I've heard it explained thusly: if car insurance worked like health insurance, then every time you put gas in your tank, got an oil change, bought tires, etc., you would file a claim.
If it worked like the UK National Health Service, all those things would be free at the point of delivery.
Everyone would pay for it in general taxation. But that amount added to taxation would be only 40% of what American's pay for their health insurance. And the payments would be progressive (more paid by the rich, less or nothing paid by the poor).
Then you don't understand the Obamacare debate at all. The "mega-corporations run by white fat cats" wanted healthcare the old and extremely profitable way. They didn't want affordable healthcare. They fought Obama every step of the way. It's to Obama's credit that he managed to get as far as he did against them.
For iOS7, isn't it convenient that an iOS7 jailbreak just happened to come out? And who's to bet that the NSA doesn't have more jailbreaks at the ready? Perhaps that's how ev4ders7 got their jailbreak?
Not sure I follow the logic of your conspiracy theory here. If the NSA were the first to have a jailbreak iOS7, what benefit would they get from publishing it? Them being the only ones having it would be to their benefit.
It seems terribly overpriced to me. But then self-study language courses tend to be.
And I found it terribly slow to cover material. Way too many repetitions of the same old stuff.
Assimil is a French company, so their courses tend not to be so commonly stocked at bookstores as American and English companies. But they do courses to learn various languages starting from English. They were recommended to me by a German polyglot, and I have found the French language one to be excellent. Though as I say, it's a shame there's not a computer version.
For taking photos, photo editing, shooting videos, video editing, recording music, music composition, sound editing, and writing tablets are clearly crap.
They are better than classic computers for:
1) taking photos and videos (at best the classic computer has a webcam, which is useless for much except skype and vlogging - tablet cameras are mobile), photo editing (direct manipulation with a stylus - at best the classic computer has a tablet for indirect manipulation - but most only have a mouse),
2) recording music (see limitations of webcam, and apply to computer mics).
3) music composition (the ui can allow direct manipulation of notes on a stave, or an actual instrument, compare and contrast with using a qwerty keyboard and a mouse.
For video editing and sound editing, classic computers are only better because of the possibility of a bigger screen. A large screen tablet and better software could be better than a classic computer, again because of direct manipulation, and the possibility to represent a purpose made button array, rather than misused qwerty keyboard.
And then there's all the other thousands of creative activities that are also better on a tablet.
Tablets are consumption tools. Computers are production tools.
Only true if you are limited in consider "production" (creation) as a text only activity. For most other kinds of creation, a tablet is far better than a classic computer.
Also, most classic computers are used mostly for consumption. So the flip side of your dichotomy doesn't work either.
Thanks for the pointer to DuoLingo. I've been looking for something that makes my French learning feel like playing a game. So far DuoLingo looks promising.
Rosetta stone is shit. I doubt many people learn much from that. And it's so overpriced.
Up to now the best I've found was Assimil. But as a book and CD experience it seems so old fashioned.
Depends what you do in life. For average worker bee employees you are right. But there are plenty of entrepreneurs that are terrible at "tests". They excel at doing things their own way, thinking out of the box, and having people skills. Likewise plenty of creatives are terrible at tests, for similar reasons.
Tests are there to categorise people. They're not great at picking out high performing individualists.
An HTML5 app isn't really going to be laid out any different between platforms. The only differences would be in color schemes and widgits, think Apple vs Android number pickers, select boxes, etc...
There's resolution too. Targeting iPad gives them a fixed aspect ratio, and only 2 resolutions, with one being an exact doubling of the other.
Plus many of the educational products aren't apps at all, they are ebooks, with interactive widgets. Using Apple's iBooks Author, a book author and an artist can prepare a finished high quality interactive ebook with no programming or web development skills whatsoever.
And they have little incentive to do anything else, as the iPad is the usual tablet that schools use.
Why should they make more work for themselves and come up with an inferior product when there's little benefit to themselves.
Only rich people or people who are bad with money can afford to have them for their children. I'm sure that Obama will buy them for the poor folks. But the middle class people are then left out. They can't afford to buy one because they are subsidizing them for the poor people.
