, especially if you come in with a new product that has some things that the big boys haven't seen before. Now they want that tech for themselves as the price of admission to the game for much less than Apple really want to give it up for. On the other side, the big boys have put together a big cell network with a lot of invested R&D and by nature of the design, Apple needs to use patented tech to be able to make a phone in the first place, so now it comes swanning in, late to the party after the heavy R&D is done with a flashy phone ready to start taking sales away from the big boys....
You can see it from both sides. They both have a case here, and it's just a matter of working out what each other's patents are worth.
Then you are talking to the wrong "Mac people", or are wilfully ignoring the ones who are telling you otherwise, unless we are going to expand this to "the sort of people who don;t read slashdot", and if you're going to include the nominally "clueless" users then you have to do that for the Windows side too.
Assuming you are just talking to people with actual computer knowledge, there are very few Apple users who believe the components inside the box are some sort of magical things that are just not used by PC makers.
It's a long known business practice of Apple that has served them well - it's turnkey or nothing. Their direct competitor is not Dell or HP, or even a whitebox home builder, and not even really companies like Alienware who go for the prestige/high performance in fancy case gamer market. They're just kind of off on their own, doing their own thing. If you want a hassle free OS X box, you buy it from them. Sure you can make yourself a hackintosh if you like for less money, but you lose out on the form factor and warranty and so on. Those things are worth it to some people. The form factor of my iMac alone was worth the price I paid for it over the equivalent spec PC from any other vendor, not to mention OS X (and the ability to triple boot if needed).
It's simply not the case that Apple drop PCs into Apple cases and put the price up - not *literally* in any case (and watch this paragraph get selectively quoted by an AC for instant karma) - the components may be the same, but what size and shape is that $300 AMD machine? How loud is it? What version of OS X does it run out of the box?
The Mac Mini is expensive because it uses laptop components and crams them into a desktop form factor, and laptop parts cost more than desktop ones do. A better comparison would be a 3Ghz laptop, minus screen (and yes, even then the PC will be cheaper).
My iMac is the same - C2D 2Ghz, 2GB Ram, 500GB Sata HD (self upgrade - stock was 250GB), 20" 1680x1050 screen. I know that I could get a PC with those specs in late 2006 when I bought it for *much less*, but then I lose the all-in-one form factor and the fact that I can just pull the wall plug, put it into its box (that has a carry handle) and travel transatlantic with it several times as checked baggage as if it was just another suitcase.
Sure, most people who have one won't be moving it very often, but even at home, it is a very small footprint and small use of space for what it is - it's fabulous not having a tower stashed under my desk.
Not everything about buying a computer is about finding the most CPU+GPU for your money.
That depends if you think the cost of the box they put the parts in is worth the price difference.
I know your post is not altogether serious, but the difference is that people who buy such things (mostly) are well aware of what's inside the box that they are handing over money for. Not so in the case of this bluray player where they are literally rebadging a cheaper product and selling it deceitfully as a $3500 machine.
I wish my iMac was cheaper too, but I still think it was worth the price I paid for it.:)
Also, "slightly" modified is a bit of a stretch I think, perhaps?
I put a £50 hard disk into an old Mac (I didn't pull it out of a dumpster but I did get it for free) that now serves as my Time Machine backup disk.
Apart from paying pounds for my hard disk, since I live in the UK, how is that different?
It was clear the AC troll initially doesn't represent any sort of starting point for discussion of Apple vs totally open source solutions, and it should also be clear to you that the Time Capsule isn't the only way to use Time Machine and is generally unsuitable for most Mac users as a backup solution in fact, since most of them already have an AP or just don't need one in the first place. An external (or extra internal) HD is all that is really needed. Doesn't even need to be a fancy Mac-branded/Mac-themed one.
Plus, the GUI for Time Machine looks way cooler than SSHing into your backup volume. How many girls have said "wow, that's so cool!" when you recovered a file that you deleted a few months ago that you suddenly needed? (a DVD rip of a disc I own, so she could watch it on her laptop on her way home, yes yes, sue me, piracy yadda yadda).
