Why would you want to use it in an open plan office? You have a computer with a big screen, keyboard and mouse/trackpad in front of you.
I can certainly see it being used in the car. Operating a keyboard is quite difficult whilst driving.
And I can see it being used for dictation by those people who have private offices - just as dictaphones used to be used by them for that purpose.
A screwdriver is no good for banging nails in. But it's very useful for screws. Tools don't have to be good for everything. They just have to be the best tool in some situations.
Just because you can't eat soup with a fork doesn't make a fork a bad eating implement.
Speech recognition isn't for saying the name of keystrokes whilst editing a document. You use a keyboard for that. It's not for drag and drop tasks, you use a mouse or trackpad for that (keyboards suck at dragging and dropping). It's for requesting the kind of things you might as ask of a secretary. Including dictation, calendar, to-dos, simple enquiries etc.
A toolbox doesn't have only one tool, it has many. Siri is another way to interact with an iPhone - it not intended to replace the other ways, but add another option to them.
I had computer graphics on my computer back in 1982. So these modern day "consoles" can't be anything special, eh?
Every product with speech recognition is not the same, just as every product with graphics is not the same.
And whilst people might feel dorks talking to a desktop, they're very used to holding a phone up to the side of their face and speaking into it. It's not seemed like a bizarre occupation for many decades.
The real issue with it is how much of a dork you look like talking to your phone.
Once upon a time, before they became internet terminals, everybody talked into their phone. I hadn't realised it had become so rare!
You don't have to press the home button and talk into it like a walkie-talkie you know. The proximity sensor will switch Siri on if you put the iPhone to the side of your head, if you're not making a phone call. And you can also operate it via the handsfree kit.
That's real cute, but IOS is a touch-based platform. How are you going to replicate that on a TV ?
Same way Wii does. Note how they both have large buttons to hit because of the lack of precision of both pointing devices (finger and Wii Remote).
OK scrolling by flick would be awkward with a wii-remote and multi-touch not possible (well, one touch per player is, but no pinch to zoom gestures.) But that just means that teh developers will need to release updates to their games, with alternate controls.
Alternatively, use iOS devices as the controllers, and do your touch UI stuff there, whilst having the uncluttered world view displayed on the TV.
Or something else. What you mention is just a matter of design choices. It's not a showstopper. And it's far from starting from scratch.
Desktop and living room games are starkly different.
Yes, but that's not a limitation of iOS. If Apple release an iOS console, then the mobile type games will be available day one. The more immersive games will arrive later.
And note that Wii was pretty successful with "small games that you can play for 5 minutes at a time".
Yes, but the mainstream games channel is as closed as I described. iOS doesn't have any section that is closed in that way.
I hear that it's true for ALL games channels that most games make fuck-all money. Most of those titles in a games shop will not be hits, and if they aren't hits they make a loss. It's the few that are hits that make the money for the industry.
There's plenty of highly cooperative games makers already. iOS is the biggest handheld games platform.
What business model is being challenged (other than Steam)? When a developer sells a game on physical media through publishers, distributors, and shops they are making maybe 5 cents on the dollar. Through the Apple Store they get 70 cents on the dollar.
Games makers aren't challenged by Apple's model - other games distributors and stores (such as Steam) are.
iOS games are mostly of the casual variety because they are targeted primarily at the iPhone. And for sure casual is what you want on a phone. Same to a lesser extent on the iPad.
Then again, Nintendo Wii didn't do too badly out of casual games...
But if the world wants more in-depth games when Apple has a TV console based on iOS, then the market will supply it. The graphics are up to it - see Infinity Blade II http://infinitybladegame.com/
It's a pretty stupid complaint from Newell. iOS might be closed, but it's not as closed as the existing consoles are.
Anyone can buy a Mac, a developer license from Apple for $99 and start developing and release their stuff on the App Store - subject to obeying the App Store rules.
For the consoles - you have to pay thousands to get a developer license, and then the console company decides whether to accept you. If you're a company without a track record in games, they'll reject you. Then you need to pay thousands more for the developer kit.
Then comes hardware, Apple hasn't shown any urge to provide real gaming hardware at any level.
iPhone 4S upped the GPS to dual core, and is 7 times faster than the iPhone 4 GPU. It's debatable whether it already competes with current gen consoles (they're 5-6 years old) - Apple seems to think it does. But it does reveal Apple has ambition in the games area if it's putting that much effort into the GPU on a phone. One can certainly expect the next gen iOS chip (A6?) to be better than current gen consoles.
iOS is already the biggest handheld games system by a large margin. It's easy to imagine them being successful in the TV console market too.
I don't think they'd start with a Mac Mini. That's a $599 item.
