Battery life. It is the entire reason for Apple providing devs with multitasking services and fast app switching in their API rather than just letting every app continue running in the background. The fast app switching part just requires a recompile - background audio and network completion tasks require special coding, but it is no more difficult than those codes would be otherwise - just a different approach. I don't expect it will take long for most apps to get updated, and of course the flood of apps coming every day will support it. The Android approach requires app developers to understand the tradeoffs and design their apps in such a way that they don't continue chewing up massive resources while backgrounded (i.e. killing the battery), because they are not prevented from doing so by the API. Many app developers will not do a good job of that.
If the phone has signal issues in real world use your point is valid. I haven't seen real world issues with mine yet - but we shall see. I suspect if this is really a problem Apple will do something about it - they're certainly profitable enough to do a replacement program. It would certainly be less expensive than the fallout of a yearlong debacle with their primary product.
It is telling that in this thread someone marked my prior comment as a troll (really??) Seems to me there is plenty in this stream that is quite a bit more inflammatory than that. Slashdot certainly has a 'point of view'..
I have one - haven't seen any problem in real-world use although I can make a bar disappear by covering the bottom of the phone. Pandora continues to stream just fine. I'm guessing many phone manufacturers hide the issue by making the signal strength indicator update more slowly or in a non-linear fashion or something...
Non-issue really, but the rabid Android contingent needs something to make them feel better about the 6 hour battery life of the EVO. Let's be real - ALL smartphones have some issue or another that can be called out. The new iPhone is a pretty damn great piece of kit regardless.
Ideological purity rarely works in the real world. If you take it too far you wind up with Bush as President...
Without Apple, the GUI would have remained hidden away in the PARC labs until who knows? Apple took those rough ideas and polished them to a wonderful degree, then brought them to the world. Similarly the iPhone touch UI Apple has commercialized is fantastic. Who really believes open software would produce new classes of products such as those? I am very happy to pay money to innovators who bring me things I otherwise could never have.
Open and commercial software are complimentary. I think patent law should be addressed so that open software products can come in and commoditize things once they have matured, but lots of real innovation happens in the commercial space.
What the execs pushing for tiered pricing fail to understand is that scarcity DOES exist online - the current chart-topping hits are extremely easy to locate and download via the file-sharing networks, and they can be easily heard via radio and all of the various other forms of distribution. So their scarcity is very low to the consumer. For this reason, increasing the price of the hit songs will only serve to drive users to piracy for those songs.
Likewise, the obscure tracks do have real online scarcity- they can't be easily found on filesharing networks, so should retain their full value for an online purchase. But of course demand for obscure old songs will be elastic for all but the hard-core fan, so raising prices for those tracks would drive consumers to other choices.
Often the TVs at the health clubs broadcast their audio over FM- each TV on a different station. And since it seems that everyone at my gym has white headphones, maybe Apple should consider the feature...
Microsoft makes almost all of their profits on sales of XP and Office. I would argue that both of these products are adequate, but neither compelling nor great. Both continue to be successful because people must endure great pain if they try to choose any other alternative.
Lets list the other great applications or product categories MS has pioneered since the beginning of the internet era- the early 90's:
(sound of crickets chirping)
Where have they completely missed the boat?
1. The Web. If it weren't for Netscape we would all be using a closed, proprietary, for-pay MS network much closer to the old pre-internet AOL model than the public internet we have today. And since MS stole the browser market from them how much innovation has happened in the browser space? For all practical purposes - Nada! Hopefully the Firefox phenomenon will convince smart, hungry people that success can be had inovating in this space.
2. Search. Google is kicking their butt back and forth and truly innovating on a regular basis. I never realized how piss-poor the Windows search functionality was until I tried Google Desktop Search. It is a revelation to get results immediately that would take several minutes or hours of searching to find with the MS provided pap. And have you seen the other stuff coming from Google Labs like the new Maps? Great stuff.