Funny how Nokia waited until the iPhone was a raging success before doing anything about those patents, isn't it?
Regardless of the nature of the situation, some of these patent claims (from all sorts of sources, not just this one) are absurd - I think it peaked with the "one click shopping" patent.
The whole system is just abused.
If Apple and RIM are in violation of this patent they will no doubt pay up. The cost of challenging is more than simply ponying up the cash.
Yes, the top google results all point to LG phones, Dell laptops and LG's Xnote with two stories and a youtube video about an MPB.
"overwhelmingly" iDevices, certainly.
Cell phones, flashlights, portable DVD players, GPS gadgets, even cordless drills also have all been recalled in recent months over concerns about dangerous batteries. During that time, there have been nearly 200 reported incidents of fires and explosions resulting from battery failure.
All of these recalls involve lithium ion rechargeable batteries, which now are the industry standard, because of their ability to yield high power in small spaces. It’s that concentration of power which makes these batteries more dangerous.
Before the Dell recall, there were 23 recalls related to lithium batteries. Apple don't even make 23 handheld devices unless you count each iPod generation as a separate device. I'm failing to see how "overwhelmingly" i* devices are catching fire in the small device category.
Assuming you have a totally unpatched 10.2 OS X Server install, the combo update will be 850MB or something which is the biggest one I can remember, the 10.5.8 full combo update for the retail copy of OS X is 759Mb, but it includes every patch from 10.5.1 up to 10.5.8 including security updates.
If you have broadband though, why are you not patching incrementally? Those are much smaller. If you have multiple machines you can just pull the combo update off Apple's server and install it manually if you are concerned about bandwidth. There's no reason to download it 5 times for 5 machines.
The same is true for Windows updates - you don't have to pull them down for each machine individually. Even if you have to totally rebuild your Mac or Windows box from scratch with full patches, how many times per month are you going to do that?!
I will wager that my standard internet browsing far exceeds any OS updates I need to download, on either platform.
As others have pointed out, you need a change in the field to generate current, either by moving through it or moving the thing making the field. You can observe this effect on a high speed aircraft, where there is a measurable potential difference between the wingtips as it flies though the earth's magnetic field. It's not really strong enough to extract anything useful out of it - you couldn't hook it up to a motor and power the plane, for instance. You'd do better bolting PV panels on every exposed surface.
On a galactic or universe scale, the earth is barely a spec. I suppose it never truly becomes flat, but from an observer at that scale, it's not a nearly spherical globe.
It doesn't matter because the electric motor is what drives the wheels. This particular diesel vs petrol discussion was purely to do with what engine would be better to run the battery charger in an electric vehicle that has no conventional transmission, only electric motors.
That is my point - consider how many iPods and iPhones there are, and all the testing that goes into them that will include dropping them from height, and subjecting them to extremes that are far outside normal user abuses. If they really were popping and exploding frequently we would know about it.
The iPod and iPhone batteries are not different to any other lithium battery in devices of similar size - many, many manufacturers use them. It's just that the Apple cases are very high profile.
The guy who dropped it once from hip height may have never done anything wrong with his iPod when it caught fire - he may have had a one off manufacturing defect. That does not mean the entire iPod model line that he had is defective. Could be just that one, or one of a small batch, or maybe they are all faulty - the scope of a recall, if there needs to be one at all, has to be determined.
You shouldn't have to keep your iPhone in a fireproof box, but it does contain a battery that has the potential to cause a serious fire if mishandled, but this is the same for laptops, other phones, iPods, wireless game controllers... practically anything using a lithium battery. People just aren't as aware of the potential hazards.
Those are my points - and the same is true for the iPhone. It doesn't sync todo items from iCal, which didn't bother me for the first 6 months I owned it, until I actually started using them in iCal and found the phone lacking in that area. It's not a glaring flaw in the iPhone but it is an annoyance for me now (using a third party app to fill in the feature).
