One problem with "self-published homemade works" is that there are few areas where these are yet of any quality.
When I want to buy a book, and it's not possible to see it first in a brinks'n'mortar store, I can go to Amazon and see what lots of previous readers have had to say about it, and what star score they gave it. That makes it pretty easy to differentiate between what's good and bad.
Please remember this is the same Apple that forced ebook prices higher because they wanted to take a larger cut than places like Amazon, but Apple forced publishes to set retail prices the same for all outlets.
You seem to have confused your vendors. Amazon originally offered 35% of the sales to the publisher, and kept 65% themselves. Sounds outrageous, but it represents what the paper book percentages are like.
Apple did the opposite and came in with 70/30 split in favour of the publisher. Amazon then has to change their deal to match.
Marginal? Even if it only has search, that's a massive gain over the index in a paper text book. (Speed and completeness).
Add to that that every photo can be colour, and fit in the text where it belongs, not on a separate set of "color plates" pages.
And that's the very bare minimum improvements in utility one can expect. The most is unlimited. An ebook could be an app and do every thing an app could do.
Quite so. I kept all my textbooks after college thinking that I'd have the need to refer to them. I can't remember opening any of them since I finished college. Might as well have rented them for a lower price.
I'm cool with ink printing on sustainable plant matter, and my little library *looks* awesome.
You'll be less happy when you've reached middle age and you've had to move all that dead tree pulp through 10 different house moves.
I've thrown away all my classics of literature on paper now, and replaced them with ebooks. It's made me very happy. I'd switch the rest too, if it wasn't for the cost. I wish I was at the start of my library creating life and could build a library of ebooks instead of a mountain of bound paper.
Hopefully, we'll get it either cheap enough to compensate
Well of course we will. Just as songs are cheaper than singles were, album downloads are cheaper than CDs, apps are down to 99c and existing ebooks are cheaper than their paper alternatives.
There are an awful lot of academics around that are capable of writing textbooks. But at the moment they have to get a publisher, and the publisher has to pay the printers, and then there's a bookseller who takes his cut.
Sounds like this is a bit like the iPhone app development. It'll let the authors deal direct with the store and set the prices. And it'll cut out all the middle-men.
It's not just that. The reason Apple took off in consumer electronics was the iPod, and the reason it took off was not the device itself, but because Apple hammered out distribution rights with major music publishers.
Actually I think it was the other way around. iTunes Music Store didn't launch until the iPad had been shipping for 18 months. And the iPod was a big success from the start.
iPod was originally marketed as something you could put your CD collection on and take it with you. It was the success of that that enabled Jobs to persuade the record labels to join in. Of course once iTMS was up and running the two formed a virtuous circle that pushed the iPod to ever greater heights of success.
I don't believe you think more than skin-deep about the dangers of the "walled garden" approach. The problem with Apple is very simple -- they have delegated themselves a right to approve how do you use "their" device and a right to charge you a tithe for everything that comes to you on "their" hardware. In effect, you've relinquished ownership, and, unlike some other platforms, you have no legal way out.
Oh don't be such a drama queen. There have been walled garden computers since at least the games consoles of the 1980s. And still the consumers are quite happy with them. There have been open consoles, and they've all failed. Given the choice of gaming on the "walled garden" consoles and open PCs, in the end the walled garden won majority share.
This "open" good; "walled garden" bad thing is ideology. And like all ideologies, it's wrong.
This is especially bad for the person who has paid the price for the Apple device.
Funnily enough the iPhone owner doesn't agree. He's more than happy with his virus free platform where he gets an enormous choice of quality apps in the 99c - $9.99 range.
Freetards amount to about 0.01% of the population. And they're the only ones that have negative views of a "walled garden".
It's not nearly as straightforward as that. Of course they tested the 3G. They even cut down the new functionality of iOS4 when running on the 3G. So that guarantees they did extensive testing - if its a dfferent build, or it behaves differently on different models, you have to test all that.
No, the problem is that they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. The 3G was the currrent model from Jun 08 to Jun 09. And iOS 4.0 came out in Jun 10. It will have been decided early on as a matter of policy that phones that may have been sold just a year earlier must be supported by 4.0. That's the rock.
