One can't argue with the economics, but it seems to me that the part left out is that said homeless person will take the two grand and find a place to live. Besides, say, buying alcohol or drugs.
On the other hand, if a significant enough percentage of homeless do use the money wisely, maybe the program is still an overall win.
But then, what of the people who aspire to be homeless so they can get the handout?
I think you misunderstand. A well designed tablet system (hardware/os/apps) shouldn't need a keyboard at all. The Surface is just a laptop with a touch screen, an OS mashup that doesn't do anything well, and a bunch of KVM-specific apps.
Nope, I'm specifically referring to a tablet, almost certainly with a stylus, a professional-grade digitizer, enough grunt for serious content creation, an operating system that doesn't demand you connect a keyboard and mouse to get real work done, and applications that are truly touch friendly. The name of the OS is immaterial. It's just that I know from personal experience that Winders ain't it, and is in fact much further behind the curve than either IOS or Android. The feel from Microsoft is that they added touch as a line item, not something that people would seriously use.
And yes, I'm aware of PixelSense. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have a future beyond TV prop.
I don't even care about that. I can do most of that on my *phone*. I want a tablet that runs adobe lightroom, photoshop and premere without a stupid keyboard or mouse, in some reasonable fashion. That's my primary use. Office suite is a far far distant second. You can do that on a $200 laptop.
Why the hell should you have to spend all your time scraping your rat just to move sliders around?
Tablets, with enough resources, and an intelligently designed GUI and intelligently designed apps, could really revolutionize content creation. We have the technology now to do this. But it's not done because of the perception that tablets are only for media consumption.
But it's not just about tablet hardware -- serious applications must become more touch friendly. And by this I do *not* mean clipping the optional $114 keyboard to the tablet in order to do real work.
What I want is the equivalent of an Alienware laptop as a tablet, with an intelligently designed stylus (one like the Galaxy Note would be ok) running an OS intended to actually work full time as a touch OS (not just with touch "features" that require you to break out the keyboard and mouse to do any serious work (so Windows is not at all a consideration)) and a version of the Adobe suite that actually works in a touch environment, not just acts as a way to consume media created on a conventional KVM PC. Then I'd throw out my PC and never look back.
...and all this could be done NOW. It's like the various hardware and application vendors are deliberately foiling this obvious next evolution, while paying lip service to the concept by giving us a place on the screen we can touch to play a cat video.
But the argument is that people are using tablets for consumption only, and people are using tablets for consumption only because that's all you can currently use them for.
> The issue is that nobody is willing to pay for high-end tablets.
I think that it's a chicken-and-egg issue. Tablets are considered media consumption devices, so nobody makes a tablet studly enough for real work, so the expectation is that tablets are media consumption devices, and consumers don't expect tablets to be studly enough for real work.
> Well, yes, maybe. Certainly true of PCs. There are ways to get OSX running on generic hardware. But handhelds are specialized enough that it probably wouldn't be worth it for the average person to try to build one from parts.
Now that I've said that, it occurs to me that Foxconn could produce generic Apple handholds by the pallet load. With their eyes closed. I'd be shocked if they had not done that.
To recall, the iPhone maker was found bricking the handsets that had been repaired by third-party vendors earlier this year.
Yes, I recall that. I also recall that it was because those third-party repairers were replacing parts of the crypto system without having the tools/expertise necessary to pair the parts they replaced with the ones they didn't. There are plenty of reasons to rant about Apple without misrepresentations like these.
I don't think it was that simple, but it's true that the summary put that in very derogatory terms. As I recall, the issue was with replacement of the biometric sensor, and the other components could still be replaced by third parties. I think there was more to it than pairing the parts properly, but as a third party service person myself, I just avoided replacing that component on late model handsets.
Well, yes, maybe. Certainly true of PCs. There are ways to get OSX running on generic hardware. But handhelds are specialized enough that it probably wouldn't be worth it for the average person to try to build one from parts.
