I even pay individuals online when physically meeting up with them isn't convenient (such as my grandmother who is a 5 hour drive from here). My bank (Bank of America) will mail a check from my account to where ever I tell them to for no charge. It takes about 2 minutes to set up a new payee, and additional payments to an existing payee can be done in literally less than 20 seconds.
When I did my undergrad in CS, we had a course that did exactly that called software engineering. Every CS major was required to take it. In it, you spent time covering every major step of the development cycle, as well as studying various different approaches to development. It also required a group project where you mimiced going through the development cycle.
I agree that the iPod certainly could use some competition. It hasn't been stagnant, but it hasn't had a serious competitor in quite some time either. I hope the Zune sees some moderate success so Apple doesn't get too complacent, though given Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies, I think it would be a pretty bad thing overall if the Zune picked up too much market share. I'm curious if it'll be as easy to rip the DRM from Microsoft's online store music as it is to rip the DRM from iTunes store music. Do you know if the license allows it to be burned to a plain audio CD?
I agree to every one of your points. I just don't think they've reached the correct conclusion that iPod owners aren't as loyal. I think what you really need to look at to determine that is how many current iPod owners are considering replacing their iPod in the next year, and for both groups, what percent anticipate eventually replacing their current iPod with another iPod vs. a different MP3 player. There are bound to be plenty of current iPod owners who like their iPod and will buy another, just not soon, as well as those who don't like their iPod and will by another brand next time, but aren't planning on actually buying one soon. I think these numbers are just as important as those who are in the market in showing loyalty.
To compare iPod loyalty vs. other brand loyalty, you then need to run the same tests against the next couple most popular MP3 players. As no one owns a Zune yet, you can't really use the Zune as a basis for comparison, though a year from now, it will be a valid and interesting comparison indeed.
My current MP3 player is a 20GB 4th gen iPod. I'm fully satisfied with it, and my next MP3 player purchase will be another iPod. That being said, I have no intention on replacing my iPod in the next year. This study would not count me as a satisfied iPod owner, even though I am.
You know you're in trouble when there are more people are arguing over exactly why your console is going to fail than there are people arguing over whether or not it will fail in the first place.
I am a techie person, and I still only use my phone for calls and text messages. I can set my 11 year old Sony clock-radio much faster than navigating the crummy interface on my cell phone. Can someone please tell me why the path is menu-> settings->tools->alarm clock? It's a $300, yet the processor is too slow to get good performance on even the games it ships with, and the keys are a pain to press. On top of that, half the items on the main menu and several in various sub menus automatically launch the browser and start downloading stuff at my expense, but I can't turn off Internet access without losing my text messaging. I don't even want to poke around the UI trying to learn how to use it because I don't want to pay for accidental Internet access.
And you nailed it. The reason why Mac OS X needs to stay Mac only is because that allows them to focus on making it run on a very small set of hardware, making the whole process much simpler.
Woah! Someone check the weather, 'cause it's gonna be a cold day down in you know where. Dvorak just said something that makes sense! Of course, it's the same chain of thought that's been going on for weeks here at Slashdot, so it may not be his own original reasoning. But nonetheless, that's the first article of his I've read in longer than I can remember that didn't make me want to highlight all the flaws in his reasoning and send them along with proof of their idiocy to his editors.
Your analogy can be improved by pointing out that said goons ignore the fact that your goods are bagged and you have a receipt. The cashier has to personally verify that you paid for your stuff, and if they don't remember you or are no longer on the floor, tough cookies. After all this, the same or another goon can tackle you again for "stealing" the exact same items and repeat the entire process.
Agreed, but at the moment, I'd much rather my grandmother be at Apple's mercy than Microsoft's. As of Tiger, there are still no CD keys, still no activation, still only one consumer version, still no upgrade hassles, and you can still reinstall from any bootable volume (I've mirrored the Tiger DVD on to my iPod and used that to reinstall Tiger on Macs that don't have DVD drives several times). Believe it or not, Apple still conforms to the ancient practice of trusting your customer not to take his one copy and install it on 20 machines. As a student, I'll be able to nab Vista for 10 bucks when it launches (assuming it launches before I graduate in May...) While I'm not going to pass up that opportunity, I have no intention on actually installing it on my Windows machine. There just seems to be nothing to gain and plenty to lose moving up to Vista from XP Pro. When Leopard launches around the same time, however, I'll pay my $100 (after student discount) the day it comes out, and have it installed on my MacBook a couple hours later. It's not a tradeoff like moving up from 2000 to XP or XP to Vista. You pay the $100, you get a slew of new features, and it performs better (gasp!) than Tiger.
Yes, they're there for anyone to find, but posting them on a public forum allows many trouble makers who would have never found the flaws otherwise to exploit them. The bugs should be disclosed to the developers so that they can be fixed, but announcing them publicly, at least right away, would be irresponsible.
