Maybe where you live you don't have many options. Where I live, which is a remote city in australia (a thousand mile drive to our state's capital city), there are literally hundreds of ISP's to choose from.
Whirlpool (one of the most reputable online communities in Australia) was just threatened with an $11,000 per day fine by the Australian government if they didn't immediately remove a link from their website.
If a company wants to make an MP3 player with buttons on the headphone cable, instead of on the device, why is that evil?
Why is everyone going mental? So you can't use the headphones you already have, so what? Just buy a different MP3 player!
Lots of people don't care much what headphones they have, they just wanna listen to music while exercising, and they want a small light device to do that. By the end of the month there will even be a handful of other headphones to choose from.
There's no standard way to control a device from a standard headphone jack, and you'll be buried in lawsuits if you do it the same as someone else is doing it, so a new approach had to be made. Why is this such a big deal? We're stifling innovation by making a scene over stuff like this.
Why does it always get so complicated every time Apple try to reinvent simplicity?
The whole point of electronics is to take something really complicated and make it simple. "Made for XXX" is a perfect example of taking something complicated and making it simple:
I have an iPod, I need something with "Made for iPod"
vs
I have an iPod, I need something with a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a button with a chip capable of sending the right signals to my iPod.
Lots of other companies do "made for xxx" stickers, and it takes time to certify that something really is compatible, so you have to charge for it, even if you're not looking for a new revenue stream.
Ask yourself this. Of all the apps people could buy, why would they buy this one? Does its competitive advantage come from the excellence of the app itself or from its use of Google's service?
This is the real question:
Should I buy this app for $0.99? Or should I spend hours creating the same app myself? Or should I pay someone $$$ to spend hours creating the app for me? Should I use the iPhone's built in web browser to send SMS's via google?
You're not paying for the SMS service, that is free. You're paying for a more convenient way to access said service.
If you want real performance you're mad to buy a mid-range machine!
My 6 year old G5 PowerMac is still faster at some things than a current mid-range intel based machine, and it's *way* cheaper. You do get better performance from high quality components, there's more than just the CPU/GFX/HDD to consider!
You can achieve a pretty nice workflow with synergy or teleport.
Use your new imac's keyboard on your old imac, as if it was a second display. You just use your old imac for stuff like email and calendars and music and stuff, and your new one for surfing the web/games/work.
I use this system every day all day between my 13.3" notebook and my 30" desktop. Works fantastic.
From what I can see, they're stating that safari grew by 0.5% of the total marketshare each day for at least 4 days, which doesn't sound completely outrageous to me, though obviously it will fall slightly as the "just checking it out" factor goes away.
0.5% for 5 days == a two 2% increase, and net applications claims safari has had over 8% since some time in december 2008:
I personally think safari 4 is a massive improvement over safari 3, so some of the people trying it out will probably stick around. It'll be interesting to see where the marketshare is in another month or two.
I think some third party extensions to safari might include favicon spoofing as a potential vulnerability, but without hacking safari it certainly can't be done.
The favicon's are no-where near where the lock icon is displayed.
You don't have to show a horrible green fucking bar to comply with EV.
All you need to do is check the new EV values and inform the user if the certificate is invalid. Which safari does do, and has done since EV certificates began being used.
Ok, so your system is cheaper. But that's a *quad core* 2.53Ghz machine of the latest architecture. It's pretty damn fast. And the hard drives are 7,200 RPM and they're running on RAID 0, which is also very fast.
Plus it has a bunch of features yours is probably lacking:
- webcam
- fingerprint scanner
- Wacom tablet
- VGA/DualLink DVI/DisplayPort
- Display Calibrator
- FireWire
- Express/Smart Card expansion
- WiFi/Bluetooth
- Not to mention... fits in your backpack
All in all, that thing isn't too bad a price for a truly mobile workstation. But it has a pretty small target market.
If you're going to start talking about the dirt-cheap end of the market you need to include second hand. You can buy a mac or PC for $1.
What really matters is who makes the cheapest computer which *matches your individual needs*. When you're being realistic, apple's prices are very competitive.
We recently moved apartments and don't have the internet hooked up... My girlfriend is doing everything she ever needs to use a computer for on my iPhone.