On the other hand, they planned the major feature of 4.0 to be multitasking of 3rd party apps. It could have been put off until 5.0, but the competition had multitasking already. And multitasking means that more things hang around in memory. So devices need more memory to perform well. That's the hard place.
When developing 4.0 they won't have known till late in the game just what the performance was like on the 3G. And it wouldn't make sense at that stage to revert out the multitasking feature.
Things are never quite so straightforward as they seem from the outside. Not that I'm an Apple insider, but I did work for Symbian, so I've all too aware of the tradeoffs and difficulties involved.
Now, consider that Android developers and manufacturers also have these issues. In fact it's worse for them as the software and hardware developers are different companies. Many reviews of many Android devices have been critical of how sluggish they are - even with the OS they are preinstalled with, never mind updates. So your contention that you switched to a platform that handles this better just doesn't ring true. Apple's screwed up once in the rock and a hard place scenario, for Android this stuff is par for the course.
Apple pushed the iOS 4 update to my iPhone 3G (not 3GS). This caused it to slow down. Research indicated that others experienced this as well, and deduced that Apple is convincing their users to upgrade.
Which is the more likely explanation: 1) Apple made a mistake in supported the 3G one update too far. The 3G didn't have enough RAM and/or CPU to run 4.0 well. 2) Apple put special slow-down code in 4.0 so that when running on the 3G it is slowed down.
I predict that you are pimply faced, fat, sweaty, incredibly puffed up and self-important & still a virgin.
Your English grammar isn't very good. That would be a guess, not a prediction. A prediction is about the future. For example: I predict you will be reading this.
Some people may be posting from where anonymity is a necessity.
Are you really that stupid? You think my real name is BasilBrush?
but they're getting along just fine as is. Still, the idea of anyone breaking away right now is ludicrous.
They aren't suggesting right now. They're suggesting sometime in the next 100 years. That's a log time. The last US civil was only a bit more than a hundred years ago. The USSR only lasted 69 years.
The key is that "getting along just fine as is" bit. Those days are numbered. China is taking over as world superpower. That's going to have interesting effects on the USA.
Ahhh....When software doesn't run on Apple, it is my fault. When software doesn't run on Android, it is Android's fault.
That's a complete non-sequitur. I just corrected you on your misunderstanding of that fragmentation is. And called your bullshit on the idea that iPhones suffer more from it than Android.
That's not fragmentation. That's having an old phone.
Fragmentation is when you have lots of differing products running a platform at the same time. Like Android.
It's not the stepwise replacement of new models in a product line sequence. Like iPhone.
iOS has a small amount of fragmentation, in the divide between the iPhone and iPad line. But that's it.
Android has countless different current product lines from several manufacturers, nearly all of them different. That's severe fragmentation.
Luckily, I have an Android phone for day to day use so that apps actually work.
LOL! Deluded, troll or fanboy? Could be any of those. But either way it's clearly ridiculous to claim you can't run programs on iPhone due to fragmentation but you have no problem on Android. It's ridiculous even for someone who doesn't know what fragmentation means.
With Android it is the carrier, not the manufacturer, that updates it. In most cases the manufacturer provides plenty of updates.
Whatever the reason, few updates get to users.
Your argument, however, makes no sense. You suggest that the Android manufacturers have no incentive to update their phones, yet Apple has the incentive of "maintaining good will"?
It makes perfect sense, and you touched on it. Apple sees end users as their customers, and they often literally are... where people buy through the Apple Stores or Apple On-line. Other manufacturers see the networks as their customers, and only have to keep good-will with them.
If the latter is a good business model then Android manufacturers have the same incentive.
Apple has lots of good and successful attributes of the way they do business that no one else in the industry manages to replicate.
It is also based on the false premis that consumers are better off with an iPhone than an Android phone, when the reality is clearly the other way around.
It's not BASED on that PREMISE. That conclusion follows. And if you still don't believe it you can look at customer satisfactions surveys, that are invariably in favour of Apple. The latest one shows 75% of iPhone owners "very satifsfied" with their purcase, and only 47% of Android owners. That's very clear, unless you're blinded by fanboyism.
See what they're doing for a dual G5 Power Mac or the original iPhone?
