Most cases were not bricks - they could be restored. 'Bricking' turns a device into a permanently non-functional unit, ie as useful as a brick.
The few cases of actual bricking should be taken straight to Apple for warranty service, unless they were physically hacked in which case it's just too bad.
First two lines were good, but then you finished with a stupid troll comment.
To take your actual point though - the physical iPhone is indeed the property of the purchaser. The warranty may have been voided by the hack though, and further support becomes the responsibility of the hacker/owner. There were warnings all over the place about this update, but still some people chose to install it on their hacked iPhones.
The update made an assumption that the system software was as shipped. How can any software update account for unknown changes throughout the system without restoring to some factory default state (if possible)? I saw video of one hacker using a soldering iron. How can anyone expect that hack to work with system updates?
I'm betting few people take you as seriously as you'd like. Perhaps you should avoid using phrases like "Listen up you primitive screwheads" when you're leading into a point you want people to accept.
Apple's update re-locks iPhones that were unlocked by third parties. Given that there have been several methods, none of which were approved or passed through Apple (obviously), how can Apple write OS updates that work around these hacks? At least one hack required physical modification to the iPhone - how can any update be expected to allow for unknown changes?
In fact, should Apple be expected to work around hacks at all?
I see the choice as either Apple updates the iPhones regardless of any hacks (over-writing them, re-locking iPhones) or Apple refuses to update hacked iPhones. Clearly Apple are taking the former path, and I agree with that.
Someone in my old apartment block did that, starting Friday night and going right through the weekend (stopped late each night, back on first thing next morning). By Saturday I hated the song (I sort of liked it before). By Sunday I wished fervently that the person playing it would just die. Not nicely either, but painfully and slowly. It was more than a little irritating.
One of the best comments I read recently about Linux was that it was free, like a puppy.
That's a bit snarky though. Funny, accurate in my experience, but snarky.
However, any Linux user who says the Mac software library sucks is coming from some weird parallel dimension inhabited by distortions, non-facts and rocks to live under. On OS X you get nearly all the Linux software with a recompile plus a lot of apps (Photoshop, Office, BBEdit, Apple's iLife, the list goes on) plus actual commercial games.
I won't argue the point that Macs are more expensive. I don't think it's that much of a premium, but there is a non-zero difference. The availability of software though - that's very much in the Mac's favour.
As for Vista... I have a Vista partition on this MacBook Pro. It's not such a bad OS. It looks better than any other Windows so far, tries harder to be secure and still runs all the Windows apps I need/want. I might be getting an unusually good run here because Apple sort out all the drivers for Mac users (thanks Boot Camp!) but Vista is the best Windows yet for a new computer. It has problems, like the continual accept/deny checks, but it's generally pretty solid.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there aren't enough people who both want a smart-phone and have bought into the Linux ideology to sustain a single Linux-based smart-phone. That's not to say that such a phone couldn't be successful, just that the selling point can't be "it's got Linux!"
What are the real selling points of a smart-phone? * The applications * The development environment (promise of new, better apps soon) * Linking to other devices (syncing) * The interface * The phone functions
Apple have just sewn up the interface, everyone gets the phone functions pretty much right, syncing is okay generally (non-Windows phones are hurt by closed Exchange servers), most people do apps reasonably well and the dev environment is okay for some, not so hot for others (Apple).
How will a Linux smart-phone distinguish itself from the pack? It's no longer enough to be as good as the rest. These phones have to be much better. Maybe the better APIs and adherence to standards will be enough. It won't win the 'cool' factor that we saw the iPhone blitz just recently, but maybe it'll be enough.
I'd like to see more sizzle to help sell the sausage.
This is great for customers, as it looks like real competition to the iTunes Music Store. No DRM, many songs and albums cheaper, looks nice. I'd prefer a better codec than mp3 (like AAC) but at 256kbps it's pretty nice.
