Aren't analysts supposed to focus on the future? Any fool can analyse past events with the benefit of hindsight, but that's pretty worthless unless the analysis is razor-sharp with the sort of brilliance that can be folded into future work.
So this article boils down to "someone thinks Apple should have done something different, but doesn't adequately explore ramifications or really prove their case." Excellent. Does this guy have a pamphlet I can subscribe to?
Mod parent to +11 'insightful reference to history'
It's a common tactic from Microsoft. When there's nothing to say and a competitor may get some PR from a tech media looking for something to write about, come out with something about a product that's on the drawing board, or is only marginally closer to release than the drawing board.
Another person who knows a theory but not really what it means. Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory shows that you're not even trying to keep audio above half the sampling frequency. That is, you're choosing to lose audio data.
Sampling original analogue frequencies to a CD (44.2kHz I think) loses anything above 22.1kHz, which some people can distinguish (especially as harmonics to lower-frequency sounds). I used to be able to pick out sounds up to about 26kHz, although it's been a while since I was tested and I'm probably well below 20kHz these days.
If you can distinguish frequencies above 22.1kHz and want "pure" sound, you won't get it from a CD.
There is no lossless encoding possible in reality.
An audio waveform encoded to CD loses resolution. We can't usually hear the difference but it still loses information between the instrument or voice, and the CD.
The only useful argument is how much loss are you prepared to suffer?
I would argue that 128kbit/s is okay for outdoor listening and 256kbit/s is good for just about any form of audio indoors. Some music is improved by listening to the CD (as opposed to the 256kbit/s AAC) and some music can only be truly appreciated in the concert hall with the orchestra in front of you and the acoustic surfaces around you.
All recording or playback devices suffer losses either from A/D (or D/A) conversions or from components altering the information as it passes through. Even if we eliminate those losses, our senses degrade and by the time we're adults we're not hearing what we heard in our teens.
You want truly lossless? Well, no recording you can own now will satisify you and no amount of money will help. Instead, work out what you'll settle for and aim for that.
...but for now, I'm not terribly impressed. Apple... still embeds buyer information inside the files
What precisely is the problem here? It's not as though you're sharing those files around is it? And it's only your name, in an easily removable tag. I'm yet to hear a serious reason why this is so bad that uses actual logic. At the absolute worst and most cynical, it could be described only as a "minor inconvenience."
Apple... still has only EMI (and the independents) at this new rate (compared to Amazon, which also has Universal)
And that's because Apple clearly don't want Universal to go DRM-free, is it? And you know this how, exactly? Could it be because EMI were willing, but other companies wanted different rules or wanted to break Apple's dominance? Will I end every sentence with a question mark? No, I have other punctuation waiting in the wings!
Apple... chose to react rather than innovate
Other people have reminded you that Apple were doing this before Amazon. Not first in the online world (it's not hard to find other labels like eMusic) but they were the first really big, unquestionably legal player to offer DRM-free tracks.
Apple... is still more expensive (ten cents, granted, but still...)
Good point. Apple picked the 99 cent price point early on and stuck with it. There have been many accounts of pressure applied to Apple to raise the price, and they've resisted. Hopefully Amazon's lower price will force Apple to compete at that level (really, I mean force the labels to realise this level is the price people are willing to pay).
I think you've tried hard to criticise Apple here, but failed to come up with a compellingly damning criticism. Better points could have revolved around the poor support for indie DRM-free tracks (improving now though) and purchase of lossless media (256kbit versus lossless is hard to hear though). Sadly you didn't grasp the nettle of opportunity when you could've.
So... you're saying that if I want a product with features X, Y and Z then I shouldn't buy one with features A, B and C and hope that I can hack it to work the way I wanted?
Madness! Pure madness! No wonder you posted anonymously, you must be ashamed of your attitude (yes, you must!)
I don't know about that last bit. As part of the Mac community I'm happy for people to hack their iPhones and I'm wondering how all this will turn out. Of course, I did miss the global meeting on Tuesday night to discuss the community's unified reaction, so I may have to recant and swallow hemlock.
They say that as long as you don't cite specific sources, you can make up any old assertion and pass it off as fact.
"The Mac community today stated that their rabid, unquestioning support of Apple was due to a suicidally loyal fanbase of OS X zealots, and not, as some outsiders previously thought, due to the solid operating system, value-adding iLife software and great laptop range."
