> Will its late arrival affect its chances of cutting out a swath of the tablet market from Apple and Android?
I don't think so. I think it'll be the inability to get any serious work done without a keyboard and a mouse that will affect its chances much more than a few months difference either way on release.
> I didn't say that I thought the fanboi rationale was valid. I said that there's a correlation between price and value.
Yes yes, I spent several years in technical marketing, I know the arguments. There is no direct correlation between price and value. Beyond recouping NRE, manufacturing costs and overhead, it's completely artificial. But that artifice keeps people employed, and serves to keep prices artificially high. From a vendor's standpoint, it's all cake.
> Sure. There are some items that are lopsided and of really high value. That's what value is all about: perceived currency for item bought.
Yeah, but that leads you to a place where you're chasing your tail. That the value of a product is based on the fanboi's perception of value is a circular argument. Then "you get what you paid for" may only mean that there's a certain symbol embossed on the shiny casing. It makes pointless the discussion of actual capabilities or usefulness.
This leads you to a bizarre place where given two products identical in build and function, one of which is cheaper, the more expensive is by nature more valuable simply because people will pay more for it. I think this misunderstands the difference between "value" and "cost".
Or perhaps you're looking at it from the vendor's perspective? The vendor would of course have a different idea of what "value" means.
> It's often a reality. Yes, there are good and decent values out there, but by and large, price and value have a proportionate correlation.
I disagree. Especially in electronics, price has very little to do with complexity and build quality, and just about everything to do with mindshare. Look, we're all geeks here -- we can't think of any examples of stuff that's overpriced for the (a) cost of manufacture and (b) actual value of the product in relation to competition for same? Or products that were superior in concept and construction but were sold at firesale prices due to poor marketing or vendor abandonment?
I'm really tired of hearing "you get what you pay for" as an excuse for paying inflated prices for fanboi products. For an established product that's priced in true relation to its build quality, that might be true, but for relatively new products or products with artificially high profit margins, it is most definitely not true. Sometimes what you get is inversely related to what you pay for it.
Mind you, the buyer should beware, but there are deals to be made if you know what to look for.
It's not a matter of "beating". There's room in the marketplace for Android and IOS. Having a choice is a good thing. (Even Windows 8 will sell a few tablets, even if they're down in the single digits.)
Sorry to say this, but you are probably in the low 20 percent of the 80/20 rule. It probably doesn't make a lot of fiscal sense to keep a rather expensive national service going for the few people in the Ozarks who are still using acoustic modems.
But even in the nineties there were bill pay services that were set-and-forget. My credit union had it, and they didn't impress me as being cutting edge. You tell them what bill to pay, how much, what account to take it out of, and then you got email when it happened. You only had to hit the website to set it up.
I suspect the real issue is after you get past the rectangular design and thin bezel, Apple is afraid that people won't see any major differentiation between the iPad and a well engineered tablet running... pretty much anything else. [1] Or even worse, they'll appreciate features the competing tablet has that the iPad does not. [2] In other words, we'll fight this war in the marketplace, but just in case we'll turn the patent lawyers loose also.
> So, what do you think is broken about TV right now?
Um, most of the content?
But never mind that for now.
The text of the summary sounds like it was written by someone from my generation -- the wireless remote control (Flashmatic) was invented in our lifetimes, and the TV tray was a must-have. We generally turned on the TV and flipped through the 3 or 4 channels looking for something good to watch, and we generally left it on until it was time to go to bed, just watching whatever came up. If it was a show we had to watch, we were absolutely stuck with the network's schedule, and had to sit down at precisely the right time so we wouldn't miss it.
Does anyone seriously believe that this behavior will continue? That mode of viewing started to become redundant when VCRs started to become equipped with timers, and now more than any time in history people have the ability to watch what they want to watch, when they want it, from whatever content source they want to watch it, and network programming be damned.
What's missing now is a high degree of integration between the content providers and the content viewers. Oh, there's hulu and netflix instant viewing and other things, but they're just now starting to get integrated in with the TV in a way that geeks can access. It's not even close yet to something Fred and Ethyl Mertz would feel comfortable using.
So what's needed is a higher degree of integration between on-demand content (from whatever source) and the eyes and fingers of regular non-geek people.
What is *not* needed is (a) higher resolution -- 1080P non-interlaced is enough for any normal sized room for normal people -- or (b) gimmicks like 3D (although that system that uses circular polarized glasses instead of electronic shutter glasses looks really interesting if they could make it cheap enough).