It's even better for Apple, as it strengthens their hand in negotiations with the labels. The labels want higher prices and DRM, but Apple can point to Amazon and say that both negotiating points are uncompetitive. A strong Amazon music store will force the labels into contracts that are better for customers.
As a long-term Apple user, I hope Amazon succeeds and we have real competition in online music stores. Who knows? In a year or two we may be wondering what that whole music DRM thing was all about.
Apart from Thompson's own rantings and the articles quoting him, I can't find anything linking Halo to these two killers. Has anyone got a link that is exclusive of Thompson?
So, you bought an expensive computer, booted it up and expected... what? You say you couldn't do anything with it? It came with a word processor (MacWrite), a paint program (MacPaint) and some other stuff. What it didn't come with was a 'write my novel' button, or an 'entertain me' application. They were for third-party developers to create. What exactly were you expecting?
Five swaps to copy a floppy? That was normal then. It took about the same on an Amiga and an Atari ST. What's the problem?
Then you go off on some bizarre tangent about TRS-80s (completely different in every respect, far more primitive) and CPM (Z80 based CLI OS, nothing to do with performance). Clearly you don't actually understand what you're typing here, or you're not being consistent in any way I can understand.
I can't find anything to substantiate your 'ROM upgrade was the only way to upgrade the OS' remark. Can you elaborate on that or provide some sort of link?
I get channels 1-13 here in Australia. Are you sure you only see 1-11?
DVD problems? Blame the price-fixing cartel forcing regions on the world, not the companies forced by law to carry out their rules.
I tried discs from two other regions and found that some files in the VIDEO_TS folder could be read and not others (not the actual video files). This indicates to me that each file has some sort of flag attached to it that Apple or Matshita are honoring somehow by refusing to read it. It's not a whole-disc refusal, but a per-file refusal.
You claim that other DVD drives allow this, or other operating systems. Can you detail if a Matshita DVD-R UJ-85J (the drive in my MBP) allows this on any other computer? This might be down to the driver and not the system software. It might be an internal drive-level thing. You're a bit hasty calling it Apple's problem without removing other variables.
You can fairly make your claim that the x86 Macs use hardware/software lock-in, but you can't claim that for older Macs. You're confusing Apple using a completely different platform (68K, PPC) than the PC world (x86) with hardware lock-in. It wasn't lock-in, just a different choice.
I believe the Iraqis have prior art on 'civilisation' from their time between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Thanks for the democracy freebie though!
Velociraptors as big as the ones in the film weren't found when the first Jurassic Park movie was made, and anyway they had flatter snouts. The animals in the movie were always Deinonychii (pl?), with that rounder head, rigid tail and sickle claw on each foot.
Just looked up when the Utah raptor was discovered - 1993 according to Wikipedia. Hmm... might be close either way. The book was from '90 and the film was released in '93. Hmm...
The old processes worked perfectly well when the world prosecuted the Nazi leadership in Nuremberg after WWII. Al Qaeda are insignificant compared to those guys, and all the terrorist acts in the last ten years are the tiniest fraction of what WWII was. The events of Sep-11 2001 were an atrocity, but in WWII there were thousands of worse atrocities all over the world.
And yet somehow the US needs to remove fundamental legal rights from suspected terrorists. Be clear on this - anyone detained is not necessarily a terrorist, they are only under suspicion. Many have been let go completely as the reasons for the original detention were shown to be false some years after they were first held. The proper thing to do is gather evidence as quickly as possible and get these people into a real courtroom, not some kangaroo court with all sorts of suspicion hanging over it.
How are people under suspicion of being terrorists worse than the leaders of the Nazi party in WWII, that the US needs to remove constitutional safeguards specially for them?
Habeus Corpus is appropriate in every single case. It was appropriate in WWII, it is appropriate now.
Okay, I forgot my basic trigonometry. And I got my AU wrong (not by much)
C = 2 x pi x R
= 2 x pi x 149,597,870,691 m
~ 939,951,143,111 m
I was out by a factor of two-and-a-little-bit, and the Earth's orbit isn't perfectly circular anyway, but the thing I was trying to get at was the sense of scale, the sense of proportion.