3. Music. Tiny little Apple has single-handedly eaten Microsofts lunch on this one. Even though MS compatible players are (or at least were) far more widely available to consumers.
4. Gaming. The XBox seems like a contender, but only because it has been propped up by the profits from other divisions. MS blew it in the first generation - using PC components sealed their fate - the machine was too big for the Japanese market and too expensive to make a profit on. Xbox would have tanked long ago if the division was actually dependent on making money. Switching to G5 chips may help with those issues but will consumers buy a machine that isn't backward compatible? If the PSP is any indicator, Sony has not forgotten how to make hardware that inpires lust in the average/.er. And they know how to build hardware that they can sell *for profit*. The PS3 will own the next generation just like PS2 owns this one.
Please somebody provide a single example of something important that Microsoft has truly inovated with in the past decade!
Um, actually digital audio CAN (and in certain cases DOES) have a volume adjustment.
Digital signals consist of samples that encode both frequency and amplitude. Without the amplitude bits, all parts of a given digital recording would have the same relative volume. By mathematically manipulating the amplitude bits, you can achieve the equivalent of a volume control.
Case in point - the Apple Airport Extreme base station I own has an optical digital output that is connected to my receiver. And the iTunes prefs on my computer provide a setting to continue allowing use of the onscreen volume control even when routing music to the stereo through the Airport.
So iTunes/Airport must reduce or increase the amplitude bits encoded in the digital signal being sent to my receiver by applying some kind of mathematical transformation. I know this because the signal is digital all the way into my receiver, but still I can control the volume from my pc.
FWIW, it works great - with lossless encoding, a decent receiver and B&W speakers, I get something approaching audiophile sound quality.
Apple gains an enormous amount from this- they will further solidify their proprietary audio codec as the standard for internet music distribution. We can be sure that HP won't be the only licensee. Apple has done this exactly right- create the most seamless integration in the industry, then graciously allow what would otherwise be their competition to join the party...
Slashdot Mirror
Battery life. It is the entire reason for Apple providing devs with multitasking services and fast app switching in their API rather than just letting every app continue running in the background. The fast app switching part just requires a recompile - background audio and network completion tasks require special coding, but it is no more difficult than those codes would be otherwise - just a different approach. I don't expect it will take long for most apps to get updated, and of course the flood of apps coming every day will support it. The Android approach requires app developers to understand the tradeoffs and design their apps in such a way that they don't continue chewing up massive resources while backgrounded (i.e. killing the battery), because they are not prevented from doing so by the API. Many app developers will not do a good job of that.
If the phone has signal issues in real world use your point is valid. I haven't seen real world issues with mine yet - but we shall see. I suspect if this is really a problem Apple will do something about it - they're certainly profitable enough to do a replacement program. It would certainly be less expensive than the fallout of a yearlong debacle with their primary product. It is telling that in this thread someone marked my prior comment as a troll (really??) Seems to me there is plenty in this stream that is quite a bit more inflammatory than that. Slashdot certainly has a 'point of view' ..
I have one - haven't seen any problem in real-world use although I can make a bar disappear by covering the bottom of the phone. Pandora continues to stream just fine. I'm guessing many phone manufacturers hide the issue by making the signal strength indicator update more slowly or in a non-linear fashion or something... Non-issue really, but the rabid Android contingent needs something to make them feel better about the 6 hour battery life of the EVO. Let's be real - ALL smartphones have some issue or another that can be called out. The new iPhone is a pretty damn great piece of kit regardless.
Ideological purity rarely works in the real world. If you take it too far you wind up with Bush as President... Without Apple, the GUI would have remained hidden away in the PARC labs until who knows? Apple took those rough ideas and polished them to a wonderful degree, then brought them to the world. Similarly the iPhone touch UI Apple has commercialized is fantastic. Who really believes open software would produce new classes of products such as those? I am very happy to pay money to innovators who bring me things I otherwise could never have. Open and commercial software are complimentary. I think patent law should be addressed so that open software products can come in and commoditize things once they have matured, but lots of real innovation happens in the commercial space.