The technologies are there to carry TV far into the future. At least until true no-glasses 3D projection becomes reality, if the audience ever decides we really need that. What is desperately needed now is a degree of integration necessary for my vehemently non-geek wife to pick up a remote, find and play the next episode in season 3 of Mayberry RFD without having to ask her geek daughter for help.
I think it's telling that a group of geeks like us could come up with a dozen fairly technical ways to tamper with mail, and another dozen countermeasures, in a matter of minutes. Non-geeks don't stand a chance.:-)
So if I'm reading someone else's physical mail for illicit purposes, what's going to stop me, is that opening the letter is committing a crime? You seriously believe this?
Keeping the recipient from knowing could be as easy as steaming open the envelope and resealing, you know, like we did as kids for those letters sent home from school.
Good old fashoined [SIC] letters are trivial to intercept, and unless you're Francis Bacon, trivial to read.
e-mail is as private as you want it to be. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. If it does, it borders on trivial to make it darned near impossible to read.
Who hand writes letters anymore? I'm in my fifties and never learned to write cursive (typewriters having become common in my grandfather's time). How old are you?
Email is best effort, but average delivery is in seconds, whereas fastest delivery by physical mail is 24 hours.
You've never heard of delivery flags on email, I'm guessing.
Congresspeople are scared as hell of the internet, for several reason.
And I'm guessing, the people who get paid out of postal service funds are scared to death of the alternatives that are making them redundant.
But you know, it doesn't matter. If there are enough people still hand writing correspondence on parchment and sealing them with wax, there will exist a service to hand-carry it on horseback to its destination. But at some point it starts to not make sense to pay for a service out of tax dollars that does not clearly benefit the public at large. (Man, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that...)
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> Will its late arrival affect its chances of cutting out a swath of the tablet market from Apple and Android?
I don't think so. I think it'll be the inability to get any serious work done without a keyboard and a mouse that will affect its chances much more than a few months difference either way on release.
Do we care?
> I didn't say that I thought the fanboi rationale was valid. I said that there's a correlation between price and value.
Yes yes, I spent several years in technical marketing, I know the arguments. There is no direct correlation between price and value. Beyond recouping NRE, manufacturing costs and overhead, it's completely artificial. But that artifice keeps people employed, and serves to keep prices artificially high. From a vendor's standpoint, it's all cake.
> Sure. There are some items that are lopsided and of really high value. That's what value is all about: perceived currency for item bought.
Yeah, but that leads you to a place where you're chasing your tail. That the value of a product is based on the fanboi's perception of value is a circular argument. Then "you get what you paid for" may only mean that there's a certain symbol embossed on the shiny casing. It makes pointless the discussion of actual capabilities or usefulness.
This leads you to a bizarre place where given two products identical in build and function, one of which is cheaper, the more expensive is by nature more valuable simply because people will pay more for it. I think this misunderstands the difference between "value" and "cost".
Or perhaps you're looking at it from the vendor's perspective? The vendor would of course have a different idea of what "value" means.
> It's often a reality. Yes, there are good and decent values out there, but by and large, price and value have a proportionate correlation.
I disagree. Especially in electronics, price has very little to do with complexity and build quality, and just about everything to do with mindshare. Look, we're all geeks here -- we can't think of any examples of stuff that's overpriced for the (a) cost of manufacture and (b) actual value of the product in relation to competition for same? Or products that were superior in concept and construction but were sold at firesale prices due to poor marketing or vendor abandonment?
> An expensive tool? How many people buy iPads and think of them as expensive tools?
I'd say, virtually none. They're more likely to think of them as "my precious".
I'm really tired of hearing "you get what you pay for" as an excuse for paying inflated prices for fanboi products. For an established product that's priced in true relation to its build quality, that might be true, but for relatively new products or products with artificially high profit margins, it is most definitely not true. Sometimes what you get is inversely related to what you pay for it.
Mind you, the buyer should beware, but there are deals to be made if you know what to look for.
It's not a matter of "beating". There's room in the marketplace for Android and IOS. Having a choice is a good thing. (Even Windows 8 will sell a few tablets, even if they're down in the single digits.)
Sorry to say this, but you are probably in the low 20 percent of the 80/20 rule. It probably doesn't make a lot of fiscal sense to keep a rather expensive national service going for the few people in the Ozarks who are still using acoustic modems.
