This is only tangentially related but I don't see why the major mobile platform owners don't offer a "transfer" program that transfers apps from one ecosystem to another, possibly for a small fee. I mean, I know plenty of people who'd love to jump ship to Android (recent iPhones have been amazingly bad - see Antennagate, Bendgate, Chipgate, and Batterygate) but they don't want to have to rebuy literally $100s of apps.
If Google just offered a simple "move to Android" incentive program, Apple's user share would plummet even faster than it already is.
Windows Phone is still fucked, of course, but it couldn't hurt for Microsoft to try something similar?
I actually have no idea how that works. Back when dinosaurs still ruled the earth, I migrated from Palm to Blackberry, and many of the apps I paid for on Palm could be migrated to Blackberry merely by contacting the app provider and requesting a license key. When migrating to Android, I contacted the few vendors of apps on BB I wanted to keep and in most cases was able to migrate without additional cost. (Required side-loading in some cases.) I can see where contacting each individual vendor separately would not be tenable if you had a lot of apps. I agree, an automatic process would help. The problem I see is that whomever manages the Apple Store and Google Play are probably mortal enemies.
I think that Apple is just doing all they can to make buying a $700 phone enticing. In a world where a $100 phone is easily obtained, a $200 phone will fulfill most people's needs, and a $300 phone will get you something that would be good enough for 99.9% of people's needs, asking people to pay $700 for a phone either up front or with installments isn't going to last much longer.
I paid $200 for my current phone, and I have zero problems with the performance or quality of this phone. It's a Windows Phone, so there's the lack of apps, but there's no way I'm going to ever spend $700 on a phone. In 2-3 years I'm sure the $100 phones will be all I need. Eventually a $200 phone will fulfill 99.9% of people's requirements. At that point Apple has to come up with a really compelling story about why people should still be paying $700 for a phone.
That's a really good point. I happen to be carrying a "refurbished" (probably a trade-in) Samsung Note 3, which isn't by any means the latest but is almost embarrassingly more capable than I need. I got it because the price was decent ($250 cash, no monthly payments) despite the stylus which I have yet to use, past just testing whether it works.
On lack of apps, the important thing is not how many thousands of apps are available, but that the apps you need are available. If that's the case, there's no reason not to stick with what you have.
Mind you, a few years ago when we were all on the steep end of the curve, there was a reason to pine for the next release or the next iteration of hardware, but not really anymore, for most of us.
> [...] but honestly, it is mostly e-waste. Apple gains no advantage in causing the market to be filled with old versions of their hardware.
Was my thought also. From an e-waste standpoint, it might even be better to sell your old iphone on ebay, or donate it to some charity, rather than trade it in. But the people who line up in the rain waiting for the store to open when a new iphone comes out are probably not thinking in those terms.
I could see people trading in Windows Phone for an iPhone. Not because the iPhone is more usable (many Windows Phone users would argue this isn't the case) but because of the iPhone's richer ecosystem and brighter future. But trade in an Android for an iPhone? Maybe carrying a high end Android phone colors my judgement, but I don't see why anyone would want to do that. Heck, just being able to open the phone's internal storage and SD card in a browser without having to funnel everything through iTunes is worth sticking with what I have. Not to mention, the fact that it takes an SD card, supports widgets, supports sideloading, has a user replaceable battery, and all the other usual stuff.
I think a legitimate question would be, what happens with all those traded-in phones every time Apple comes out with some incremental improvement? I would hate to think it just ends up as electronic waste. (I'm not trying to make a point here; I'd really like to know.)
Yeah it's too bad. My last Mac was a G4, which I had continued to use way past the point of unsupported. I never made the transition to Intel Macs, instead gritting my teeth and switching to Winders so I could use a purpose-built computer (built, as it happens, by me) and upgrade it as needed, instead of being stuck with whatever Apple thought I needed. I'm currently trying to make the leap to Mint, but there are still issues to iron out. I hate Winders but it's a necessary evil right now.
Used to be, Apple was the go-to brand for content creation. I guess that's still true if "content creation" is Instagram. But pros probably need to look elsewhere. Unfortunate.
