Sometimes car companies iterate on their products with only incremental updates to the styling, but with significantly better interior features and under-the-hood improvements. Casual auto customers don't always notice, but enough enthusiasts exist out there that these kinds of updates *can* be worthwhile.
The smartphone marketplace is not as mature as the automotive one, but in the end the same customer dynamics are likely to exist.
It's pathetic, isn't it.
In the Slashdot of old, there would be a lot of people dissecting the new features, especially Siri and the new camera, comparing those features to competitors (objectively), maybe explaining the prior art or comparative products that exist. There would still be a lot of criticism, but by and large most of it would be of the objective kind. The slashdot of now? A bitter cesspool of trollish negativity.
Being "reputable" means not always placing your profit interests first and foremost. Besides, if they actively negotiate with these states they may find a solution acceptable to those states, that actually does not sting as bad as expected. And, anyways, many other e-tailers collect those taxes and still manage to prosper.
At some point, we have to figure out how e-tailers can and should responsibly collect sales taxes. Amazon could be helping that process, instead of fighting it tooth and nail.
... and watch as the number of manufacturers who care about Android wilt.
No manufacturer wants to get caught in a price war on Android devices, where the only distinguishing items are hardware feature set (marginal selling point) and price. Their margins will sink like a rock.
It is imperative for these manufacturers to be able to differentiate on software as well, for the long term health of the Android marketplace.
Samsung / Motorola / HTC are beating each other senselessly, driving down prices to such a degree that they HAVE to sell millions of handsets to make any kind of decent profits.
If I was an investor in this segment, would I want to buy stock in a company betting the farm on Android, knowing this? Doesn't matter if Android takes 75%+ market share, there just isn't much actual income to be found.
It's just like Dell versus every other Wintel PC manufacturer. A low margin game, where you have to market yourself almost entirely on your hardware, but the consumer doesn't care much, and will jump to the latest and greatest and cheapest (brand loyalty is rare, as well, when you can't market something about your own software).
Win7 will likely have similar issues, although since the license for that software isn't free, it may be to a lesser degree.
When are we going to separate out the 3D-vs-2D argument for animated films versus the non-animated counterparts? Isn't it clear that the 3D argument is far, far more compelling for animation? While for non-animated films, it remains a contentious and dubious "benefit"?
Congrats, you just proved the parent's point completely. Any rational, unbiased person comparing iPhone4 versus Evo4G and Droid X would find a lot of winning points for iPhone4 (and I don't just mean looks) compared to the others. Similarly they would find a lot of winning points for the Android phones compared to iPhone4. A refusal to acknowledge this and admit that many subjective factors can and should decide a mobile shopper at this stage, marks you as an Android shill and/or iPhone troll.
And your assertion that Apple intentionally cripples their devices is meritless.
People here on slashdot complain and joke about the mythical Apple fanboys mercilessly, but my observation is that the Apple trolls are far more numerous and far more annoying.
You just described the business model for FPGAs, and reconfigurable computing. At some point, we'll have CPU+GPU+FPGA trifecta as standard operating environment, with FPGA dynamically updated as needed per application, to hardware-accelerate some particular software-intensive cycle-churning computations.
There are more high quality first and third party titles for the Wii at this stage (a little over 3 years past initial shipments) than any prior Nintendo console, going all the way back to the NES.
Many of these titles are "casual" or appeal to non-traditional gaming audiences. Given that we have XBOX360/PS3 to cover the traditional bases, I consider this a good thing. Anyways, Nintendo can hardly be blamed that some of the more finicky, "hard-cord" gamers cannot look at its solid library and find some of the excellent titles that are there.
Sure, you can carry over-sized mobile devices in a purse or other small bag, but sales of such devices probably do a lot better if people perceive they can carry them on their person and still be normal people.
Right now, the standard layman outfit of jeans/slacks + shirt provides limited options... keys + wallet + other junk already leave little space for more than a tiny cell phone as it is.
I'd bet some apparel company could make a killing, for example, if they made a real attempt to market cargo pants, with larger sized pockets for all the gee-whiz gadgets, to the Best Buy loving crowd.
Isn't watermarking pretty close to nirvana for both users/distributors alike? It has no negative effects on user format conversion/playability, and it is seemingly a pretty good tool to track down major copyright violators on p2p networks. Everybody wins, right?