DM: We found an attack which affects OS X and demonstrated it at a security conference. Also, you Mac users deserve a lit cigarette in your eyes. AS: Give us details or admit you're lying! DM: No details, because someone (aside, stage whisper hey George Ou - tell everyone it's Apple) won't let me speak. Legal eagles make me go hush now. AS: You're a dirty liar! What's all this about using a non-Apple WiFi card? This proves you engineered a fake hack! DM: I'd love to tell you why you're all wrong, but can't because I'm being leaned on by a company I can't name. I wonder who could be doing that..? Besides, someone sent me an anonymous email with a vague threat, which proves Mac users are all rabid dogs. AS: Put up or shut up. Admit you're lying! DM:...
A year passes, seasons come and go, the planet traces a circle of about 450M km around the Sun, people fall in and out of love, some are born, some die, interests change and people forget the whole thing.
DM: Hey everyone! It turns out I can talk now because an NDA (won't say who with, but you can probably guess) is over! My reputation is intact because here are all the documents I've held onto for a year! But I don't care what any of you think. AS: O... kay... Would've been nice to know this all back then, and if you played it better you may have looked less like a publicity-seeking asshat and more like a responsible researcher with real information. The flaw was real, but you never reported it to Apple, Microsoft or any other OS vendor. People suspect the NDA was with Atheros but you haven't even said this much. It's still very suspicious, and you've never accounted properly for the use of that WiFi card.
And why did he sign an NDA and then play it up for the crowds so much? He knew he couldn't talk, but he dropped hints and made veiled references. Wouldn't the right thing, the responsible thing, have been to not make lots of public statements about something he signed an NDA not to detail?
Maynor played the publicity game with a hand he couldn't reveal for a year. By the time he could show his hand, the game had ended and everyone else had left the table. We all moved on. He could've done things a lot better, but he seems to have wanted shock and awe. It still stinks, and he's in no way off the hook for the farrago that whole incident became.
Come on, it looked pretty suspicious. He demonstrated a security hole, refused to detail it, it turns out he used a third-party WiFi card instead of the built-in card... Who would just accept that and say "well, it's a fair cop?"
Some Apple fans got a bit rabid. Not because a security flaw was found - there have been a good number of those since OS X started, and resposible disclosure has never caused users to go apeshit before - but because of the way the flaw was publicised without any real information. On top of that, he made that crack about stabbing Mac users in the eye with a pencil. What was that about? Who says these things and expects no reaction whatsoever?
Then he started saying he'd had death threats. Still haven't seen the threats and apparently they were serious enough to publicise but not enough to call the police in. I lost touch with the story when it seemed to be just poor reporting with low information content and pissy blog wars.
And now a secret NDA is up and he can talk about it. Well, good for him. It's about a year too late, but there's still publicity to be made I see.
Develop your games on spec for your customers. Once you get paid, they get the game and can do whatever they want with it and then it doesn't matter one bit what a million pirates do
Are you advocating that each customer gets to outline their game, and the developer will design and code it, along with all artwork, sounds, etc? I suppose people might pay $100,000 for a game, but I'm pretty sure they'd rather pay just $20. I can't afford to pay for a year's worth of coding, art and sound design just to play some bespoke FPS or car game.
If you're advocating that a group of customers design a game, then we're now into the world of design-by-committee, and the reason most independant game developers write games is to get their own designs out. Games would be a terrible group to design a game, and every gamer willing to put money in would think they've got a stake in the final design. It'd be a nightmare just to manage the expectations, let alone the process around it! In any project you've got to have a single, clear vision of the endpoint. Getting that vision signed off by 5,000 people is not possible.
Are you advocating that a single, high-level customer specs and pays for the game, then on-sells copies to the wider public? If so, that's the model most game companies use and it suffers from piracy. The developer just shifts the impacts of piracy to the publisher, which is nice for the dev, but not practical for independant developers who both write and publish their games.