The real issue, I think, is that Apple realizes that people are keeping their phones longer. There was an article in Slashdot just a couple days ago on this. Handheld market growth started out about 70% towards the turn of the century, was 14% last year, will be 7% this year, expected to drop again next year. We are on the flat end of the curve; not just market saturation, but the capabilities of the phones have reached people's expectations. People are lining up for the next incremental improvement in smaller and smaller numbers.
Apple can't rope in enough replacement revenue on new features alone. (Side note, they seem to have lost their way on providing new features, anyway.) They have to do it on breakage.
It just occurred to me, one possible piece of collateral damage from this is that phones aren't going to get any sturdier.
It's for people who have (or their parents have) enough disposable income and the right personality traits to participate in a cult-like abusive mindset. Fortunately, there appears to be enough of them for Apple to turn a tidy profit.
There is already a huge business in replacing screens and other things like that. Hell there is a phone repair kiosk in every shopping mall I visit.
The killer for that business is that good phones aren't that expensive and screens make up a significant % of their cost. No you may not pay $600 to replace your battery, but you will pay $400 to replace a cracked screen on a 2 year old device knowing you will get a new phone, new battery, when the screen replacement cost is $200
Really? I do replace broken screens, headphone jacks and the like as a small side business. You can buy a new screen for an iphone 6 (for instance) for around $30, less if you go wholesale. You need special tools to get the thing open, but you only have to buy those once. It takes about an hour to replace it if you're working carefully.
If the kiosks are really charging $400 per phone to replace a broken screen, I really need to open a kiosk.
Seriously, there's nothing in a modern smartphone that justifies a $600 price tag except the intellectual property. The individual parts aren't cheaper than dirt, but they're cheaper than a tank of gas.
...and companies who built their business plan on the current growth continuing will have a hard time of it. We've reached the flat end of the curve. Current phones (with the possible exception of Windows Phone, which could use a couple more iterations, and Blackberry... well, sorry) are Good Enough.
I wonder how many companies will realize the ramifications of this?
Technical Support will become more important, because people aren't trading in their phones every 18 months. (Replacing cracked screens, bonkered earphone jacks, bad buttons, etc. All the outward facing stuff.) (This could be a small business opportunity.)
Battery longevity (not charge, but how many charges it'll take) will become more important, as well as battery replacement. Let's face it, there aren't many people who will buy another $600 phone in order to get a new $40 battery.
Firmware updates may become more important. No, I'm not going to buy another phone just to go from OS 4.2.2 to OS 4.2.3.
Product differentiation might become features more like the LG G5, where the battery can be replaced in seconds without taking off the back. (I'm blase about "new" features, but that one I could actually use!)
Since people will be using their phones longer, perhaps more storage, or an easy way to migrate content to a PC, might be in order. ("Easy" *NOT* defined as some stupid dysfunctional proprietary app offered by the carrier that isn't worth crapping on.)
Maybe someone will be able to figure out how to shrink smartphone functionality down to watch size, and actually make is usable, without having to be bluetooth connected to a phone.
There's a *lot* of room for improvement in voice recognition.
There are probably other things. We could see this coming. Let's see now if the vendors could.
"Gersh Zavodnik, the printer's buyer, has been described as "prolific, abusive litigant" who has brought dozens of lawsuits against individuals and businesses. He often asks for "astronomical" damages."
Isn't there any way to turn the Internet loose on this guy?
On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, in my experience, the part most likely to fail is the headphone jack. I'd go with the reduced battery life of a bluetooth headset just to never again have to pry open the case in order to replace that flimsy plastic jack. (Which exposes me as not a true apple aficionado. who would instead trade their phone in.)
> On the sidelines, the media is abuzz with reports that the next iPhone will have 32GB internal storage in its base model.
I understand this is rumor, but it makes sense. Memory has never been cheaper, and it just doesn't make any sense anymore to pay a boutique-grade premium in order to get a usable amount.
Slashdot Mirror
One can't argue with the economics, but it seems to me that the part left out is that said homeless person will take the two grand and find a place to live. Besides, say, buying alcohol or drugs.
