Oh come on. Are you going to tell me that you can even hear the difference between 256kbps AAC and lossless? And why do you care about watermarking? Unlike DRM, watermarking doesn't prevent you from doing what you want with the media. It's not anything likely to be abused in any way. If you know of any problem that watermarking will cause non-pirates, please let me know.
Copying software to a CD isn't really "manufacture" either. The problem with your analogy is that, really, software does not undergo "manufacturing". It's designed, written, debugged, patched, and finally copied.
If the patents involved burning CDs or making boxes for software, then those patents would be used in the process of pressing and boxing CDs. If that process took place in China, then you'd have a point. However, if the patent involves the software itself, then all the pieces of that patented process are "assembled" when the software is written.
If writing software to disk is legally considered "manufacturing", then this is an instance of the law failing to keep pace with the times. These days, copying information is too trivial a matter to carry any weight. In a serious metaphysical way, the game has changed, but a lot of governments and businesses haven't figured it out yet. If IP laws can be circumvented as simply as having the copying process take place in other countries, then something is wrong-- where the copying takes place is arbitrary and meaningless. If IP laws rightfully should be circumvented as simply as having the copying process take place in other countries, then that should be a real indication that those IP laws need revision.
This is a big step in the right direction, although it's unclear exactly what Apple means by 'higher quality,' and there is no mention of price changes.
It seems pretty clear to me-- they're offering the same pricing scheme that they've announced with EMI. They will continue to sell 128 kbps DRM-wrapped AACs for $0.99, but will additionally offer 256kbps DRM-free AACs for $1.29. Anyone familiar with Apple's tactics will tell you that they'll want to keep it simple. They'll offer the same pricing for the same product across the board.
I'd guess that this is all transitional anyway. Apple will continue to try to pressure labels to drop prices and remove DRM on everything. In the mean time, this is a step in the right direction.
That still doesn't make sense. Windows isn't "manufactured" abroad. It's copied abroad. Unless the patents are related to pressing CDs, the "product" being manufactured isn't the disc, it's the OS.
It's overreaction. Mercury really isn't that dangerous. I mean, it's not safe either, but the really horrific things happened back when scientists were so fascinated by the stuff that they'd enclose themselves in small, poorly ventillated rooms with big pools of mercury evaporating into the air, and sometimes even submerge large portions of their bodies into tubs full of mercury.
So, yeah, if you break a thermometer, don't clean it up with your tongue. Don't feed your kids diets consisting only of tuna, because their bodies are small and mercury builds up. But if you break a thermometer or CF bulb, don't worry about it. Even if you get a little on your hands, it's not going to kill you.
I don't think that would ever work. I mean... maybe, let's say if you somehow marketed it towards obsessive geeks who'd actually waste their time all day writing comments, moderating, and then what? You'd need a way to moderate the community moderation system, like some sort of meta-moderation. Who'd be a big enough loser to spend their time that way?
Not me. I'm not going to waste my time arguing about inconsequential topics on some dumb geeky community website.
Right, I think that's what is difficult about the whole Google/China censorship thing. If you ask people whether companies should participate in government censorship, most of us would say no. However, if you ask whether companies should be bound by the laws of the land, I think most of us would say yes.
You might be thinking that this is a different issue because it's a Good American company against the Evil Chinese government, and the Good American rules should trump the Evil Chinese rules. However, I don't think Americans would like it if some foreign company set up shop in America, started breaking American laws, and when caught exclaimed, "But your laws are wrong!"
I thougth the "tubes" analogy was fine, myself. I don't know why people got on his case about it.
I really don't think it is a bad analogy, as far as analogies go. All analogies are inherently inaccurate-- if they were all accurate, it would be a valid description and not an analogy. And really, many of us do think about the internet as pipes of some kind-- conduits with a limited capacity.
I think the reason why people "got on his case" was that he is in a position where he really ought to know something about the internet-- since it's his job to deal with legislation that effects the internet-- and he showed little understanding beyond this vague analogy. He talked about "sending an internet" when he meant that he'd sent an e-mail.