It's a peculiarly American thing to feel sorry for the middle class. It's a bit like white folks feeling they've been hard done to because they don't have as much discrimination to benefit from these days.
Universal education is one of those things that are best done by the government rather than the private sector. It may not seem so because private schools do tend to get good exam results as things stand. But that's only because they select pupils, both literally, and as a result of kids with social problems not tending to have parents that are willing and able to pay the fees. Start paying private schools, to take every kid, at the same price per kid as government schools, and their results will dip below existing schools. Profits have to come from somewhere, and in such situations they come from cutting corners.
Example: Direct manipulation to scroll, rather than using a D-Pad or manipulation of scroll bars.
Example: Tap to zoom.
Example: Two finger zoom.
Apple was the first to bring these things to a phone. They were previously thought to be concepts for very large screen devices. They are far more fundamental to the look and feel Apple brought to phones than any of the peripheral features you mention.
Google copied iOS when they restarted their Android development.
Right so Android's use of widgets, pull down notifications, separate home screen and app drawer, copy-paste features, different lock screen, support for flash is somehow a copy of Apple because the app icons weren't laid out in the square or hexagon? I'm describing Android 1.0 by the way.
Android's 1.0's inclusion of some features that were not in iPhone 1.0 does nothing to cancel out the fundamental copying of the look and feel that Google did do.
The fact is the early Android UI was a rip off of Blackberry. After the iPhone came out, Google changed direction, and copied iPhone instead.
Except they don't. In Ireland a company owes taxes where it's controlled from (the US). But by US law, it owes them where its mailbox is (Ireland). Thus Apple pay them nowhere.
Apple pays tax on it's EU hardware sales in Ireland. And on it's iTunes sales in Luxemberg. They are low tax rates, and that's why Apple arranges things to pay them there, but they are not zero rate.
Sure there are gaps in Apple's offerings. But that is a very different thing than Apple being overpriced for a given spec and quality.
it lacks wifi
I have no idea what you are talking about. What lacks WiFi?
who the fuck buys a new monitor and keyboard every time they buy a PC
The vast majority of people. Maybe the fact that you've lost sight of mainstream PC buyers is the reason you don't see how well Apple serves the high end of that market.
Right. But Minix was intended for educational use. It was intended to inspire and equip students to create their own OSs. Which is exactly what Linux did.
Not so when Google based their restarted Android development look and feel on the iPhone.
The fact that the first generation of Android phones looked more like blackberries while those that came later looked more like iphones is no more reason to suspect that they copied the iphone than...
In the article I linked to, Android Engineer Chris DeSalvo, and director of the Android team Andy Rubin both admit that they stopped development of Android and started in a whole new direction after the day they saw the iPhone. There is no inevitability of a one-true phone design here. Simply a company seeing that their competitor has a far better product than the one they have in development, and so they changed direction and widely copied it's look and feel.
We have the documented cause and effect here. The LG Prada was a coincidence - release dates make that clear. But the Android becoming iPhone like after having seen the iPhone is admitted to by the people that did it.
So perhaps, instead of anyone copying anybody else, smartphones look and operate the way they do because it is a design that comes spontaneously from a combination of the evolution of technology, intuitive operation, and overall practicality...
I'm afraid not. See here for the story from an Android Engineer, about the day they saw the iPhone unveiled, and they had to start again from scratch on their design.
It's no coincidence that Android phones have so many similarities to the iPhone. It's plagiarism, pure and simple.
Now I'm not saying that Apple have never copied other people's features. But lets not deny that Google did it on a vast scale when they reengineered Android to look more like the iPhone.
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I've heard it explained thusly: if car insurance worked like health insurance, then every time you put gas in your tank, got an oil change, bought tires, etc., you would file a claim.
If it worked like the UK National Health Service, all those things would be free at the point of delivery.
Everyone would pay for it in general taxation. But that amount added to taxation would be only 40% of what American's pay for their health insurance. And the payments would be progressive (more paid by the rich, less or nothing paid by the poor).
