Who has friends at VISA? I suspect that Best Buy is in dire need of a PCI Compliance audit.
Wow, paranoid much? The customer probably used their "Reward Zone" points card and probably bought the machine through one of the sales people on the sales floor. During that transaction, Best Buy usually collect name and address information or look that information up using your phone number.
Best Buy probably just has the account number, but they then cross-reference that number with credit bureau information, and with an educated guess (i.e., last reported address), they send you the stuff.
Uh, no. The sales guy usually collects that information at a sales person kiosk. They can usually take your credit card or debit payment right on the sales floor. That address information is used for any extended warranty service or sending out any rebates in the mail.
Seriously folk, Best Buy was doing you a service as a customer. If you have a problem with this, then you probably also collect your own urine in jars and wear Kleenex boxes on your feet.
I sick and tired of how paranoid everyone is these days.
They do not have this information from your debit card or credit card but most likely, they collected your address information for marketing and warranty purposes when you purchased the device. Collecting that information also helps protect you from credit card fraud/theft.
1) Buy a new battery. Even their claimed 2-3x industry standard isn't more than a year or two if you use your laptop every day. I'm still using a three year old laptop which is perfectly fine even for software development.
You are basing this on what? Idle speculation?
2) Not having to send your laptop to Apple when they inevitably recall the battery
Speculation?
3) A long flight is much more than 8 hours. Try going to Australia or Hong Kong.
Dude, seriously, if you are on that long of a flight, you should take some time to relax, have a few drinks and take a nap. Nobody should be expected to "work" on a plane the whole time. Unless if you are a chronic workaholic with no life, you should not be working through the flight and your employer should understand that.
In the end, it's fairly irrelevant, because any serious business user won't be considering Apple products.
Serious business users should not allow themselves to be at the beckoned call of their employers 24-7. Turn off your blackberries and close your notebooks for a while. Life is too short and your employer is not paying you extra to cut into your personal time anyway.
Dude, are you trying to tell me that 8 hours is not enough? Even with it talking you 8 hours, you are not going to be able to use your laptop the entire time anyway. It takes a lot longer going through security these days even on domestic flights and any airport I've been to in Canada, the US or Europe had some outlets that you could plug into if you really needed to.
One battery with a 5 hour charge might not be enough but 8 hours should be enough for everyone.
If you ran out of juice after 8 hours unplugged, maybe you should take it as a sign that you are working too hard and that you should take a break.
Come on, it isn't that hard to make a user removeable battery. Just do it -- people want it. It is a freaking laptop!
Give me a reason why you would need a removable battery for anything other than having to swap a battery mid-flight from Japan to North America because your laptop battery only gives you a 4-5 hour window of use per charge. If it last for up to 8 hours, that should be more than enough even for a long flight across the Pacific or Atlantic. You are not going to be using your laptop the entire time anyway since people have to eat, get up and use the toilet and potentially take a nap.
The weight on this thing is mighty impressive though, I'm not familiar with any 17" laptop that is only 6.6 lbs. Of course, I'm not sure if it's worth the trade-off of not having a removable battery.
It has a potential 8 hours of operation per charge. That is more than enough for basically anyone. Even if you are "working" on a 10 hour flight, you are not going to be "working" for all of those 10 hours. So this not only saves you on weight with the laptop itself but also not having to carry around additional batteries to compensate for the short usage per charge.
I'd say that it is an acceptable trade off since the longer life basically eliminates the need for a battery swap in 99% of possible situations.
You will just get pirated distribution of binaries...
You just illustrated how many people view open source software as just an easier way to get software for free and how many usesr today do not understand the value of movies/music/software or how much effort went into making it.
Nobody wants to work for free for their employer and yet some people feel that they should be entitled to the works of others without any compensation. The hypocrisy on the internet is unbelievable.
This entirely ignores the question of how the FOSS people are paying their expenses. Many are no doubt coding on the company's dime, often with only tacit (not official) approval. Wanna bet how many of them get canned in the coming year? Or how many suddenly don't have as much 'free' time to devote to such endeavors?