I cannot see how your idea of coding games to a customer spec could possibly work in reality.
Ah. I clicked the 'Demo' button and a.exe file started downloading, so I assumed (wrongly) that it was PC only. Well, the game looks interesting and the reviews look good and I'm feeling daring this morning, so I bought a copy to try out. Good luck with everything.
Interesting post. I've often wondered how people can protect digital content without something like the DMCA. It's not an answer to just trust people, because time and again there are people who are just untrustworthy. There needs to be something with teeth and fairness. The DMCA seems to have the teeth, but I'm not sure the level of fairness is right for enough people (it is for you, which is a definite positive).
I was interested in your political sim game, but there's no Mac version and I don't use my Vista partition for games. It looks very nice though.
Pricing? My MacBook Pro 17" cost a bit, but so does a comparable machine from other quality suppliers. I don't think I paid over the odds for it.
OS X updates are free between major versions. The major versions are the first number after the "Mac OS X 10." - that is 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 and soon 10.5. These are each huge overhauls and upgrades, not little service packs, which are free on OS X, Windows and (of course) Linux.
Holier-than-thou attitude? O...kay... I don't see that in practice, except on forums where Windows fans bait Mac fans. But consider this - since going Mac in '92, I've been called a noob-user (because the Mac didn't need a command line for everything), a toy owner (because oddly the Mac's not as good for games - I never understood this, surely PC gamers are toy owners), a sheep (despite bucking the Wintel trend), a Macalot (for defending myself against the former insults) and many other things besides. Not once did I start the tirade with anything more than mentioning that I've got a Mac.
After a while, many Mac owners go through a period of responding poorly to heavy insults. I've generally given up on responding to people trolling for reactions, but every now and then someone raises my ire and then the chorus of 'holier than thou! Macalot!' springs up because I don't choose to be insulted.
"Holier than thou" is an unfair comment, yet another insult.
The stories about service and returns you listed (if true) are damning, and I'd hope that people got their arses kicked over their failure to deal with their customers. But that's the same in any retail company. I worked in retail for a bit, and refused refunds for things obviously smashed up by customers. It should be clear when to help and when not to help a customer (they're not always right, but they are critical to success and you have to deal fairly). After my iBook fiasco (three motherboards, two hard drives, two power circuits, two screens, two little sensors in the lid) I was close to the edge with Apple but they treated me well, acknowledged the issues and lived up to their extended warranty without fuss. My experience with Apple retail and support has been very good.
Lastly, I agree that Apple don't want to be #1. Why do they have to win to be successful? That's a false argument, and I'm not sure why people promote it. This is a big market, with plenty of room for Apple, Microsoft, all the Linux variants and (hopefully) new competitors besides. So long as the companies are profitable and have good future prospects, who cares about some fake 'winner takes all' concept?
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Most cases were not bricks - they could be restored. 'Bricking' turns a device into a permanently non-functional unit, ie as useful as a brick.
The few cases of actual bricking should be taken straight to Apple for warranty service, unless they were physically hacked in which case it's just too bad.
First two lines were good, but then you finished with a stupid troll comment.
To take your actual point though - the physical iPhone is indeed the property of the purchaser. The warranty may have been voided by the hack though, and further support becomes the responsibility of the hacker/owner. There were warnings all over the place about this update, but still some people chose to install it on their hacked iPhones.
The update made an assumption that the system software was as shipped. How can any software update account for unknown changes throughout the system without restoring to some factory default state (if possible)? I saw video of one hacker using a soldering iron. How can anyone expect that hack to work with system updates?
I'm betting few people take you as seriously as you'd like. Perhaps you should avoid using phrases like "Listen up you primitive screwheads" when you're leading into a point you want people to accept.