I don't see this touch screen issue as a major flaw of the Droid, but from the way people have come flooding out to declare the test flawed is just interesting to me. They are doing everything they accuse iPhone "fanbois" of doing.
I'm not for a minute suggesting that everyone is doing this - it's just interesting to see this from the other side, where I as an iPhone user am labelled an "Apple fanboi who only cares about style over substance" regardless of my actual feelings or experiences on the subject.
My hypothetical droid user response was aimed at the people who are frothing about the tests, especially the top comments on the article itself, not directed at all droid users. If it works for you, then great. I'm sure they're excellent phones.
How is this different to a company that sells a physical product that is unique but subsequently goes out of business. If your product that has been working up to that point then later fails (say you need to replace a unique widget that is no longer manufactured) then you are on your own - you either have to look for third party help to make a replacement, or look for someone who happens to have a spare somewhere. The original company doesn't owe you anything.
I don't see this as any different - the product requires activation and won;t work when those servers are gone. Either you have to hack around it, or look for third party help to fill the gap left by the thing that no longer works. You know ahead of time that it requires online activation.
I hate it as much as the next guy and think it is a woeful business practice, but if you buy a product that has it, you have to be aware that it won;t work if the company goes tits up.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just multi touch that they're after though - it was just one example.
It's not in Apple's interests to fight against this, as people have said, it is surely easier to just pay for use of the GSM patents - no one is questioning Nokia's R&D or ownership or validity of the patents in question, and Apple obviously doesn't want to just *not* pay for patents (as a large company with its own patents, it simply cannot be pursuing this angle). The question entirely comes down to what is "fair" - which ordinarily doesn't matter, but since GSM is a standard, Nokia has certain obligations with regard to licencing the patents that are involved in it, in exchange for it being ratified as a standard and Apple are claiming (not sure how accurately) that Nokia are not in keeping with that obligation.
I'm not sure how it will play out, but I don't think Apple are going to go this far into a litigation battle rather than simply cross licencing with Nokia unless they have serious concerns with it (or think they genuinely have something that need addressing). They may be a big and litigious company, but they're ultimately not stupid (in a business sense).
I have posted a lot in this discussion and it seems like (or can be read) that I am just blindly siding with Apple - I'm actually not trying to take sides. If Apple are in the wrong here they will eventually be forced into a settlement that they may not want, but the general tone of all the comments has been "Nokia = can do no wrong", Apple = evil, wants-its-own-way, wants-to-ignore-the-rules" when I just don't think it is that simple. I very much doubt the comments would have played out the way they did if this was Nokia vs RIM, for example - it would have been much more balanced between pro-Nokia, pro-RIM and those in the middle who have no bias one way or the other.
I don't normally reply to AC, but perhaps you accidentally checked the post anon box - there are actual sentences in this reply.
I'm not taking sides either way here, it's just that everyone seems to be immediately siding with Nokia here, without even looking at the nature of the dispute.
Apple has cross licenced before, and will do so again, but they are equally not just going to accept any terms Nokia holds them to ransom for since they *need* Nokia's patents to use GSM. Apple's complaint is that as a standard holder they are being discriminatory by attempting to bar entry to the standard in order to get more patents/more cash out of Apple.
I'm not saying Apple doesn't want to cross licence, but you seem to be trying to paint this as all Apple's fault - both companies are negotiating the value of the patents they hold and are not agreeing.
Apple is willing to pay what other third parties are paying, Nokia wants more (allegedly). The bracketed word is what all the fuss is about. That's what the litigation is all about.
They eventually will settle and cross licence.
My point was that Greenpeace nailed Apple for all sorts of things that Apple very easily and demonstrably proved were not the case, while HP and Dell were giving good marks by Greenpeace for much less.
It's only relevant in regard to the way people scrutinize Apple. Greenpeace heavily criticised Apple for BFRs, and awarded HP a higher score for "planning make a plan to eliminate BFRs" (ie, not even actually doing much) where Apple had already removed the bulk of BFRs from their products several years before and was almost totally done - years and years ahead of HP, yet they were scored lower by Greenpeace.