I think if you want to get more literal, the internet itself can be compared to a postal system. The whole point is to somehow transport information from point A to point B. Different things can be sent in different packages, and there are many ways to get from point A to point B. We have addresses to tell people where things should go, but you still need to look up where those addresses are supposed to be. Different areas have different mailmen (routers, I guess?) who know how to find things, and so your mailman hands your package off to another mailman who knows how to find the next mailman, in a chain until the package gets to its intended recipient.
Pagemaker? Geeze, you're really reaching back, aren't you? In my time working professionally with designers, I haven't actually seen anyone use PageMaker. Granted, that experience only stretches back to the mid 90s, but given how young the industry is, that's a pretty long time.
QuarkXpress was competing with the overwhelming market leader in the design/layout space- Adobe.
You're not a designer, are you? Until a couple years ago, Quark completely dominated layout. Sure, you might edit your photos in Photoshop or build some graphics in Illustrator, but when it came time to place those graphics on a page, QuarkXpress was all anyone used. Adobe's layout programs were basically a joke. No one thought Adobe would ever be able to beat out Quark.
And then... Well, Adobe was working on improving their product while Quark was ignoring their customers. People started moving to InDesign. But keep in mind that this was only two or three years ago-- before that, no one used anything but Quark. And it's worth noting that Macromedia controlled a lot of web design until Adobe bought them out. That wasn't long ago either, considering the first Adobe-branded version of formerly-Macromedia software was... a week ago.
Well, you could look it up, but it just has more features than that. You can do the same things that you can do through VNC or SSH. In fact, I believe it uses VNC and SSH to accomplish some of its magic, but it's a pretty well-integrated easy-to-use remote administration package. It basically gives you remote control, optionally running a script on a batch of computers with a few clicks, it allows automated remote installations, and has various monitoring/reporting tools to tell you what's going on with your clients.
Apple Remote Desktop is not a comparable product to VNC. It's not like Terminal Services, either. ARD does provide that sort of remote desktop viewing, but it also provides a bevy of other remote-management features, such as being able to install the same package on several machines or running the same script on several machines, using only a few clicks.
Macs can also connect to Windows AD servers for authentication, and Apple provides their own directory services through their own directory server. Many of the same things can be accomplished, though not always through the same methods.
Yes, in my experience too, Macs require less time to support, but I've never done anything resembling a study. I can't tell you for sure whether they really took less time to support or if it just seemed that way.
It's not just that they're easier to deal with (they are) or because they're more reliable (they seem to be), but also because Apple Remote Desktop is an amazing help. If you have to administer to a bunch of Macs and haven't used it, it's definitely worth a look. Hint: It's not the same thing as VNC or Terminal Services.
The same things were said about Windows XP. And look where we are today...
At least for me, when Windows XP came out, I tried it and thought there were a couple minor annoyances, and I didn't see that it really gave me any huge benefit over 2000-- but I liked it. I found myself using it, and wanting to use it rather than XP.
Now I actually have a couple free upgrades to Vista because when I bought a couple licenses last year, I bought SA because I knew Vista was coming. I installed it, tried it out, and I find myself avoiding it. I like things about it, but everything feels more difficult. Just recently, after a few months of testing, I wiped out my Vista install and went back to XP, and I just feel so much better.
XP certainly doesn't really look as nice, but I've had fewer crashes, everything feels faster, and I'm far less aggravated.
But no, the automatic mode in dSLR's isn't "worse" than the cellphone camera in any way.
But that's exactly what the article showed, that if you do purely subjective tests with cell phone P&S cameras and a high-end dSLR with no tweaking or post-processing, resized down to "normal" dimensions, you can actually get *better* results using a P&S cell phone camera. Look at the sample pictures, and most people will say that the Nokia cellphone produced "better" pictures than the dSLR.
That's not to say that dSLR pictures really aren't as good-- you have bigger sizes and better detail to work with. The unprocessed images can be processed to look better-- but that's not the test being run. It's starting from the assumption that this is a subjective test for P&S photographers who won't particularly want to do manual work or extra processing. For these people, the "burnt highlights, blotchy shadows, lens distortion and digitally over-sharpened edges to disguise the lack of real resolution" still might look better than the actually superior results of a quality camera.