On the other hand, if a significant enough percentage of homeless do use the money wisely, maybe the program is still an overall win.
But then, what of the people who aspire to be homeless so they can get the handout?
I think you misunderstand. A well designed tablet system (hardware/os/apps) shouldn't need a keyboard at all. The Surface is just a laptop with a touch screen, an OS mashup that doesn't do anything well, and a bunch of KVM-specific apps.
Nope, I'm specifically referring to a tablet, almost certainly with a stylus, a professional-grade digitizer, enough grunt for serious content creation, an operating system that doesn't demand you connect a keyboard and mouse to get real work done, and applications that are truly touch friendly. The name of the OS is immaterial. It's just that I know from personal experience that Winders ain't it, and is in fact much further behind the curve than either IOS or Android. The feel from Microsoft is that they added touch as a line item, not something that people would seriously use.
And yes, I'm aware of PixelSense. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have a future beyond TV prop.
Windows doesn't count, for a number of reasons. I tried going that route, it's carp. Microsoft still doesn't get tablets.
I don't even care about that. I can do most of that on my *phone*. I want a tablet that runs adobe lightroom, photoshop and premere without a stupid keyboard or mouse, in some reasonable fashion. That's my primary use. Office suite is a far far distant second. You can do that on a $200 laptop.
Why the hell should you have to spend all your time scraping your rat just to move sliders around?
Tablets, with enough resources, and an intelligently designed GUI and intelligently designed apps, could really revolutionize content creation. We have the technology now to do this. But it's not done because of the perception that tablets are only for media consumption.
But it's not just about tablet hardware -- serious applications must become more touch friendly. And by this I do *not* mean clipping the optional $114 keyboard to the tablet in order to do real work.
What I want is the equivalent of an Alienware laptop as a tablet, with an intelligently designed stylus (one like the Galaxy Note would be ok) running an OS intended to actually work full time as a touch OS (not just with touch "features" that require you to break out the keyboard and mouse to do any serious work (so Windows is not at all a consideration)) and a version of the Adobe suite that actually works in a touch environment, not just acts as a way to consume media created on a conventional KVM PC. Then I'd throw out my PC and never look back.
But the argument is that people are using tablets for consumption only, and people are using tablets for consumption only because that's all you can currently use them for.
ex vi termini
> The issue is that nobody is willing to pay for high-end tablets.
I think that it's a chicken-and-egg issue. Tablets are considered media consumption devices, so nobody makes a tablet studly enough for real work, so the expectation is that tablets are media consumption devices, and consumers don't expect tablets to be studly enough for real work.
> Well, yes, maybe. Certainly true of PCs. There are ways to get OSX running on generic hardware. But handhelds are specialized enough that it probably wouldn't be worth it for the average person to try to build one from parts.
Now that I've said that, it occurs to me that Foxconn could produce generic Apple handholds by the pallet load. With their eyes closed. I'd be shocked if they had not done that.
To recall, the iPhone maker was found bricking the handsets that had been repaired by third-party vendors earlier this year.
Yes, I recall that. I also recall that it was because those third-party repairers were replacing parts of the crypto system without having the tools/expertise necessary to pair the parts they replaced with the ones they didn't. There are plenty of reasons to rant about Apple without misrepresentations like these.
I don't think it was that simple, but it's true that the summary put that in very derogatory terms. As I recall, the issue was with replacement of the biometric sensor, and the other components could still be replaced by third parties. I think there was more to it than pairing the parts properly, but as a third party service person myself, I just avoided replacing that component on late model handsets.
Well, yes, maybe. Certainly true of PCs. There are ways to get OSX running on generic hardware. But handhelds are specialized enough that it probably wouldn't be worth it for the average person to try to build one from parts.