I'm not saying that Apple is not at fault, or that they should be trusted implicitly, but you can't always believe everything you read, even if it is negative.
Is just to fly some guys up there with shovels. It can't be that badly stuck. Maybe do some science after they dig it out.
Apple also contributed to the USB protocol as part of the USB-IF, and were active in the creation of firewire right up to its current inception, not just in 1986 when it was first proposed (Sony and TI also featured heavily in the creation of what eventually became the 1394 standard).
I know you said it was a good implementation, you also claimed that Apple does "no R&D", which is demonstrably false.
Of course Apple want to play by the rules - they are not simply saying "nah nah we don't have to licence Nokia's patents". They are arguing about the nature of Nokia's strong arming (that under the rules that Nokia agreed to when their patented tech became part of the GSM standard they would not be discriminatory in their cross licencing or charging of fees). Apple are claiming that Nokia are breaking those rules and are after far more from Apple than anyone else they licence their patents to. Nokia are, of course, saying that it's all fair and fine. The two don't agree, thus courts get involved. It's not rocket surgery. They will eventually settle and the patents will be cross licenced. Apple aren't seeking to just *not pay* - they just don;t want to be bullied into paying much more than anyone else Nokia has dealt with (and while that in itself is not ordinarily something they can moan about, it is when Nokia created the GSM standard with their patents).
I'd be interested to hear how Apple have "lawyer mobbed" their way out of playing by the rules - do you have any specific citations? I am genuinely curious, although since you seem to think are not held to the same standard as any company in the eyes of the law, I suspect it's just biased ranting.
Disclaimer: I am not rabidly "pro-apple" or "anti-anyone-who-goes-against-apple" - I just tend to actually look at what is being discussed and try not to make sweeping generalisations based on my own bias. I have no idea which way this one will come out - clearly Nokia has put a great deal of R&D into GSM and mobil tech and obviously Apple needs to pay to use that tech. We do not know Nokia's terms though. Apple are claiming that they are (contractually enforceable) unfair - are they? Who knows. That's what the courts are for, as well as some unpleasant grandstanding from both sides.
At worst? Buy/merge with Nokia.
Unlikely and unpleasant for all concerned, but forceable. Alternatively and much more likely if Apple simply does not want to play ball is the withdrawal of the iPhone, in much the same way as MS did with Office. MS are obviously going to bring Office back after the patent-infringing material is removed, and potentially Apple would do the same (since the iPhone is a clear money spinner) by either going CDMA only, or releasing some sort of phone that requires a n add-in chip to enable GSM function that can be bought from a third party supplier.
There are always ways around it - the most convenient being to pay whatever Nokia is asking (including licencing other patents unrelated to phones), which they are clearly hoping Apple will do rather than take a major pain in the butt and revenue hit by having to drastically change the iPhone or stop selling it for a certain time frame.
I think you mean "the single GSM chip that gets bolted on to the iPhone to make it talk with the cell tower" where you say "builds heavily on the work of others". The rest of the phone is not the GSM chip.
Also, that chip us manufactured by Qualcomm, who already licences the patents involved from Nokia and and sells a turnkey chip solution to third party manufacturers so they can make phones. Didn't Apple already pay Nokia by proxy? Or does the cost of buying the chips not include the patent cost, that the chip manufacturer has already paid?
The "only thing novel is the interface" is *everything* about the phone - there are only so many ways you can make a candybar phone. You can't really innovate there (well, Nokia has tried with that cube phone that folds out and looks odd, but generally you are limited in what you can do). The interface of most phones is *awful*. If you've ever tried to use some of these phones you wonder who on earth designed it. So Apple comes along with a large touchscreen UI with gestures and multi touch and is simple to operate. It is by no means the first, but in a similar way to the iPod (again, not the first mp3 player) it is one of the first UIs to really work well and is actually pleasant and intuitive to use. Again, it is not the only good UI, but it is a very good one.