If you aren't able to understand the concept, I don't know what else to tell you.
Yes, but maintaining Firefox for OSX and Camino isn't necessarily ideal. It's probably a little bit of a duplication of effort for developers, and it might confuse users a little regarding which browser they should be using.
One of the major features of Firefox is its extensions. Camino can't use Firefox extensions, but Firefox doesn't quite integrate into the OS. It'd be nice if they could somehow close the gap.
They are deliberately limiting the quality by assuming that everyone's final goal is to post scaled down pictures on Flickr.
Uh... yeah... that's the premise of the article. "If you're only interested in point-and-click sharing your pictures over the internet through Flickr or e-mail, is it worth your money to buy an expensive stand-alone camera or will the camera in your cell do the job well enough?"
Hence the comparison with video scaled down to a point where the original quality is irrelevant. 64x48 pixel video is worse than DVCPRO HD but my point is that it's also worse than VHS.
Again I feel tempted to say, "Uh... yeah..." You know, I read you the first time and I understand what 64x64 means, but this just isn't an apt criticism of the article. You see, no one is storing 68x68 movies on either VHS or DVCPRO HD, so comparing those formats usefulness for 68x68 pixels would be utterly useless. However, many people are taking pictures only really caring whether the pictures look good at lower resolutions, so the CNet article is not completely useless. It goes to illustrate a point.
Most people (especially the ones with two X chromosomes) like to be able to print their pictures, and most camera phones can't really produce acceptable results above 15x10 cm (6x4"), regardless of their resolution.
That's really not a huge problem for a lot of people. Fewer and fewer people care about printing their pictures because they have other methods to share them (like Flickr), and many who print them don't print them bigger than 6x4".
The article is really demonstrating something true: Most of the time, casual point-and-shoot photographers won't benefit from expensive SLR cameras. It's not just that their results won't be much better, but sometimes their results will be worse than buying a cheap point-and-shoot camera because the point-and-shoot cameras are designed for that purpose. Even the expensive manual cameras are designed for photographers who will exercise a lot of control for the best effect (whatever they're looking for), and so often their automatic settings aren't as good at providing what the point-and-shoot photographer would consider "pretty".
An experienced photographer would know this, of course, but a casual point-and-shoot photographer wouldn't-- and casual photographers are obviously the intend audience of this article.
I don't think your criticism is fair. CNet isn't claiming that the cell phones are better cameras, but are comparing them to dedicated digital cameras in conditions that are common to point-and-shoot photographers. Default settings, medium/low light, point... and shoot. Resize to a reasonable size for e-mailing it, and see how it looks.
So it'd be like if someone discovered that simple photo work like resizing, rotating, and cropping gave better visual quality when using built-in OS tools than if you do the same tasks in Photoshop.
Of course, it may be obvious to you that expert equipment is designed for people who know enough not to use the default settings-- and fair enough. However, I don't believe this article is written for those experts. It's written for basic point-and-shooters who might be considering blowing their money on expensive equipment thinking it will magically provide amazingly superior quality, not realizing that achieving that quality requires a certain level of expertise.
Yes, it's entirely possible. I think that, for a lot of us, we just want a point-and-shoot camera with very few settings, but which will take passable pictures under many conditions. People with expensive cameras, assuming they have expensive cameras for good reason, have paid that amount of money to have a camera with lots of settings that enable them to take the best picture possible under any condition if the settings are tweaked just so.
It's true that some small cameras (and camera phones) just have crappy lenses and crappy sensors, and if you want to blow pictures up to an enormous size or zoom in extremely far, a higher pixel count may help. However, some of the claims that you can't get decent pictures out of something the size of a cell phone are overblown.
You know, you can always enable the IMAP/POP services on Exchange. You can even allow users to access your company's internal address book through LDAP. The problem most people have is that most e-mail clients can't deal with Exchange calendars.