Then you don't understand the Obamacare debate at all. The "mega-corporations run by white fat cats" wanted healthcare the old and extremely profitable way. They didn't want affordable healthcare. They fought Obama every step of the way. It's to Obama's credit that he managed to get as far as he did against them.
For iOS7, isn't it convenient that an iOS7 jailbreak just happened to come out? And who's to bet that the NSA doesn't have more jailbreaks at the ready? Perhaps that's how ev4ders7 got their jailbreak?
Not sure I follow the logic of your conspiracy theory here. If the NSA were the first to have a jailbreak iOS7, what benefit would they get from publishing it? Them being the only ones having it would be to their benefit.
It seems terribly overpriced to me. But then self-study language courses tend to be.
And I found it terribly slow to cover material. Way too many repetitions of the same old stuff.
Assimil is a French company, so their courses tend not to be so commonly stocked at bookstores as American and English companies. But they do courses to learn various languages starting from English. They were recommended to me by a German polyglot, and I have found the French language one to be excellent. Though as I say, it's a shame there's not a computer version.
For taking photos, photo editing, shooting videos, video editing, recording music, music composition, sound editing, and writing tablets are clearly crap.
They are better than classic computers for:
1) taking photos and videos (at best the classic computer has a webcam, which is useless for much except skype and vlogging - tablet cameras are mobile), photo editing (direct manipulation with a stylus - at best the classic computer has a tablet for indirect manipulation - but most only have a mouse),
2) recording music (see limitations of webcam, and apply to computer mics).
3) music composition (the ui can allow direct manipulation of notes on a stave, or an actual instrument, compare and contrast with using a qwerty keyboard and a mouse.
For video editing and sound editing, classic computers are only better because of the possibility of a bigger screen. A large screen tablet and better software could be better than a classic computer, again because of direct manipulation, and the possibility to represent a purpose made button array, rather than misused qwerty keyboard.
And then there's all the other thousands of creative activities that are also better on a tablet.
Tablets are consumption tools. Computers are production tools.
Only true if you are limited in consider "production" (creation) as a text only activity. For most other kinds of creation, a tablet is far better than a classic computer.
Also, most classic computers are used mostly for consumption. So the flip side of your dichotomy doesn't work either.
Thanks for the pointer to DuoLingo. I've been looking for something that makes my French learning feel like playing a game. So far DuoLingo looks promising.
Rosetta stone is shit. I doubt many people learn much from that. And it's so overpriced.
Up to now the best I've found was Assimil. But as a book and CD experience it seems so old fashioned.
You have a house to rent out, and yet you feel sorry for yourself? Because you feel poor people aren't as poor as you want them to be. How pathetic.
Depends what you do in life. For average worker bee employees you are right. But there are plenty of entrepreneurs that are terrible at "tests". They excel at doing things their own way, thinking out of the box, and having people skills. Likewise plenty of creatives are terrible at tests, for similar reasons.
Tests are there to categorise people. They're not great at picking out high performing individualists.
An HTML5 app isn't really going to be laid out any different between platforms. The only differences would be in color schemes and widgits, think Apple vs Android number pickers, select boxes, etc...
There's resolution too. Targeting iPad gives them a fixed aspect ratio, and only 2 resolutions, with one being an exact doubling of the other.
Plus many of the educational products aren't apps at all, they are ebooks, with interactive widgets. Using Apple's iBooks Author, a book author and an artist can prepare a finished high quality interactive ebook with no programming or web development skills whatsoever.
And they have little incentive to do anything else, as the iPad is the usual tablet that schools use.
Why should they make more work for themselves and come up with an inferior product when there's little benefit to themselves.
Only rich people or people who are bad with money can afford to have them for their children. I'm sure that Obama will buy them for the poor folks. But the middle class people are then left out. They can't afford to buy one because they are subsidizing them for the poor people.
It's a peculiarly American thing to feel sorry for the middle class. It's a bit like white folks feeling they've been hard done to because they don't have as much discrimination to benefit from these days.
