Did anybody notice the bizarro contradiction in the description of this story? If Apple had "announced aggressive pricing," the referenced article wouldn't be talking about what Apple was "reportedly" going to do. It can be announced OR it can be just rumored. You can't reasonably use both words.
"And meanwhile, Apple has announced aggressive pricing on all Apple products for Black Friday, reportedly including $100 off on MacBook and iMac products, and a $61 discount on the iPad 2."
If you don't think so, then don't buy it. But there's a reason all the other tablets are still compared -- unfavorably -- to the iPad. That's not exactly a controversial assertion.
Believe whatever you want to, but the reviews aren't as positive as you claim. The reviews bear out that if you buy something cheap, you get a cheap experience. If that's what you want, you can save some money. I don't see what that would offend you. You don't get a premium experience for a cheapo price -- not in anything.
No, that's NOT what all the reviews say. Some of the reviews say it does a poor job on really basic things, such as page turns. If you like that -- and want a cheapo experience -- buy it. But don't expect an iPad experience for Fire prices. It won't happen.
I know this is a shock to the fanboys who demand that companies arbitrarily lower prices because they don't want to pay $500 for a tablet, but if you strip something down to a cheap price, there are tradeoffs. You lose some of what people want. OF COURSE it's not as good as an experience as something costing twice as much. Why in the world is this a surprise? If you don't mind the cheaper experience, buy the Fire. If you want something excellent and you think it's worth paying the money, get an iPad. Those are your choices. You can't expect an iPad experience at a Kindle Fire price. Decide whether you want cheap or good, but don't complain that reality won't let you have both.
It's insane to call Apple's FairPlay DRM a failed system, as the item for this says. The system did exactly what it was supposed to do. It allowed Apple to start legally selling something that the record labels wouldn't allow without it and then it was taken away when the labels agreed to go without it. The system worked as advertised. It achieved the goals of building a market for legal music. And then it went away. It was very successful and then it was retired when it was no longer needed.
The headline for this item plays into something that's very dangerous in the long term. This guy isn't "America's new CIO." He is the CIO for a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that runs the GOVERNMENT of this country. He has no power or influence over the country itself. People frequently indulge in the fiction that we elect a president to "run the country" -- and that leads to people having insane expectations and an insane willingness to turn power over to one man. Calling this guy the country's CIO is a small manifestation of the same mistake.
Please tell me you're not stupid enough (or ignorant enough) to think Siri is the same thing that Android has had. If you are, you're a moron or such a fanboy that you can't bother to understand the substantial differences.
If anyone wants to know just how disconnected from reality much of the "free" software world is, all he has to do is pat attention to Stallman's idiocy about this. Stallman certainly looks like a fool, as he frequently does, but the real news is that some of his supporters are so clueless and blind that they support him on this. If you're too stupid to understand why this statement was absurd and guaranteed to make you look foolish, then you're not bright enough to even try to influence popular opinion.
Among geeks, there is a substantial percentage who think it's cool to run multiple operating systems. There's an even smaller sub-set for whom it's truly useful. Among normal, everyday users, though, the percentage of users who want or need this is very, very tiny. Just managing ONE operating system is complicated for most non-geeks. They don't WANT to further complicate their tech lives by adding more operating systems. For some reason, it seems to be very difficult for geeks to understand that not everyone is like them -- and the fact that they don't want to do what you want to do doesn't make them stupid. It just means their priorities aren't the same as yours. So this capability isn't "everywhere" because there aren't enough people who need it or want it to make it a profitable feature to add. Simple.
I don't understand why so many people believe it's going to be possible for some company to produce a good tablet -- with decent specs -- and still sell it cheap. If you want a good tablet, you have to pay for the cost of those components. ANY $200 tablet is going to have very huge compromises -- at least until the cost of components come WAY down in years to come. Right now, if you want the best available tablet, buy an iPad if you just want a good user experience or an expensive Android tablet if you want to make it a hobby. Any of the cheapos are going to be disappointing to anyone with high expectations.
Maybe I don't have all of my brain cells firing this morning -- or maybe it's because I'm not a software developer -- but I don't have a clue what this API will actually allow people to do in real life if developers use it. Can someone explain in it in simple terms? Thanks.