I sometimes forget that there are areas of the world where DSL is still the only option. I was an early adopter of fiber to the house, have been on it for years now. The *lowest* tier is 30Mbps down and 30 Mbps up, and 100 Mbps both ways is available (at more than I want to spend). But -- interesting thing -- the service through which I sell my photos also offers (at the tier I'm currently on) to keep all my original digital negatives "in the cloud" (on their servers) so I don't have to burn up local disk, and even at 30/30 the transfer time is too slow for that to be practical. "The Cloud" seems only to be practical for starlet naked selfies and the like.
> Now, I'm sitting here with disposable income, telling Apple "take my money!", and I still can't buy a new computer with enough storage to meet my needs at any price.
I know the feeling. My understanding is that you're supposed to put everything "in the cloud" now. How that's supposed to work on location with no network connection is anyone's guess.
For applications like this, a desktop unit is still somewhat necessary. On location, my laptop is a place where I can sort through the day's shots and get a leg up on post processing work. When I get home, the files get transferred to the desktop machine.
I have pieces still in boxes for a rack mount machine that will be a Linux based NAS, several terabytes of RAID available on my home network. Then it won't matter so much what machine I actually do my work on. I hope to start standing up that server soon.
> put in like ten of those fuel canisters in there
Hydrogen is very light, even when compressed. The current 1.5Kg tank probably fills the complete rear end of this car, you won't get 'ten of those... in there'.
That's a classic problem with hydrogen in cars. Low energy density.
> It might even suck so bad that no-one gives a shit about $/GB any longer, for 95% of all applications. Perhaps, minus all those cat pictures, we're almost there already.
Right. At some point it's enough for most people. I repair laptops as a side business for non-computer-savvy who have gotten fed up with offshore "support", and one thing I've noticed is that most people don't even begin to touch the capacity of the original drive. I on the other hand, as a photographer, can't get enough storage (my current machine has five terabytes -- one two and one three -- and is full up) but the average user couldn't fill up a 128 GB drive with cat photos over the life of the machine.
There are exceptions of course. A friend wants to double his laptop capacity and switch to SSD when the price comes down a little more. But I suspect it's for pr0n.
Not bad. If the resulting crystals are small and light enough, perhaps part of every spacecraft and lander. All landers double as memorials of the human race up to that point.
> as digital copies that could survive the human race
(That's actually really cool.) Ok, let's assume that we've put the entirety of human knowledge on crystals that could survive us as a race. It seems like we should put it somewhere... what would the term be... astronomically safe? Maybe in solar orbit out past Jupiter? In the Oort cloud? On Pluto? The problem seems to be, the more remote we put it, the harder it will be for some other civilization to find.
The gain as a few people have pointed out so far is that with an electronically actuated valve that both opens and closes electronically, you can reach much higher RPMs without the "valve float" of current valve trains, where the spring can't push the valve closed in time. horsepower being related to (torque)X(rpm), this translates to greater performance.
Lots of discussion about what happens with a mistimed valve in an interference engine. It's a valid concern, but as has already been pointed out, happens a lot in regular camshaft engines also. The most trivial example is a broken timing belt.
Someone mentioned that electric valve actuators could be less forceful than a mechanical valve train, so that the piston slamming against an open valve would be bad but not catastrophic. But valve springs tend to be pretty strong, so it'd take lots of force to open a valve, so maybe the impact would be catastrophic after all.
To me the advantage of digitally actuated valves is the elimination of not only the camshaft but also the springs. As Ducati discovered awhile back, if your valve train pushes the valve open and then pushes the valve closed without springs, you can maintain much higher RPMs without danger of valve "float", where the spring isn't able to push the valve closed in time. This same type of arrangement should be possible in digital systems also, where the valve is electronically opened and also electronically closed. Then if the system goes dead (electoronic version of a timing belt snap) the valves are under no pressure and the impact force with the piston is much lessened.
A mistiming might still be difficult, but there should be a way to design the system to survive it.
I don't see the primary benefit to be one of efficiency. I see this as a way to get wickedly high RPMs. Think of a motorcycle engine that redlines at 3000 RPM or more.
