Ah, but the iPod wasn't exactly "first to market". It's risen to dominance thanks to a combination of ease of use, functionality, appearance, and so forth; it was, and remains, a damn desirable MP3 player, and once it had risen to dominance in that market, Apple launched the iTMS to lend it even more weight - why faff about with multiple stores and players when you can do it all Apple's way much easier?
What Microsoft and the other companies selling music online and producing players have let to achieve is to make a player that doesn't out-feature the iPod, but is more desirable than it anyway. The iPod hasn't all the features of other players (took a while for a colour screen, took a while for video, and so on) but it's more than that that makes the player. Being first to market does help - but if your product can be lusted after by so many people regardless, you can unseat the established leader.
If Napster's branded MP3 players could combine the ease-of-use of the iPod with its slick integration to iTunes and the iTMS, that would be a start. I personally think Creative have missed this opportunity, at least in the UK - their players seem to be what those who don't want an iPod buy. If they launched a store and tied it into their player as well as Apple have done, they'd see a lot more interest.
Vinyl isn't that hard to find if you know where to look - specifically, Amazon are a godsend when it comes to getting new LPs. Just a regular search for and vinyl will usually yield vinyl versions of all their singles and albums - it's been helpful for me certainly just to see if certain albums have a vinyl release, and I've bought one or two.
It's not a Power Mac, nor has it ever tried to be - one wouldn't have bought the original bondi blue iMac when it first came out if they needed the power of the Power Mac G3 then, either. Also, Jobs admitted that Rosetta wasn't really professional-level yet - Photoshop and the like are usable, but professionals will want to wait for the x86-native releases. They'll come, and so will an Intel-based Power Mac - until then, the G5 Quad will be more than sufficient and will last a long time to come.
Holding down Option when booting does do something - on Open Firmware-based Macs, it presents a graphical list of the volumes you can boot from. (For example, with my iBook with the Mac OS X DVD in the drive, it shows I can boot from the hard disc, from the install partition on the DVD, or the Apple Hardware Test partition on the DVD). As the review says, it did a similar thing on the new EFI iMac, only it only showed his hard disc as bootable.
Also, apparently on the new Intel-based Macs, one holds 'D' instead of 'C' to boot from the optical drive - presumably because Mac OS X ships on DVDs by default.
Mac OS X not pre-emptively multitasking? I think you're either misinformed, thinking of Mac OS 9 (the 'classic' Mac OS) or are just trolling. Mac OS X boasts pre-emptive multitasking just as other modern Unices do.
You've got a Slashdot username. You have a preferences page. You have a checkbox labelled "Apple" just begging to be unchecked. Seriously, if you don't want Apple stories, just turn 'em off and stop complaining. There's a reason why there's a lot of Apple stories at the moment anyway - it's Macworld, so you'd expect maybe just a little more focus on them?
learn |l?rn| verb ( past learned |l?rnd|or chiefly Brit. learnt |l?rnt|) [ trans. ] 1 gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught: they'd started learning French | [with infinitive ] she is learning to play the piano | [ intrans. ] we learn from experience.
It's common here in the UK, like burnt is used instead of burned.
The BBC is hardly a 'mouthpiece for the Government' - while it receives funding in the form of the licence fee it has a duty to be impartial and not simply tell the news as the Government wants it.
As for the 'Brit' term, I have no problem with it - I'm English, and British. Being called either is fine with me. "English" just denotes me as being from a specific country within the UK, whereas British indicates I'm from the country as a whole. I don't see the controversy - it's not like calling a Scot an Englishman.
Did you read the Wikipedia article? "Chemie Grünenthal decided to expand into the United States, and applied to the Food and Drug Administration for approval to sell the drug. This approval was not expected to be controversial... [Kelsey] refused to clear thalidomide for sale"
The FDA did not clear Thalidomide for sale, as stated in the article.
At the time it was necessary for them to be cautious with who they allowed to develop for their platform. The 1984 computer games crash was, in part, due to the massive flow of low-quality software being pumped out primarily for the Atari 2600; at the time, even Quaker Oats were developing games. Nintendo saw that there needed to be at least some regulation when they attempted to restart the games market; whilst they were heavy handed to the extreme, it did the trick.
Nintendo were happy to let third parties develop for the NES, just so long as they played by Nintendo's rules.