Starting from an Apple TV makes more sense. That's a $99 item.
But I'd think the most likely is to make a whole new iOS derivative. The iPhone 4S has a 1GHz dual core processor, and Apple made the graphics speed 7 times faster than the iPhone 4. They did this by making it a dual core GPU. That seems like a lot of effort on games for a phone! It makes a lot more sense if that's the platform they are intending to make a console with.
Furthermore they made a comment at the launch of the iPhone 4S that the graphics were now console level. Whether you accept that or not, it again reveals their ambitions. And it's easy to believe the next iteration of Apple SoC will be.
The iPhone platform already has supports composite and HGMI video out.
But the bigger reasons for iOS are software. iOS is already a very successful games platform, OS X isn't. iOS is also more robust - every App gets installed into its own sandbox. OS X can go wrong, and needs technical support. iOS just works. iOS is designed to run one app at a time, just like a console. The iOS App Store and installation system is more robust than the Mac App Store. SpringBoard would make a perfectly reasonable console UI, Finder wouldn't, and Front Row seems almost abandoned.
I imagine a new generation Apple TV with next gen A5 CPU (A6?) and iOS. Already capable of running all the games in the App Store.
I dont wish Stallman dead, but I'll be glad when he's gone. Mind you the outpouring of tributes on Slashdot when that happens will be completely over the top.
My main problem with Stallman is that he wants to control everyone. He can't accept that other people weigh things up differently from him, and make different choices. If he had the power to do it, he'd stop people from choosing to buy proprietary products. Luckily for people who value quality, design and ease of use in their products, he doesn't have that power.
Jobs and his company are based entirely on control of other people's property.
People have complete freedom to choose what product to buy. If they buy an iPhone they'll have one set of features and restrictions. If they buy Android they'll have another set. If they buy Windows Mobile they'll have yet another set. If you're interested in such things, then you know what the features and restrictions are when you buy.
If the restrictions on an iPhone are ones you don't want, then you don't buy an iPhone. And if you didn't buy an iPhone then it's imbecilic to whine about what it is.
People who do buy iPhones are buying it in part because of those restrictions, whether they realise it or not. Because those restrictions make the phone more reliable, give it longer battery life, make it easier to get content, remove confusion, keep malware to a bare minimum, etc.
Accept that not everyone has the same requirements in devices that you have.
there are still people walking around who believe we have Al Gore to thank for the Internet
It's only right wing rubes that believe Al Gore said he invented the internet. I won 5 EUROs from one such idiot a while ago. YouTube is a wonderful resource for being able to go back and see what people actually said.
Al Gore was however responsible for allocating the government money which was used to create the widely accessible internet from earlier government networks such as ARPANET. That's a fact. Whether you want to be thankful for it is up to you.
***Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn noted that, "as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication."*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
You're somewhat behind the times with your criticism. Apple hasn't shipped a one button mouse with a Mac for 2-3 years. Mac Minis don't come with mice at all - you use whatever you choose. iMacs and Mac Pros come with a choice of Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad. Both of which have multitouch surfaces, which are configurable for two virtual buttons or one. Macbooks also have multitouch pad which is similarly configurable.
I think my point is well made by just how niche you had to go to find software that isn't available on the Mac. At one time people would point out that there weren't any decent POS systems on Mac. Now there are lots, so you have to add another filter to make it yet more niche.
In pretty much all the examples, businesses would buy dedicated machines to run the software. If the software needs a PC they'll buy a PC, if it needs a Mac they'll buy a Mac, if it needs a proprietary NCR cash register, they'll buy a proprietary NCR cash register.
It's not software that someone who has a Mac as their personal computer is going to want to run and be disappointed because they can't find it.
Availability of software is no longer a reason for people to choose a PC as a personal computer rather than a Mac, except in very rare cases of niche requirements... unless they're a gamer.
Yes, most electricity in France is nuclear. And therefore the electric cars are indeed better for the environment, both because of less particulate pollution and because of less contribution to global warming producing CO2.
Yeah, that link is the Lyon Autolib. The Paris Autolib is all electric, using a single model called the Bluecar. It's 12 EURO per month + a half hourly change.
5 EUROs the first half hour. 4 EUROs the second half hour. 6 EUROs the third half hour.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would you want to use it in an open plan office? You have a computer with a big screen, keyboard and mouse/trackpad in front of you.
I can certainly see it being used in the car. Operating a keyboard is quite difficult whilst driving.
And I can see it being used for dictation by those people who have private offices - just as dictaphones used to be used by them for that purpose.
A screwdriver is no good for banging nails in. But it's very useful for screws. Tools don't have to be good for everything. They just have to be the best tool in some situations.