I think that you have hit the nail in the head. So many people on slashdot are ready to be vocal proponents of OSS but so few if any are prepared to contribute their own efforts or money to support the efforts of others. OSS projects should rethink their business model and think about charging a nominal fee for downloading and registration of binary builds. People who do not want to pay should be forced to compile it themselves.
Read my reply title. LOOK, it's no longer exclusive! Free software can access it! : )
Let me guess. You could not hold a note if your life depended on it. Right? What do you do for a living? Would you like to work for free?
It really burns me up when talentless cheapskates talk about pirating software or music without considering how much effort it takes to make it. That effort is worth something as is the talent to be able to create it. I work as a software developer so I understand how hard software can be to make. I also sing in a choir so I know how hard it is to get a performance right. I was in a concert last night performing as a choir member and I recall that we had weeks of practices leading up to it including 2 1/2 hour practices on Wednesday and Thursday as well as an hour long sound check/rehearsal just before the concert.
Just consider that many of those artists on iTMS spend even more time laying down their tracks and preparing for their tours. Should they work for free or should they be compensated for the enjoyment their songs bring to us? As an amateur, I'm all to happy to volunteer but I don't end up spending anywhere near as much time as a professional would for their music. Given the insight that I have into the process of making music, I'm all too happy to pay a fair price for a song and to not share it because I understand that I did not purchase that "right" to copy to others when I bought the song.
iTunes has some feature deficiencies that are solved by user plugins in other competitors.
And they're solved by user plugin in iTunes too!
Right now I have SRS iWow and Volume Logic loaded as DSP plugins, Lathe, Jelly and Stix loaded as third-party visualizers and sometimes I load up iScrobbler to scrobble songs I'm listening to in iTunes.
All of this is running on an Intel iMac running 10.5.5 with iTunes 8.0.1.
I don't know what they were smoking but I'm sure it is illegal in most countries.
Just look at the UIs, especially Amarok. It is a dog's breakfast. The screens are way too cluttered.
iTunes performs well on OS X, it supports the iPhone/iPod,iPod Touch and now comes with some pretty cool visualizers. What exactly is lacking that the "average" users would want or even need? IMHO, nothing. What it does not have can be added by plugins and third-party apps like Synergy.
Since when is basic funcionality a sacrifice? Somebody who pays $20 for a USB storage device MP3 player, and <$10 per month for a prepaid phone is not "sacrificing", unless ringtones, handheld games and all that crap somehow became a necessity while I wasn't looking.
It all depends on what your needs are. The person I was responding to suggesting that the functionality of the iPhone could be replaced by a variety of devices which individually cost less but it was my contention that the total price of those devices could be more.
So you might not want handheld games and songs on your phone but someone might want games and music on the go so they would either need to buy a phone, PSP/DS and an MP3 player or a phone like the iPhone which combines them all into one form factor.
I've been through various phone from the original Motorola brick on CDMA Telus, to a Nokia handset (non flip), a Motorola V60 (flip), Samsung Slider and Motorola Krzr (flip) before finally getting an iPhone. All of the other features it has are great but it is also great phone with great call quality even on a noisy street. It is also useful that I can easily sync and backup my songs, ringtones, contacts and calendars on to my mac. None of my previous phones gave me that facility.
It's been my experience that "cheap" devices are also cheaply made, limited in some way and often tied into the download services of the phone service provider with their own high prices.
Everyone I know that have a job that pays over 100K+ gets a nice black berry from there company. Why would they go out and by an IPhoney when they already have a phone that is paid for by their job?
I would think this is also true for most people that work for decent company and is above an entry level position. How else would they be able to keep you on the hook 24/7 ?
You could not pay me enough money to carry around a blackberry. That "free" phone is not really yours to use as you please for personal use and it comes at the cost of your freedom. I would never want to be tethered to my work like that 24/7.
I would rather have my own iPhone and have control over when I give out my phone number to my work and when they are allowed to contact me on it which would be on a case by case basis.
Not everyone working in IT within a company have to be on call 24/7 all year round. As a developer, the only time I would need to be on call would be if a promotion was occurring where I was the lead developer on the project.