Universal education is one of those things that are best done by the government rather than the private sector. It may not seem so because private schools do tend to get good exam results as things stand. But that's only because they select pupils, both literally, and as a result of kids with social problems not tending to have parents that are willing and able to pay the fees. Start paying private schools, to take every kid, at the same price per kid as government schools, and their results will dip below existing schools. Profits have to come from somewhere, and in such situations they come from cutting corners.
Again expand on this with examples.
Example: Direct manipulation to scroll, rather than using a D-Pad or manipulation of scroll bars.
Example: Tap to zoom.
Example: Two finger zoom.
Apple was the first to bring these things to a phone. They were previously thought to be concepts for very large screen devices. They are far more fundamental to the look and feel Apple brought to phones than any of the peripheral features you mention.
Google copied iOS when they restarted their Android development.
Right so Android's use of widgets, pull down notifications, separate home screen and app drawer, copy-paste features, different lock screen, support for flash is somehow a copy of Apple because the app icons weren't laid out in the square or hexagon?
I'm describing Android 1.0 by the way.
Android's 1.0's inclusion of some features that were not in iPhone 1.0 does nothing to cancel out the fundamental copying of the look and feel that Google did do.
The fact is the early Android UI was a rip off of Blackberry. After the iPhone came out, Google changed direction, and copied iPhone instead.
I suppose you may say Windows 8 now copied Apple too
No, because the Windows 8 UI is original. It's not based on either of Apple's UIs. Android's UI isn't original, it's largely a copy of iOS.
Except they don't. In Ireland a company owes taxes where it's controlled from (the US). But by US law, it owes them where its mailbox is (Ireland). Thus Apple pay them nowhere.
Apple pays tax on it's EU hardware sales in Ireland. And on it's iTunes sales in Luxemberg. They are low tax rates, and that's why Apple arranges things to pay them there, but they are not zero rate.
Which is fine, as all the patents on hammers are long past. Google and Samsung's error was that they didn't wait for patents to expire before copying.
you'll find that the Mac is more expensive pretty much every single time
Because when you do that, you're inevitably comparing a cheap and nasty PC to a quality Mac. No-one ever said Apple serve the low end market.
Sure. What they have to give back is money.
They just can't offer me the PC I want.
Sure there are gaps in Apple's offerings. But that is a very different thing than Apple being overpriced for a given spec and quality.
it lacks wifi
I have no idea what you are talking about. What lacks WiFi?
who the fuck buys a new monitor and keyboard every time they buy a PC
The vast majority of people. Maybe the fact that you've lost sight of mainstream PC buyers is the reason you don't see how well Apple serves the high end of that market.
Right. But Minix was intended for educational use. It was intended to inspire and equip students to create their own OSs. Which is exactly what Linux did.
Not so when Google based their restarted Android development look and feel on the iPhone.
The fact that the first generation of Android phones looked more like blackberries while those that came later looked more like iphones is no more reason to suspect that they copied the iphone than...
In the article I linked to, Android Engineer Chris DeSalvo, and director of the Android team Andy Rubin both admit that they stopped development of Android and started in a whole new direction after the day they saw the iPhone. There is no inevitability of a one-true phone design here. Simply a company seeing that their competitor has a far better product than the one they have in development, and so they changed direction and widely copied it's look and feel.
We have the documented cause and effect here. The LG Prada was a coincidence - release dates make that clear. But the Android becoming iPhone like after having seen the iPhone is admitted to by the people that did it.
Then, we turn around, sued Apple for a monopoly and break it into 20 separate companies that will spend the next 50 years reunifying.
There is not illegal to have a monopoly.
Unfortunately, whilst Asia is the biggest manufacturer, the USA is the world's biggest consumer. They need each other.
So perhaps, instead of anyone copying anybody else, smartphones look and operate the way they do because it is a design that comes spontaneously from a combination of the evolution of technology, intuitive operation, and overall practicality...
I'm afraid not. See here for the story from an Android Engineer, about the day they saw the iPhone unveiled, and they had to start again from scratch on their design.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479/
It's no coincidence that Android phones have so many similarities to the iPhone. It's plagiarism, pure and simple.
Now I'm not saying that Apple have never copied other people's features. But lets not deny that Google did it on a vast scale when they reengineered Android to look more like the iPhone.