What I said was: "Apple does see the value in doing software updates for old models, for as long as the old model has the power to run the new software OK."
If you recall, when iOS 4 was launched, there were complaints from iPhone3 3G owners because the performance was bad. In that case Apple had actually supported one step further than they should have done. Your question about the original iPhone, as if it should still be supported is ridiculous.
Mac G5 isn't supported anymore because the CPU architecture changed. It's not to do with a general unwillingness to release builds for older computers. Even so it was supported with new OS versions for 5 years.
My contrast was iOS to Android. With Android, if you get any updates at all you are lucky. You might get 1 year. You won't get 2 years.
I had to give my mom my newer Mac-Mini to replace her dual G5 since the version of iTunes available on the dual G5 couldn't load the latest IOS on her 3GS.
That's a bit strange, because the current version of iTunes still supports the G5. It will run on Leopard, and Leopard is compatible with G5. What's your problem?
Exactly. There is no money to be made on it after the sale of the TV for the manufacturer, and therefore no incentive to maintain / upgrade the service; or even fix it if it's broken. This is not a good business model for the consumer.
Rather like Android phones. That's why they don't get much in the way of updates from the manufacturer. And I suppose, also like Android phones, geeks will be able to get around that because it's Ubuntu underneath, and they can get community created builds.
Meanwhile, consumers that would prefer to get official software updates from the manufacturer will be better getting a "Smart TV" from Apple (once they release one). Just like they're better off with an iPhone. Apple does see the value in doing software updates for old models, for as long as the old model has the power to run the new software OK. Their incentive is maintaining the good will of their customers.
If the difference in price isn't enough to cover P&P, and your time in listing, packaging and visiting the post office, then you might as well take the money from the machine.
Your plan won't work. Once the data cable is plugged in, the door closes and you don't get access to your phone again unless you decide to decline the transaction.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect all patents on text book methods are long since expired.
One problem with "self-published homemade works" is that there are few areas where these are yet of any quality.
When I want to buy a book, and it's not possible to see it first in a brinks'n'mortar store, I can go to Amazon and see what lots of previous readers have had to say about it, and what star score they gave it. That makes it pretty easy to differentiate between what's good and bad.
Just the same with Apple's App Store.
And it'll be just the same with text books.
Please remember this is the same Apple that forced ebook prices higher because they wanted to take a larger cut than places like Amazon, but Apple forced publishes to set retail prices the same for all outlets.
You seem to have confused your vendors. Amazon originally offered 35% of the sales to the publisher, and kept 65% themselves. Sounds outrageous, but it represents what the paper book percentages are like.
Apple did the opposite and came in with 70/30 split in favour of the publisher. Amazon then has to change their deal to match.
Marginal? Even if it only has search, that's a massive gain over the index in a paper text book. (Speed and completeness).
Add to that that every photo can be colour, and fit in the text where it belongs, not on a separate set of "color plates" pages.
And that's the very bare minimum improvements in utility one can expect. The most is unlimited. An ebook could be an app and do every thing an app could do.
This isn't book burning. This is not cutting down trees in the first place.
Quite so. I kept all my textbooks after college thinking that I'd have the need to refer to them. I can't remember opening any of them since I finished college. Might as well have rented them for a lower price.
I'm cool with ink printing on sustainable plant matter, and my little library *looks* awesome.
You'll be less happy when you've reached middle age and you've had to move all that dead tree pulp through 10 different house moves.
I've thrown away all my classics of literature on paper now, and replaced them with ebooks. It's made me very happy. I'd switch the rest too, if it wasn't for the cost. I wish I was at the start of my library creating life and could build a library of ebooks instead of a mountain of bound paper.
Hopefully, we'll get it either cheap enough to compensate
Well of course we will. Just as songs are cheaper than singles were, album downloads are cheaper than CDs, apps are down to 99c and existing ebooks are cheaper than their paper alternatives.
There are an awful lot of academics around that are capable of writing textbooks. But at the moment they have to get a publisher, and the publisher has to pay the printers, and then there's a bookseller who takes his cut.
Sounds like this is a bit like the iPhone app development. It'll let the authors deal direct with the store and set the prices. And it'll cut out all the middle-men.