I live in a neighbourhood which is rapidly gentrifying - So you have a mix of 'poor' people, middle class and upper-middle class. It's interesting to look at the houses when I walk my dog in the evening - The houses which would be branded as 'poor' - Junk in the yard, unmowed lawn, shabby house, almost always have a 50" flatscreen glowing away in the front room, showing hockey in high-def. Then I go home to my ten year old 28" CRT television with analog cable.
Do you want a cookie? Did you stop to consider that old appliances often consume more power than newer ones? How much is quality of life worth to you?
Being overly frugal can actually end up costing you more in the long run. Consider for example a person that drives their car (with these gas prices) around just to save 10 dollars on groceries versus just going to the nearest grocery store. It is likely that this person would have actually saved money by finding the store with the best median price on food instead of spending gas and time on searching for the "bargains".
And which platform is easier to use for the average person? Answer: the iPhone. Consider this, linux is even more open than windows but which is more popular and easier to use? Answer: Windows.
The average person does not give a damn about choice if the default offerings are good enough.
BTW. Have you tried Opera lately on any platform? I've noticed that it does not seem to really "fit" in with the UI or user experience of any of the platforms it's on. This is one of the reasons why opera is not allowed on the iPhone. The other reason has do with added complexity/unpredictability of behaviour when clicking on links in other apps on the iPhone if more than one browser was present. Remember the KISS principle?
Part of Apple's new found success has to do with the adherence to the KISS principle. If you want complexity, get a windows or one of those linux based phones.
But unlike the article, I never thought the iPhone/Touch were chosen based on frugality; rather, I think they are status symbols, vulgar displays of wealth like knock-off designer clothes and cheap bling. There are much cheaper devices, or combination of devices, available.
Please. The truly low income people (under 20k) on the bus have iPod knockoff devices which ironically probably end up costing more than an actual iPod or are a fraction cheaper at the sacrifice of no third-party support and usability.
I see low income people on the bus with some shuffle-like MP3 player and a cheap plastic LG or motorola flip phone on one of the CDMA providers all the time.
What you don't seem to get is that these people often are paying more than they should because they have bad credit and this forces them into accepting a crippled phone on a pay as you go scheme.
People that you see with an iPhone on the bus are either students with rich parents or frugal upper middle class people like me who bought the device because it was not locked down by the wireless provider or branded with their logo. I took into consideration things like how I would use my iTMS songs on my phone, the affordability of apps and games on iTMS and the ease of backing up my phone data on my mac. My previous Nokia, Motorola and Samsung phones were crap in comparison and offered no easy way for me to backup my purchased ringtones onto my mac or to sync songs onto the phone.
PS. Maybe you should stop to consider that those "cheaper" devices may not really be cheaper when you add up their combined price or consider what you are sacrificing in terms of functionality and usability.
I'm a first year graduate student in physics, and about 1/3 of my class have iPhones. We're definitely low-income -- Teaching Assistant pay is ~$14k/year.
Wow. My condolences. You make around the same amount as a friend of mine did when she worked at a small bistro.
You might initially think that owning an iPhone is silly with your means but consider that most other phones out there are tied the providers download service which charge 3 to 4 times as much as ITMS for ringtones and songs and you do not get the convenience of an easy backup on your PC or Mac of those files. Also consider that the iPhone can take the place of a PDA or laptop for voice/text notes, web searches, various apps and email. It can also serve as your MP3 player, portable video player and portable game console in addition to being a decent phone.
What this means to students is that they can have a desktop and iPhone and not have to worry about having to have a laptop or various other portable devices in many cases.
Apparently, neither do the majority of Americans. This is just great. It was bad enough having Americans think that America was the centre of the universe and now you think LA is.
A wage of 50,000 outside of cities like LA or NY is a enough for you to be considered middle class.
I haven't earned that little in years but 50k is nothing to sneeze at. Minimum wage would be what I would consider low income.
So they only way other than buying the product to see the license is if you have an internet connection? Wow, that's just fantastic if you live in an area without one.
You did not specify that you wanted an off-line version. I'm sure any store would be more than happy to provide you with a printed copy to alleviate your concerns if you asked nicely.
Except that nearly all EULAs I only have access to after I buy the product and I have no recourse if I refuse it.