I can type almost as fast as i can talk
Not on a phone you can't.
Just because you can't eat soup with a fork doesn't make a fork a bad eating implement.
Speech recognition isn't for saying the name of keystrokes whilst editing a document. You use a keyboard for that. It's not for drag and drop tasks, you use a mouse or trackpad for that (keyboards suck at dragging and dropping). It's for requesting the kind of things you might as ask of a secretary. Including dictation, calendar, to-dos, simple enquiries etc.
A toolbox doesn't have only one tool, it has many. Siri is another way to interact with an iPhone - it not intended to replace the other ways, but add another option to them.
I had computer graphics on my computer back in 1982. So these modern day "consoles" can't be anything special, eh?
Every product with speech recognition is not the same, just as every product with graphics is not the same.
And whilst people might feel dorks talking to a desktop, they're very used to holding a phone up to the side of their face and speaking into it. It's not seemed like a bizarre occupation for many decades.
The real issue with it is how much of a dork you look like talking to your phone.
Once upon a time, before they became internet terminals, everybody talked into their phone. I hadn't realised it had become so rare!
You don't have to press the home button and talk into it like a walkie-talkie you know. The proximity sensor will switch Siri on if you put the iPhone to the side of your head, if you're not making a phone call. And you can also operate it via the handsfree kit.
Specs we've got. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5
Good luck comparing that to the completely different and 5-6 year old tech in the Wii, PS3 and Xbox.
Common benchmarks would be useful, but I haven't seen any. Likewise comparison stills.
But specs? Good luck with that comparison.
How do you know? iPhone 4S isn't out in the wild yet. So unless you have a review unit, or were at the launch... How do you know?
Remember that the current gen consoles are 5-6 years old now.
I'm not saying the graphics are console level. I just don't know. But it's certainly not impossible.
That's real cute, but IOS is a touch-based platform. How are you going to replicate that on a TV ?
Same way Wii does. Note how they both have large buttons to hit because of the lack of precision of both pointing devices (finger and Wii Remote).
OK scrolling by flick would be awkward with a wii-remote and multi-touch not possible (well, one touch per player is, but no pinch to zoom gestures.) But that just means that teh developers will need to release updates to their games, with alternate controls.
Alternatively, use iOS devices as the controllers, and do your touch UI stuff there, whilst having the uncluttered world view displayed on the TV.
Or something else. What you mention is just a matter of design choices. It's not a showstopper. And it's far from starting from scratch.
Desktop and living room games are starkly different.
Yes, but that's not a limitation of iOS. If Apple release an iOS console, then the mobile type games will be available day one. The more immersive games will arrive later.
And note that Wii was pretty successful with "small games that you can play for 5 minutes at a time".
Yes, but the mainstream games channel is as closed as I described. iOS doesn't have any section that is closed in that way.
I hear that it's true for ALL games channels that most games make fuck-all money. Most of those titles in a games shop will not be hits, and if they aren't hits they make a loss. It's the few that are hits that make the money for the industry.
There's plenty of highly cooperative games makers already. iOS is the biggest handheld games platform.
What business model is being challenged (other than Steam)? When a developer sells a game on physical media through publishers, distributors, and shops they are making maybe 5 cents on the dollar. Through the Apple Store they get 70 cents on the dollar.
Games makers aren't challenged by Apple's model - other games distributors and stores (such as Steam) are.
Chicken and the egg. Apple TV lost focus because sales were always disappointing.
iOS games are mostly of the casual variety because they are targeted primarily at the iPhone. And for sure casual is what you want on a phone. Same to a lesser extent on the iPad.
Then again, Nintendo Wii didn't do too badly out of casual games...
But if the world wants more in-depth games when Apple has a TV console based on iOS, then the market will supply it. The graphics are up to it - see Infinity Blade II http://infinitybladegame.com/
It's a pretty stupid complaint from Newell. iOS might be closed, but it's not as closed as the existing consoles are.
Anyone can buy a Mac, a developer license from Apple for $99 and start developing and release their stuff on the App Store - subject to obeying the App Store rules.
For the consoles - you have to pay thousands to get a developer license, and then the console company decides whether to accept you. If you're a company without a track record in games, they'll reject you. Then you need to pay thousands more for the developer kit.
Then comes hardware, Apple hasn't shown any urge to provide real gaming hardware at any level.
iPhone 4S upped the GPS to dual core, and is 7 times faster than the iPhone 4 GPU. It's debatable whether it already competes with current gen consoles (they're 5-6 years old) - Apple seems to think it does. But it does reveal Apple has ambition in the games area if it's putting that much effort into the GPU on a phone. One can certainly expect the next gen iOS chip (A6?) to be better than current gen consoles.
iOS is already the biggest handheld games system by a large margin. It's easy to imagine them being successful in the TV console market too.