I can't tell if you have problems with reading comprehension or if you're just stupid, but I don't have the time and inclination to teach you basic logic based on what was actually said, not what you want to be true.
I couldn't care less about "apologizing" for anyone. Apple is producing products that millions of people want. The fact that the geeky minority don't approve of what those people want doesn't make them wrong. You're letting your bias for the model that works for you get in the way of understanding why many other people want something different from your preference.
If you think that one company can produce the iPad AND the anti-iPad, you don't understand brands and positioning. That's for some other company to do. The same brand can't stand for both things.
What's even more ironic to me is that you don't seem to understand that Apple is succeeding BECAUSE it has a product that is "crippled," from your point of view. Your needs and wants are NOT the needs and wants of the majority. If Apple tried to cater to what you wanted, the company wouldn't have the huge hit that it has. Apple is focusing on what a much wider audience wants, NOT the desires of the geek crowd.
Air is great for people who care only about developing cross-platform apps cheaply and not about whether those apps fit with the rest of the platform they're running on. As a user, I won't use Air apps unless there's absolutely no other choice. For me, that's happened... never.
No, this isn't brave or any such nonsense. It's just a way to get publicity for a low-budget film that nobody would hear of otherwise. The odds of this succeeding are pretty close to zero. I'm a wannabe filmmaker, so I keep up with this world avidly. It might very well be a smart strategy that will attract the producer enough attention that he can leverage it into some financing. But it's not likely. Even if it worked, it would be a one-trick pony. I'm just surprised that some people are falling for something this obvious.
It's still the same picture. Period. It's visually identical except for the resolution. There's not a legal difference whether a machine reproduces it or a hand does.
Linking to random Wikipedia articles that aren't about the same thing doesn't do any good, does it? That case is about a thumbnail of something used as an online preview. The case we're talking about here is where an entire album's cover artwork copied the entire cover album artwork of another. If you can't see that this case is radically different from the one you're linking to without context, I can't help you.
I couldn't illustrate anything to save my life, but I've produced enough ads and publications for clients over the years (using other people's artwork) to know what counts as fair use and what you have to pay for on a commercial project. Your insinuation that it requires someone with a personal need to get paid for his work to understand the law on this point is pretty stupid.
If you take a photo that someone else owns and you run it through a Photoshop filter, that doesn't make it a different photo. Someone else still owns it. Period. It doesn't matter whether you like copyrights or not. It is insane to claim this case has anything to do with fair use. This is a blatant case of someone using a piece of art that he didn't own and just ASSUMING that the owner of the art wouldn't object. That was stupid. He was unlucky enough that the copyright owner asserted his correct legal rights. If Baio had taken the case to court, he would have lost -- 100 times out of 100. I don't care what his motives are. I don't care that he got correct legal permissions for the recordings. ALL of those things are irrelevant. You can't rip off art and use it the way you want if it's still under copyright. There isn't a fair use exception that will magically make it so.
Your comment is indicative of the kind of arrogance that makes people hate so many technically proficient people. Do you even realize how arrogant you are to call people "morons" because they don't happen to have the kind of technical understanding and knowledge that we have? I'm sorry, but it's YOUR ARROGANCE that marks you as the real moron.
People have different skills and knowledge. Yours (and mine) happens to be in a technical field, among others, presumably. But you have areas where you don't know anything, too. Everybody does. Just because people don't value YOUR subject area above all others doesn't mean they're morons who are "dumb users." Just as a person who doesn't want to be an auto mechanic isn't a moron when he simply wants his car to work without him futzing with it.
You really need to climb down from the high horse and realize that people aren't necessarily morons just because they don't know everything about IT that we know.
I use MobileMe and like it quite a bit. When the transition happened from.mac to MobileMe, it was rocky in the beginning. There were times even before that when there were periodic short outages (minutes, not hours) of one service or another. But I've not seen one of those outages in a long, long time. The services work great and I've never lost anything. Maybe you have some specific experience to the contrary, but I support seven users on MobileMe (including myself) and I've found it to be an excellent product at this point (and for quite some time).