"According to the PC community, Windows Vista is actually the world's most sophisticated practical joke, which we'll all get on April 1, 2008 when all Vista PCs in the world start flashing up pictures of tubgirl every 30th of a second before delivering all user data to Microsoft over an unencrypted connection."
"'Linux isn't going anywhere and we're abandoning all versions immediately,' the Linux community stated yesterday. 'We've finally realised we're never going to catch up with Windows or OS X, and that we've been fooling ourselves all along' said a spokes-penguin who asked not to be identified. 'We're all going to give this Amiga thing another go, we think we can make it work'"
"Government officials today said that the whole Iraq thing was a double-dog dare that got out of hand, and expressed great concerns about the escalation of a dog dare to a double-dog dare regarding Iran."
"UN insiders revealed that the current leader, Ban Ki Moon, is actually a sock puppet from a children's television show in Asia. 'Banky' as he is known, likes to draw pictures on cartridge paper and make animals out of toilet rolls and pipe cleaners. He was voted Korea's most popular children's entertainer four years in a row before accepting the job of entertaining the children of the previous UN leadership cicrle. Due to a paperwork error, 'Banky' Moon was nominated for leadership of the entire UN and since no-one wanted a Western nation to run it, the world's countries voted him in as the least hated nominee."
"People who know popular Slashdot identity MrHanky have admitted their irritation in being used in unsubstantiated quotes made by him, and wish he'd put their names in his posts or at least link to their quotes as proof. MrHanky has so far remained silent on the issue, leading some people to question his motives for doing so."
Not that I would doubt your unsupported statement, or just call it an amazing bitterness by someone who probably has never bought an Apple product and somehow feels empowered to bitch about them at every turn, but can you back up your bile with some facts?
Yes, the iPhone isn't turning out to be Apple's shining moment in the Sun as far as open-ness goes but prior to that?
Here in Australia, South Park is around 8pm, and the channel hosting it also had a feedback show for a while. I remember a letter demanding to know why the channel made children stay up so late to watch cartoons. It's probably just as well they didn't still have the feedback show when they screened Drawn Together, not that the parent was watching the show anyway.
Some people have very fixed ideas about media. Cartoons are always for children. Video games are always for children. They don't listen to advice, don't see warnings because these things must be safe for children or they wouldn't be allowed to air, surely? These people can't seem to grasp that any media can be used to express concepts targeted at infants, children, teens or adults.
I like how you focus on the reality of the smaller statement which was used purely to set up the longer and far more unreal statement after it. Good focus!
First the ignored us. Then they laughed at us. Then then fought us (costing many of us fines of several thousand, and some people were fined everything and live in squalid bankrupcy to this day) Then we win (except for everyone sued or taken to court and/or the cleaners by the system that supported the big companies)
That's a... colourful... metaphor. I'm a bit lost for words, to be honest.
Still - you can admit it, you write EULAs don't you? I'm pretty sure this sort of thing is buried in most EULAs in caps after the bit about prohibited countries.
Anyway, today's award for Best and Most Unusual Metaphor goes to you, alshithead. I'd thank you personally, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
No, you're forgetting Pine Gap. It's a crucial military outpost for the US, as it ties into their surveillance programs and early warning systems. We don't have a similar base anywhere outside our borders, so clearly we're more an outpost for the US than they are for us. If you're in doubt as to how critical it is, ask your local MP about removing it. No matter who your MP is, they'll reject the idea outright. It's unthinkable to them.
Watching successive governments bend over forwards for the US' slightest whim (none so bad as the current team, but since Holt's quip of 'all the way with LBJ' it's been clear) certainly gives the idea of a one-sided relationship a fair bit of support.
Lastly, it's true that we are an English-speaking nation surrounded by Asian nations, but they're not alien to us in any way. The differences are minor when you get right down to it. My wife and I honeymooned in Vietnam, and their English newspaper had the same sort of content that you get here (although a bit more siding with the government, being a state-run 'paper). Add a strong immigration component from Asian countries and you've got an Australia that's closer to Asia in many ways than the US.
Apple didn't need the money - they had something like $4B in cash in the bank. Microsoft's $150M of non-voting stock was a symbolic gesture, nothing more. Microsoft sold the stock much later for a tidy profit, although if they still had it it'd be worth billions now (Apple were around $15/share then, from memory, and have split shares several times as well).
