I can already imagine the slashdot story: I tried to download a fix-it patch on my Ubuntu box and it failed. What if I wanted to copy it to the Windows machine on a USB key!?!? This is a broken design!!! Windoze sucks!!!
Re:This is nothing new
on
Less Is Moore
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· Score: 1
It's an even bigger trend than you state. Because of inflation, $5000 in 1984 dollars (the price of an original IBM PC) is around $10,000 today.
If I lost my kid, I wouldn't want a clone of that kid. That would be sick, as the clone wouldn't be the same person as the kid I lost. You can't replace a kid, cloning notwithstanding.
Same goes for pets. If your pet dies, it is gone. To think cloning brings that pet back is a lie.
That's not correct. Windows didn't get the market by price. Windows got the market by leveraging an existing DOS/Office monopoly. Pretty much every market that Microsoft has been successful in (other than XBox) it has succeeded by leveraging one of its existing monopolies.
When it has had to compete on a level playing field, it has generally failed. (See Microsoft Money, MSN, Windows Mobile, etc.)
Yeah, I have a 30 year old portable "football" game. Works great. I've also got an old HP scientific calculator that is 25 years old. Electronics can last a long time if you take care of it.
Nintendo, even with its buckets of Wii money, can't compete with Sony and Microsoft in terms of spending buckets of cash to develop something that you sell at a loss. They've been smart enough to realize that perhaps they didn't have to.
It is also because in most of human history, the average person died before reaching the age when diseases like this hit their full effect. If 90% of people die at before 50, and 90% of the rest die before 60, a gene that kills at 55 is going to have a pretty weak effect from an evolutionary standpoint even with secondary effects like the positive benefits on descendants with grandparents around.
In most of human history, a man's DNA at 60 was likely moldering in a grave somewhere.
You must be a marketer for an Apple competitor...you certainly talk like one. Typical "bulleted list" feature lists and complete fairly to understand what usability is.
Have you actually used an iPod?
I'm no fanboy. My first MP3 player was a Samsung Yepp. To give you an idea of the age, it took a 32 MB SD card. In those days, keeping multiple cards made more sense because of small sizes, but the expense meant I ended up just transferring with the crappy software it used instead.
I later got an iRiver specifically because it did OGG, though its OGG support at the time was flaky. The transfer software to the device was abysmal. I later patched the firmware to get it to look like a drive, and that worked OK, but digging through a file structure to find files to transfer isn't near as easy as being able to search a list with software. (Though I gather Amarok lets you do that. Too bad Amarok blows goats...I gave up on that after the fiftieth time I had to rescan my library.)
The iRiver had radio, but I never used it because as with many of these players, the reception was crap, and you just get music interspersed with blowhard annoying DJs.
I got into listening to podcasts at the time, but listening to podcasts on the iRiver was an annoying manual process.
I stopped using the iRiver because the little joystick thingy stopped responding. I got a Sony hard drive player, but dropped the thing within a month, destroying it. I got a Sony flash player, but it required Sonic Stage, which is the biggest piece of garbage software I've ever encountered. I got a hacked up thing that made it act like a drive, but it had the same manual issues. "Just looking like a drive" is fine as it goes, but it certainly doesn't help with things like podcasts and automatically generated playlists.
I've also used a couple different phones to play music...the less said the better.
It was only after all this that I caved and got an iPod. iTunes isn't great, but it is a lot better than anything else I've ever used. (And don't tell say "Amarok" or "Banshee". Bleah. I've tried both. They are great when they aren't crapping out and failing to find an output device, or losing access to your music.)
I'm no Apple fanboy. I'm typing this on an Ubuntu box. My current phone is a T-Mobile G1. I've used all sorts of MP3 players from many different companies from long before the iPod even existed.
I suspect the person who is deluding himself is the person who refuses to accept that the player that owns the market is easier to use despite the people buying it saying "it is easier to use" and instead blames it on fanboyism and user stupidity.
I've used other players extensively. They are harder to use.
Yes. All those things make it harder to design a cohesive interface that does what people want.
Most people don't give a flying fuck about removable SD cards, OGG support, voice recording, FM tuners or a particular PC software player. They want something they can hook up to their computer and get music they got from something they put a CD in to get music, or clicked a button to get music. That is what 90% of the people buying players want, and they want it to be easy.
Which is why they buy iPods, not other players that come with shitty PC software and are full of hard-to-navigate menus full of features they don't give a crap about.
I've used a number of other players. I've tried the Walkman, the iRiver and a Sansa. I mean, really tried. I used the iRiver for a year and a half. And the iPod is hands down, *much* easier to use than any of those.
Because the iPod has a better user interface and comes with PC software that also has a better user interface.
The reason the other players fail to compete is because their designers concentrate on "more features" without concentrating on user interface, thereby creating a player that is harder to use and confusing.
As someone who voted for Obama, I sure hope to hell if he does a tenth of the illegal crap Bush seems to have, he is vindictively hounded out of office a lot sooner than 4 years from now.
The cases that hit the news are rare. Having unfortunately lived through companies going out of business before, often it happens suddenly and obviously.
My group had open positions for three years solid. We were hiring as many good people as we could find. That stopped suddenly last November. Now we won't even replace people we lose.
I certainly hope this is temporary because obviously we still have the workload that had us expanding as fast as we could.
Slashdot Mirror
They reset those QuickTime preferences every damn time you upgrade iTunes.
I can already imagine the slashdot story: I tried to download a fix-it patch on my Ubuntu box and it failed. What if I wanted to copy it to the Windows machine on a USB key!?!? This is a broken design!!! Windoze sucks!!!
