Even if the "fine print" meant something, the site still isn't satirical. There's no perspective on the thing they're allegedly satirizing. In fact, they're just aping Windows fanboyism without tweaking or questioning it. Maybe that's for lack of talent or desire. Who cares? But satire it is not.
Steve's essay was cogent and well-reasoned. It simply lacked any moral persuasiveness. If you're going to profit from a corrupt industry by perpetuating its abusive DRM, then of course you will say, as Steve essentially did, "What can we do about it? We just sell the songs!"
DVD Jon is right that it's trivial for Apple to make allowances for selling non-DRM'd indy music. The reason it doesn't is no mystery: Apple's making money. Pleasing the Big Four is the surest way to continue doing so. Jobs might wish things were different--and so the essay implies--but that is of no consequence to the bottom line.
Besides, the essay's real goal was to deflect anticompetitive talk from Apple. I only see Apple reforming itself if the iPod stops selling, the labels withdraw their catalogs or the courts and legislators force its hand. All three are possible, as Jobs knows.
Meanwhile, I've moved on. While once buying several dozen songs per year via iTunes, increasingly I buy from eMusic.com instead. DRM is partly why, but price, selection and bitrate are equal or greater reasons. In fact, my eMusic sub for 40 songs is about the price of one iTunes album. For that matter, I will often find used CDs on eBay for less (with shipping!) than if I bought the lower quality hobbled Apple files. Still waiting for the ideal scenario, though: lossless downloads at sub-CD prices.
We should all be fine running XP for quite a few more years. Let Bill charge all he wants; it's coming nowhere near my boxen, virtually or otherwise.:-)
Well, I'll see your didja-see-this and raise you one. Did you see this?
As we expand we'd like to find more contributors for our site, If you're someone who loves microsoft, or just likes to piss off mac & linux users, we would appreciate your contributions to our content.
Q: Are you bugged by the Apple commercial where John Hodgman is the PC, and he has to undergo surgery to get Vista?
A: I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.
While surfing recently I found this little outpost of unintentional comedy, proof that Gates' public relations spews have a certain, er, receptive following.
Case in point: did you know Vista is "flawless"?;-)
Let this be a lesson to Apple--with others to follow, if needed--that it will cost it plenty to throw its weight around by issuing abusive subpoenas.
While there are going to be some here who value AAPL stock over the intersection of confidentiality and journalistic freedom, happily the courts, at least this time, do not.
At a time when blogging is rewriting the practice of journalism by handing individuals the power formerly reserved to wealthy media companies, American law needs more such victories.
Unfortunately in the US, my countrymen will accept any kind of abuse dished out by corporations. It's a kind of malaise familiar to the enslaved: after a couple of decades of peeing in cups to stay employed, we aren't even up to telling corps we want to play our music on our own terms.
So it's time for us to ask for a little liberation from abroad. Apple's due for a good reality check on this one, and it'll take a free people to deliver it.
Are you shitting me? I have NEVER YET seen a Kernel Panic in Mac OS X. Yet I have seen Windows 2000 "STOP Error" once or twice, and even more times with Windows XP. And of course, WinDOwS 3.11/95/98/ME would bluescreen at the drop of a hat.
Yeah? Well, I see OS X kernel Panics too often for my taste--perhaps once a month. One Apple store genius put it down to a bug in iTunes, and indeed that's the least well-behaved app on my otherwise very enjoyable and dependable iBook.
By contrast my XP box, kept around for occasional work and more frequent play, has BSOD'd once or twice in four years. That isn't to say it doesn't have a messy interface, ongoing security problems or other annoyances. I don't really like XP, but it is usable and quite far from being the disaster that hysterics claim. In the hands of people who know what they're doing, it's at least as stable as OS X. Quite a lot of the "oh, XP doesn't work!" stuff comes from (ahem) partisans and from the clueless; present company excepted, of course.;-)
Friendlier and more rationally conceived for the user, OS X is still better for most non-technical folks--which is probably the reason the Mac population is greying, much to Apple's dismay. Young people can tame Windows. The elderly--like my septuagenarian parents--are often better off on the saner OS X.
Maybe Steve'll take his song and dance across town to Sharper Image.
SharperImageWorld, 2009...
We've reinvented the pillow. Fully digital. We've filled it with sensors. You lay your head on it--and it knows you want to sleep. Holds up your head and neck. Like magic. Everybody hates their pillows. This one: beautiful. It just works.