Mod parent up. When you're driving a huge lump of metal with the ability to very, very easily end someone else's (or your own) life, you should be concentrating on one thing and one thing only: ensuring that you don't.
The first time I've actually encountered a voice recognition menu was yesterday, trying to get through to UPS's support, and it was sufficiently confused by my voice as to send me straight to a real person on the other end. Perhaps I'll just 'accidentally' mangle it whenever I use one of these systems again?
Would you rather we all just keep quiet over the Sony/rootkit story, do as we're told, keep buying our DRMed/etc. CDs, and act like good, unquestioning consumers? Sorry, but I think that this is something we simply do have to keep on about. We have to make sure people know that Sony are not beneath putting this sort of software on their CDs (even if they didn't know quite everything the rootkit did, they're still responsible for putting it on their products), else we'll only see things getting worse.
I agree. I bought myself a laptop for University, and take it to all my lectures and tutorial sessions. During some of the classes (I'm studying Computer Science), I already know the material; there's absolutely no point in my taking dedicated notes on basic HTML. On the other paw, Analytical Modelling is a part of my course I've never studied before, so I earnestly take notes.
...a website which, when most seem to think über-long flash intros, banners everywhere and convoluted stylesheets are acceptable and good, chooses to use plain old-fashioned HTML?
High-fives to whoever designed the website. The layout is nice and clean, and is pretty much guarenteed to load in any browser. If we had more websites like this, the web would be so much more tolerable.
So Apple can get away with charging for service packs. Imagine if MS did that.
Sorry to be the bringer of bad tidings, but Apple releasing Mac OS X 10.4 as a full-price OS is just the same as Microsoft, for example, doing the same with NT 5.1. That's Windows XP, by the way.
Apple's "service packs" are available for free through software update, just as Windows XP SP2 was through Windows Update.
No doubt Apple are already in discussions to get all sorts of content up on the iTMS - it all depends on whether the various movie/television/etc. companies are willing to give the nod. Unless they can rope more distributors on board, they're relatively stuck. It all rests with the distributors.
The question is not whether the freshly-fertilised egg is 'alive', but whether it can be considered human. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas* considered an unborn boy to have a soul at 40 days, and an unborn girl to have one at 80; before those times, he saw the foetus to be non-human. At what point to we declare the bundle of multiplying cells to be human, and at what point are they afforded the same rights? I doubt these new findings will bring much insight to this rather contentious question.
I dislike adverts/intros you're "not allowed" to fast-forward immensely. Sadly, DVD Player on Mac OS X won't let you skip them using the controls, but there's a workaround which might work for PowerDVD and others, too: create a bookmark of the menus. This should skip right to them, with no fuss.
Slashdot Mirror
What Microsoft and the other companies selling music online and producing players have let to achieve is to make a player that doesn't out-feature the iPod, but is more desirable than it anyway. The iPod hasn't all the features of other players (took a while for a colour screen, took a while for video, and so on) but it's more than that that makes the player. Being first to market does help - but if your product can be lusted after by so many people regardless, you can unseat the established leader.
If Napster's branded MP3 players could combine the ease-of-use of the iPod with its slick integration to iTunes and the iTMS, that would be a start. I personally think Creative have missed this opportunity, at least in the UK - their players seem to be what those who don't want an iPod buy. If they launched a store and tied it into their player as well as Apple have done, they'd see a lot more interest.
Vinyl isn't that hard to find if you know where to look - specifically, Amazon are a godsend when it comes to getting new LPs. Just a regular search for and vinyl will usually yield vinyl versions of all their singles and albums - it's been helpful for me certainly just to see if certain albums have a vinyl release, and I've bought one or two.
It's not a Power Mac, nor has it ever tried to be - one wouldn't have bought the original bondi blue iMac when it first came out if they needed the power of the Power Mac G3 then, either. Also, Jobs admitted that Rosetta wasn't really professional-level yet - Photoshop and the like are usable, but professionals will want to wait for the x86-native releases. They'll come, and so will an Intel-based Power Mac - until then, the G5 Quad will be more than sufficient and will last a long time to come.
Also, apparently on the new Intel-based Macs, one holds 'D' instead of 'C' to boot from the optical drive - presumably because Mac OS X ships on DVDs by default.
Mac OS X not pre-emptively multitasking? I think you're either misinformed, thinking of Mac OS 9 (the 'classic' Mac OS) or are just trolling. Mac OS X boasts pre-emptive multitasking just as other modern Unices do.