The danger to Apple as I see it is one of perception -- there are now two classes of unrepairable, use-awhile-and-throw-away devices -- the high end, boutique, trendy brushed aluminum Apple products, and the extreme low end, bubble pack, by-the-register, impulse items. When people start associating the two, things could go badly.
Nice observation. I think that's one of the reasons Apple keeps their boutique pricing - to reduce the likelihood of that association.
I'm trying to wrap my head around that. So I guess you could say that Apple's value add is their high prices. For some reason that reminds me of the old Dilbert cartoon "we used to say that people were our most valuable resource. Turns out that was wrong. Money is our most valuable resource."
"the new efficiency standards are projected to save consumers $300 million a year in electricity costs "
While costing them an additional $400M a year in increased costs of the new power supplies.
This is similar to thought process that gives us cars that shut off the ignition when you stop the car, then restart. The starter breaks after 5 years, costing $1,000 to fix, but it does save $40 in gas over the life of the car.
...the difference being, the additional $400M will be going into the pockets of the people who lobbied for the bill. That $400M represents only three or four bucks per household, but it's millions to the few people it benefits. And thus are fortunes made.
> the new efficiency standards are projected to save consumers $300 million a year in electricity costs
...and with a US population of 318 Million that's.... wait a minute... carry the one... That's NINETY-FOUR CENTS in savings per household per year! [1]
Wow, that's gonna push me into a higher tax bracket...
But wait, how much more will wall warts cost, having to comply with these new standards?
[1] It's a standard ploy to use raw numbers without context when you're trying to make what is essentially a REALLY feeble point.
Making devices unrepairable isn't really newsworthy, it's in line with Apple's business model of selling expensive periodic incremental upgrades to a fiercely loyal following. Tying the parts that have very long lifetimes (CPU, northbridge, southbridge, memory) with parts that have very poor longivity (batteries) insures that you periodically throw out perfectly good computer parts and purchase small incremental improvements at boutique prices. As a market plan, it's absolutely brilliant. I didn't think the business model was sustainable, but so far it seems to be. Kinda sucks for electronic waste, but I'm sure Apple is donating to save some trees somewhere.
It's a natural part of the process for Apple to gradually make their devices less and less repairable. I see the day coming very soon where every one of their devices are single blocks of epoxy with no repairable parts inside. And the arguments will be "security" and "user experience" and "quick turn-around" and a bunch of other logical sounding stuff.
The danger to Apple as I see it is one of perception -- there are now two classes of unrepairable, use-awhile-and-throw-away devices -- the high end, boutique, trendy brushed aluminum Apple products, and the extreme low end, bubble pack, by-the-register, impulse items. When people start associating the two, things could go badly.
And a darkened police helicopter flies by and now you're one of those idiots/criminals/attempted murderers. See how easy they are to 'misuse'? Using them for star pointing is a potentially very dangerous use. They are a hazard any time they're pointed above eye level and even otherwise if there's anything shiny below that.
As much as I love lasers, I do understand how dangerous they can be. Unless you have a cheap red one they are ALWAYS dangerous.
Ok hang on... unless it's Blue Thunder, you'd hear it even if you couldn't see it, plus I'm pretty sure that police can't fly without running lights, same as everyone else.
Not to mention that laser pointers are so common they've been given away as free tokens at trade shows for years. They're built into some commercial remotes. They're sold as cat toys.
Pilots should wear laser safety glasses, or the wind shields should have LCD shutters.
Sounds safe... dark glasses or auto darkening windows would just guarantee the pilots cant see the runway. They may not be temporarily blinded but if the laser keeps the windhsield dark they still can't see the runway!
This may not be the answer, but a friend of mine did some work on a FLIR system, which would throw up an image of the exterior, properly sized and registered, on the inside of the glass during such times when you couldn't see out the windows. It was designed for heavy fog, but maybe there are other uses.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. So why are they being posted? Aren't there, like, editors or something?
This is only tangentially related but I don't see why the major mobile platform owners don't offer a "transfer" program that transfers apps from one ecosystem to another, possibly for a small fee. I mean, I know plenty of people who'd love to jump ship to Android (recent iPhones have been amazingly bad - see Antennagate, Bendgate, Chipgate, and Batterygate) but they don't want to have to rebuy literally $100s of apps.