If watermarking is "evil", then we should be similarly outraged about the license plates we're forced to display on our cars... all it does is ID the file owner.
This might sound funny, but the best thing Yahoo has over Google right now is... search.
Seriously.
Yahoo's plain vanilla search is on par with Google's, but Yahoo's local search is much better, which is why I switched back to Yahoo for search.
Also, Yahoo Maps Beta is superior to Google Maps/Google Earth, at least at the moment. And obviously Yahoo has a lot of content that Google does not have (i.e. Fantasy Football, etc.).
Anyways, sorry to sound like a Yahoo Fanboy, but I'm just a little irritated when people give +4 ratings to a -1 Flamebait kind of post.
There is less than a million people in San Francisco. There are millions more in surrounding cities, but these statistics are from the SF police department only.
Related to this (but still in the early research phase) is the idea of reconfigurable computing. Perhaps in a few years we'll have a CPU, a GPU, and a "reconfigurable processing unit". The reconfigurable solution might just be an FPGA or something which can take any algorithm which is bogging down one of the main processors and does massive instruction parallelization through some hardware implementation. (converting C to hardware logic)
Like I said, still in the research phase, but interesting to think about.
Well, it's either your product sucks or the marketing of your product sucks.
Honestly, the search quality of Yahoo and MSN is likely on par with Google. But the perception of search quality clearly resides with Google. Credit their Marketing department.
And we know it takes a REALLY long time to get over the perception of inferior quality even when it's just a myth. Look at the US auto industry compared to the Japanese...
Of course, the best method to get the right URL if you are unsure is to simply type the name of the institution into Yahoo or Google Search bar and click on the main link in the search results (the correct institution should be in the first few search results).
Then, of course, the phishers will one-up this safety valve by combining their scam with some google-clicking scheme to artificially increase the search result of their bogus web site...
I have to agree completely. I keep finding myself annoyed at the new Yahoo Mail's responsiveness, and I have to purposely remind myself that it's a web-based service. I think Yahoo made the interface seem too much like an offline mail reader, to the extent that people instinctively expect it to behave that way. Notice, though, that if you somewhat purposely develop a new set of habits for this new Yahoo Mail interface, it's a lot easier to deal with. For example, you can open/compose multiple emails at the same time and then navigate between them using the tabbed interface (this is easily the best feature of this new email service). Also it's a lot easier to delete/move emails in groups as opposed to individually.
In the very same course, Wario's race, one of my housemates (at the time) figured out how to jump over one of the walls in one particular spot, by jumping at the wall at a certain angle (I dunno, maybe it was a game glitch or something), meaning he would easily win the race every time. Probably deserves the same house rules in any case.
Why would MS be opposed to someone installing Windows or other MS software on Apple hardware? That makes no sense. MS is primarily a software company, and they could care less which x86 hardware their software is being run on. From their point of view, the guy who purchased Apple hardware primarily intended to run OSX in the first place, and any Windows usage on the machine is bonus to them.
Indeed, Microsoft might be secretly happy about this scheme, since they might be less beholden to Dell.
Slashdot Mirror
One single novel feature often generates a thousand posts.
The smartphone marketplace is not as mature as the automotive one, but in the end the same customer dynamics are likely to exist.
It's pathetic, isn't it. In the Slashdot of old, there would be a lot of people dissecting the new features, especially Siri and the new camera, comparing those features to competitors (objectively), maybe explaining the prior art or comparative products that exist. There would still be a lot of criticism, but by and large most of it would be of the objective kind. The slashdot of now? A bitter cesspool of trollish negativity.
Can somebody explain that a little more? Is that really unique or not?
This 4S phone might have the horsepower and usability to pull it off, at least some of the basic augmented reality applications?
Being "reputable" means not always placing your profit interests first and foremost. Besides, if they actively negotiate with these states they may find a solution acceptable to those states, that actually does not sting as bad as expected. And, anyways, many other e-tailers collect those taxes and still manage to prosper.
At some point, we have to figure out how e-tailers can and should responsibly collect sales taxes. Amazon could be helping that process, instead of fighting it tooth and nail.
No manufacturer wants to get caught in a price war on Android devices, where the only distinguishing items are hardware feature set (marginal selling point) and price. Their margins will sink like a rock.