Apple's update re-locks iPhones that were unlocked by third parties. Given that there have been several methods, none of which were approved or passed through Apple (obviously), how can Apple write OS updates that work around these hacks? At least one hack required physical modification to the iPhone - how can any update be expected to allow for unknown changes?
In fact, should Apple be expected to work around hacks at all?
I see the choice as either Apple updates the iPhones regardless of any hacks (over-writing them, re-locking iPhones) or Apple refuses to update hacked iPhones. Clearly Apple are taking the former path, and I agree with that.
Someone in my old apartment block did that, starting Friday night and going right through the weekend (stopped late each night, back on first thing next morning). By Saturday I hated the song (I sort of liked it before). By Sunday I wished fervently that the person playing it would just die. Not nicely either, but painfully and slowly. It was more than a little irritating.
One of the best comments I read recently about Linux was that it was free, like a puppy.
That's a bit snarky though. Funny, accurate in my experience, but snarky.
However, any Linux user who says the Mac software library sucks is coming from some weird parallel dimension inhabited by distortions, non-facts and rocks to live under. On OS X you get nearly all the Linux software with a recompile plus a lot of apps (Photoshop, Office, BBEdit, Apple's iLife, the list goes on) plus actual commercial games.
I won't argue the point that Macs are more expensive. I don't think it's that much of a premium, but there is a non-zero difference. The availability of software though - that's very much in the Mac's favour.
As for Vista... I have a Vista partition on this MacBook Pro. It's not such a bad OS. It looks better than any other Windows so far, tries harder to be secure and still runs all the Windows apps I need/want. I might be getting an unusually good run here because Apple sort out all the drivers for Mac users (thanks Boot Camp!) but Vista is the best Windows yet for a new computer. It has problems, like the continual accept/deny checks, but it's generally pretty solid.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there aren't enough people who both want a smart-phone and have bought into the Linux ideology to sustain a single Linux-based smart-phone. That's not to say that such a phone couldn't be successful, just that the selling point can't be "it's got Linux!"
What are the real selling points of a smart-phone?
* The applications
* The development environment (promise of new, better apps soon)
* Linking to other devices (syncing)
* The interface
* The phone functions
Apple have just sewn up the interface, everyone gets the phone functions pretty much right, syncing is okay generally (non-Windows phones are hurt by closed Exchange servers), most people do apps reasonably well and the dev environment is okay for some, not so hot for others (Apple).
How will a Linux smart-phone distinguish itself from the pack? It's no longer enough to be as good as the rest. These phones have to be much better. Maybe the better APIs and adherence to standards will be enough. It won't win the 'cool' factor that we saw the iPhone blitz just recently, but maybe it'll be enough.
I'd like to see more sizzle to help sell the sausage.
This is great for customers, as it looks like real competition to the iTunes Music Store. No DRM, many songs and albums cheaper, looks nice. I'd prefer a better codec than mp3 (like AAC) but at 256kbps it's pretty nice.
It's even better for Apple, as it strengthens their hand in negotiations with the labels. The labels want higher prices and DRM, but Apple can point to Amazon and say that both negotiating points are uncompetitive. A strong Amazon music store will force the labels into contracts that are better for customers.
As a long-term Apple user, I hope Amazon succeeds and we have real competition in online music stores. Who knows? In a year or two we may be wondering what that whole music DRM thing was all about.
Apart from Thompson's own rantings and the articles quoting him, I can't find anything linking Halo to these two killers. Has anyone got a link that is exclusive of Thompson?
Agh! My brain! It bleeds!
So, you bought an expensive computer, booted it up and expected... what? You say you couldn't do anything with it? It came with a word processor (MacWrite), a paint program (MacPaint) and some other stuff. What it didn't come with was a 'write my novel' button, or an 'entertain me' application. They were for third-party developers to create. What exactly were you expecting?
Five swaps to copy a floppy? That was normal then. It took about the same on an Amiga and an Atari ST. What's the problem?