If people have already come up with these interface ideas before (and I have no doubt people have thought of them) then why didn't we see them in widescale use on phones and portable electronics (or personal computers) before the iPhone? I'm not disputing that someone in Redmond thought up some cool new UI trick, but if you are suggesting Apple copied it then fair play to them. Some guy describes it in a journal that is open to read (and presumably patents it), and Apple decide to use it. If it's patented, they pay royalties. Isn't that how it;s meant to work?
If creating really good UIs (note: not perfect, I am not saying that OS X and iPhone UI are perfect, just really good) then why don;t we see more of them, if there are so many people innovating in this area? Apple are very good at combining and refining and making things work and it is disingenuous to claim that they do no innovation of their own.
Their track history of products suggests otherwise - if these things are trivial and easy, where is the competition?
Incidentally, the creation of firewire, usb and a few other standards would like to have a word with you about "no research".
You also have to weigh the fact that Apple is a big target and is under much heavier scrutiny - just look at the way Greenpeace treated them in their "well researched" green technology/environmental roundup, where companies like Dell and HP scored much better despite being 20 years behind Apple in several areas related to environmental factors like removal of BFRs from products, removal of particular toxins from packaging, cables, lead free solder, energy use etc etc.
Apple are not blameless by any means, but in general they are not the textbook "evil" company that some people like to make out they are with some of the casual commentary I have seen in these comments so far. Usually little throwaway opinion bits made to look like facts and then used to support a later point, that sort of thing.
Incidentally, what did you really expect them to do regarding Jobs' health? The health of a CEO (even one as pivotal as Steve) is a private matter. They're not just going to tell you "oh yeah, he's touch and go and having treatment for pancreatic cancer...", they are going to remain tight lipped. It's no different from any other large company. You can argue that Jobs is a "special case" because of his "magic touch" at Apple, but that really doesn't hold water. His health issues are private. I didn't like the eventual way he essentially had to come out and openly talk about his condition and treatment in a public setting. He was hounded incessantly until he gave it up.
And Nokia said "give us multi touch for essentially free or we will make it very difficult for you to operate a cellphone because we control the patents on talking to celltowers"
"you can roll your own cell towers of course..."
This is not just all Apple. Both companies are slugging it out here - neither one playing nice. It's not really in Apple's interests (or Nokia's) to have this out in court if they could come to a cross licensing agreement. The only obvious result of this is that they simply don't agree on what each other's patents are worth.
It's cheaper to just cross licence; that is has got this far is an indication that they are fundamentally disagreeing on some serious points, mainly financial ones.
It's not easy to be a new player to a big game that has been sewn up by other companies, especially if you come in with a new product that has some things that the big boys haven't seen before. Now they want that tech for themselves as the price of admission to the game for much less than Apple really want to give it up for. On the other side, the big boys have put together a big cell network with a lot of invested R&D and by nature of the design, Apple needs to use patented tech to be able to make a phone in the first place, so now it comes swanning in, late to the party after the heavy R&D is done with a flashy phone ready to start taking sales away from the big boys....
You can see it from both sides. They both have a case here, and it's just a matter of working out what each other's patents are worth.
Who modded the parent post troll?! The above information is a fact. A readable, look-up-able fact.
Then you are talking to the wrong "Mac people", or are wilfully ignoring the ones who are telling you otherwise, unless we are going to expand this to "the sort of people who don;t read slashdot", and if you're going to include the nominally "clueless" users then you have to do that for the Windows side too.
Assuming you are just talking to people with actual computer knowledge, there are very few Apple users who believe the components inside the box are some sort of magical things that are just not used by PC makers.
It's a long known business practice of Apple that has served them well - it's turnkey or nothing. Their direct competitor is not Dell or HP, or even a whitebox home builder, and not even really companies like Alienware who go for the prestige/high performance in fancy case gamer market. They're just kind of off on their own, doing their own thing. If you want a hassle free OS X box, you buy it from them. Sure you can make yourself a hackintosh if you like for less money, but you lose out on the form factor and warranty and so on. Those things are worth it to some people. The form factor of my iMac alone was worth the price I paid for it over the equivalent spec PC from any other vendor, not to mention OS X (and the ability to triple boot if needed).
