But really, it's a pointless discussion. Ethernet for laptops is almost dead. Laptops are made to be mobile.
It might not be dead for you, but then you present yourself as a budget computer buyer, so it's hardly surprising you're behind the times on technology. Very few real potential purchasers of a MBP are going to be put off by the lack of inbuilt ethernet. Any more than they were put off by the removal of floppy disks, RS232, Centronics printer ports, and VGA.
I don't agree. Neither that it's unpopular "by all accounts". Nor that the disappearance this year means it's a dead product for the future. As I say, it's just that a standard res 17" won't sit well in a rational single product range alongside a retina 15".
Remember one of the early things Jobs did when he returned to Apple was rationalise the product range. To remove difficult product decisions. Better to have a clear top of the range than to have people wondering whether the 15" retina or the 17" standard res is the top of the range.
The thing is, other than the screen, the Macs tend to be worse spec-wise than that half-priced PC.
Bullshit.
They also tend on average to last 3 years, with the Macs lasting (if the propaganda being believed) 3-5. This means after 5 years, I have a much newer laptop with far superior specs at the same price as that one Mac
Pardon? You're trying to paint the longer useful life of Macs as a negative?
They also keep their value better, so whereas you'll be junking that 3 year old Wintel, you'll be getting a decent price on eBay for a 3 year old Mac.
not to mention not carrying around a gigantic thief-magnet.
Yeah. Were back to the Kia vs BMW again. Your recommendation seems to be buy something that's undesirable, so that no one will steal it. How can I say this. No. Things that are desirable are desirable for a reason. You can keep the crap.
The technology presumably isn't ready for an affordable 17" retina display this year.
And having a 17" with a significantly lower resolution than the 15" wouldn't make for a rational product line.
Expect 17" with retina display to be next year's flagship product. In the mean-time, anyone who really needs a current-as-of-yesterday resolution 17" MBP will no doubt find some vendor with them still in stock at a discount.
WiFi isn't everywhere. But it's at a hell of a lot more places than ethernet. Last time I used ethernet was 2009.
Are you saying that Laptop should be held up thickness wise, at the point where the body can accomodate an RJ45?
The minority of people that are still ufing ethernet for laptops need to carry an ethernet cable with them anyway. It's no hardship to them to take a cable with a dongle in instead. Meanwhile the majority who use WiFi now get a better laptop.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but that accusation is weak. It tails off at the end with a lack of explanation about how Microsoft are doing it, even though they managed to engineer exactly the circumstances required... installing certain software on engineers laptops and sending them out to do certain searches repeatedly.
The truth is that Microsoft's toolbar is spyware, installed with permission. It adds data to Bing by analysing ever page the user visits, and ranking the most important links for the text by what the user clicks on. EVERY PAGE, not Google's in particular.
Likewise Google get their data by analysing EVERY PAGE they can find by spidering from site to site through links.
Google know this, but don't explain it. It's just a bitch slap.
I've also used both. There are nice things about iOS. It's definitely prettier (though ICS is damn slick) and slightly 'smoother'.
And more stable. I only know 2 people in real life that have Androids, and in the short time I've seen each of them using the things, they've both had to restart them. Both whilst using them as Satnavs. I don't know if the instability is limited to sat nav - it's just the only time I ever see anyone using an Android. Oh, and the GPS accuracy in both cases was appalling too.
There's nothing to stop people or companies protecting their creations in multiple ways. Just like in safety engineering, redundancy is to make things safer - in this case legally.
That's interesting, but doesn't change the example's use to point out that Apple patenting a shape is neither new nor unusual. It's one of the primary intended purposes of a design patent.
Take a look at the device. It doesn't look anything like a Macbook Air.
Bear in mind the design patent doesn't say anything about wedge shapes. That was the CNet reporter. Hence the word is irrelevant. It's the look of the device as represented by the drawings in the design patent that matter.
It's like you've never heard of a design patent before. What the hell do you think the design patent on the classic Coca-Cola bottle was other than a patent on a shape?