A truly great designer. But if you heard Jony burble nervously at the Keynote, you know he's not going to strut in the limelight as Jobs does. And that's critical for Apple, which depends for its success on manufacturing "cool" as much as it does upon technology.
Keeping them "rapt" at Macworld is a little like keeping them in a lather at a Megachurch: the audience comes with a very obvious cord, which it enjoys having yanked.
Frankly, the endless applause from people who are supposed to be critical professionals is more than a little embarrassing. Who'd trust a single one of those cheering monkeys to deliver an independent assessment of Apple's new tech?
That's a fair point: the whole economy isn't tanking, and there are some bright spots. But if the DOW and gas prices were critical, why do you think holiday sales in general were so poor? The fact is it's the housing bubble that has driven spending and provided up to 40% of the new jobs. As it deflates, as adjustable monthly mortgage payments climb and as the "home ATM" isn't there to depend on, people will have a lot less to spend on pricey game systems. You can see what this means for Sony relative to less expensive systems like Xbox 360 and the Wii, and why there will be pressure on Sony to cut prices.
The cost is still too high and they won't see big sales numbers until they lower the cost. They can't lower the cost, at present, due to losing money out of the gate. It's also a lost cause because MS/Nin can still low ball them if they decide to drop the cost. I think if they came in around 360 premium price, they would see better market penetration. They should also consider releasing a non-BR version with wifi for $299 and I bet it'd sell the shit out of the present choices they are offering up.
Very good observations.
While I'm hardly going to weep for any corporation, Sony's in a world of hurt due to many factors. Chief, and hardly ever acknowledged, is the worsening U.S. economy. As the housing bubble deflates, we're seeing trends that are going to devastate Sony's chances of selling $600 game machines: a) the retail slowdown, and b) falling house prices and the reduced mortgage equity withdrawal that have driven retail growth under Bushonomics.
Bad times in McMansionland are painting a very different picture from the one only two years ago when it was spend, spend, spend. If Sony banked on that--and it is hard to see why otherwise they thought a $600 console would succeed at market--then they will pay the same price as others who have ignored distortions in the fundamentals (e.g., builders and mortgage companies now seeing their stock plummet and beginning lay offs). You'll probably be able to track PS3 sales inversely to the soaring foreclosure rate because that's who was expected to buy this thing, and those people are drastically downsizing, and not willingly.
Expect Sony to reintroduce the PS3 at a lower price point, with reduced functionality. Expect it within one calendar year, by which time Sony's own financial picture will be looking even more grim.
...he tripped over the rack containing Nixon as he entered Hell.
A mere 100,000-200,000 Timorese were slaughtered thanks to good ol' Gerald R. giving Indonesia the green light for invasion, a number that pales next to Nixon's bodycount in Vietnam. May they have eternity to compare notes.
Brian Krebs seems to have some kind of fascination with "proving" that Mac OS X is "insecure" while simultaneously accusing Apple of using strong-arm tactics to try to silence critics. . . What should be "interesting" to see isn't whether or not Apple "does anything" to "scuttle" the project; it will be whether Apple has previously had any chance to respond to any of the issues that will be disclosed.
Wow--I don't know how "you" do "it," "Dave." Even your preemptive spin on the month-of-bugs makes my iBook feel snappier!
Slashdot Mirror
...to play the mouse in the film version.
Even if the "fine print" meant something, the site still isn't satirical. There's no perspective on the thing they're allegedly satirizing. In fact, they're just aping Windows fanboyism without tweaking or questioning it. Maybe that's for lack of talent or desire. Who cares? But satire it is not.
DVD Jon is right that it's trivial for Apple to make allowances for selling non-DRM'd indy music. The reason it doesn't is no mystery: Apple's making money. Pleasing the Big Four is the surest way to continue doing so. Jobs might wish things were different--and so the essay implies--but that is of no consequence to the bottom line.
Besides, the essay's real goal was to deflect anticompetitive talk from Apple. I only see Apple reforming itself if the iPod stops selling, the labels withdraw their catalogs or the courts and legislators force its hand. All three are possible, as Jobs knows.
Meanwhile, I've moved on. While once buying several dozen songs per year via iTunes, increasingly I buy from eMusic.com instead. DRM is partly why, but price, selection and bitrate are equal or greater reasons. In fact, my eMusic sub for 40 songs is about the price of one iTunes album. For that matter, I will often find used CDs on eBay for less (with shipping!) than if I bought the lower quality hobbled Apple files. Still waiting for the ideal scenario, though: lossless downloads at sub-CD prices.