I recently bought a real netbook for my nieces, everything I've ever seen them do on it they could do on an iPod touch (surf the net for homework, IM their friends, watch youtube, play games, purchase music on iTunes to copy to their iPod).
Granted, a netbook has a bigger screen/better keyboard, which is why I didn't save myself some cash and buy them an iPod touch. But there's nothing missing really.
Is an iPod touch/iPhone a good netbook? No. But it is pretty damn close to the same thing. Plus it's cheaper and more portable.
Microsoft's two big problems when competing with linux in the server market are:
It's an area where "good enough" is basically the same as "perfect". So being better than linux is completely useless in any market where linux is good enough.
Linux has a big head start on microsoft in developing it's server tools, so in many ways linux is more feature rich and stable than windows server.
Except for a few areas where a windows server is genuinely better (such as exchange), microsoft is forced to compete on price alone, which is challenging when your competitor is open source (creating a product which needs less staff to maintain it is difficult).
Actually the webkit nightly builds launch safari and then patch it to use the nightly build of the framework. It's not a "safari like interface", it is the safari interface.
For example, I had yesterday's webkit nightly installed on my computer, and I just installed safari 4.0 beta.
Launching yesterday's webkit nightly brings up the safari 4.0 user interface, which it most definitely didn't do yesterday.
Also, I'm more interested in how it stacks up against Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. Comparing it to IE7 is a little bit like Ford comparing their new car to a horse and cart. No offense meant to the browser, but from every chart I've seen it's the bottom of the barrel in terms of speed.
Actually "the bottom" of the barrel is IE 6, which still has about 30% marketshare on the websites I work on.
But the real reason they're talking about IE 7 is simple: it's their only real competitor.
Firefox's real strength is being customisable, which aims it squarely at a different target market to Safari. Chrome is using the same rendering engine as Safari, so any new marketshare to either one benefits both browsers and there's tons of markethsare available right now, and opera is too insignificant to even consider (Safari already has hardly any users and even it has 12x more than Opera according to wikipedia's reference: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0)
The nightly builds of WebKit have been faster than V8 since the day V8 was released, and WebKit has a lot more developers than chrome, the gap has grown significantly in the last months.
It's at the point now where speed is a non-issue on desktop systems, but it does mean better battery life on notebooks and better performance on phones, so they're still pushing hard to optimise.
Chrome is faster than IE/FireFox, and it has some very interesting features. But safari is definitely the fastest, and with the UI changes in Safari 4, it looks like apple has taken the best ideas in chrome and added their own flair.
Overall I think it's fantastic to see two big companies competing hard and even a bit dirty to make the best browser experience, while both using the same rendering engine. This is *exactly* how open source contributes to better software.
in windows, you can choose between wildly different themes and even use your own colours and font sizes.
On a mac, it's "white, silver and blue" or "white, silver and graphite". That's all the choice you get.
As a result, even when using someone else's mac it's all exactly the same as your own mac and thus is "simple". And it's also simple for programmers, because they know everyone is looking at the same thing and doesn't have weird font sizes or different size window borders or so on.
Windows on the other hand is very flexible, but changes from computer to computer, which confuses inexperienced users and frustrates the fuck out of programmers.
Just one example of mac being simple and windows being flexible.
Mac OS X has been using PDF as one of the core technologies for drawing graphics to the screen for something like 20 years, it's integrated deep into the system and always has been.
It looks like they're intending to use this with the iPod touch rather than iPhones, so the phone/sms worry isn't there.
Although it would be really really funny to find a calendar alert "kill CEO of ***" come up as you're lining up your shot!
But seriously, how many sniper's actually fire in the dark? Isn't it kinda hard to see your target at night? I would imagine most of these jobs are during daylight hours, and that you're usually a really long way from your target, and that you have some kind of camo blanket that could be covering your face and the phone (only the barrel and the scope really needs to stick out of it right?)...
>> In related news, now we know what happened to the Iraqi Information Minister: He changed his name and became President and CFO of a large credit card payment processing company.
That's borderline racist and not even funny. Take your warmongering FUD somewhere else please.
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Maybe where you live you don't have many options. Where I live, which is a remote city in australia (a thousand mile drive to our state's capital city), there are literally hundreds of ISP's to choose from.
Whirlpool (one of the most reputable online communities in Australia) was just threatened with an $11,000 per day fine by the Australian government if they didn't immediately remove a link from their website.