Try it, buy some software and try to get a refund because you reject the EULA.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can smell something outside the outside the cabin of a pressurized airplane, you have bigger problems than being offended by the smell.
Super smell?
Who has friends at VISA? I suspect that Best Buy is in dire need of a PCI Compliance audit.
Wow, paranoid much? The customer probably used their "Reward Zone" points card and probably bought the machine through one of the sales people on the sales floor. During that transaction, Best Buy usually collect name and address information or look that information up using your phone number.
Best Buy probably just has the account number, but they then cross-reference that number with credit bureau information, and with an educated guess (i.e., last reported address), they send you the stuff.
Uh, no. The sales guy usually collects that information at a sales person kiosk. They can usually take your credit card or debit payment right on the sales floor. That address information is used for any extended warranty service or sending out any rebates in the mail.
I sick and tired of how paranoid everyone is these days.
They do not have this information from your debit card or credit card but most likely, they collected your address information for marketing and warranty purposes when you purchased the device. Collecting that information also helps protect you from credit card fraud/theft.
Seriously? Here are a few:
Yeah, seriously.
1) Buy a new battery. Even their claimed 2-3x industry standard isn't more than a year or two if you use your laptop every day. I'm still using a three year old laptop which is perfectly fine even for software development.
You are basing this on what? Idle speculation?
2) Not having to send your laptop to Apple when they inevitably recall the battery
Speculation?
3) A long flight is much more than 8 hours. Try going to Australia or Hong Kong.
Dude, seriously, if you are on that long of a flight, you should take some time to relax, have a few drinks and take a nap. Nobody should be expected to "work" on a plane the whole time. Unless if you are a chronic workaholic with no life, you should not be working through the flight and your employer should understand that.
In the end, it's fairly irrelevant, because any serious business user won't be considering Apple products.
Serious business users should not allow themselves to be at the beckoned call of their employers 24-7. Turn off your blackberries and close your notebooks for a while. Life is too short and your employer is not paying you extra to cut into your personal time anyway.
One battery with a 5 hour charge might not be enough but 8 hours should be enough for everyone.
If you ran out of juice after 8 hours unplugged, maybe you should take it as a sign that you are working too hard and that you should take a break.
Come on, it isn't that hard to make a user removeable battery. Just do it -- people want it. It is a freaking laptop!
Give me a reason why you would need a removable battery for anything other than having to swap a battery mid-flight from Japan to North America because your laptop battery only gives you a 4-5 hour window of use per charge. If it last for up to 8 hours, that should be more than enough even for a long flight across the Pacific or Atlantic. You are not going to be using your laptop the entire time anyway since people have to eat, get up and use the toilet and potentially take a nap.
The weight on this thing is mighty impressive though, I'm not familiar with any 17" laptop that is only 6.6 lbs. Of course, I'm not sure if it's worth the trade-off of not having a removable battery.
It has a potential 8 hours of operation per charge. That is more than enough for basically anyone. Even if you are "working" on a 10 hour flight, you are not going to be "working" for all of those 10 hours. So this not only saves you on weight with the laptop itself but also not having to carry around additional batteries to compensate for the short usage per charge.
I'd say that it is an acceptable trade off since the longer life basically eliminates the need for a battery swap in 99% of possible situations.
Why is there no mention of Steve Jobs' death announcement? I saw it on MacRumorslive! WTF!
That site was hacked.
You will just get pirated distribution of binaries...
You just illustrated how many people view open source software as just an easier way to get software for free and how many usesr today do not understand the value of movies/music/software or how much effort went into making it.
Nobody wants to work for free for their employer and yet some people feel that they should be entitled to the works of others without any compensation. The hypocrisy on the internet is unbelievable.
This entirely ignores the question of how the FOSS people are paying their expenses. Many are no doubt coding on the company's dime, often with only tacit (not official) approval. Wanna bet how many of them get canned in the coming year? Or how many suddenly don't have as much 'free' time to devote to such endeavors?
I think that you have hit the nail in the head. So many people on slashdot are ready to be vocal proponents of OSS but so few if any are prepared to contribute their own efforts or money to support the efforts of others. OSS projects should rethink their business model and think about charging a nominal fee for downloading and registration of binary builds. People who do not want to pay should be forced to compile it themselves.