I agree. I think there are a lot of geeks here who will complain that the iPhone doesn't have enough functionality, but the truth is most people won't use that "extra functionality" in other phones. I've had to support a bunch of blackberry users, and many of them simply used the e-mail access. That was it.
They simply weren't sophisticated enough to think about what else might possibly be done on their phones, but they liked having a mobile e-mail device. They didn't even use the Blackberry as a phone most of the time. A good portion of the time, they wouldn't even really use the thing very much. They'd leave it in their office unless they were travelling, or they'd keep in the in their briefcase in case they needed to check for an e-mail they were expecting, or they had an idea they suddenly wanted to e-mail to someone.
For most users, it's merely a convenience issue of wanting access to e-mail wherever they are. Some people also use the calendar and contacts, so if Apple has a way to sync those, it will help them immensely. If it can sync with both Outlook and Apple's iCal/Address Book, then I think you'll have a device many people find very useful.
It really *really* depends on what you mean by "enterprise". Are there going to be "enterprise" users who aren't satisfied with the iPhone and will continue to use Blackberry/Windows phones? Yes. Absolutely. Will there by users who have "enterprise" accounts with AT&T who will be scrambling to get their hands on an iPhone? Yes. Absolutely.
A fair number of the people who get iPhones will be business users who want to be able to get e-mail on-the-go, but otherwise wouldn't want a "smart phone". People who have found smart phones annoying but would carry a iPod with them anyway. I think many "experts" are underestimating that market-- and that market does exist in the "enterprise".
I've known quite a few executive-types who would carry around a normal cell-phone, a Blackberry/Windows smart phone, and an iPod. All three. They didn't like their smart phone as a phone, but they wanted the ability to e-mail just in case. The ability to check an IMAP account will be sufficient for a lot of people.
I think most citizens would not think the state had overstepped its bounds if it enforced all laws to the letter/intent of the law. If citizens would be bothered by the state enforcing the laws it has been contracted to enforce, then that state has bad laws.
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Oh come on. Are you going to tell me that you can even hear the difference between 256kbps AAC and lossless? And why do you care about watermarking? Unlike DRM, watermarking doesn't prevent you from doing what you want with the media. It's not anything likely to be abused in any way. If you know of any problem that watermarking will cause non-pirates, please let me know.
*WRITING* software isn't manufacture, it's design.
Copying software to a CD isn't really "manufacture" either. The problem with your analogy is that, really, software does not undergo "manufacturing". It's designed, written, debugged, patched, and finally copied.
If the patents involved burning CDs or making boxes for software, then those patents would be used in the process of pressing and boxing CDs. If that process took place in China, then you'd have a point. However, if the patent involves the software itself, then all the pieces of that patented process are "assembled" when the software is written.
If writing software to disk is legally considered "manufacturing", then this is an instance of the law failing to keep pace with the times. These days, copying information is too trivial a matter to carry any weight. In a serious metaphysical way, the game has changed, but a lot of governments and businesses haven't figured it out yet. If IP laws can be circumvented as simply as having the copying process take place in other countries, then something is wrong-- where the copying takes place is arbitrary and meaningless. If IP laws rightfully should be circumvented as simply as having the copying process take place in other countries, then that should be a real indication that those IP laws need revision.
1) iTMS gets some actual competition at the same ease-of-use level, yet maintain complete interoperability with it.
I'm not sure how much that will help, since most of the current price of iTunes music is just set by the labels.
It seems pretty clear to me-- they're offering the same pricing scheme that they've announced with EMI. They will continue to sell 128 kbps DRM-wrapped AACs for $0.99, but will additionally offer 256kbps DRM-free AACs for $1.29. Anyone familiar with Apple's tactics will tell you that they'll want to keep it simple. They'll offer the same pricing for the same product across the board.
I'd guess that this is all transitional anyway. Apple will continue to try to pressure labels to drop prices and remove DRM on everything. In the mean time, this is a step in the right direction.
That still doesn't make sense. Windows isn't "manufactured" abroad. It's copied abroad. Unless the patents are related to pressing CDs, the "product" being manufactured isn't the disc, it's the OS.