Sounds like censorship to me.
If a company wants to make an MP3 player with buttons on the headphone cable, instead of on the device, why is that evil?
Why is everyone going mental? So you can't use the headphones you already have, so what? Just buy a different MP3 player!
Lots of people don't care much what headphones they have, they just wanna listen to music while exercising, and they want a small light device to do that. By the end of the month there will even be a handful of other headphones to choose from.
There's no standard way to control a device from a standard headphone jack, and you'll be buried in lawsuits if you do it the same as someone else is doing it, so a new approach had to be made. Why is this such a big deal? We're stifling innovation by making a scene over stuff like this.
Why does it always get so complicated every time Apple try to reinvent simplicity?
The whole point of electronics is to take something really complicated and make it simple. "Made for XXX" is a perfect example of taking something complicated and making it simple:
I have an iPod, I need something with "Made for iPod"
vs
I have an iPod, I need something with a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a button with a chip capable of sending the right signals to my iPod.
Lots of other companies do "made for xxx" stickers, and it takes time to certify that something really is compatible, so you have to charge for it, even if you're not looking for a new revenue stream.
And the effective value is not having to use your web browser to use google's free SMS service.
Ask yourself this. Of all the apps people could buy, why would they buy this one? Does its competitive advantage come from the excellence of the app itself or from its use of Google's service?
This is the real question:
Should I buy this app for $0.99? Or should I spend hours creating the same app myself? Or should I pay someone $$$ to spend hours creating the app for me? Should I use the iPhone's built in web browser to send SMS's via google?
You're not paying for the SMS service, that is free. You're paying for a more convenient way to access said service.
If you want real performance you're mad to buy a mid-range machine!
My 6 year old G5 PowerMac is still faster at some things than a current mid-range intel based machine, and it's *way* cheaper. You do get better performance from high quality components, there's more than just the CPU/GFX/HDD to consider!
You can achieve a pretty nice workflow with synergy or teleport.
Use your new imac's keyboard on your old imac, as if it was a second display. You just use your old imac for stuff like email and calendars and music and stuff, and your new one for surfing the web/games/work.
I use this system every day all day between my 13.3" notebook and my 30" desktop. Works fantastic.
The entire point of the Acid test is to be a great measure of browser compliance.
The Acid3 test was developed by WaSP, which receives input from all the major browsers (from microsoft to mozilla).
From what I can see, they're stating that safari grew by 0.5% of the total marketshare each day for at least 4 days, which doesn't sound completely outrageous to me, though obviously it will fall slightly as the "just checking it out" factor goes away.
0.5% for 5 days == a two 2% increase, and net applications claims safari has had over 8% since some time in december 2008:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1
I personally think safari 4 is a massive improvement over safari 3, so some of the people trying it out will probably stick around. It'll be interesting to see where the marketshare is in another month or two.
I think some third party extensions to safari might include favicon spoofing as a potential vulnerability, but without hacking safari it certainly can't be done.
The favicon's are no-where near where the lock icon is displayed.
You don't have to show a horrible green fucking bar to comply with EV.
All you need to do is check the new EV values and inform the user if the certificate is invalid. Which safari does do, and has done since EV certificates began being used.
$6,209 is the demo model. Actual prices start at "just over $3000", but I can't find what features you get for that.
Ok, so your system is cheaper. But that's a *quad core* 2.53Ghz machine of the latest architecture. It's pretty damn fast. And the hard drives are 7,200 RPM and they're running on RAID 0, which is also very fast.
Plus it has a bunch of features yours is probably lacking:
- webcam
- fingerprint scanner
- Wacom tablet
- VGA/DualLink DVI/DisplayPort
- Display Calibrator
- FireWire
- Express/Smart Card expansion
- WiFi/Bluetooth
- Not to mention... fits in your backpack
All in all, that thing isn't too bad a price for a truly mobile workstation. But it has a pretty small target market.
If you're going to start talking about the dirt-cheap end of the market you need to include second hand. You can buy a mac or PC for $1.
What really matters is who makes the cheapest computer which *matches your individual needs*. When you're being realistic, apple's prices are very competitive.
We recently moved apartments and don't have the internet hooked up... My girlfriend is doing everything she ever needs to use a computer for on my iPhone.
