The thing with "do no evil" is that it's good business.
Toyota beat the rest of the world because they didn't act in an evil way. Other car companies were doing things like lowering quality in order to make sure that people bought a new car or parts sooner.
Toyota instead tried to make things better. They made better cars which maybe meant less in the short to medium, but paid off in the long - people would buy one Toyota and then replace it with another (there's some phenomenal rate on Lexus customer loyalty).
3) by pulling the ultimate MS move with free411 they are most certainly participating in anticompetitive behavior.
Do we even know this?
Are Google doing anything that's not known about how free411 operates?
Maybe Google thought about doing something similar, took a look at free411 and decided that the way they worked didn't fit in with Google, so decided they'd build their own?
I know a company that took a look at another company and realised that most of their IT was decrepit and due for replacement, and that if they had to do that, they may as well build rather than buy.
The buy cinema tickets widget!! I'm amazed that found its place in Steves 10 features list at WWDC07, kind of prove there wasn't much intresting
I'm a bit of an Apple skeptic. I don't have anything against them, but I don't see why people are getting so worked up about it. Looking at Apple's top features, they include iChat backgrounds and personalised stationery for Mail.
I'll tell you straight out, no one's going to touch it. No developer in their right mind is going to code to an API that is not backwards compatible to XP. Not going to happen. And in our field of software, financial services, if it doesn't run on W2K, it doesn't ship. Forget shiny, we do not care about shiny. Amateur programmers play with that stuff. Professional programmers code with event horizons of five to ten years. We will not be beta-testing yet another crazy development model from Microsoft.
I recently went to a VS2008 event at Microsoft. When asked "hands up who's using Vista", the number of hands were very much in the minority.
It will come eventually as the machines get faster, but I don't sense the same enthusiasm that existed for Win2K or WinXP.
Anytime someone says "we won't do that ", always say "in which case, you'll have no problem with signing this". Watch the reaction. If they seem nervous, consider your options.
"Oh and also, remember that photo of Saddam and Rummy shaking hands back in 1980s-something? How come Saddam was good enough to do business with back then but NOT in 2003?"
You could say the same thing about Stalin from 1941 to 1945.
Because back then, we needed him. It's called realpolitik. As one British politician put it "we have no friends, only strategic allies".
He helped to keep the oil flowing, which reduced the price which helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and forced them down a democratic path.
That's ridiculous moral relativism. That because the USA has a few dozen people at Camp X-Ray (which I won't defend), it's somehow on the same level as a government that has no democracy, no freedom of speech and will shoot people who protest.
Apple could have made a truly great phone. Completely open, programmable OS, use with Sim, WIFI or both. It would have revolutionised the industry and got more people buying Macs.
But I don't believe that Apple really understand the whole idea of creating a "developers market" - they're more interested in a provided environment. I took a look at the Apple site for developers. UK Events? One training course with a 3rd party provider. They're hardly reaching out to encourage people to write in Cocoa who aren't already.
"Apple says that want to do something more like a desktop computer: They want to keep adding new functionality."
The question is what precisely that means. Does it mean that I'm going to have the functionality to write my own code, or does it mean that Apple will provide end-user applications that I can use?
It's not just about profits today as profits tomorrow. Treat customers with contempt and you might be able to get a few more bucks out of them this time, but next time, they'll go elsewhere.
In the OGG situation, think of it this way: everyone can use OGG. EVERYONE. Apple, Microsoft, everyone. The reason they don't? Because they can just support MP3 (which at some point may decide to charge out the ass for its use), WMA, whatever. If we could get the majority of consumers using OGG, Microsoft and Apple would have to jump on board and we are guaranteed interoperability from any platform be it free or not. You will never get that with proprietary patent-encumbered formats. That's a darn good reason to encourage the use of OGG if you ask me.
MP3 is licensed, and people pay fees to use it. However, the MP3 spec was released in 1991, which means that in about 4 years, all the patents expire. Chances are that at that point, Ogg will largely disappear.