It is imperative for these manufacturers to be able to differentiate on software as well, for the long term health of the Android marketplace.
Samsung / Motorola / HTC are beating each other senselessly, driving down prices to such a degree that they HAVE to sell millions of handsets to make any kind of decent profits. If I was an investor in this segment, would I want to buy stock in a company betting the farm on Android, knowing this? Doesn't matter if Android takes 75%+ market share, there just isn't much actual income to be found. It's just like Dell versus every other Wintel PC manufacturer. A low margin game, where you have to market yourself almost entirely on your hardware, but the consumer doesn't care much, and will jump to the latest and greatest and cheapest (brand loyalty is rare, as well, when you can't market something about your own software). Win7 will likely have similar issues, although since the license for that software isn't free, it may be to a lesser degree.
When are we going to separate out the 3D-vs-2D argument for animated films versus the non-animated counterparts? Isn't it clear that the 3D argument is far, far more compelling for animation? While for non-animated films, it remains a contentious and dubious "benefit"?
And your assertion that Apple intentionally cripples their devices is meritless.
People here on slashdot complain and joke about the mythical Apple fanboys mercilessly, but my observation is that the Apple trolls are far more numerous and far more annoying.
=) Best use of a slashdot meme in a looonnnng while...
You just described the business model for FPGAs, and reconfigurable computing. At some point, we'll have CPU+GPU+FPGA trifecta as standard operating environment, with FPGA dynamically updated as needed per application, to hardware-accelerate some particular software-intensive cycle-churning computations.
Many of these titles are "casual" or appeal to non-traditional gaming audiences. Given that we have XBOX360/PS3 to cover the traditional bases, I consider this a good thing. Anyways, Nintendo can hardly be blamed that some of the more finicky, "hard-cord" gamers cannot look at its solid library and find some of the excellent titles that are there.
Right now, the standard layman outfit of jeans/slacks + shirt provides limited options... keys + wallet + other junk already leave little space for more than a tiny cell phone as it is.
I'd bet some apparel company could make a killing, for example, if they made a real attempt to market cargo pants, with larger sized pockets for all the gee-whiz gadgets, to the Best Buy loving crowd.
If watermarking is "evil", then we should be similarly outraged about the license plates we're forced to display on our cars... all it does is ID the file owner.
Seriously.
Yahoo's plain vanilla search is on par with Google's, but Yahoo's local search is much better, which is why I switched back to Yahoo for search.
Also, Yahoo Maps Beta is superior to Google Maps/Google Earth, at least at the moment. And obviously Yahoo has a lot of content that Google does not have (i.e. Fantasy Football, etc.).
Anyways, sorry to sound like a Yahoo Fanboy, but I'm just a little irritated when people give +4 ratings to a -1 Flamebait kind of post.
There is less than a million people in San Francisco. There are millions more in surrounding cities, but these statistics are from the SF police department only.
Like I said, still in the research phase, but interesting to think about.
"Yo ho ho ho, a pirate's life for me!"
Honestly, the search quality of Yahoo and MSN is likely on par with Google. But the perception of search quality clearly resides with Google. Credit their Marketing department.
And we know it takes a REALLY long time to get over the perception of inferior quality even when it's just a myth. Look at the US auto industry compared to the Japanese...
Then, of course, the phishers will one-up this safety valve by combining their scam with some google-clicking scheme to artificially increase the search result of their bogus web site...
I have to agree completely. I keep finding myself annoyed at the new Yahoo Mail's responsiveness, and I have to purposely remind myself that it's a web-based service. I think Yahoo made the interface seem too much like an offline mail reader, to the extent that people instinctively expect it to behave that way. Notice, though, that if you somewhat purposely develop a new set of habits for this new Yahoo Mail interface, it's a lot easier to deal with. For example, you can open/compose multiple emails at the same time and then navigate between them using the tabbed interface (this is easily the best feature of this new email service). Also it's a lot easier to delete/move emails in groups as opposed to individually.
In the very same course, Wario's race, one of my housemates (at the time) figured out how to jump over one of the walls in one particular spot, by jumping at the wall at a certain angle (I dunno, maybe it was a game glitch or something), meaning he would easily win the race every time. Probably deserves the same house rules in any case.
Indeed, Microsoft might be secretly happy about this scheme, since they might be less beholden to Dell.