If Google just offered a simple "move to Android" incentive program, Apple's user share would plummet even faster than it already is.
Windows Phone is still fucked, of course, but it couldn't hurt for Microsoft to try something similar?
I actually have no idea how that works. Back when dinosaurs still ruled the earth, I migrated from Palm to Blackberry, and many of the apps I paid for on Palm could be migrated to Blackberry merely by contacting the app provider and requesting a license key. When migrating to Android, I contacted the few vendors of apps on BB I wanted to keep and in most cases was able to migrate without additional cost. (Required side-loading in some cases.) I can see where contacting each individual vendor separately would not be tenable if you had a lot of apps. I agree, an automatic process would help. The problem I see is that whomever manages the Apple Store and Google Play are probably mortal enemies.
FWIW, I use a Windows Phone now, and they couldn't pay me to use an iPhone. Those things are horrid.
It does seem like the iPhone UI has fallen behind the times. Maybe the company misses Jobs more than even they realize.
I think that Apple is just doing all they can to make buying a $700 phone enticing. In a world where a $100 phone is easily obtained, a $200 phone will fulfill most people's needs, and a $300 phone will get you something that would be good enough for 99.9% of people's needs, asking people to pay $700 for a phone either up front or with installments isn't going to last much longer.
I paid $200 for my current phone, and I have zero problems with the performance or quality of this phone. It's a Windows Phone, so there's the lack of apps, but there's no way I'm going to ever spend $700 on a phone. In 2-3 years I'm sure the $100 phones will be all I need. Eventually a $200 phone will fulfill 99.9% of people's requirements. At that point Apple has to come up with a really compelling story about why people should still be paying $700 for a phone.
That's a really good point. I happen to be carrying a "refurbished" (probably a trade-in) Samsung Note 3, which isn't by any means the latest but is almost embarrassingly more capable than I need. I got it because the price was decent ($250 cash, no monthly payments) despite the stylus which I have yet to use, past just testing whether it works.
On lack of apps, the important thing is not how many thousands of apps are available, but that the apps you need are available. If that's the case, there's no reason not to stick with what you have.
Mind you, a few years ago when we were all on the steep end of the curve, there was a reason to pine for the next release or the next iteration of hardware, but not really anymore, for most of us.
The question becomes, if the differences aren't important, are the boutique prices justified?
> [...] but honestly, it is mostly e-waste. Apple gains no advantage in causing the market to be filled with old versions of their hardware.
Was my thought also. From an e-waste standpoint, it might even be better to sell your old iphone on ebay, or donate it to some charity, rather than trade it in. But the people who line up in the rain waiting for the store to open when a new iphone comes out are probably not thinking in those terms.
I could see people trading in Windows Phone for an iPhone. Not because the iPhone is more usable (many Windows Phone users would argue this isn't the case) but because of the iPhone's richer ecosystem and brighter future. But trade in an Android for an iPhone? Maybe carrying a high end Android phone colors my judgement, but I don't see why anyone would want to do that. Heck, just being able to open the phone's internal storage and SD card in a browser without having to funnel everything through iTunes is worth sticking with what I have. Not to mention, the fact that it takes an SD card, supports widgets, supports sideloading, has a user replaceable battery, and all the other usual stuff.
I think a legitimate question would be, what happens with all those traded-in phones every time Apple comes out with some incremental improvement? I would hate to think it just ends up as electronic waste. (I'm not trying to make a point here; I'd really like to know.)
Yeah it's too bad. My last Mac was a G4, which I had continued to use way past the point of unsupported. I never made the transition to Intel Macs, instead gritting my teeth and switching to Winders so I could use a purpose-built computer (built, as it happens, by me) and upgrade it as needed, instead of being stuck with whatever Apple thought I needed. I'm currently trying to make the leap to Mint, but there are still issues to iron out. I hate Winders but it's a necessary evil right now.
Used to be, Apple was the go-to brand for content creation. I guess that's still true if "content creation" is Instagram. But pros probably need to look elsewhere. Unfortunate.