Steve Jobs was there with Bill Gates on stage. What event did you see?
The real benefit of the Apple-Microsoft deal then was to show a level of business support (MS Office) for the Mac platform, which encouraged prospective purchasers that things were going to be okay. At the time, the Mac was looking less viable than ever, even though it's hard to see that now.
You're right - they should've written the installer to verify the installed software before starting, failing if some sort of checksum was incorrect. I wonder why they didn't do this - preinstall checks are common in OS X. Maybe they were worried about not showing some sort of tacit acceptance.
Some more-or-less anonymous person calls me a nobody.
Get over yourself. I, not recognising the quote, thought the original poster was seriously commenting like that and made an issue of it. He graciously (well, moreso than you're capable of apparently) pointed out the reference and I responded to him. Everyone happy, all done.
But that was not enough for you. Apparently I must fawn to low user IDs, never post any criticisms of other people's comment styles and take the advice of some random bozo who gets upset because I gave advice to someone else.
You sir are a hypocrit, a fool and a blaggard. If someone can be no-one, you're top of the list.
The number of digits in an account number only mean someone has been around for a long time. I lurked through the five digit days, and signed up years after I started reading Slashdot. I care less about how many digits someone's got in their account number than what they say, and will continue to completely ignore their number in future. I suggest you do the same - you might appear more "smart and worldly" and less fawning.
Slashdot Mirror
Aren't analysts supposed to focus on the future? Any fool can analyse past events with the benefit of hindsight, but that's pretty worthless unless the analysis is razor-sharp with the sort of brilliance that can be folded into future work.
So this article boils down to "someone thinks Apple should have done something different, but doesn't adequately explore ramifications or really prove their case." Excellent. Does this guy have a pamphlet I can subscribe to?
Mod parent to +11 'insightful reference to history'
It's a common tactic from Microsoft. When there's nothing to say and a competitor may get some PR from a tech media looking for something to write about, come out with something about a product that's on the drawing board, or is only marginally closer to release than the drawing board.
Everyone forgets Windows 1.0 these days.
Hmm.... after reading the Wikipedia page I see why!
Another person who knows a theory but not really what it means. Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory shows that you're not even trying to keep audio above half the sampling frequency. That is, you're choosing to lose audio data.
Sampling original analogue frequencies to a CD (44.2kHz I think) loses anything above 22.1kHz, which some people can distinguish (especially as harmonics to lower-frequency sounds). I used to be able to pick out sounds up to about 26kHz, although it's been a while since I was tested and I'm probably well below 20kHz these days.
If you can distinguish frequencies above 22.1kHz and want "pure" sound, you won't get it from a CD.
There is no lossless encoding possible in reality.
An audio waveform encoded to CD loses resolution. We can't usually hear the difference but it still loses information between the instrument or voice, and the CD.
The only useful argument is how much loss are you prepared to suffer?
I would argue that 128kbit/s is okay for outdoor listening and 256kbit/s is good for just about any form of audio indoors. Some music is improved by listening to the CD (as opposed to the 256kbit/s AAC) and some music can only be truly appreciated in the concert hall with the orchestra in front of you and the acoustic surfaces around you.
All recording or playback devices suffer losses either from A/D (or D/A) conversions or from components altering the information as it passes through. Even if we eliminate those losses, our senses degrade and by the time we're adults we're not hearing what we heard in our teens.
You want truly lossless? Well, no recording you can own now will satisify you and no amount of money will help. Instead, work out what you'll settle for and aim for that.
Positives are negatives!
Up is down!
In is out!
Left is right!
Black is white!
I love the variety of Slashdot, where you'll always get someone popping up to describe how a new and beneficial development is actually a bad thing.
Choice is bad!
Options are wrong!
Change is evil!
Better is worse!
...but for now, I'm not terribly impressed. Apple ... still embeds buyer information inside the files
... still has only EMI (and the independents) at this new rate (compared to Amazon, which also has Universal)
... chose to react rather than innovate
... is still more expensive (ten cents, granted, but still...)
What precisely is the problem here? It's not as though you're sharing those files around is it? And it's only your name, in an easily removable tag. I'm yet to hear a serious reason why this is so bad that uses actual logic. At the absolute worst and most cynical, it could be described only as a "minor inconvenience."