Apple fans love that version of events but it just isn't so. The Blackberry-esque device was only one prototype. There were fully touch enabled prototypes being tested in the same time frame:
It's not a matter of who likes it, it's just the facts. That blogger's opinion is just wrong. The video he shows dates to Nov 2007. That's 10 months AFTER the iPhone was launched. And you see a pretty complete Blackberry clone, but a rudimentary port to what at first appears an iPhone like device. So rudimentary that for most options, the touchscreen isn't available. They never show the area below the screen but from the thumb movements it's clear that the there is a d-pad there.
The video doesn't show that they were developing an iPhone like device in the same time frame as the Blackberry like device at all. It shows them towards the end of preparing a Blackberry device, and in the early stages of adapting a PocketPC like device to look more like an iPhone.
Of course this is obvious even to you Android Fanboys. But your apologism has no care for the truth.
No, it matters. It matters where the carbon came from that is being converted to CO2. If it's coming from a biofuel, then it's carbon neutral. If it's a fossil fuel, it's increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
There's no advantage to confusing the term fossil fuel, which has a clear meaning. It means fuel containing carbon that has been previously locked up underground for millions of years.
... and note that it's hardly something Apple came up with first. For instance, high-end stereos in the '70s had tuning knobs that did this (and it was clearly a "design" rather than an artifact of the mechanism).
And there lies the difference between inspiration and copying.
The Beatles were inspired by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley amongst others. But they didn't copy them.
Using the idea of a mechanical analogue tuning system for a radio for a a digital electronic media player is inspiration. Doing a phone design that's just like a competitors phone design is copying.
Unfortunately for you your apologism is trivially blown out of the water by the fact that Samsung couldn't help themselves and even copied the design of the charger. Only changing the colour. If you're saying that's the only way a charger can be reasonably designed, you're insane.
Slashdot Mirror
I cant comment as I've never seen one.
But really, it's a pointless discussion. Ethernet for laptops is almost dead. Laptops are made to be mobile.
It might not be dead for you, but then you present yourself as a budget computer buyer, so it's hardly surprising you're behind the times on technology. Very few real potential purchasers of a MBP are going to be put off by the lack of inbuilt ethernet. Any more than they were put off by the removal of floppy disks, RS232, Centronics printer ports, and VGA.
I don't agree. Neither that it's unpopular "by all accounts". Nor that the disappearance this year means it's a dead product for the future. As I say, it's just that a standard res 17" won't sit well in a rational single product range alongside a retina 15".
Remember one of the early things Jobs did when he returned to Apple was rationalise the product range. To remove difficult product decisions. Better to have a clear top of the range than to have people wondering whether the 15" retina or the 17" standard res is the top of the range.
The thing is, other than the screen, the Macs tend to be worse spec-wise than that half-priced PC.
Bullshit.
They also tend on average to last 3 years, with the Macs lasting (if the propaganda being believed) 3-5. This means after 5 years, I have a much newer laptop with far superior specs at the same price as that one Mac
Pardon? You're trying to paint the longer useful life of Macs as a negative?
They also keep their value better, so whereas you'll be junking that 3 year old Wintel, you'll be getting a decent price on eBay for a 3 year old Mac.
not to mention not carrying around a gigantic thief-magnet.
Yeah. Were back to the Kia vs BMW again. Your recommendation seems to be buy something that's undesirable, so that no one will steal it. How can I say this. No. Things that are desirable are desirable for a reason. You can keep the crap.
I think Macs tend to make a rather poor budgeting choice.
So Macs aren't the budget choice. And especially not the Pro range. If it's budget you want, there are plenty of other choices.
Similarly buy a Kia rather than a BMW when you buy a car.
I don't see anyone using it. Last time I used it was 2009.
Shut the fuck up and read the configurations you can get when you buy.
You probably need to see a retina display alongside a standard one to appreciate it.
It certainly makes more sense than HDTV does.
By that argument, we'd all still be limited on laptop size by the volume of a 3.5" floppy drive. Even though few people use them any more.
On the store now. $29.
That's hardly going to break the budget for a top of the line $2,199 laptop buyer.
If you need 16GB of memory, buy it with 16B of memory in the first place.
The technology presumably isn't ready for an affordable 17" retina display this year.
And having a 17" with a significantly lower resolution than the 15" wouldn't make for a rational product line.
Expect 17" with retina display to be next year's flagship product. In the mean-time, anyone who really needs a current-as-of-yesterday resolution 17" MBP will no doubt find some vendor with them still in stock at a discount.