It's not just that. The reason Apple took off in consumer electronics was the iPod, and the reason it took off was not the device itself, but because Apple hammered out distribution rights with major music publishers.
Actually I think it was the other way around. iTunes Music Store didn't launch until the iPad had been shipping for 18 months. And the iPod was a big success from the start.
iPod was originally marketed as something you could put your CD collection on and take it with you. It was the success of that that enabled Jobs to persuade the record labels to join in. Of course once iTMS was up and running the two formed a virtuous circle that pushed the iPod to ever greater heights of success.
I don't believe you think more than skin-deep about the dangers of the "walled garden" approach. The problem with Apple is very simple -- they have delegated themselves a right to approve how do you use "their" device and a right to charge you a tithe for everything that comes to you on "their" hardware. In effect, you've relinquished ownership, and, unlike some other platforms, you have no legal way out.
Oh don't be such a drama queen. There have been walled garden computers since at least the games consoles of the 1980s. And still the consumers are quite happy with them. There have been open consoles, and they've all failed. Given the choice of gaming on the "walled garden" consoles and open PCs, in the end the walled garden won majority share.
This "open" good; "walled garden" bad thing is ideology. And like all ideologies, it's wrong.
This is especially bad for the person who has paid the price for the Apple device.
Funnily enough the iPhone owner doesn't agree. He's more than happy with his virus free platform where he gets an enormous choice of quality apps in the 99c - $9.99 range.
Freetards amount to about 0.01% of the population. And they're the only ones that have negative views of a "walled garden".
It's not nearly as straightforward as that. Of course they tested the 3G. They even cut down the new functionality of iOS4 when running on the 3G. So that guarantees they did extensive testing - if its a dfferent build, or it behaves differently on different models, you have to test all that.
No, the problem is that they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. The 3G was the currrent model from Jun 08 to Jun 09. And iOS 4.0 came out in Jun 10. It will have been decided early on as a matter of policy that phones that may have been sold just a year earlier must be supported by 4.0. That's the rock.
On the other hand, they planned the major feature of 4.0 to be multitasking of 3rd party apps. It could have been put off until 5.0, but the competition had multitasking already. And multitasking means that more things hang around in memory. So devices need more memory to perform well. That's the hard place.
When developing 4.0 they won't have known till late in the game just what the performance was like on the 3G. And it wouldn't make sense at that stage to revert out the multitasking feature.
Things are never quite so straightforward as they seem from the outside. Not that I'm an Apple insider, but I did work for Symbian, so I've all too aware of the tradeoffs and difficulties involved.
Now, consider that Android developers and manufacturers also have these issues. In fact it's worse for them as the software and hardware developers are different companies. Many reviews of many Android devices have been critical of how sluggish they are - even with the OS they are preinstalled with, never mind updates. So your contention that you switched to a platform that handles this better just doesn't ring true. Apple's screwed up once in the rock and a hard place scenario, for Android this stuff is par for the course.
Even if they are, that doesn't help many Android phone owners.
http://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-phones
Apple pushed the iOS 4 update to my iPhone 3G (not 3GS). This caused it to slow down. Research indicated that others experienced this as well, and deduced that Apple is convincing their users to upgrade.
Which is the more likely explanation:
1) Apple made a mistake in supported the 3G one update too far. The 3G didn't have enough RAM and/or CPU to run 4.0 well.
2) Apple put special slow-down code in 4.0 so that when running on the 3G it is slowed down.
Occam's razor.
It's only a matter of time. This story is about 100 year predictions. China is going to overtake the US and Europe way before then.
You're welcome.
I predict that you are pimply faced, fat, sweaty, incredibly puffed up and self-important & still a virgin.
Your English grammar isn't very good. That would be a guess, not a prediction. A prediction is about the future. For example: I predict you will be reading this.
Some people may be posting from where anonymity is a necessity.
Are you really that stupid? You think my real name is BasilBrush?
Not just the British Empire. The Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, The Russian Empire, The French Empire, The Spanish Empire, the USSR.
Empires rise, and then they fall again. The USA is on the same path as all the empire before it. Only the timing varies.
but they're getting along just fine as is. Still, the idea of anyone breaking away right now is ludicrous.
