Wonder if some of the complainants here have been similarly caught out.
The two-year-old Medium post in the summary links to a author who was fooled. A later post reveals this and corrects the cost estimate. Based on the language and misleading info, I think the summary author has an agenda.
I have no idea whether the case has merit or not - I would never spend $200 on headphones and am completely unequipped to judge. However, the article says "recent" Motley Fool article, when the linked article was published in 2015 - about a year after the Apple acquisition of Beats. I don't know if Apple has used those years to improve the product or not, but calling the article "recent" is disingenuous.
Sorry, I didn't mean to make it a derogatory term. Android meets my needs because I'm a cheapskate. You prefer Android for its other merits, and that's cool. Some people buy them because they have a deep antipathy towards Apple, and that's fine too. But I think there are more of me than there are of you. I find it hard to believe that the correlation between ASP and unit shipments is coincidental.
Yeah, so you are one of the fanboys I spoke about. But the trend is undeniable - Android phones sell for ~$200 on average and iPhones go for ~$600 on average. My current phone was effectively free. If I had unlimited funds, I might buy a high-end Android or an iPhone. I haven't spent much time deliberating because they are both way out of my price range.
Some other possibilities are that they have a small screen or sit some distance away from their big-screen TV.
Movie theaters, with their 20+ ft screens only run at 2-4k, so people already accept a relatively low pixel density as the state of the art. In my living room, we sit about 15ft from the TV and it's very questionable whether a 4k TV is discernible from that distance in all but the most monster-sized TVs.
I think you are referring to a theoretical technology whereas I am talking about something you could do today. If you want to integrate high-speed visible light data transmission into office lighting, that may very well be a wonderful replacement for WiFi in many settings. But that is currently not possible - certainly nothing you could buy today. Today what is possible is point-source LEDs.
I don't buy it. Googling around I can see even Europe has an average phone selling price of $259, and that includes iPhones. The only anomaly is North America - and it is notable that in North America iPhones have around 30% of the market - a share that continues to grow. So the only market which might support your claim is the same one where Android is losing marketshare.
I don't mean that you could see the flickering - I mean that there would be this persistent light shining right at you as long as data was transmitting.
Radio is just plain wrong for massive data bandwidths
Light is radio at a different frequency. Light has more bandwidth at its higher frequencies compared to radio, but there is also a lot of occurring interference... We tend to have a lot of it in the same areas that you'd want to use light to transmit data. Visible modulating light would also be annoying as hell - in the past it's been IR... which brings me to:
The ONLY reason light isn't used is because light hasn't been used in the past, save for remote control units.
I assume you are very young? I say this because the main technology used for wireless communication of computers and related equipment was IR. Everything - laptops, PDAs, phones - had an IrDA port. It worked, but it was not fast and the line-of-sight requirement was a pain. There are researchers trying to make IR systems faster, but it's not a trivial problem. If they can get it working, the bandwidth would be gigabit-class.
I'm almost never in an environment with headphones where I'd be able to hear AAC artifacts. I'm not sure I'd be able to hear any under any conditions, when it comes down to it. If all you get is SBC, then yeah, I think most people should be able to hear that.
They are popular single models, but they do not outsell cheap handsets by unit volume. Average selling price of a Samsung (a premium brand) phone was $227 last year.
That's good advice. I've always enjoyed comedies, and - perhaps because humor is so subjective - I've noticed that comedies rarely have a good score upon release. I remember when Airplane! would come on TV in the early 80s and the guide had it as 3 stars. Now that it's a cult-classic, it fetches a 7.8 on IMDB and a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
OK? Is the GPU 50,000 times less valuable than the i7?
Let's put it another way - Moore's law roughly doubles transistor count every 2 years. The article says that research spending has needed to double every decade. So transistor count is obeying pow(2,t/2) and research is obeying pow(2,t/10). For t=40 years, that means the score is transistor: 1,048,576, research: 16. That's a factor of 65,536. There is no way to do this math without exposing the idiocy of the argument.
The difference is that video can be delayed to match the BT delay, but video games cannot. My phone must do this for me, as I'm fairly sensitive to such things and haven't seen any lag.
I definitely watch videos and haven't noticed the lag. But you are right - not a gaming guy. Most of my Bluetooth headphone usage is podcasts and music while working in the yard or on house projects where the cord is in the way (or even dangerous).
That means each researcher's output today is 18 times less effective in terms of generating economic value than it was several decades ago.
Assuming that the absolute number of transistors still matters, this math is ridiculous. A doubling of transistor count now means roughly 10 billion new transistors vs. a doubling in the 70s meaning maybe 10,000. So for 18x the headcount you get 1 MILLION times the transistors. A researcher is about 50,000 times more effective than he was in the 70s.
The world has switched to Android largely because it's cheap. There are certainly Samsung $600+ phone fanboys, but the vast majority of Android phones are cheap.
(Count me in that camp - $600+ for a phone is not my kind of toy.)
If I were the type to drop $1000 on this kind of toy, I definitely wouldn't sweat paying for a good set of Bluetooth headphones. But I'm more of a "bust out the soldering gun when the headphone plug goes wonky" kind of guy.
Slashdot Mirror
Wonder if some of the complainants here have been similarly caught out.
The two-year-old Medium post in the summary links to a author who was fooled. A later post reveals this and corrects the cost estimate. Based on the language and misleading info, I think the summary author has an agenda.