WiFi isn't everywhere. But it's at a hell of a lot more places than ethernet. Last time I used ethernet was 2009.
Are you saying that Laptop should be held up thickness wise, at the point where the body can accomodate an RJ45?
The minority of people that are still ufing ethernet for laptops need to carry an ethernet cable with them anyway. It's no hardship to them to take a cable with a dongle in instead. Meanwhile the majority who use WiFi now get a better laptop.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but that accusation is weak. It tails off at the end with a lack of explanation about how Microsoft are doing it, even though they managed to engineer exactly the circumstances required... installing certain software on engineers laptops and sending them out to do certain searches repeatedly.
The truth is that Microsoft's toolbar is spyware, installed with permission. It adds data to Bing by analysing ever page the user visits, and ranking the most important links for the text by what the user clicks on. EVERY PAGE, not Google's in particular.
Likewise Google get their data by analysing EVERY PAGE they can find by spidering from site to site through links.
Google know this, but don't explain it. It's just a bitch slap.
I've also used both. There are nice things about iOS. It's definitely prettier (though ICS is damn slick) and slightly 'smoother'.
And more stable. I only know 2 people in real life that have Androids, and in the short time I've seen each of them using the things, they've both had to restart them. Both whilst using them as Satnavs. I don't know if the instability is limited to sat nav - it's just the only time I ever see anyone using an Android. Oh, and the GPS accuracy in both cases was appalling too.
It's nothing to do with grammar, it's semantics. And for the reason I stated earlier, semantics matter.
And your mistake was also quite funny. I probably wouldn't have bothered otherwise.
There's nothing to stop people or companies protecting their creations in multiple ways. Just like in safety engineering, redundancy is to make things safer - in this case legally.
That's interesting, but doesn't change the example's use to point out that Apple patenting a shape is neither new nor unusual. It's one of the primary intended purposes of a design patent.
Can't say I'd confuse the two even from from the opposite sides of a very large room.
Take a look at the device. It doesn't look anything like a Macbook Air.
Bear in mind the design patent doesn't say anything about wedge shapes. That was the CNet reporter. Hence the word is irrelevant. It's the look of the device as represented by the drawings in the design patent that matter.
It's like you've never heard of a design patent before. What the hell do you think the design patent on the classic Coca-Cola bottle was other than a patent on a shape?
Sorry? What's the significance of this discontinued Android laptop that came out 2 years after the Macbook Air?
Apple fans love that version of events but it just isn't so. The Blackberry-esque device was only one prototype. There were fully touch enabled prototypes being tested in the same time frame:
It's not a matter of who likes it, it's just the facts. That blogger's opinion is just wrong. The video he shows dates to Nov 2007. That's 10 months AFTER the iPhone was launched. And you see a pretty complete Blackberry clone, but a rudimentary port to what at first appears an iPhone like device. So rudimentary that for most options, the touchscreen isn't available. They never show the area below the screen but from the thumb movements it's clear that the there is a d-pad there.
The video doesn't show that they were developing an iPhone like device in the same time frame as the Blackberry like device at all. It shows them towards the end of preparing a Blackberry device, and in the early stages of adapting a PocketPC like device to look more like an iPhone.
Of course this is obvious even to you Android Fanboys. But your apologism has no care for the truth.
No, it matters. It matters where the carbon came from that is being converted to CO2. If it's coming from a biofuel, then it's carbon neutral. If it's a fossil fuel, it's increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
There's no advantage to confusing the term fossil fuel, which has a clear meaning. It means fuel containing carbon that has been previously locked up underground for millions of years.
... and note that it's hardly something Apple came up with first. For instance, high-end stereos in the '70s had tuning knobs that did this (and it was clearly a "design" rather than an artifact of the mechanism).
And there lies the difference between inspiration and copying.
The Beatles were inspired by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley amongst others. But they didn't copy them.
Using the idea of a mechanical analogue tuning system for a radio for a a digital electronic media player is inspiration. Doing a phone design that's just like a competitors phone design is copying.
Unfortunately for you your apologism is trivially blown out of the water by the fact that Samsung couldn't help themselves and even copied the design of the charger. Only changing the colour. If you're saying that's the only way a charger can be reasonably designed, you're insane.
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/09/24/samsung-charger/