You've got a Slashdot username. You have a preferences page. You have a checkbox labelled "Apple" just begging to be unchecked. Seriously, if you don't want Apple stories, just turn 'em off and stop complaining. There's a reason why there's a lot of Apple stories at the moment anyway - it's Macworld, so you'd expect maybe just a little more focus on them?
Quoth Dictionary.app on Mac OS X:
learn |l?rn| verb ( past learned |l?rnd|or chiefly Brit. learnt |l?rnt|) [ trans. ] 1 gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught : they'd started learning French | [with infinitive ] she is learning to play the piano | [ intrans. ] we learn from experience.
It's common here in the UK, like burnt is used instead of burned.
As for the 'Brit' term, I have no problem with it - I'm English, and British. Being called either is fine with me. "English" just denotes me as being from a specific country within the UK, whereas British indicates I'm from the country as a whole. I don't see the controversy - it's not like calling a Scot an Englishman.
The FDA did not clear Thalidomide for sale, as stated in the article.
One word: thalidomide.
Nintendo were happy to let third parties develop for the NES, just so long as they played by Nintendo's rules.
Mod parent up. When you're driving a huge lump of metal with the ability to very, very easily end someone else's (or your own) life, you should be concentrating on one thing and one thing only: ensuring that you don't.
The first time I've actually encountered a voice recognition menu was yesterday, trying to get through to UPS's support, and it was sufficiently confused by my voice as to send me straight to a real person on the other end. Perhaps I'll just 'accidentally' mangle it whenever I use one of these systems again?
I'm going to be a rich man.
Would you rather we all just keep quiet over the Sony/rootkit story, do as we're told, keep buying our DRMed/etc. CDs, and act like good, unquestioning consumers? Sorry, but I think that this is something we simply do have to keep on about. We have to make sure people know that Sony are not beneath putting this sort of software on their CDs (even if they didn't know quite everything the rootkit did, they're still responsible for putting it on their products), else we'll only see things getting worse.
I agree. I bought myself a laptop for University, and take it to all my lectures and tutorial sessions. During some of the classes (I'm studying Computer Science), I already know the material; there's absolutely no point in my taking dedicated notes on basic HTML. On the other paw, Analytical Modelling is a part of my course I've never studied before, so I earnestly take notes.
...a website which, when most seem to think über-long flash intros, banners everywhere and convoluted stylesheets are acceptable and good, chooses to use plain old-fashioned HTML?
High-fives to whoever designed the website. The layout is nice and clean, and is pretty much guarenteed to load in any browser. If we had more websites like this, the web would be so much more tolerable.
So Apple can get away with charging for service packs. Imagine if MS did that.
Sorry to be the bringer of bad tidings, but Apple releasing Mac OS X 10.4 as a full-price OS is just the same as Microsoft, for example, doing the same with NT 5.1. That's Windows XP, by the way.
Apple's "service packs" are available for free through software update, just as Windows XP SP2 was through Windows Update.
I get enough funny looks from my housemates already. I am not putting a condom over my monitor.
I c no porblem wiv the aboev,.
(typing that hurt...)
I think you've stumbled into the wrong place. linux.slashdot.org is just down the hall, to your left.
*ducks and runs* I kid! I kid!
Apple are you listening?
No doubt Apple are already in discussions to get all sorts of content up on the iTMS - it all depends on whether the various movie/television/etc. companies are willing to give the nod. Unless they can rope more distributors on board, they're relatively stuck. It all rests with the distributors.
I think in this case, you may have slightly bigger issues at hand...
Oh hell, that reads worse and worse every time...
The question is not whether the freshly-fertilised egg is 'alive', but whether it can be considered human. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas* considered an unborn boy to have a soul at 40 days, and an unborn girl to have one at 80; before those times, he saw the foetus to be non-human. At what point to we declare the bundle of multiplying cells to be human, and at what point are they afforded the same rights? I doubt these new findings will bring much insight to this rather contentious question.
* A-level Ethics and Philosophy pays off again!
I dislike adverts/intros you're "not allowed" to fast-forward immensely. Sadly, DVD Player on Mac OS X won't let you skip them using the controls, but there's a workaround which might work for PowerDVD and others, too: create a bookmark of the menus. This should skip right to them, with no fuss.