We should all be fine running XP for quite a few more years. Let Bill charge all he wants; it's coming nowhere near my boxen, virtually or otherwise. :-)
A: I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.
Bill's never done tech support, has he?
Case in point: did you know Vista is "flawless"? ;-)
While there are going to be some here who value AAPL stock over the intersection of confidentiality and journalistic freedom, happily the courts, at least this time, do not.
At a time when blogging is rewriting the practice of journalism by handing individuals the power formerly reserved to wealthy media companies, American law needs more such victories.
We've got 'em!
So it's time for us to ask for a little liberation from abroad. Apple's due for a good reality check on this one, and it'll take a free people to deliver it.
Yeah? Well, I see OS X kernel Panics too often for my taste--perhaps once a month. One Apple store genius put it down to a bug in iTunes, and indeed that's the least well-behaved app on my otherwise very enjoyable and dependable iBook.
By contrast my XP box, kept around for occasional work and more frequent play, has BSOD'd once or twice in four years. That isn't to say it doesn't have a messy interface, ongoing security problems or other annoyances. I don't really like XP, but it is usable and quite far from being the disaster that hysterics claim. In the hands of people who know what they're doing, it's at least as stable as OS X. Quite a lot of the "oh, XP doesn't work!" stuff comes from (ahem) partisans and from the clueless; present company excepted, of course. ;-)
Friendlier and more rationally conceived for the user, OS X is still better for most non-technical folks--which is probably the reason the Mac population is greying, much to Apple's dismay. Young people can tame Windows. The elderly--like my septuagenarian parents--are often better off on the saner OS X.
My friend, this is the Internet in 2007 where "a 13 year old's tone" is the lingua franca.
SharperImageWorld, 2009...
We've reinvented the pillow. Fully digital. We've filled it with sensors. You lay your head on it--and it knows you want to sleep. Holds up your head and neck. Like magic. Everybody hates their pillows. This one: beautiful. It just works.
A truly great designer. But if you heard Jony burble nervously at the Keynote, you know he's not going to strut in the limelight as Jobs does. And that's critical for Apple, which depends for its success on manufacturing "cool" as much as it does upon technology.
Frankly, the endless applause from people who are supposed to be critical professionals is more than a little embarrassing. Who'd trust a single one of those cheering monkeys to deliver an independent assessment of Apple's new tech?
That's a fair point: the whole economy isn't tanking, and there are some bright spots. But if the DOW and gas prices were critical, why do you think holiday sales in general were so poor? The fact is it's the housing bubble that has driven spending and provided up to 40% of the new jobs. As it deflates, as adjustable monthly mortgage payments climb and as the "home ATM" isn't there to depend on, people will have a lot less to spend on pricey game systems. You can see what this means for Sony relative to less expensive systems like Xbox 360 and the Wii, and why there will be pressure on Sony to cut prices.
Very good observations.
While I'm hardly going to weep for any corporation, Sony's in a world of hurt due to many factors. Chief, and hardly ever acknowledged, is the worsening U.S. economy. As the housing bubble deflates, we're seeing trends that are going to devastate Sony's chances of selling $600 game machines: a) the retail slowdown, and b) falling house prices and the reduced mortgage equity withdrawal that have driven retail growth under Bushonomics.
Bad times in McMansionland are painting a very different picture from the one only two years ago when it was spend, spend, spend. If Sony banked on that--and it is hard to see why otherwise they thought a $600 console would succeed at market--then they will pay the same price as others who have ignored distortions in the fundamentals (e.g., builders and mortgage companies now seeing their stock plummet and beginning lay offs). You'll probably be able to track PS3 sales inversely to the soaring foreclosure rate because that's who was expected to buy this thing, and those people are drastically downsizing, and not willingly.
Expect Sony to reintroduce the PS3 at a lower price point, with reduced functionality. Expect it within one calendar year, by which time Sony's own financial picture will be looking even more grim.
For that, er, synching feeling.
Your standard of evidence being what it is, we can all sleep better knowing you're not adjudicating corporate crime.
Uwe Boll has spent the weekend watching all his movies again and, well, they rock so hard it hurts.
A mere 100,000-200,000 Timorese were slaughtered thanks to good ol' Gerald R. giving Indonesia the green light for invasion, a number that pales next to Nixon's bodycount in Vietnam. May they have eternity to compare notes.
felt snappier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbl4vQLfr4
Wow--I don't know how "you" do "it," "Dave." Even your preemptive spin on the month-of-bugs makes my iBook feel snappier!
NIMBY!