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That's not the case. Apple hasn't announced anything. Read the stories. The description of this item is just plain wrong.
Did anybody notice the bizarro contradiction in the description of this story? If Apple had "announced aggressive pricing," the referenced article wouldn't be talking about what Apple was "reportedly" going to do. It can be announced OR it can be just rumored. You can't reasonably use both words.
"And meanwhile, Apple has announced aggressive pricing on all Apple products for Black Friday, reportedly including $100 off on MacBook and iMac products, and a $61 discount on the iPad 2."
If you don't think so, then don't buy it. But there's a reason all the other tablets are still compared -- unfavorably -- to the iPad. That's not exactly a controversial assertion.
Believe whatever you want to, but the reviews aren't as positive as you claim. The reviews bear out that if you buy something cheap, you get a cheap experience. If that's what you want, you can save some money. I don't see what that would offend you. You don't get a premium experience for a cheapo price -- not in anything.
No, that's NOT what all the reviews say. Some of the reviews say it does a poor job on really basic things, such as page turns. If you like that -- and want a cheapo experience -- buy it. But don't expect an iPad experience for Fire prices. It won't happen.
I know this is a shock to the fanboys who demand that companies arbitrarily lower prices because they don't want to pay $500 for a tablet, but if you strip something down to a cheap price, there are tradeoffs. You lose some of what people want. OF COURSE it's not as good as an experience as something costing twice as much. Why in the world is this a surprise? If you don't mind the cheaper experience, buy the Fire. If you want something excellent and you think it's worth paying the money, get an iPad. Those are your choices. You can't expect an iPad experience at a Kindle Fire price. Decide whether you want cheap or good, but don't complain that reality won't let you have both.
It's insane to call Apple's FairPlay DRM a failed system, as the item for this says. The system did exactly what it was supposed to do. It allowed Apple to start legally selling something that the record labels wouldn't allow without it and then it was taken away when the labels agreed to go without it. The system worked as advertised. It achieved the goals of building a market for legal music. And then it went away. It was very successful and then it was retired when it was no longer needed.
The headline for this item plays into something that's very dangerous in the long term. This guy isn't "America's new CIO." He is the CIO for a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that runs the GOVERNMENT of this country. He has no power or influence over the country itself. People frequently indulge in the fiction that we elect a president to "run the country" -- and that leads to people having insane expectations and an insane willingness to turn power over to one man. Calling this guy the country's CIO is a small manifestation of the same mistake.
Please tell me you're not stupid enough (or ignorant enough) to think Siri is the same thing that Android has had. If you are, you're a moron or such a fanboy that you can't bother to understand the substantial differences.
If anyone wants to know just how disconnected from reality much of the "free" software world is, all he has to do is pat attention to Stallman's idiocy about this. Stallman certainly looks like a fool, as he frequently does, but the real news is that some of his supporters are so clueless and blind that they support him on this. If you're too stupid to understand why this statement was absurd and guaranteed to make you look foolish, then you're not bright enough to even try to influence popular opinion.
Among geeks, there is a substantial percentage who think it's cool to run multiple operating systems. There's an even smaller sub-set for whom it's truly useful. Among normal, everyday users, though, the percentage of users who want or need this is very, very tiny. Just managing ONE operating system is complicated for most non-geeks. They don't WANT to further complicate their tech lives by adding more operating systems. For some reason, it seems to be very difficult for geeks to understand that not everyone is like them -- and the fact that they don't want to do what you want to do doesn't make them stupid. It just means their priorities aren't the same as yours. So this capability isn't "everywhere" because there aren't enough people who need it or want it to make it a profitable feature to add. Simple.
I don't understand why so many people believe it's going to be possible for some company to produce a good tablet -- with decent specs -- and still sell it cheap. If you want a good tablet, you have to pay for the cost of those components. ANY $200 tablet is going to have very huge compromises -- at least until the cost of components come WAY down in years to come. Right now, if you want the best available tablet, buy an iPad if you just want a good user experience or an expensive Android tablet if you want to make it a hobby. Any of the cheapos are going to be disappointing to anyone with high expectations.
Maybe I don't have all of my brain cells firing this morning -- or maybe it's because I'm not a software developer -- but I don't have a clue what this API will actually allow people to do in real life if developers use it. Can someone explain in it in simple terms? Thanks.