It's overreaction. Mercury really isn't that dangerous. I mean, it's not safe either, but the really horrific things happened back when scientists were so fascinated by the stuff that they'd enclose themselves in small, poorly ventillated rooms with big pools of mercury evaporating into the air, and sometimes even submerge large portions of their bodies into tubs full of mercury.
So, yeah, if you break a thermometer, don't clean it up with your tongue. Don't feed your kids diets consisting only of tuna, because their bodies are small and mercury builds up. But if you break a thermometer or CF bulb, don't worry about it. Even if you get a little on your hands, it's not going to kill you.
I don't think that would ever work. I mean... maybe, let's say if you somehow marketed it towards obsessive geeks who'd actually waste their time all day writing comments, moderating, and then what? You'd need a way to moderate the community moderation system, like some sort of meta-moderation. Who'd be a big enough loser to spend their time that way?
Not me. I'm not going to waste my time arguing about inconsequential topics on some dumb geeky community website.
Right, I think that's what is difficult about the whole Google/China censorship thing. If you ask people whether companies should participate in government censorship, most of us would say no. However, if you ask whether companies should be bound by the laws of the land, I think most of us would say yes.
You might be thinking that this is a different issue because it's a Good American company against the Evil Chinese government, and the Good American rules should trump the Evil Chinese rules. However, I don't think Americans would like it if some foreign company set up shop in America, started breaking American laws, and when caught exclaimed, "But your laws are wrong!"
I thougth the "tubes" analogy was fine, myself. I don't know why people got on his case about it.
I really don't think it is a bad analogy, as far as analogies go. All analogies are inherently inaccurate-- if they were all accurate, it would be a valid description and not an analogy. And really, many of us do think about the internet as pipes of some kind-- conduits with a limited capacity.
I think the reason why people "got on his case" was that he is in a position where he really ought to know something about the internet-- since it's his job to deal with legislation that effects the internet-- and he showed little understanding beyond this vague analogy. He talked about "sending an internet" when he meant that he'd sent an e-mail.
I think if you want to get more literal, the internet itself can be compared to a postal system. The whole point is to somehow transport information from point A to point B. Different things can be sent in different packages, and there are many ways to get from point A to point B. We have addresses to tell people where things should go, but you still need to look up where those addresses are supposed to be. Different areas have different mailmen (routers, I guess?) who know how to find things, and so your mailman hands your package off to another mailman who knows how to find the next mailman, in a chain until the package gets to its intended recipient.
Pagemaker? Geeze, you're really reaching back, aren't you? In my time working professionally with designers, I haven't actually seen anyone use PageMaker. Granted, that experience only stretches back to the mid 90s, but given how young the industry is, that's a pretty long time.
QuarkXpress was competing with the overwhelming market leader in the design/layout space- Adobe.
You're not a designer, are you? Until a couple years ago, Quark completely dominated layout. Sure, you might edit your photos in Photoshop or build some graphics in Illustrator, but when it came time to place those graphics on a page, QuarkXpress was all anyone used. Adobe's layout programs were basically a joke. No one thought Adobe would ever be able to beat out Quark.
And then... Well, Adobe was working on improving their product while Quark was ignoring their customers. People started moving to InDesign. But keep in mind that this was only two or three years ago-- before that, no one used anything but Quark. And it's worth noting that Macromedia controlled a lot of web design until Adobe bought them out. That wasn't long ago either, considering the first Adobe-branded version of formerly-Macromedia software was... a week ago.
Well, you could look it up, but it just has more features than that. You can do the same things that you can do through VNC or SSH. In fact, I believe it uses VNC and SSH to accomplish some of its magic, but it's a pretty well-integrated easy-to-use remote administration package. It basically gives you remote control, optionally running a script on a batch of computers with a few clicks, it allows automated remote installations, and has various monitoring/reporting tools to tell you what's going on with your clients.
Apple Remote Desktop is not a comparable product to VNC. It's not like Terminal Services, either. ARD does provide that sort of remote desktop viewing, but it also provides a bevy of other remote-management features, such as being able to install the same package on several machines or running the same script on several machines, using only a few clicks.