I don't think they'd start with a Mac Mini. That's a $599 item.
Starting from an Apple TV makes more sense. That's a $99 item.
But I'd think the most likely is to make a whole new iOS derivative. The iPhone 4S has a 1GHz dual core processor, and Apple made the graphics speed 7 times faster than the iPhone 4. They did this by making it a dual core GPU. That seems like a lot of effort on games for a phone! It makes a lot more sense if that's the platform they are intending to make a console with.
Furthermore they made a comment at the launch of the iPhone 4S that the graphics were now console level. Whether you accept that or not, it again reveals their ambitions. And it's easy to believe the next iteration of Apple SoC will be.
The iPhone platform already has supports composite and HGMI video out.
But the bigger reasons for iOS are software. iOS is already a very successful games platform, OS X isn't. iOS is also more robust - every App gets installed into its own sandbox. OS X can go wrong, and needs technical support. iOS just works. iOS is designed to run one app at a time, just like a console. The iOS App Store and installation system is more robust than the Mac App Store. SpringBoard would make a perfectly reasonable console UI, Finder wouldn't, and Front Row seems almost abandoned.
I imagine a new generation Apple TV with next gen A5 CPU (A6?) and iOS. Already capable of running all the games in the App Store.
BBC1 the home of Bang Goes the Theory.
BBC2 home of QI and Horizon.
And of course countless more quality programmes, currently and in their back catalogue.
I dont wish Stallman dead, but I'll be glad when he's gone. Mind you the outpouring of tributes on Slashdot when that happens will be completely over the top.
My main problem with Stallman is that he wants to control everyone. He can't accept that other people weigh things up differently from him, and make different choices. If he had the power to do it, he'd stop people from choosing to buy proprietary products. Luckily for people who value quality, design and ease of use in their products, he doesn't have that power.
Jobs and his company are based entirely on control of other people's property.
People have complete freedom to choose what product to buy. If they buy an iPhone they'll have one set of features and restrictions. If they buy Android they'll have another set. If they buy Windows Mobile they'll have yet another set. If you're interested in such things, then you know what the features and restrictions are when you buy.
If the restrictions on an iPhone are ones you don't want, then you don't buy an iPhone. And if you didn't buy an iPhone then it's imbecilic to whine about what it is.
People who do buy iPhones are buying it in part because of those restrictions, whether they realise it or not. Because those restrictions make the phone more reliable, give it longer battery life, make it easier to get content, remove confusion, keep malware to a bare minimum, etc.
Accept that not everyone has the same requirements in devices that you have.
there are still people walking around who believe we have Al Gore to thank for the Internet
It's only right wing rubes that believe Al Gore said he invented the internet. I won 5 EUROs from one such idiot a while ago. YouTube is a wonderful resource for being able to go back and see what people actually said.
Al Gore was however responsible for allocating the government money which was used to create the widely accessible internet from earlier government networks such as ARPANET. That's a fact. Whether you want to be thankful for it is up to you.
***Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn noted that, "as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication."***
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
BBC1 and BBC2 are not stupid. But you have to be in the UK or somewhere near to get those.
You're somewhat behind the times with your criticism. Apple hasn't shipped a one button mouse with a Mac for 2-3 years. Mac Minis don't come with mice at all - you use whatever you choose. iMacs and Mac Pros come with a choice of Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad. Both of which have multitouch surfaces, which are configurable for two virtual buttons or one. Macbooks also have multitouch pad which is similarly configurable.
I think my point is well made by just how niche you had to go to find software that isn't available on the Mac. At one time people would point out that there weren't any decent POS systems on Mac. Now there are lots, so you have to add another filter to make it yet more niche.
In pretty much all the examples, businesses would buy dedicated machines to run the software. If the software needs a PC they'll buy a PC, if it needs a Mac they'll buy a Mac, if it needs a proprietary NCR cash register, they'll buy a proprietary NCR cash register.
It's not software that someone who has a Mac as their personal computer is going to want to run and be disappointed because they can't find it.
Availability of software is no longer a reason for people to choose a PC as a personal computer rather than a Mac, except in very rare cases of niche requirements... unless they're a gamer.
Yes, most electricity in France is nuclear. And therefore the electric cars are indeed better for the environment, both because of less particulate pollution and because of less contribution to global warming producing CO2.
Yeah, that link is the Lyon Autolib. The Paris Autolib is all electric, using a single model called the Bluecar. It's 12 EURO per month + a half hourly change.
5 EUROs the first half hour.
4 EUROs the second half hour.
6 EUROs the third half hour.
There's no distance or fuel charge.