What the execs pushing for tiered pricing fail to understand is that scarcity DOES exist online - the current chart-topping hits are extremely easy to locate and download via the file-sharing networks, and they can be easily heard via radio and all of the various other forms of distribution. So their scarcity is very low to the consumer. For this reason, increasing the price of the hit songs will only serve to drive users to piracy for those songs.
Likewise, the obscure tracks do have real online scarcity- they can't be easily found on filesharing networks, so should retain their full value for an online purchase. But of course demand for obscure old songs will be elastic for all but the hard-core fan, so raising prices for those tracks would drive consumers to other choices.
Often the TVs at the health clubs broadcast their audio over FM- each TV on a different station. And since it seems that everyone at my gym has white headphones, maybe Apple should consider the feature...
Microsoft makes almost all of their profits on sales of XP and Office. I would argue that both of these products are adequate, but neither compelling nor great. Both continue to be successful because people must endure great pain if they try to choose any other alternative.
/.er. And they know how to build hardware that they can sell *for profit*. The PS3 will own the next generation just like PS2 owns this one.
Lets list the other great applications or product categories MS has pioneered since the beginning of the internet era- the early 90's:
(sound of crickets chirping)
Where have they completely missed the boat?
1. The Web. If it weren't for Netscape we would all be using a closed, proprietary, for-pay MS network much closer to the old pre-internet AOL model than the public internet we have today. And since MS stole the browser market from them how much innovation has happened in the browser space? For all practical purposes - Nada! Hopefully the Firefox phenomenon will convince smart, hungry people that success can be had inovating in this space.
2. Search. Google is kicking their butt back and forth and truly innovating on a regular basis. I never realized how piss-poor the Windows search functionality was until I tried Google Desktop Search. It is a revelation to get results immediately that would take several minutes or hours of searching to find with the MS provided pap. And have you seen the other stuff coming from Google Labs like the new Maps? Great stuff.
3. Music. Tiny little Apple has single-handedly eaten Microsofts lunch on this one. Even though MS compatible players are (or at least were) far more widely available to consumers.
4. Gaming. The XBox seems like a contender, but only because it has been propped up by the profits from other divisions. MS blew it in the first generation - using PC components sealed their fate - the machine was too big for the Japanese market and too expensive to make a profit on. Xbox would have tanked long ago if the division was actually dependent on making money. Switching to G5 chips may help with those issues but will consumers buy a machine that isn't backward compatible? If the PSP is any indicator, Sony has not forgotten how to make hardware that inpires lust in the average
Please somebody provide a single example of something important that Microsoft has truly inovated with in the past decade!
Um, actually digital audio CAN (and in certain cases DOES) have a volume adjustment.
Digital signals consist of samples that encode both frequency and amplitude. Without the amplitude bits, all parts of a given digital recording would have the same relative volume. By mathematically manipulating the amplitude bits, you can achieve the equivalent of a volume control.
Case in point - the Apple Airport Extreme base station I own has an optical digital output that is connected to my receiver. And the iTunes prefs on my computer provide a setting to continue allowing use of the onscreen volume control even when routing music to the stereo through the Airport.
So iTunes/Airport must reduce or increase the amplitude bits encoded in the digital signal being sent to my receiver by applying some kind of mathematical transformation. I know this because the signal is digital all the way into my receiver, but still I can control the volume from my pc.
FWIW, it works great - with lossless encoding, a decent receiver and B&W speakers, I get something approaching audiophile sound quality.
Apple gains an enormous amount from this- they will further solidify their proprietary audio codec as the standard for internet music distribution. We can be sure that HP won't be the only licensee. Apple has done this exactly right- create the most seamless integration in the industry, then graciously allow what would otherwise be their competition to join the party...