Macs can also connect to Windows AD servers for authentication, and Apple provides their own directory services through their own directory server. Many of the same things can be accomplished, though not always through the same methods.
Yes, in my experience too, Macs require less time to support, but I've never done anything resembling a study. I can't tell you for sure whether they really took less time to support or if it just seemed that way.
It's not just that they're easier to deal with (they are) or because they're more reliable (they seem to be), but also because Apple Remote Desktop is an amazing help. If you have to administer to a bunch of Macs and haven't used it, it's definitely worth a look. Hint: It's not the same thing as VNC or Terminal Services.
The same things were said about Windows XP. And look where we are today...
At least for me, when Windows XP came out, I tried it and thought there were a couple minor annoyances, and I didn't see that it really gave me any huge benefit over 2000-- but I liked it. I found myself using it, and wanting to use it rather than XP.
Now I actually have a couple free upgrades to Vista because when I bought a couple licenses last year, I bought SA because I knew Vista was coming. I installed it, tried it out, and I find myself avoiding it. I like things about it, but everything feels more difficult. Just recently, after a few months of testing, I wiped out my Vista install and went back to XP, and I just feel so much better.
XP certainly doesn't really look as nice, but I've had fewer crashes, everything feels faster, and I'm far less aggravated.
But no, the automatic mode in dSLR's isn't "worse" than the cellphone camera in any way.
But that's exactly what the article showed, that if you do purely subjective tests with cell phone P&S cameras and a high-end dSLR with no tweaking or post-processing, resized down to "normal" dimensions, you can actually get *better* results using a P&S cell phone camera. Look at the sample pictures, and most people will say that the Nokia cellphone produced "better" pictures than the dSLR.
That's not to say that dSLR pictures really aren't as good-- you have bigger sizes and better detail to work with. The unprocessed images can be processed to look better-- but that's not the test being run. It's starting from the assumption that this is a subjective test for P&S photographers who won't particularly want to do manual work or extra processing. For these people, the "burnt highlights, blotchy shadows, lens distortion and digitally over-sharpened edges to disguise the lack of real resolution" still might look better than the actually superior results of a quality camera.
If you aren't able to understand the concept, I don't know what else to tell you.
Yes, but maintaining Firefox for OSX and Camino isn't necessarily ideal. It's probably a little bit of a duplication of effort for developers, and it might confuse users a little regarding which browser they should be using.
One of the major features of Firefox is its extensions. Camino can't use Firefox extensions, but Firefox doesn't quite integrate into the OS. It'd be nice if they could somehow close the gap.
They are deliberately limiting the quality by assuming that everyone's final goal is to post scaled down pictures on Flickr.
Uh... yeah... that's the premise of the article. "If you're only interested in point-and-click sharing your pictures over the internet through Flickr or e-mail, is it worth your money to buy an expensive stand-alone camera or will the camera in your cell do the job well enough?"
Hence the comparison with video scaled down to a point where the original quality is irrelevant. 64x48 pixel video is worse than DVCPRO HD but my point is that it's also worse than VHS.
Again I feel tempted to say, "Uh... yeah..." You know, I read you the first time and I understand what 64x64 means, but this just isn't an apt criticism of the article. You see, no one is storing 68x68 movies on either VHS or DVCPRO HD, so comparing those formats usefulness for 68x68 pixels would be utterly useless. However, many people are taking pictures only really caring whether the pictures look good at lower resolutions, so the CNet article is not completely useless. It goes to illustrate a point.
Most people (especially the ones with two X chromosomes) like to be able to print their pictures, and most camera phones can't really produce acceptable results above 15x10 cm (6x4"), regardless of their resolution.
That's really not a huge problem for a lot of people. Fewer and fewer people care about printing their pictures because they have other methods to share them (like Flickr), and many who print them don't print them bigger than 6x4".