They aren't suggesting right now. They're suggesting sometime in the next 100 years. That's a log time. The last US civil was only a bit more than a hundred years ago. The USSR only lasted 69 years.
The key is that "getting along just fine as is" bit. Those days are numbered. China is taking over as world superpower. That's going to have interesting effects on the USA.
Ahhh....When software doesn't run on Apple, it is my fault. When software doesn't run on Android, it is Android's fault.
That's a complete non-sequitur. I just corrected you on your misunderstanding of that fragmentation is. And called your bullshit on the idea that iPhones suffer more from it than Android.
That's not fragmentation. That's having an old phone.
Fragmentation is when you have lots of differing products running a platform at the same time. Like Android.
It's not the stepwise replacement of new models in a product line sequence. Like iPhone.
iOS has a small amount of fragmentation, in the divide between the iPhone and iPad line. But that's it.
Android has countless different current product lines from several manufacturers, nearly all of them different. That's severe fragmentation.
Luckily, I have an Android phone for day to day use so that apps actually work.
LOL! Deluded, troll or fanboy? Could be any of those. But either way it's clearly ridiculous to claim you can't run programs on iPhone due to fragmentation but you have no problem on Android. It's ridiculous even for someone who doesn't know what fragmentation means.
With Android it is the carrier, not the manufacturer, that updates it. In most cases the manufacturer provides plenty of updates.
Whatever the reason, few updates get to users.
Your argument, however, makes no sense. You suggest that the Android manufacturers have no incentive to update their phones, yet Apple has the incentive of "maintaining good will"?
It makes perfect sense, and you touched on it. Apple sees end users as their customers, and they often literally are... where people buy through the Apple Stores or Apple On-line. Other manufacturers see the networks as their customers, and only have to keep good-will with them.
If the latter is a good business model then Android manufacturers have the same incentive.
Apple has lots of good and successful attributes of the way they do business that no one else in the industry manages to replicate.
It is also based on the false premis that consumers are better off with an iPhone than an Android phone, when the reality is clearly the other way around.
It's not BASED on that PREMISE. That conclusion follows.
And if you still don't believe it you can look at customer satisfactions surveys, that are invariably in favour of Apple. The latest one shows 75% of iPhone owners "very satifsfied" with their purcase, and only 47% of Android owners. That's very clear, unless you're blinded by fanboyism.
See what they're doing for a dual G5 Power Mac or the original iPhone?
What I said was:
"Apple does see the value in doing software updates for old models, for as long as the old model has the power to run the new software OK."
If you recall, when iOS 4 was launched, there were complaints from iPhone3 3G owners because the performance was bad. In that case Apple had actually supported one step further than they should have done. Your question about the original iPhone, as if it should still be supported is ridiculous.
Mac G5 isn't supported anymore because the CPU architecture changed. It's not to do with a general unwillingness to release builds for older computers. Even so it was supported with new OS versions for 5 years.
My contrast was iOS to Android. With Android, if you get any updates at all you are lucky. You might get 1 year. You won't get 2 years.
I had to give my mom my newer Mac-Mini to replace her dual G5 since the version of iTunes available on the dual G5 couldn't load the latest IOS on her 3GS.
That's a bit strange, because the current version of iTunes still supports the G5. It will run on Leopard, and Leopard is compatible with G5. What's your problem?
Exactly. There is no money to be made on it after the sale of the TV for the manufacturer, and therefore no incentive to maintain / upgrade the service; or even fix it if it's broken. This is not a good business model for the consumer.
Rather like Android phones. That's why they don't get much in the way of updates from the manufacturer. And I suppose, also like Android phones, geeks will be able to get around that because it's Ubuntu underneath, and they can get community created builds.
Meanwhile, consumers that would prefer to get official software updates from the manufacturer will be better getting a "Smart TV" from Apple (once they release one). Just like they're better off with an iPhone. Apple does see the value in doing software updates for old models, for as long as the old model has the power to run the new software OK. Their incentive is maintaining the good will of their customers.
So go to ebay first, check the price.
If the difference in price isn't enough to cover P&P, and your time in listing, packaging and visiting the post office, then you might as well take the money from the machine.
Your plan won't work. Once the data cable is plugged in, the door closes and you don't get access to your phone again unless you decide to decline the transaction.