Apple
And that's because Apple clearly don't want Universal to go DRM-free, is it? And you know this how, exactly? Could it be because EMI were willing, but other companies wanted different rules or wanted to break Apple's dominance? Will I end every sentence with a question mark? No, I have other punctuation waiting in the wings!
Apple
Other people have reminded you that Apple were doing this before Amazon. Not first in the online world (it's not hard to find other labels like eMusic) but they were the first really big, unquestionably legal player to offer DRM-free tracks.
Apple
Good point. Apple picked the 99 cent price point early on and stuck with it. There have been many accounts of pressure applied to Apple to raise the price, and they've resisted. Hopefully Amazon's lower price will force Apple to compete at that level (really, I mean force the labels to realise this level is the price people are willing to pay).
I think you've tried hard to criticise Apple here, but failed to come up with a compellingly damning criticism. Better points could have revolved around the poor support for indie DRM-free tracks (improving now though) and purchase of lossless media (256kbit versus lossless is hard to hear though). Sadly you didn't grasp the nettle of opportunity when you could've.
Thanks for that. I just spent a little while reading the whole set, and will now bookmark that site in my 'check often' list.
Best line ever - "It was self defense. The orphanage attacked me!" (although "Worst. Portal. Ever." was a good one too)
No, just having some fun.
So... you're saying that if I want a product with features X, Y and Z then I shouldn't buy one with features A, B and C and hope that I can hack it to work the way I wanted?
Madness! Pure madness! No wonder you posted anonymously, you must be ashamed of your attitude (yes, you must!)
I don't know about that last bit. As part of the Mac community I'm happy for people to hack their iPhones and I'm wondering how all this will turn out. Of course, I did miss the global meeting on Tuesday night to discuss the community's unified reaction, so I may have to recant and swallow hemlock.
They say that as long as you don't cite specific sources, you can make up any old assertion and pass it off as fact.
"The Mac community today stated that their rabid, unquestioning support of Apple was due to a suicidally loyal fanbase of OS X zealots, and not, as some outsiders previously thought, due to the solid operating system, value-adding iLife software and great laptop range."
"According to the PC community, Windows Vista is actually the world's most sophisticated practical joke, which we'll all get on April 1, 2008 when all Vista PCs in the world start flashing up pictures of tubgirl every 30th of a second before delivering all user data to Microsoft over an unencrypted connection."
"'Linux isn't going anywhere and we're abandoning all versions immediately,' the Linux community stated yesterday. 'We've finally realised we're never going to catch up with Windows or OS X, and that we've been fooling ourselves all along' said a spokes-penguin who asked not to be identified. 'We're all going to give this Amiga thing another go, we think we can make it work'"
"Government officials today said that the whole Iraq thing was a double-dog dare that got out of hand, and expressed great concerns about the escalation of a dog dare to a double-dog dare regarding Iran."
"UN insiders revealed that the current leader, Ban Ki Moon, is actually a sock puppet from a children's television show in Asia. 'Banky' as he is known, likes to draw pictures on cartridge paper and make animals out of toilet rolls and pipe cleaners. He was voted Korea's most popular children's entertainer four years in a row before accepting the job of entertaining the children of the previous UN leadership cicrle. Due to a paperwork error, 'Banky' Moon was nominated for leadership of the entire UN and since no-one wanted a Western nation to run it, the world's countries voted him in as the least hated nominee."
"People who know popular Slashdot identity MrHanky have admitted their irritation in being used in unsubstantiated quotes made by him, and wish he'd put their names in his posts or at least link to their quotes as proof. MrHanky has so far remained silent on the issue, leading some people to question his motives for doing so."
Hey! This is fun!
Not so much "LEAVE APPLE ALONE" as "BACK YOUR ASSERTIONS UP WITH SOMETHING MORE THAN JUST 'BECAUSE I SAID SO'."
But you can read what you like into that.
(This text added purely to game the lameness filter, as it just doesn't like so many capitals. Please ignore.)
Not that I would doubt your unsupported statement, or just call it an amazing bitterness by someone who probably has never bought an Apple product and somehow feels empowered to bitch about them at every turn, but can you back up your bile with some facts?