The real issue, I think, is that Apple realizes that people are keeping their phones longer. There was an article in Slashdot just a couple days ago on this. Handheld market growth started out about 70% towards the turn of the century, was 14% last year, will be 7% this year, expected to drop again next year. We are on the flat end of the curve; not just market saturation, but the capabilities of the phones have reached people's expectations. People are lining up for the next incremental improvement in smaller and smaller numbers.
Apple can't rope in enough replacement revenue on new features alone. (Side note, they seem to have lost their way on providing new features, anyway.) They have to do it on breakage.
It just occurred to me, one possible piece of collateral damage from this is that phones aren't going to get any sturdier.
It's for people who have (or their parents have) enough disposable income and the right personality traits to participate in a cult-like abusive mindset. Fortunately, there appears to be enough of them for Apple to turn a tidy profit.
Whomever you're doing business with is rooking you. A brand new LG G4 digitizer LCD assembly on Amazon is $53.
There is already a huge business in replacing screens and other things like that. Hell there is a phone repair kiosk in every shopping mall I visit.
The killer for that business is that good phones aren't that expensive and screens make up a significant % of their cost. No you may not pay $600 to replace your battery, but you will pay $400 to replace a cracked screen on a 2 year old device knowing you will get a new phone, new battery, when the screen replacement cost is $200
Really? I do replace broken screens, headphone jacks and the like as a small side business. You can buy a new screen for an iphone 6 (for instance) for around $30, less if you go wholesale. You need special tools to get the thing open, but you only have to buy those once. It takes about an hour to replace it if you're working carefully.
If the kiosks are really charging $400 per phone to replace a broken screen, I really need to open a kiosk.
Seriously, there's nothing in a modern smartphone that justifies a $600 price tag except the intellectual property. The individual parts aren't cheaper than dirt, but they're cheaper than a tank of gas.
I mean, it's not like this has been happening since the dawn of illegal downloads, when unscrupulous people were painting viruses on cave walls.
I wonder how many companies will realize the ramifications of this?
Technical Support will become more important, because people aren't trading in their phones every 18 months. (Replacing cracked screens, bonkered earphone jacks, bad buttons, etc. All the outward facing stuff.) (This could be a small business opportunity.)
Battery longevity (not charge, but how many charges it'll take) will become more important, as well as battery replacement. Let's face it, there aren't many people who will buy another $600 phone in order to get a new $40 battery.
Firmware updates may become more important. No, I'm not going to buy another phone just to go from OS 4.2.2 to OS 4.2.3.
Product differentiation might become features more like the LG G5, where the battery can be replaced in seconds without taking off the back. (I'm blase about "new" features, but that one I could actually use!)
Since people will be using their phones longer, perhaps more storage, or an easy way to migrate content to a PC, might be in order. ("Easy" *NOT* defined as some stupid dysfunctional proprietary app offered by the carrier that isn't worth crapping on.)
Maybe someone will be able to figure out how to shrink smartphone functionality down to watch size, and actually make is usable, without having to be bluetooth connected to a phone.
There's a *lot* of room for improvement in voice recognition.
There are probably other things. We could see this coming. Let's see now if the vendors could.
It takes forever for Slashdot to load.
That's kind-of where I was going. Say, a few thousand people sue him for being a dick.
"Gersh Zavodnik, the printer's buyer, has been described as "prolific, abusive litigant" who has brought dozens of lawsuits against individuals and businesses. He often asks for "astronomical" damages."
Isn't there any way to turn the Internet loose on this guy?
This is what we get for using Windows.
The last movie was TERRIBLE. Why would... wait what? Never mind.
On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, in my experience, the part most likely to fail is the headphone jack. I'd go with the reduced battery life of a bluetooth headset just to never again have to pry open the case in order to replace that flimsy plastic jack. (Which exposes me as not a true apple aficionado. who would instead trade their phone in.)
> On the sidelines, the media is abuzz with reports that the next iPhone will have 32GB internal storage in its base model.
I understand this is rumor, but it makes sense. Memory has never been cheaper, and it just doesn't make any sense anymore to pay a boutique-grade premium in order to get a usable amount.