"I came to the conclusion several years ago that if I boycotted every company that had done something I considered unethical, there would be no companies left to buy goods or services from. Pretty much every company has done something unethical at some point, does that mean we should boycott them all?"
No, but it's more a question of degrees. Some companies are more ethical than others. Google got a huge amount of flak for censoring in China, but Yahoo has been far more co-operative (and also more co-operative with the US government).
It's more complex than that, and the bottom line is that what Bill did was understand the future better than his competitors.
IBM saw the PC as basically a home machine. They didn't want it cutting into their commercial profits. Apple didn't grasp the thing about looking after developers.
And Bill got lucky too. The BIOS got opened, and a market was created that drove down costs and nearly wiped out Apple.
.net is like many other forms of code abstraction. It's great for what it does, but when you want to try and break its rules (like doing javascript), it can make life real difficult.
I think it will take longer. There will have been a rush on Friday and then lots of sales on Saturday. Huge numbers of people buy phones on Saturdays, less on weekdays.
There's a 4GB card that works with the N95. And of course, they're swappable (if you want lots of videos, 4GB isn't going to give you a lot). And of course, the N95 does TV out.
I heard it loses 750mb for the OS. Which really makes a 4GB iPhone more like a 3GB iPhone.
(yes, I'm hoping that some sheeple dump their N95s when the iPhone arrives in the UK).
Re:This phone is a 2 HAND device vs 1 HAND device
on
Apple iPhone Dissected
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· Score: 1
I am ignoring every review at this point. Even "we had the phone for 2 weeks" reviews.
I want to know how it performs in the real world when it really matters. When you need to look up some information in a big hurry for your job. When you need to discretely text someone. When you need to find a place on maps. When you realise that you've been listening to music for too long and your phone is dying.
Anything that does not need long term recording nor fast processing nor complex processing does not require a computer.
There are things that humans are not so good at. Financial systems allow data to be processed at high speed, to be stored in much less space for long term retrieval, transported around and for the complexity of data to be represented in many different ways. The results are required quickly. They run repeatedly, so despite a high initial cost, they pay off in the long term.
Votes are the complete opposite. With a paper vote, you collect less than a byte of information for each person, speed is not that important (we do it in the UK with a small army of staff in each constituency who deliver the results by morning), the process is nothing more than tallying for each candidate and rarely is retrieval required (and in those cases, it's not random). You do it occasionally.
Computer systems have problems that humans don't have. A person with a fault (stupidity, illness) has a tiny impact. Software with a fault will reflect across all results. And those human errors get picked up. If the vote is tight, there's a recount and stacks are rechecked, so any human errors are more likely to get ironed out. An electrical storm isn't going to knock out a box of ballots. A head isn't going to crash in a ballot box.
Slashdot Mirror
Toyota beat the rest of the world because they didn't act in an evil way. Other car companies were doing things like lowering quality in order to make sure that people bought a new car or parts sooner.
Toyota instead tried to make things better. They made better cars which maybe meant less in the short to medium, but paid off in the long - people would buy one Toyota and then replace it with another (there's some phenomenal rate on Lexus customer loyalty).
Do we even know this?
Are Google doing anything that's not known about how free411 operates?
Maybe Google thought about doing something similar, took a look at free411 and decided that the way they worked didn't fit in with Google, so decided they'd build their own?
I know a company that took a look at another company and realised that most of their IT was decrepit and due for replacement, and that if they had to do that, they may as well build rather than buy.
and without the cool opening music/titles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSaPF8Y_l04 (just found this)
I'm a bit of an Apple skeptic. I don't have anything against them, but I don't see why people are getting so worked up about it. Looking at Apple's top features, they include iChat backgrounds and personalised stationery for Mail.
I recently went to a VS2008 event at Microsoft. When asked "hands up who's using Vista", the number of hands were very much in the minority.
It will come eventually as the machines get faster, but I don't sense the same enthusiasm that existed for Win2K or WinXP.