But even in the nineties there were bill pay services that were set-and-forget. My credit union had it, and they didn't impress me as being cutting edge. You tell them what bill to pay, how much, what account to take it out of, and then you got email when it happened. You only had to hit the website to set it up.
I suspect the real issue is after you get past the rectangular design and thin bezel, Apple is afraid that people won't see any major differentiation between the iPad and a well engineered tablet running... pretty much anything else. [1] Or even worse, they'll appreciate features the competing tablet has that the iPad does not. [2] In other words, we'll fight this war in the marketplace, but just in case we'll turn the patent lawyers loose also.
[1] Except Windows 8.
[2] Probably not Metro.
> Because, of course, this [zdnet.co.uk]
Oh man, I want one. But it has a rounded, metal bezel! How could Apple allow this?... Ok, I'm tired of this topic now.
> If you're referring to the IBM PC, Apple was there first.
> So just because you are the first in a field, you agree that no-one else can make anything in that field?
Apparently....
This is going to totally change online dating... Not in a good way.
Obviously this is going to be used... for... Oh drat. Never mind.
And this is different from having your personal assistant send out cards in your name, in what way? That's been going on since at least the fifties.
> So, what do you think is broken about TV right now?
Um, most of the content?
But never mind that for now.
The text of the summary sounds like it was written by someone from my generation -- the wireless remote control (Flashmatic) was invented in our lifetimes, and the TV tray was a must-have. We generally turned on the TV and flipped through the 3 or 4 channels looking for something good to watch, and we generally left it on until it was time to go to bed, just watching whatever came up. If it was a show we had to watch, we were absolutely stuck with the network's schedule, and had to sit down at precisely the right time so we wouldn't miss it.
Does anyone seriously believe that this behavior will continue? That mode of viewing started to become redundant when VCRs started to become equipped with timers, and now more than any time in history people have the ability to watch what they want to watch, when they want it, from whatever content source they want to watch it, and network programming be damned.
What's missing now is a high degree of integration between the content providers and the content viewers. Oh, there's hulu and netflix instant viewing and other things, but they're just now starting to get integrated in with the TV in a way that geeks can access. It's not even close yet to something Fred and Ethyl Mertz would feel comfortable using.
So what's needed is a higher degree of integration between on-demand content (from whatever source) and the eyes and fingers of regular non-geek people.
What is *not* needed is (a) higher resolution -- 1080P non-interlaced is enough for any normal sized room for normal people -- or (b) gimmicks like 3D (although that system that uses circular polarized glasses instead of electronic shutter glasses looks really interesting if they could make it cheap enough).
The technologies are there to carry TV far into the future. At least until true no-glasses 3D projection becomes reality, if the audience ever decides we really need that. What is desperately needed now is a degree of integration necessary for my vehemently non-geek wife to pick up a remote, find and play the next episode in season 3 of Mayberry RFD without having to ask her geek daughter for help.
I'll buy that.
And... how come we haven't heard from any other civilizations on any of those planets?
I think it's telling that a group of geeks like us could come up with a dozen fairly technical ways to tamper with mail, and another dozen countermeasures, in a matter of minutes. Non-geeks don't stand a chance. :-)
Paging Dan Brown...
Public schools... Sigh.
So if I'm reading someone else's physical mail for illicit purposes, what's going to stop me, is that opening the letter is committing a crime? You seriously believe this?
Keeping the recipient from knowing could be as easy as steaming open the envelope and resealing, you know, like we did as kids for those letters sent home from school.
Wow, what's it like in your world?
Good old fashoined [SIC] letters are trivial to intercept, and unless you're Francis Bacon, trivial to read.
e-mail is as private as you want it to be. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. If it does, it borders on trivial to make it darned near impossible to read.
Who hand writes letters anymore? I'm in my fifties and never learned to write cursive (typewriters having become common in my grandfather's time). How old are you?
Email is best effort, but average delivery is in seconds, whereas fastest delivery by physical mail is 24 hours.
You've never heard of delivery flags on email, I'm guessing.
Congresspeople are scared as hell of the internet, for several reason.
And I'm guessing, the people who get paid out of postal service funds are scared to death of the alternatives that are making them redundant.
But you know, it doesn't matter. If there are enough people still hand writing correspondence on parchment and sealing them with wax, there will exist a service to hand-carry it on horseback to its destination. But at some point it starts to not make sense to pay for a service out of tax dollars that does not clearly benefit the public at large. (Man, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that...)
And you seriously think that the US postal service is any better?