It's simply not the case that Apple drop PCs into Apple cases and put the price up - not *literally* in any case (and watch this paragraph get selectively quoted by an AC for instant karma) - the components may be the same, but what size and shape is that $300 AMD machine? How loud is it? What version of OS X does it run out of the box?
The Mac Mini is expensive because it uses laptop components and crams them into a desktop form factor, and laptop parts cost more than desktop ones do. A better comparison would be a 3Ghz laptop, minus screen (and yes, even then the PC will be cheaper).
My iMac is the same - C2D 2Ghz, 2GB Ram, 500GB Sata HD (self upgrade - stock was 250GB), 20" 1680x1050 screen. I know that I could get a PC with those specs in late 2006 when I bought it for *much less*, but then I lose the all-in-one form factor and the fact that I can just pull the wall plug, put it into its box (that has a carry handle) and travel transatlantic with it several times as checked baggage as if it was just another suitcase.
Sure, most people who have one won't be moving it very often, but even at home, it is a very small footprint and small use of space for what it is - it's fabulous not having a tower stashed under my desk.
Not everything about buying a computer is about finding the most CPU+GPU for your money.
That depends if you think the cost of the box they put the parts in is worth the price difference.
I know your post is not altogether serious, but the difference is that people who buy such things (mostly) are well aware of what's inside the box that they are handing over money for. Not so in the case of this bluray player where they are literally rebadging a cheaper product and selling it deceitfully as a $3500 machine.
I wish my iMac was cheaper too, but I still think it was worth the price I paid for it. :)
Also, "slightly" modified is a bit of a stretch I think, perhaps?
I put a £50 hard disk into an old Mac (I didn't pull it out of a dumpster but I did get it for free) that now serves as my Time Machine backup disk.
Apart from paying pounds for my hard disk, since I live in the UK, how is that different?
It was clear the AC troll initially doesn't represent any sort of starting point for discussion of Apple vs totally open source solutions, and it should also be clear to you that the Time Capsule isn't the only way to use Time Machine and is generally unsuitable for most Mac users as a backup solution in fact, since most of them already have an AP or just don't need one in the first place. An external (or extra internal) HD is all that is really needed. Doesn't even need to be a fancy Mac-branded/Mac-themed one.
Plus, the GUI for Time Machine looks way cooler than SSHing into your backup volume. How many girls have said "wow, that's so cool!" when you recovered a file that you deleted a few months ago that you suddenly needed? (a DVD rip of a disc I own, so she could watch it on her laptop on her way home, yes yes, sue me, piracy yadda yadda).
Funny how Nokia waited until the iPhone was a raging success before doing anything about those patents, isn't it?
Regardless of the nature of the situation, some of these patent claims (from all sorts of sources, not just this one) are absurd - I think it peaked with the "one click shopping" patent.
The whole system is just abused.
If Apple and RIM are in violation of this patent they will no doubt pay up. The cost of challenging is more than simply ponying up the cash.
And you are making the rest of us non-smokers look like total wankers. Grow the fuck up.
Yes, the top google results all point to LG phones, Dell laptops and LG's Xnote with two stories and a youtube video about an MPB.
"overwhelmingly" iDevices, certainly.
Cell phones, flashlights, portable DVD players, GPS gadgets, even cordless drills also have all been recalled in recent months over concerns about dangerous batteries. During that time, there have been nearly 200 reported incidents of fires and explosions resulting from battery failure.
All of these recalls involve lithium ion rechargeable batteries, which now are the industry standard, because of their ability to yield high power in small spaces. It’s that concentration of power which makes these batteries more dangerous.
From: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2006/08/exploding_gadge.html
Before the Dell recall, there were 23 recalls related to lithium batteries. Apple don't even make 23 handheld devices unless you count each iPod generation as a separate device. I'm failing to see how "overwhelmingly" i* devices are catching fire in the small device category.