In my case, the reason is simple. Over the two years I used my last Windows laptop (with it being my only computer for one of those years), it never once woke up from sleep or hibernate. Never. I always wound up having to hold the power key down for 5 seconds and cold boot it. This was whether I was using the default install of XP Home that came with the machine or my own copy of XP Pro. My current Windows desktop does resume from hibernate successfully nearly half the time, but the other half it crashes hard 30 seconds or so after resuming. Effectively, I always shut those machines down when I'm done with them and boot them cold next time I need them.
Between my two Mac laptops on the other hand (an iBook G3 and a MacBook, so one much newer machine than the other) I have failed to resume from sleep maybe three times total. My iBook when it was my only Mac and my MacBook now are probably slept and resumed over a dozen times a day without incident. Naturally, I don't have any hesitation whatsoever about sleeping those machines.
If you actually have a 78 item long list of reasons you won't be buying Vista, please send it to me! I've got plenty of my own reasons and I'd love to compare notes.
Do they seriously think annoying the users who care enough about their systems to turn off the Windows startup sound in the first place is really a good idea?
If you don't have any ports forwarded or DMZ enabled, pretty much nil. You should be good. Now, that setup will grant you no protection whatsoever from a stupid user who winds up with malware, but that's a whole different can of worms.
That's an interesting observation. I'd never noticed that before, but you appear to be correct. I thought the SNES did have a much larger market share than the Genesis, but I don't have any numbers, so I'm not sure.
That applies to handhelds as well. The GameBoy couldn't compare favorably in just about any way to the GameGear except for battery life, yet the GameBoy won hands down. Throughout the GameBoy family's lifespan, it's had to compete with quite a few systems vastly more powerful than the then current generation, such as the Wonder Swan, Wonder Swan Color, and Neo Geo Pocket. The PSP is the only one since GameGear that's ever even had a halfway decent market share, and nothing has come close to toppling Nintendo's dominance on the handhelds. I'm very curious to see what happens in the console market now that Nintendo is breaking rank. I know I'm preordring my Wii!
This has been around for months on the MacBook Pro in the form of Smackbook. The user simply hits his MBP to switch desktops. In this case, one of the desktops is running OS X, the other XP via Parallels.
An excellent point, but if you find yourself in this situation, you can usually escape by logging on as administrator* (administrator itself, not a normal user account with administrator access). Administrator adds a context menu item to take ownership of files, which will override the security preventing you from getting to those files normally.
*On XP Home Edition, to log on as administrator, you must boot in to safe mode.
Slashdot Mirror
I even pay individuals online when physically meeting up with them isn't convenient (such as my grandmother who is a 5 hour drive from here). My bank (Bank of America) will mail a check from my account to where ever I tell them to for no charge. It takes about 2 minutes to set up a new payee, and additional payments to an existing payee can be done in literally less than 20 seconds.
When I did my undergrad in CS, we had a course that did exactly that called software engineering. Every CS major was required to take it. In it, you spent time covering every major step of the development cycle, as well as studying various different approaches to development. It also required a group project where you mimiced going through the development cycle.
I agree that the iPod certainly could use some competition. It hasn't been stagnant, but it hasn't had a serious competitor in quite some time either. I hope the Zune sees some moderate success so Apple doesn't get too complacent, though given Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies, I think it would be a pretty bad thing overall if the Zune picked up too much market share. I'm curious if it'll be as easy to rip the DRM from Microsoft's online store music as it is to rip the DRM from iTunes store music. Do you know if the license allows it to be burned to a plain audio CD?
I agree to every one of your points. I just don't think they've reached the correct conclusion that iPod owners aren't as loyal. I think what you really need to look at to determine that is how many current iPod owners are considering replacing their iPod in the next year, and for both groups, what percent anticipate eventually replacing their current iPod with another iPod vs. a different MP3 player. There are bound to be plenty of current iPod owners who like their iPod and will buy another, just not soon, as well as those who don't like their iPod and will by another brand next time, but aren't planning on actually buying one soon. I think these numbers are just as important as those who are in the market in showing loyalty.
To compare iPod loyalty vs. other brand loyalty, you then need to run the same tests against the next couple most popular MP3 players. As no one owns a Zune yet, you can't really use the Zune as a basis for comparison, though a year from now, it will be a valid and interesting comparison indeed.
My current MP3 player is a 20GB 4th gen iPod. I'm fully satisfied with it, and my next MP3 player purchase will be another iPod. That being said, I have no intention on replacing my iPod in the next year. This study would not count me as a satisfied iPod owner, even though I am.
You know you're in trouble when there are more people are arguing over exactly why your console is going to fail than there are people arguing over whether or not it will fail in the first place.
I am a techie person, and I still only use my phone for calls and text messages. I can set my 11 year old Sony clock-radio much faster than navigating the crummy interface on my cell phone. Can someone please tell me why the path is menu-> settings->tools->alarm clock? It's a $300, yet the processor is too slow to get good performance on even the games it ships with, and the keys are a pain to press. On top of that, half the items on the main menu and several in various sub menus automatically launch the browser and start downloading stuff at my expense, but I can't turn off Internet access without losing my text messaging. I don't even want to poke around the UI trying to learn how to use it because I don't want to pay for accidental Internet access.