Yes, the iPhone isn't turning out to be Apple's shining moment in the Sun as far as open-ness goes but prior to that?
Here in Australia, South Park is around 8pm, and the channel hosting it also had a feedback show for a while. I remember a letter demanding to know why the channel made children stay up so late to watch cartoons. It's probably just as well they didn't still have the feedback show when they screened Drawn Together, not that the parent was watching the show anyway.
Some people have very fixed ideas about media. Cartoons are always for children. Video games are always for children. They don't listen to advice, don't see warnings because these things must be safe for children or they wouldn't be allowed to air, surely? These people can't seem to grasp that any media can be used to express concepts targeted at infants, children, teens or adults.
I like how you focus on the reality of the smaller statement which was used purely to set up the longer and far more unreal statement after it. Good focus!
Though I hear the latest WH20k RTS is pretty cool
Yes, but it's only half as good as the official WH40K game.
First the ignored us.
Then they laughed at us.
Then then fought us (costing many of us fines of several thousand, and some people were fined everything and live in squalid bankrupcy to this day)
Then we win (except for everyone sued or taken to court and/or the cleaners by the system that supported the big companies)
Um... Yay?
That's a... colourful... metaphor. I'm a bit lost for words, to be honest.
Still - you can admit it, you write EULAs don't you? I'm pretty sure this sort of thing is buried in most EULAs in caps after the bit about prohibited countries.
Anyway, today's award for Best and Most Unusual Metaphor goes to you, alshithead. I'd thank you personally, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it.
No, you're forgetting Pine Gap. It's a crucial military outpost for the US, as it ties into their surveillance programs and early warning systems. We don't have a similar base anywhere outside our borders, so clearly we're more an outpost for the US than they are for us. If you're in doubt as to how critical it is, ask your local MP about removing it. No matter who your MP is, they'll reject the idea outright. It's unthinkable to them.
Watching successive governments bend over forwards for the US' slightest whim (none so bad as the current team, but since Holt's quip of 'all the way with LBJ' it's been clear) certainly gives the idea of a one-sided relationship a fair bit of support.
Lastly, it's true that we are an English-speaking nation surrounded by Asian nations, but they're not alien to us in any way. The differences are minor when you get right down to it. My wife and I honeymooned in Vietnam, and their English newspaper had the same sort of content that you get here (although a bit more siding with the government, being a state-run 'paper). Add a strong immigration component from Asian countries and you've got an Australia that's closer to Asia in many ways than the US.
No. You're wrong.
Apple didn't need the money - they had something like $4B in cash in the bank. Microsoft's $150M of non-voting stock was a symbolic gesture, nothing more. Microsoft sold the stock much later for a tidy profit, although if they still had it it'd be worth billions now (Apple were around $15/share then, from memory, and have split shares several times as well).
Steve Jobs was there with Bill Gates on stage. What event did you see?
The real benefit of the Apple-Microsoft deal then was to show a level of business support (MS Office) for the Mac platform, which encouraged prospective purchasers that things were going to be okay. At the time, the Mac was looking less viable than ever, even though it's hard to see that now.
You're right - they should've written the installer to verify the installed software before starting, failing if some sort of checksum was incorrect. I wonder why they didn't do this - preinstall checks are common in OS X. Maybe they were worried about not showing some sort of tacit acceptance.
Some more-or-less anonymous person calls me a nobody.
Get over yourself. I, not recognising the quote, thought the original poster was seriously commenting like that and made an issue of it. He graciously (well, moreso than you're capable of apparently) pointed out the reference and I responded to him. Everyone happy, all done.
But that was not enough for you. Apparently I must fawn to low user IDs, never post any criticisms of other people's comment styles and take the advice of some random bozo who gets upset because I gave advice to someone else.
You sir are a hypocrit, a fool and a blaggard. If someone can be no-one, you're top of the list.
The number of digits in an account number only mean someone has been around for a long time. I lurked through the five digit days, and signed up years after I started reading Slashdot. I care less about how many digits someone's got in their account number than what they say, and will continue to completely ignore their number in future. I suggest you do the same - you might appear more "smart and worldly" and less fawning.
I guess we have a slashdot user who has not watched Army of Darkness enough times. Sad. :)
Or at all. I had to go to IMDB.com to find out about that film. Not my cup of tea, really. Oh well.