Read my reply title. LOOK, it's no longer exclusive! Free software can access it! : )
Let me guess. You could not hold a note if your life depended on it. Right? What do you do for a living? Would you like to work for free?
It really burns me up when talentless cheapskates talk about pirating software or music without considering how much effort it takes to make it. That effort is worth something as is the talent to be able to create it. I work as a software developer so I understand how hard software can be to make. I also sing in a choir so I know how hard it is to get a performance right. I was in a concert last night performing as a choir member and I recall that we had weeks of practices leading up to it including 2 1/2 hour practices on Wednesday and Thursday as well as an hour long sound check/rehearsal just before the concert.
Just consider that many of those artists on iTMS spend even more time laying down their tracks and preparing for their tours. Should they work for free or should they be compensated for the enjoyment their songs bring to us? As an amateur, I'm all to happy to volunteer but I don't end up spending anywhere near as much time as a professional would for their music. Given the insight that I have into the process of making music, I'm all too happy to pay a fair price for a song and to not share it because I understand that I did not purchase that "right" to copy to others when I bought the song.
They are a bunch of sick hypocrites with too much money and time on their hands.
iTunes has some feature deficiencies that are solved by user plugins in other competitors.
And they're solved by user plugin in iTunes too!
Right now I have SRS iWow and Volume Logic loaded as DSP plugins, Lathe, Jelly and Stix loaded as third-party visualizers and sometimes I load up iScrobbler to scrobble songs I'm listening to in iTunes.
All of this is running on an Intel iMac running 10.5.5 with iTunes 8.0.1.
I don't know what they were smoking but I'm sure it is illegal in most countries.
Just look at the UIs, especially Amarok. It is a dog's breakfast. The screens are way too cluttered. iTunes performs well on OS X, it supports the iPhone/iPod,iPod Touch and now comes with some pretty cool visualizers. What exactly is lacking that the "average" users would want or even need? IMHO, nothing. What it does not have can be added by plugins and third-party apps like Synergy.
Passing a law against What everyone does is a risky affair.
Please be sure to speak for yourself only and not assume that "everyone" does it.
Since when is basic funcionality a sacrifice? Somebody who pays $20 for a USB storage device MP3 player, and <$10 per month for a prepaid phone is not "sacrificing", unless ringtones, handheld games and all that crap somehow became a necessity while I wasn't looking.
It all depends on what your needs are. The person I was responding to suggesting that the functionality of the iPhone could be replaced by a variety of devices which individually cost less but it was my contention that the total price of those devices could be more.
So you might not want handheld games and songs on your phone but someone might want games and music on the go so they would either need to buy a phone, PSP/DS and an MP3 player or a phone like the iPhone which combines them all into one form factor.
I've been through various phone from the original Motorola brick on CDMA Telus, to a Nokia handset (non flip), a Motorola V60 (flip), Samsung Slider and Motorola Krzr (flip) before finally getting an iPhone. All of the other features it has are great but it is also great phone with great call quality even on a noisy street. It is also useful that I can easily sync and backup my songs, ringtones, contacts and calendars on to my mac. None of my previous phones gave me that facility.
It's been my experience that "cheap" devices are also cheaply made, limited in some way and often tied into the download services of the phone service provider with their own high prices.
Everyone I know that have a job that pays over 100K+ gets a nice black berry from there company. Why would they go out and by an IPhoney when they already have a phone that is paid for by their job?
I would think this is also true for most people that work for decent company and is above an entry level position. How else would they be able to keep you on the hook 24/7 ?
You could not pay me enough money to carry around a blackberry. That "free" phone is not really yours to use as you please for personal use and it comes at the cost of your freedom. I would never want to be tethered to my work like that 24/7.
I would rather have my own iPhone and have control over when I give out my phone number to my work and when they are allowed to contact me on it which would be on a case by case basis.
Not everyone working in IT within a company have to be on call 24/7 all year round. As a developer, the only time I would need to be on call would be if a promotion was occurring where I was the lead developer on the project.