I have no idea whether the case has merit or not - I would never spend $200 on headphones and am completely unequipped to judge. However, the article says "recent" Motley Fool article, when the linked article was published in 2015 - about a year after the Apple acquisition of Beats. I don't know if Apple has used those years to improve the product or not, but calling the article "recent" is disingenuous.
Sorry, I didn't mean to make it a derogatory term. Android meets my needs because I'm a cheapskate. You prefer Android for its other merits, and that's cool. Some people buy them because they have a deep antipathy towards Apple, and that's fine too. But I think there are more of me than there are of you. I find it hard to believe that the correlation between ASP and unit shipments is coincidental.
Yeah, so you are one of the fanboys I spoke about. But the trend is undeniable - Android phones sell for ~$200 on average and iPhones go for ~$600 on average. My current phone was effectively free. If I had unlimited funds, I might buy a high-end Android or an iPhone. I haven't spent much time deliberating because they are both way out of my price range.
Some other possibilities are that they have a small screen or sit some distance away from their big-screen TV.
Movie theaters, with their 20+ ft screens only run at 2-4k, so people already accept a relatively low pixel density as the state of the art. In my living room, we sit about 15ft from the TV and it's very questionable whether a 4k TV is discernible from that distance in all but the most monster-sized TVs.
I think you are referring to a theoretical technology whereas I am talking about something you could do today. If you want to integrate high-speed visible light data transmission into office lighting, that may very well be a wonderful replacement for WiFi in many settings. But that is currently not possible - certainly nothing you could buy today. Today what is possible is point-source LEDs.
I don't buy it. Googling around I can see even Europe has an average phone selling price of $259, and that includes iPhones. The only anomaly is North America - and it is notable that in North America iPhones have around 30% of the market - a share that continues to grow. So the only market which might support your claim is the same one where Android is losing marketshare.
I don't mean that you could see the flickering - I mean that there would be this persistent light shining right at you as long as data was transmitting.
At least they predicted that big recession a few years back. Dodged a bullet there.
Radio is just plain wrong for massive data bandwidths
Light is radio at a different frequency. Light has more bandwidth at its higher frequencies compared to radio, but there is also a lot of occurring interference... We tend to have a lot of it in the same areas that you'd want to use light to transmit data. Visible modulating light would also be annoying as hell - in the past it's been IR... which brings me to:
The ONLY reason light isn't used is because light hasn't been used in the past, save for remote control units.
I assume you are very young? I say this because the main technology used for wireless communication of computers and related equipment was IR. Everything - laptops, PDAs, phones - had an IrDA port. It worked, but it was not fast and the line-of-sight requirement was a pain. There are researchers trying to make IR systems faster, but it's not a trivial problem. If they can get it working, the bandwidth would be gigabit-class.
And all I want is one with decent "phablet" specs in an under 5" form factor :)
Actually, I'd be perfectly happy with the one they sell as the Galaxy A in Europe, but it doesn't have all of the US frequencies.
Cadillac uses eye tracking to monitor the driver's attentiveness.
I'm almost never in an environment with headphones where I'd be able to hear AAC artifacts. I'm not sure I'd be able to hear any under any conditions, when it comes down to it. If all you get is SBC, then yeah, I think most people should be able to hear that.
Why does it matter why they are more productive?
They are popular single models, but they do not outsell cheap handsets by unit volume. Average selling price of a Samsung (a premium brand) phone was $227 last year.
by one particular product that, when I last checked, was still on the market.
The Cornballer?
That's good advice. I've always enjoyed comedies, and - perhaps because humor is so subjective - I've noticed that comedies rarely have a good score upon release. I remember when Airplane! would come on TV in the early 80s and the guide had it as 3 stars. Now that it's a cult-classic, it fetches a 7.8 on IMDB and a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
OK? Is the GPU 50,000 times less valuable than the i7?
Let's put it another way - Moore's law roughly doubles transistor count every 2 years. The article says that research spending has needed to double every decade. So transistor count is obeying pow(2,t/2) and research is obeying pow(2,t/10). For t=40 years, that means the score is transistor: 1,048,576, research: 16. That's a factor of 65,536. There is no way to do this math without exposing the idiocy of the argument.
The difference is that video can be delayed to match the BT delay, but video games cannot. My phone must do this for me, as I'm fairly sensitive to such things and haven't seen any lag.
I definitely watch videos and haven't noticed the lag. But you are right - not a gaming guy. Most of my Bluetooth headphone usage is podcasts and music while working in the yard or on house projects where the cord is in the way (or even dangerous).
That means each researcher's output today is 18 times less effective in terms of generating economic value than it was several decades ago.
Assuming that the absolute number of transistors still matters, this math is ridiculous. A doubling of transistor count now means roughly 10 billion new transistors vs. a doubling in the 70s meaning maybe 10,000. So for 18x the headcount you get 1 MILLION times the transistors. A researcher is about 50,000 times more effective than he was in the 70s.
Boss, it's creepy when you talk to me from the next stall. I'm trying to play Spaceward Ho!
The world has switched to Android largely because it's cheap. There are certainly Samsung $600+ phone fanboys, but the vast majority of Android phones are cheap.
(Count me in that camp - $600+ for a phone is not my kind of toy.)
how the fuck can a phone change your life
My shits are now longer and more enjoyable.
If I were the type to drop $1000 on this kind of toy, I definitely wouldn't sweat paying for a good set of Bluetooth headphones. But I'm more of a "bust out the soldering gun when the headphone plug goes wonky" kind of guy.