I can't tell if you have problems with reading comprehension or if you're just stupid, but I don't have the time and inclination to teach you basic logic based on what was actually said, not what you want to be true.
I couldn't care less about "apologizing" for anyone. Apple is producing products that millions of people want. The fact that the geeky minority don't approve of what those people want doesn't make them wrong. You're letting your bias for the model that works for you get in the way of understanding why many other people want something different from your preference.
If you think that one company can produce the iPad AND the anti-iPad, you don't understand brands and positioning. That's for some other company to do. The same brand can't stand for both things.
What's even more ironic to me is that you don't seem to understand that Apple is succeeding BECAUSE it has a product that is "crippled," from your point of view. Your needs and wants are NOT the needs and wants of the majority. If Apple tried to cater to what you wanted, the company wouldn't have the huge hit that it has. Apple is focusing on what a much wider audience wants, NOT the desires of the geek crowd.
Air is great for people who care only about developing cross-platform apps cheaply and not about whether those apps fit with the rest of the platform they're running on. As a user, I won't use Air apps unless there's absolutely no other choice. For me, that's happened ... never.
No, this isn't brave or any such nonsense. It's just a way to get publicity for a low-budget film that nobody would hear of otherwise. The odds of this succeeding are pretty close to zero. I'm a wannabe filmmaker, so I keep up with this world avidly. It might very well be a smart strategy that will attract the producer enough attention that he can leverage it into some financing. But it's not likely. Even if it worked, it would be a one-trick pony. I'm just surprised that some people are falling for something this obvious.
It's still the same picture. Period. It's visually identical except for the resolution. There's not a legal difference whether a machine reproduces it or a hand does.
Linking to random Wikipedia articles that aren't about the same thing doesn't do any good, does it? That case is about a thumbnail of something used as an online preview. The case we're talking about here is where an entire album's cover artwork copied the entire cover album artwork of another. If you can't see that this case is radically different from the one you're linking to without context, I can't help you.
I couldn't illustrate anything to save my life, but I've produced enough ads and publications for clients over the years (using other people's artwork) to know what counts as fair use and what you have to pay for on a commercial project. Your insinuation that it requires someone with a personal need to get paid for his work to understand the law on this point is pretty stupid.
If you take a photo that someone else owns and you run it through a Photoshop filter, that doesn't make it a different photo. Someone else still owns it. Period. It doesn't matter whether you like copyrights or not. It is insane to claim this case has anything to do with fair use. This is a blatant case of someone using a piece of art that he didn't own and just ASSUMING that the owner of the art wouldn't object. That was stupid. He was unlucky enough that the copyright owner asserted his correct legal rights. If Baio had taken the case to court, he would have lost -- 100 times out of 100. I don't care what his motives are. I don't care that he got correct legal permissions for the recordings. ALL of those things are irrelevant. You can't rip off art and use it the way you want if it's still under copyright. There isn't a fair use exception that will magically make it so.
Your comment is indicative of the kind of arrogance that makes people hate so many technically proficient people. Do you even realize how arrogant you are to call people "morons" because they don't happen to have the kind of technical understanding and knowledge that we have? I'm sorry, but it's YOUR ARROGANCE that marks you as the real moron. People have different skills and knowledge. Yours (and mine) happens to be in a technical field, among others, presumably. But you have areas where you don't know anything, too. Everybody does. Just because people don't value YOUR subject area above all others doesn't mean they're morons who are "dumb users." Just as a person who doesn't want to be an auto mechanic isn't a moron when he simply wants his car to work without him futzing with it. You really need to climb down from the high horse and realize that people aren't necessarily morons just because they don't know everything about IT that we know.
I use MobileMe and like it quite a bit. When the transition happened from .mac to MobileMe, it was rocky in the beginning. There were times even before that when there were periodic short outages (minutes, not hours) of one service or another. But I've not seen one of those outages in a long, long time. The services work great and I've never lost anything. Maybe you have some specific experience to the contrary, but I support seven users on MobileMe (including myself) and I've found it to be an excellent product at this point (and for quite some time).