Steve is wrong. My Nokia phone has 3 unsigned apps running on it. What Nokia do is warn me that it's an unsigned app.
He also trades in certain mistruths (eg water levels rising) that lose all respect.
The more people want Linux, the more hardware and software gets built for it, the more likely Linux becomes a fit for users.
Anytime someone says "we won't do that ", always say "in which case, you'll have no problem with signing this". Watch the reaction. If they seem nervous, consider your options.
You could say the same thing about Stalin from 1941 to 1945.
Because back then, we needed him. It's called realpolitik. As one British politician put it "we have no friends, only strategic allies".
He helped to keep the oil flowing, which reduced the price which helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and forced them down a democratic path.
That's ridiculous moral relativism. That because the USA has a few dozen people at Camp X-Ray (which I won't defend), it's somehow on the same level as a government that has no democracy, no freedom of speech and will shoot people who protest.
I think that e-voting is more about technophobic politicians thinking they can just throw technology at a problem and it will solve it.
But I don't believe that Apple really understand the whole idea of creating a "developers market" - they're more interested in a provided environment. I took a look at the Apple site for developers. UK Events? One training course with a 3rd party provider. They're hardly reaching out to encourage people to write in Cocoa who aren't already.
At the time that Steve Jobs wrote his open letter about DRM, it was pointed out that there were tracks on eMusic without DRM that had DRM on iTunes.
The question is what precisely that means. Does it mean that I'm going to have the functionality to write my own code, or does it mean that Apple will provide end-user applications that I can use?
It's not just about profits today as profits tomorrow. Treat customers with contempt and you might be able to get a few more bucks out of them this time, but next time, they'll go elsewhere.
MP3 is licensed, and people pay fees to use it. However, the MP3 spec was released in 1991, which means that in about 4 years, all the patents expire. Chances are that at that point, Ogg will largely disappear.
The 17% refers to RETAIL notebook sales.
No, but it's more a question of degrees. Some companies are more ethical than others. Google got a huge amount of flak for censoring in China, but Yahoo has been far more co-operative (and also more co-operative with the US government).
IBM saw the PC as basically a home machine. They didn't want it cutting into their commercial profits. Apple didn't grasp the thing about looking after developers.
And Bill got lucky too. The BIOS got opened, and a market was created that drove down costs and nearly wiped out Apple.
.net is like many other forms of code abstraction. It's great for what it does, but when you want to try and break its rules (like doing javascript), it can make life real difficult.
I think it will take longer. There will have been a rush on Friday and then lots of sales on Saturday. Huge numbers of people buy phones on Saturdays, less on weekdays.
I heard it loses 750mb for the OS. Which really makes a 4GB iPhone more like a 3GB iPhone.
(yes, I'm hoping that some sheeple dump their N95s when the iPhone arrives in the UK).
I want to know how it performs in the real world when it really matters. When you need to look up some information in a big hurry for your job. When you need to discretely text someone. When you need to find a place on maps. When you realise that you've been listening to music for too long and your phone is dying.
There are things that humans are not so good at. Financial systems allow data to be processed at high speed, to be stored in much less space for long term retrieval, transported around and for the complexity of data to be represented in many different ways. The results are required quickly. They run repeatedly, so despite a high initial cost, they pay off in the long term.
Votes are the complete opposite. With a paper vote, you collect less than a byte of information for each person, speed is not that important (we do it in the UK with a small army of staff in each constituency who deliver the results by morning), the process is nothing more than tallying for each candidate and rarely is retrieval required (and in those cases, it's not random). You do it occasionally.
Computer systems have problems that humans don't have. A person with a fault (stupidity, illness) has a tiny impact. Software with a fault will reflect across all results. And those human errors get picked up. If the vote is tight, there's a recount and stacks are rechecked, so any human errors are more likely to get ironed out. An electrical storm isn't going to knock out a box of ballots. A head isn't going to crash in a ballot box.