I sometimes forget that there are areas of the world where DSL is still the only option. I was an early adopter of fiber to the house, have been on it for years now. The *lowest* tier is 30Mbps down and 30 Mbps up, and 100 Mbps both ways is available (at more than I want to spend). But -- interesting thing -- the service through which I sell my photos also offers (at the tier I'm currently on) to keep all my original digital negatives "in the cloud" (on their servers) so I don't have to burn up local disk, and even at 30/30 the transfer time is too slow for that to be practical. "The Cloud" seems only to be practical for starlet naked selfies and the like.
> Now, I'm sitting here with disposable income, telling Apple "take my money!", and I still can't buy a new computer with enough storage to meet my needs at any price.
I know the feeling. My understanding is that you're supposed to put everything "in the cloud" now. How that's supposed to work on location with no network connection is anyone's guess.
For applications like this, a desktop unit is still somewhat necessary. On location, my laptop is a place where I can sort through the day's shots and get a leg up on post processing work. When I get home, the files get transferred to the desktop machine.
I have pieces still in boxes for a rack mount machine that will be a Linux based NAS, several terabytes of RAID available on my home network. Then it won't matter so much what machine I actually do my work on. I hope to start standing up that server soon.
> put in like ten of those fuel canisters in there
Hydrogen is very light, even when compressed. The current 1.5Kg tank probably fills the complete rear end of this car, you won't get 'ten of those ... in there'.
That's a classic problem with hydrogen in cars. Low energy density.
> It might even suck so bad that no-one gives a shit about $/GB any longer, for 95% of all applications. Perhaps, minus all those cat pictures, we're almost there already.
Right. At some point it's enough for most people. I repair laptops as a side business for non-computer-savvy who have gotten fed up with offshore "support", and one thing I've noticed is that most people don't even begin to touch the capacity of the original drive. I on the other hand, as a photographer, can't get enough storage (my current machine has five terabytes -- one two and one three -- and is full up) but the average user couldn't fill up a 128 GB drive with cat photos over the life of the machine.
There are exceptions of course. A friend wants to double his laptop capacity and switch to SSD when the price comes down a little more. But I suspect it's for pr0n.
Why would you put it in just one place?
Copies everywhere!
Not bad. If the resulting crystals are small and light enough, perhaps part of every spacecraft and lander. All landers double as memorials of the human race up to that point.
> as digital copies that could survive the human race
(That's actually really cool.) Ok, let's assume that we've put the entirety of human knowledge on crystals that could survive us as a race. It seems like we should put it somewhere ... what would the term be ... astronomically safe? Maybe in solar orbit out past Jupiter? In the Oort cloud? On Pluto? The problem seems to be, the more remote we put it, the harder it will be for some other civilization to find.
> Where is the gain?
The gain as a few people have pointed out so far is that with an electronically actuated valve that both opens and closes electronically, you can reach much higher RPMs without the "valve float" of current valve trains, where the spring can't push the valve closed in time. horsepower being related to (torque)X(rpm), this translates to greater performance.
Lots of discussion about what happens with a mistimed valve in an interference engine. It's a valid concern, but as has already been pointed out, happens a lot in regular camshaft engines also. The most trivial example is a broken timing belt.
Someone mentioned that electric valve actuators could be less forceful than a mechanical valve train, so that the piston slamming against an open valve would be bad but not catastrophic. But valve springs tend to be pretty strong, so it'd take lots of force to open a valve, so maybe the impact would be catastrophic after all.
To me the advantage of digitally actuated valves is the elimination of not only the camshaft but also the springs. As Ducati discovered awhile back, if your valve train pushes the valve open and then pushes the valve closed without springs, you can maintain much higher RPMs without danger of valve "float", where the spring isn't able to push the valve closed in time. This same type of arrangement should be possible in digital systems also, where the valve is electronically opened and also electronically closed. Then if the system goes dead (electoronic version of a timing belt snap) the valves are under no pressure and the impact force with the piston is much lessened.
A mistiming might still be difficult, but there should be a way to design the system to survive it.