It's an even bigger trend than you state. Because of inflation, $5000 in 1984 dollars (the price of an original IBM PC) is around $10,000 today.
If I lost my kid, I wouldn't want a clone of that kid. That would be sick, as the clone wouldn't be the same person as the kid I lost. You can't replace a kid, cloning notwithstanding.
Same goes for pets. If your pet dies, it is gone. To think cloning brings that pet back is a lie.
Or you can be a real programmer, and use the command line.
That's not correct. Windows didn't get the market by price. Windows got the market by leveraging an existing DOS/Office monopoly. Pretty much every market that Microsoft has been successful in (other than XBox) it has succeeded by leveraging one of its existing monopolies.
When it has had to compete on a level playing field, it has generally failed. (See Microsoft Money, MSN, Windows Mobile, etc.)
I'll be there in 50 years.
Yeah, I have a 30 year old portable "football" game. Works great. I've also got an old HP scientific calculator that is 25 years old. Electronics can last a long time if you take care of it.
This is stupid. There is no shortage of "family friendly" games.
Nintendo, even with its buckets of Wii money, can't compete with Sony and Microsoft in terms of spending buckets of cash to develop something that you sell at a loss. They've been smart enough to realize that perhaps they didn't have to.
He makes more money doing things like "The Sims", alas.
Probably because they don't want to run sensitive government computers on something automatically updated from servers outside the country.
I suspect that they won't "develop an operating system" so much as "create a distribution".
It is also because in most of human history, the average person died before reaching the age when diseases like this hit their full effect. If 90% of people die at before 50, and 90% of the rest die before 60, a gene that kills at 55 is going to have a pretty weak effect from an evolutionary standpoint even with secondary effects like the positive benefits on descendants with grandparents around.
In most of human history, a man's DNA at 60 was likely moldering in a grave somewhere.
The law will last a lot longer than this current recession.
I wasn't aware that Apple marketers used multiple non-Apple players over a seven year period.
You must be a marketer for an Apple competitor...you certainly talk like one. Typical "bulleted list" feature lists and complete fairly to understand what usability is.
Have you actually used an iPod?
I'm no fanboy. My first MP3 player was a Samsung Yepp. To give you an idea of the age, it took a 32 MB SD card. In those days, keeping multiple cards made more sense because of small sizes, but the expense meant I ended up just transferring with the crappy software it used instead.
I later got an iRiver specifically because it did OGG, though its OGG support at the time was flaky. The transfer software to the device was abysmal. I later patched the firmware to get it to look like a drive, and that worked OK, but digging through a file structure to find files to transfer isn't near as easy as being able to search a list with software. (Though I gather Amarok lets you do that. Too bad Amarok blows goats...I gave up on that after the fiftieth time I had to rescan my library.)
The iRiver had radio, but I never used it because as with many of these players, the reception was crap, and you just get music interspersed with blowhard annoying DJs.
I got into listening to podcasts at the time, but listening to podcasts on the iRiver was an annoying manual process.
I stopped using the iRiver because the little joystick thingy stopped responding. I got a Sony hard drive player, but dropped the thing within a month, destroying it. I got a Sony flash player, but it required Sonic Stage, which is the biggest piece of garbage software I've ever encountered. I got a hacked up thing that made it act like a drive, but it had the same manual issues. "Just looking like a drive" is fine as it goes, but it certainly doesn't help with things like podcasts and automatically generated playlists.
I've also used a couple different phones to play music...the less said the better.
It was only after all this that I caved and got an iPod. iTunes isn't great, but it is a lot better than anything else I've ever used. (And don't tell say "Amarok" or "Banshee". Bleah. I've tried both. They are great when they aren't crapping out and failing to find an output device, or losing access to your music.)
I'm no Apple fanboy. I'm typing this on an Ubuntu box. My current phone is a T-Mobile G1. I've used all sorts of MP3 players from many different companies from long before the iPod even existed.
I suspect the person who is deluding himself is the person who refuses to accept that the player that owns the market is easier to use despite the people buying it saying "it is easier to use" and instead blames it on fanboyism and user stupidity.
I've used other players extensively. They are harder to use.
Yes. All those things make it harder to design a cohesive interface that does what people want.
Most people don't give a flying fuck about removable SD cards, OGG support, voice recording, FM tuners or a particular PC software player. They want something they can hook up to their computer and get music they got from something they put a CD in to get music, or clicked a button to get music. That is what 90% of the people buying players want, and they want it to be easy.
Which is why they buy iPods, not other players that come with shitty PC software and are full of hard-to-navigate menus full of features they don't give a crap about.
I've used a number of other players. I've tried the Walkman, the iRiver and a Sansa. I mean, really tried. I used the iRiver for a year and a half. And the iPod is hands down, *much* easier to use than any of those.
Because the iPod has a better user interface and comes with PC software that also has a better user interface.
The reason the other players fail to compete is because their designers concentrate on "more features" without concentrating on user interface, thereby creating a player that is harder to use and confusing.
As someone who voted for Obama, I sure hope to hell if he does a tenth of the illegal crap Bush seems to have, he is vindictively hounded out of office a lot sooner than 4 years from now.
Bastard. When I was twelve, my family couldn't afford a PDP-11!
Because it is in the best interest of the insurers to keep things bureaucratic and difficult to understand.
The cases that hit the news are rare. Having unfortunately lived through companies going out of business before, often it happens suddenly and obviously.
My group had open positions for three years solid. We were hiring as many good people as we could find. That stopped suddenly last November. Now we won't even replace people we lose.
I certainly hope this is temporary because obviously we still have the workload that had us expanding as fast as we could.
Ugh. I graduated in '87. It wasn't until the dotcom boom that I got onto a career path that didn't suck.