I live in a neighbourhood which is rapidly gentrifying - So you have a mix of 'poor' people, middle class and upper-middle class. It's interesting to look at the houses when I walk my dog in the evening - The houses which would be branded as 'poor' - Junk in the yard, unmowed lawn, shabby house, almost always have a 50" flatscreen glowing away in the front room, showing hockey in high-def. Then I go home to my ten year old 28" CRT television with analog cable.
Do you want a cookie? Did you stop to consider that old appliances often consume more power than newer ones? How much is quality of life worth to you?
Being overly frugal can actually end up costing you more in the long run. Consider for example a person that drives their car (with these gas prices) around just to save 10 dollars on groceries versus just going to the nearest grocery store. It is likely that this person would have actually saved money by finding the store with the best median price on food instead of spending gas and time on searching for the "bargains".
The average person does not give a damn about choice if the default offerings are good enough.
BTW. Have you tried Opera lately on any platform? I've noticed that it does not seem to really "fit" in with the UI or user experience of any of the platforms it's on. This is one of the reasons why opera is not allowed on the iPhone. The other reason has do with added complexity/unpredictability of behaviour when clicking on links in other apps on the iPhone if more than one browser was present. Remember the KISS principle?
Part of Apple's new found success has to do with the adherence to the KISS principle. If you want complexity, get a windows or one of those linux based phones.
But unlike the article, I never thought the iPhone/Touch were chosen based on frugality; rather, I think they are status symbols, vulgar displays of wealth like knock-off designer clothes and cheap bling. There are much cheaper devices, or combination of devices, available.
Please. The truly low income people (under 20k) on the bus have iPod knockoff devices which ironically probably end up costing more than an actual iPod or are a fraction cheaper at the sacrifice of no third-party support and usability.
I see low income people on the bus with some shuffle-like MP3 player and a cheap plastic LG or motorola flip phone on one of the CDMA providers all the time.
What you don't seem to get is that these people often are paying more than they should because they have bad credit and this forces them into accepting a crippled phone on a pay as you go scheme.
People that you see with an iPhone on the bus are either students with rich parents or frugal upper middle class people like me who bought the device because it was not locked down by the wireless provider or branded with their logo. I took into consideration things like how I would use my iTMS songs on my phone, the affordability of apps and games on iTMS and the ease of backing up my phone data on my mac. My previous Nokia, Motorola and Samsung phones were crap in comparison and offered no easy way for me to backup my purchased ringtones onto my mac or to sync songs onto the phone.
PS. Maybe you should stop to consider that those "cheaper" devices may not really be cheaper when you add up their combined price or consider what you are sacrificing in terms of functionality and usability.
I'm a first year graduate student in physics, and about 1/3 of my class have iPhones. We're definitely low-income -- Teaching Assistant pay is ~$14k/year.
Wow. My condolences. You make around the same amount as a friend of mine did when she worked at a small bistro.
You might initially think that owning an iPhone is silly with your means but consider that most other phones out there are tied the providers download service which charge 3 to 4 times as much as ITMS for ringtones and songs and you do not get the convenience of an easy backup on your PC or Mac of those files. Also consider that the iPhone can take the place of a PDA or laptop for voice/text notes, web searches, various apps and email. It can also serve as your MP3 player, portable video player and portable game console in addition to being a decent phone.
What this means to students is that they can have a desktop and iPhone and not have to worry about having to have a laptop or various other portable devices in many cases.
Apparently you don't live in LA.
Apparently, neither do the majority of Americans. This is just great. It was bad enough having Americans think that America was the centre of the universe and now you think LA is.
A wage of 50,000 outside of cities like LA or NY is a enough for you to be considered middle class.
I haven't earned that little in years but 50k is nothing to sneeze at. Minimum wage would be what I would consider low income.
So they only way other than buying the product to see the license is if you have an internet connection? Wow, that's just fantastic if you live in an area without one.
You did not specify that you wanted an off-line version. I'm sure any store would be more than happy to provide you with a printed copy to alleviate your concerns if you asked nicely.
Except that nearly all EULAs I only have access to after I buy the product and I have no recourse if I refuse it. Try it, buy some software and try to get a refund because you reject the EULA.
Oh really?
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx
http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/
You were saying?