I don't see the primary benefit to be one of efficiency. I see this as a way to get wickedly high RPMs. Think of a motorcycle engine that redlines at 3000 RPM or more.
The danger to Apple as I see it is one of perception -- there are now two classes of unrepairable, use-awhile-and-throw-away devices -- the high end, boutique, trendy brushed aluminum Apple products, and the extreme low end, bubble pack, by-the-register, impulse items. When people start associating the two, things could go badly.
Nice observation. I think that's one of the reasons Apple keeps their boutique pricing - to reduce the likelihood of that association.
I'm trying to wrap my head around that. So I guess you could say that Apple's value add is their high prices. For some reason that reminds me of the old Dilbert cartoon "we used to say that people were our most valuable resource. Turns out that was wrong. Money is our most valuable resource."
"the new efficiency standards are projected to save consumers $300 million a year in electricity costs "
While costing them an additional $400M a year in increased costs of the new power supplies.
This is similar to thought process that gives us cars that shut off the ignition when you stop the car, then restart. The starter breaks after 5 years, costing $1,000 to fix, but it does save $40 in gas over the life of the car.
> the new efficiency standards are projected to save consumers $300 million a year in electricity costs
Wow, that's gonna push me into a higher tax bracket...
But wait, how much more will wall warts cost, having to comply with these new standards?
[1] It's a standard ploy to use raw numbers without context when you're trying to make what is essentially a REALLY feeble point.
Huh. It was very specifically a Gulfstream he was working on. Maybe we know some people in common?
Making devices unrepairable isn't really newsworthy, it's in line with Apple's business model of selling expensive periodic incremental upgrades to a fiercely loyal following. Tying the parts that have very long lifetimes (CPU, northbridge, southbridge, memory) with parts that have very poor longivity (batteries) insures that you periodically throw out perfectly good computer parts and purchase small incremental improvements at boutique prices. As a market plan, it's absolutely brilliant. I didn't think the business model was sustainable, but so far it seems to be. Kinda sucks for electronic waste, but I'm sure Apple is donating to save some trees somewhere.
It's a natural part of the process for Apple to gradually make their devices less and less repairable. I see the day coming very soon where every one of their devices are single blocks of epoxy with no repairable parts inside. And the arguments will be "security" and "user experience" and "quick turn-around" and a bunch of other logical sounding stuff.
The danger to Apple as I see it is one of perception -- there are now two classes of unrepairable, use-awhile-and-throw-away devices -- the high end, boutique, trendy brushed aluminum Apple products, and the extreme low end, bubble pack, by-the-register, impulse items. When people start associating the two, things could go badly.
And a darkened police helicopter flies by and now you're one of those idiots/criminals/attempted murderers. See how easy they are to 'misuse'? Using them for star pointing is a potentially very dangerous use. They are a hazard any time they're pointed above eye level and even otherwise if there's anything shiny below that.
As much as I love lasers, I do understand how dangerous they can be. Unless you have a cheap red one they are ALWAYS dangerous.
Ok hang on... unless it's Blue Thunder, you'd hear it even if you couldn't see it, plus I'm pretty sure that police can't fly without running lights, same as everyone else.
Around the cockpit windows. We'll shine one right back at you.
There's part of me that thinks some moron will shine laser pointers at aircraft just to see the reflectors sparkle.
Not to mention that laser pointers are so common they've been given away as free tokens at trade shows for years. They're built into some commercial remotes. They're sold as cat toys.
This is a solved problem.
Pilots should wear laser safety glasses, or the wind shields should have LCD shutters.
Sounds safe...
dark glasses or auto darkening windows would just guarantee the pilots cant see the runway.
They may not be temporarily blinded but if the laser keeps the windhsield dark they still can't see the runway!
This may not be the answer, but a friend of mine did some work on a FLIR system, which would throw up an image of the exterior, properly sized and registered, on the inside of the glass during such times when you couldn't see out the windows. It was designed for heavy fog, but maybe there are other uses.
"...and over here, we handle the contingency where the number of members exceeds..."
"Police! Drop the laser pointer! On your knees!"
"I'm teaching a *class*!"
"Sir, you're holding an offensive weapon! Drop it and get on your knees or I will shoot!"