I recently bought a real netbook for my nieces, everything I've ever seen them do on it they could do on an iPod touch (surf the net for homework, IM their friends, watch youtube, play games, purchase music on iTunes to copy to their iPod).
Granted, a netbook has a bigger screen/better keyboard, which is why I didn't save myself some cash and buy them an iPod touch. But there's nothing missing really.
Is an iPod touch/iPhone a good netbook? No. But it is pretty damn close to the same thing. Plus it's cheaper and more portable.
How many servers are there in the world? How many clients are there in the world?
Where I work, we have one server and about 17 clients. Plus almost everyone who works here has a desktop or notebook at home.
Microsoft's two big problems when competing with linux in the server market are:
It's an area where "good enough" is basically the same as "perfect". So being better than linux is completely useless in any market where linux is good enough.
Linux has a big head start on microsoft in developing it's server tools, so in many ways linux is more feature rich and stable than windows server.
Except for a few areas where a windows server is genuinely better (such as exchange), microsoft is forced to compete on price alone, which is challenging when your competitor is open source (creating a product which needs less staff to maintain it is difficult).
Actually the webkit nightly builds launch safari and then patch it to use the nightly build of the framework. It's not a "safari like interface", it is the safari interface.
For example, I had yesterday's webkit nightly installed on my computer, and I just installed safari 4.0 beta.
Launching yesterday's webkit nightly brings up the safari 4.0 user interface, which it most definitely didn't do yesterday.
Also, I'm more interested in how it stacks up against Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. Comparing it to IE7 is a little bit like Ford comparing their new car to a horse and cart. No offense meant to the browser, but from every chart I've seen it's the bottom of the barrel in terms of speed.
Actually "the bottom" of the barrel is IE 6, which still has about 30% marketshare on the websites I work on.
But the real reason they're talking about IE 7 is simple: it's their only real competitor.
Firefox's real strength is being customisable, which aims it squarely at a different target market to Safari. Chrome is using the same rendering engine as Safari, so any new marketshare to either one benefits both browsers and there's tons of markethsare available right now, and opera is too insignificant to even consider (Safari already has hardly any users and even it has 12x more than Opera according to wikipedia's reference: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0)
The nightly builds of WebKit have been faster than V8 since the day V8 was released, and WebKit has a lot more developers than chrome, the gap has grown significantly in the last months.
It's at the point now where speed is a non-issue on desktop systems, but it does mean better battery life on notebooks and better performance on phones, so they're still pushing hard to optimise.
Chrome is faster than IE/FireFox, and it has some very interesting features. But safari is definitely the fastest, and with the UI changes in Safari 4, it looks like apple has taken the best ideas in chrome and added their own flair.
Overall I think it's fantastic to see two big companies competing hard and even a bit dirty to make the best browser experience, while both using the same rendering engine. This is *exactly* how open source contributes to better software.
in windows, you can choose between wildly different themes and even use your own colours and font sizes.
On a mac, it's "white, silver and blue" or "white, silver and graphite". That's all the choice you get.
As a result, even when using someone else's mac it's all exactly the same as your own mac and thus is "simple". And it's also simple for programmers, because they know everyone is looking at the same thing and doesn't have weird font sizes or different size window borders or so on.
Windows on the other hand is very flexible, but changes from computer to computer, which confuses inexperienced users and frustrates the fuck out of programmers.
Just one example of mac being simple and windows being flexible.
Mac OS X has been using PDF as one of the core technologies for drawing graphics to the screen for something like 20 years, it's integrated deep into the system and always has been.
It's a bit late now to say "you can't do that!"
It looks like they're intending to use this with the iPod touch rather than iPhones, so the phone/sms worry isn't there.
Although it would be really really funny to find a calendar alert "kill CEO of ***" come up as you're lining up your shot!
But seriously, how many sniper's actually fire in the dark? Isn't it kinda hard to see your target at night? I would imagine most of these jobs are during daylight hours, and that you're usually a really long way from your target, and that you have some kind of camo blanket that could be covering your face and the phone (only the barrel and the scope really needs to stick out of it right?)...
This is probably a useful product.
>> In related news, now we know what happened to the Iraqi Information Minister: He changed his name and became President and CFO of a large credit card payment processing company.
That's borderline racist and not even funny. Take your warmongering FUD somewhere else please.