Does it share an acronym with hit points and horse power?
And you nailed it. The reason why Mac OS X needs to stay Mac only is because that allows them to focus on making it run on a very small set of hardware, making the whole process much simpler.
Just FYI, use the Code format when spacing is important. HTML usually ignores excess spaces, but the code formatting will preserve them.
Woah! Someone check the weather, 'cause it's gonna be a cold day down in you know where. Dvorak just said something that makes sense! Of course, it's the same chain of thought that's been going on for weeks here at Slashdot, so it may not be his own original reasoning. But nonetheless, that's the first article of his I've read in longer than I can remember that didn't make me want to highlight all the flaws in his reasoning and send them along with proof of their idiocy to his editors.
Your analogy can be improved by pointing out that said goons ignore the fact that your goods are bagged and you have a receipt. The cashier has to personally verify that you paid for your stuff, and if they don't remember you or are no longer on the floor, tough cookies. After all this, the same or another goon can tackle you again for "stealing" the exact same items and repeat the entire process.
Agreed, but at the moment, I'd much rather my grandmother be at Apple's mercy than Microsoft's. As of Tiger, there are still no CD keys, still no activation, still only one consumer version, still no upgrade hassles, and you can still reinstall from any bootable volume (I've mirrored the Tiger DVD on to my iPod and used that to reinstall Tiger on Macs that don't have DVD drives several times). Believe it or not, Apple still conforms to the ancient practice of trusting your customer not to take his one copy and install it on 20 machines. As a student, I'll be able to nab Vista for 10 bucks when it launches (assuming it launches before I graduate in May...) While I'm not going to pass up that opportunity, I have no intention on actually installing it on my Windows machine. There just seems to be nothing to gain and plenty to lose moving up to Vista from XP Pro. When Leopard launches around the same time, however, I'll pay my $100 (after student discount) the day it comes out, and have it installed on my MacBook a couple hours later. It's not a tradeoff like moving up from 2000 to XP or XP to Vista. You pay the $100, you get a slew of new features, and it performs better (gasp!) than Tiger.
I guess Plays for Sure doesn't actually play for sure.
Yes, they're there for anyone to find, but posting them on a public forum allows many trouble makers who would have never found the flaws otherwise to exploit them. The bugs should be disclosed to the developers so that they can be fixed, but announcing them publicly, at least right away, would be irresponsible.
In my case, the reason is simple. Over the two years I used my last Windows laptop (with it being my only computer for one of those years), it never once woke up from sleep or hibernate. Never. I always wound up having to hold the power key down for 5 seconds and cold boot it. This was whether I was using the default install of XP Home that came with the machine or my own copy of XP Pro. My current Windows desktop does resume from hibernate successfully nearly half the time, but the other half it crashes hard 30 seconds or so after resuming. Effectively, I always shut those machines down when I'm done with them and boot them cold next time I need them.
Between my two Mac laptops on the other hand (an iBook G3 and a MacBook, so one much newer machine than the other) I have failed to resume from sleep maybe three times total. My iBook when it was my only Mac and my MacBook now are probably slept and resumed over a dozen times a day without incident. Naturally, I don't have any hesitation whatsoever about sleeping those machines.
If you actually have a 78 item long list of reasons you won't be buying Vista, please send it to me! I've got plenty of my own reasons and I'd love to compare notes.
Point.
Do they seriously think annoying the users who care enough about their systems to turn off the Windows startup sound in the first place is really a good idea?
If you don't have any ports forwarded or DMZ enabled, pretty much nil. You should be good. Now, that setup will grant you no protection whatsoever from a stupid user who winds up with malware, but that's a whole different can of worms.
Nice? In what way would THAT be nice? :/
It would get rid of IE as the default browser. Who knows what sort of problems they would add to it, but at least we'd finally be rid of IE.
That's an interesting observation. I'd never noticed that before, but you appear to be correct. I thought the SNES did have a much larger market share than the Genesis, but I don't have any numbers, so I'm not sure.
That applies to handhelds as well. The GameBoy couldn't compare favorably in just about any way to the GameGear except for battery life, yet the GameBoy won hands down. Throughout the GameBoy family's lifespan, it's had to compete with quite a few systems vastly more powerful than the then current generation, such as the Wonder Swan, Wonder Swan Color, and Neo Geo Pocket. The PSP is the only one since GameGear that's ever even had a halfway decent market share, and nothing has come close to toppling Nintendo's dominance on the handhelds. I'm very curious to see what happens in the console market now that Nintendo is breaking rank. I know I'm preordring my Wii!
This has been around for months on the MacBook Pro in the form of Smackbook. The user simply hits his MBP to switch desktops. In this case, one of the desktops is running OS X, the other XP via Parallels.
An excellent point, but if you find yourself in this situation, you can usually escape by logging on as administrator* (administrator itself, not a normal user account with administrator access). Administrator adds a context menu item to take ownership of files, which will override the security preventing you from getting to those files normally. *On XP Home Edition, to log on as administrator, you must boot in to safe mode.
Just wait for the version fun when Vista comes out!