Assuming you have a totally unpatched 10.2 OS X Server install, the combo update will be 850MB or something which is the biggest one I can remember, the 10.5.8 full combo update for the retail copy of OS X is 759Mb, but it includes every patch from 10.5.1 up to 10.5.8 including security updates.
If you have broadband though, why are you not patching incrementally? Those are much smaller. If you have multiple machines you can just pull the combo update off Apple's server and install it manually if you are concerned about bandwidth. There's no reason to download it 5 times for 5 machines.
The same is true for Windows updates - you don't have to pull them down for each machine individually. Even if you have to totally rebuild your Mac or Windows box from scratch with full patches, how many times per month are you going to do that?!
I will wager that my standard internet browsing far exceeds any OS updates I need to download, on either platform.
As others have pointed out, you need a change in the field to generate current, either by moving through it or moving the thing making the field. You can observe this effect on a high speed aircraft, where there is a measurable potential difference between the wingtips as it flies though the earth's magnetic field. It's not really strong enough to extract anything useful out of it - you couldn't hook it up to a motor and power the plane, for instance. You'd do better bolting PV panels on every exposed surface.
Is a sheet of fresh, unfolded paper flat?
What about under an electron microscope?
On a galactic or universe scale, the earth is barely a spec. I suppose it never truly becomes flat, but from an observer at that scale, it's not a nearly spherical globe.
It doesn't matter because the electric motor is what drives the wheels. This particular diesel vs petrol discussion was purely to do with what engine would be better to run the battery charger in an electric vehicle that has no conventional transmission, only electric motors.
That is my point - consider how many iPods and iPhones there are, and all the testing that goes into them that will include dropping them from height, and subjecting them to extremes that are far outside normal user abuses. If they really were popping and exploding frequently we would know about it.
The iPod and iPhone batteries are not different to any other lithium battery in devices of similar size - many, many manufacturers use them. It's just that the Apple cases are very high profile.
The guy who dropped it once from hip height may have never done anything wrong with his iPod when it caught fire - he may have had a one off manufacturing defect. That does not mean the entire iPod model line that he had is defective. Could be just that one, or one of a small batch, or maybe they are all faulty - the scope of a recall, if there needs to be one at all, has to be determined.
You shouldn't have to keep your iPhone in a fireproof box, but it does contain a battery that has the potential to cause a serious fire if mishandled, but this is the same for laptops, other phones, iPods, wireless game controllers... practically anything using a lithium battery. People just aren't as aware of the potential hazards.
Ah yes, Charlie Miller, the highly unbiased source claiming that 10.6 was "much less secure than Vista or Windows 7".
Those are my points - and the same is true for the iPhone. It doesn't sync todo items from iCal, which didn't bother me for the first 6 months I owned it, until I actually started using them in iCal and found the phone lacking in that area. It's not a glaring flaw in the iPhone but it is an annoyance for me now (using a third party app to fill in the feature).
I don't see this touch screen issue as a major flaw of the Droid, but from the way people have come flooding out to declare the test flawed is just interesting to me. They are doing everything they accuse iPhone "fanbois" of doing.
I'm not for a minute suggesting that everyone is doing this - it's just interesting to see this from the other side, where I as an iPhone user am labelled an "Apple fanboi who only cares about style over substance" regardless of my actual feelings or experiences on the subject.
My hypothetical droid user response was aimed at the people who are frothing about the tests, especially the top comments on the article itself, not directed at all droid users. If it works for you, then great. I'm sure they're excellent phones.
Why?
How is this different to a company that sells a physical product that is unique but subsequently goes out of business. If your product that has been working up to that point then later fails (say you need to replace a unique widget that is no longer manufactured) then you are on your own - you either have to look for third party help to make a replacement, or look for someone who happens to have a spare somewhere. The original company doesn't owe you anything.
I don't see this as any different - the product requires activation and won;t work when those servers are gone. Either you have to hack around it, or look for third party help to fill the gap left by the thing that no longer works. You know ahead of time that it requires online activation.
I hate it as much as the next guy and think it is a woeful business practice, but if you buy a product that has it, you have to be aware that it won;t work if the company goes tits up.