The article is really demonstrating something true: Most of the time, casual point-and-shoot photographers won't benefit from expensive SLR cameras. It's not just that their results won't be much better, but sometimes their results will be worse than buying a cheap point-and-shoot camera because the point-and-shoot cameras are designed for that purpose. Even the expensive manual cameras are designed for photographers who will exercise a lot of control for the best effect (whatever they're looking for), and so often their automatic settings aren't as good at providing what the point-and-shoot photographer would consider "pretty".
An experienced photographer would know this, of course, but a casual point-and-shoot photographer wouldn't-- and casual photographers are obviously the intend audience of this article.
I'm not claiming that Exchange is a perfect e-mail system, but it does support IMAP, and I use IMAP on my Exchange server every day without problems.
I don't think your criticism is fair. CNet isn't claiming that the cell phones are better cameras, but are comparing them to dedicated digital cameras in conditions that are common to point-and-shoot photographers. Default settings, medium/low light, point... and shoot. Resize to a reasonable size for e-mailing it, and see how it looks.
So it'd be like if someone discovered that simple photo work like resizing, rotating, and cropping gave better visual quality when using built-in OS tools than if you do the same tasks in Photoshop.
Of course, it may be obvious to you that expert equipment is designed for people who know enough not to use the default settings-- and fair enough. However, I don't believe this article is written for those experts. It's written for basic point-and-shooters who might be considering blowing their money on expensive equipment thinking it will magically provide amazingly superior quality, not realizing that achieving that quality requires a certain level of expertise.
Yes, it's entirely possible. I think that, for a lot of us, we just want a point-and-shoot camera with very few settings, but which will take passable pictures under many conditions. People with expensive cameras, assuming they have expensive cameras for good reason, have paid that amount of money to have a camera with lots of settings that enable them to take the best picture possible under any condition if the settings are tweaked just so.
It's true that some small cameras (and camera phones) just have crappy lenses and crappy sensors, and if you want to blow pictures up to an enormous size or zoom in extremely far, a higher pixel count may help. However, some of the claims that you can't get decent pictures out of something the size of a cell phone are overblown.
You know, you can always enable the IMAP/POP services on Exchange. You can even allow users to access your company's internal address book through LDAP. The problem most people have is that most e-mail clients can't deal with Exchange calendars.
I agree. I think there are a lot of geeks here who will complain that the iPhone doesn't have enough functionality, but the truth is most people won't use that "extra functionality" in other phones. I've had to support a bunch of blackberry users, and many of them simply used the e-mail access. That was it.
They simply weren't sophisticated enough to think about what else might possibly be done on their phones, but they liked having a mobile e-mail device. They didn't even use the Blackberry as a phone most of the time. A good portion of the time, they wouldn't even really use the thing very much. They'd leave it in their office unless they were travelling, or they'd keep in the in their briefcase in case they needed to check for an e-mail they were expecting, or they had an idea they suddenly wanted to e-mail to someone.
For most users, it's merely a convenience issue of wanting access to e-mail wherever they are. Some people also use the calendar and contacts, so if Apple has a way to sync those, it will help them immensely. If it can sync with both Outlook and Apple's iCal/Address Book, then I think you'll have a device many people find very useful.
It really *really* depends on what you mean by "enterprise". Are there going to be "enterprise" users who aren't satisfied with the iPhone and will continue to use Blackberry/Windows phones? Yes. Absolutely. Will there by users who have "enterprise" accounts with AT&T who will be scrambling to get their hands on an iPhone? Yes. Absolutely.
A fair number of the people who get iPhones will be business users who want to be able to get e-mail on-the-go, but otherwise wouldn't want a "smart phone". People who have found smart phones annoying but would carry a iPod with them anyway. I think many "experts" are underestimating that market-- and that market does exist in the "enterprise".
I've known quite a few executive-types who would carry around a normal cell-phone, a Blackberry/Windows smart phone, and an iPod. All three. They didn't like their smart phone as a phone, but they wanted the ability to e-mail just in case. The ability to check an IMAP account will be sufficient for a lot of people.
I think most citizens would not think the state had overstepped its bounds if it enforced all laws to the letter/intent of the law. If citizens would be bothered by the state enforcing the laws it has been contracted to enforce, then that state has bad laws.