Then you go off on some bizarre tangent about TRS-80s (completely different in every respect, far more primitive) and CPM (Z80 based CLI OS, nothing to do with performance). Clearly you don't actually understand what you're typing here, or you're not being consistent in any way I can understand.
I can't find anything to substantiate your 'ROM upgrade was the only way to upgrade the OS' remark. Can you elaborate on that or provide some sort of link?
I get channels 1-13 here in Australia. Are you sure you only see 1-11?
DVD problems? Blame the price-fixing cartel forcing regions on the world, not the companies forced by law to carry out their rules.
I tried discs from two other regions and found that some files in the VIDEO_TS folder could be read and not others (not the actual video files). This indicates to me that each file has some sort of flag attached to it that Apple or Matshita are honoring somehow by refusing to read it. It's not a whole-disc refusal, but a per-file refusal.
You claim that other DVD drives allow this, or other operating systems. Can you detail if a Matshita DVD-R UJ-85J (the drive in my MBP) allows this on any other computer? This might be down to the driver and not the system software. It might be an internal drive-level thing. You're a bit hasty calling it Apple's problem without removing other variables.
Rubbish!
You can fairly make your claim that the x86 Macs use hardware/software lock-in, but you can't claim that for older Macs. You're confusing Apple using a completely different platform (68K, PPC) than the PC world (x86) with hardware lock-in. It wasn't lock-in, just a different choice.
I believe the Iraqis have prior art on 'civilisation' from their time between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Thanks for the democracy freebie though!
Velociraptors as big as the ones in the film weren't found when the first Jurassic Park movie was made, and anyway they had flatter snouts. The animals in the movie were always Deinonychii (pl?), with that rounder head, rigid tail and sickle claw on each foot.
Just looked up when the Utah raptor was discovered - 1993 according to Wikipedia. Hmm... might be close either way. The book was from '90 and the film was released in '93. Hmm...
The old processes worked perfectly well when the world prosecuted the Nazi leadership in Nuremberg after WWII. Al Qaeda are insignificant compared to those guys, and all the terrorist acts in the last ten years are the tiniest fraction of what WWII was. The events of Sep-11 2001 were an atrocity, but in WWII there were thousands of worse atrocities all over the world.
And yet somehow the US needs to remove fundamental legal rights from suspected terrorists. Be clear on this - anyone detained is not necessarily a terrorist, they are only under suspicion. Many have been let go completely as the reasons for the original detention were shown to be false some years after they were first held. The proper thing to do is gather evidence as quickly as possible and get these people into a real courtroom, not some kangaroo court with all sorts of suspicion hanging over it.
How are people under suspicion of being terrorists worse than the leaders of the Nazi party in WWII, that the US needs to remove constitutional safeguards specially for them?
Habeus Corpus is appropriate in every single case. It was appropriate in WWII, it is appropriate now.
Okay, I forgot my basic trigonometry. And I got my AU wrong (not by much)
C = 2 x pi x R
= 2 x pi x 149,597,870,691 m
~ 939,951,143,111 m
I was out by a factor of two-and-a-little-bit, and the Earth's orbit isn't perfectly circular anyway, but the thing I was trying to get at was the sense of scale, the sense of proportion.
Apple fanatics are vicious to Apple. They devour their god, and their bloated bellies are never full.
Best single line on Slashdot today. It almost sounds like some kind of ancient Greek myth, or a line from a particularly good Penny Arcade comic.
I'd write it a little differently:
DM: We found an attack which affects OS X and demonstrated it at a security conference. Also, you Mac users deserve a lit cigarette in your eyes.
AS: Give us details or admit you're lying!
DM: No details, because someone (aside, stage whisper hey George Ou - tell everyone it's Apple) won't let me speak. Legal eagles make me go hush now.
AS: You're a dirty liar! What's all this about using a non-Apple WiFi card? This proves you engineered a fake hack!
DM: I'd love to tell you why you're all wrong, but can't because I'm being leaned on by a company I can't name. I wonder who could be doing that..? Besides, someone sent me an anonymous email with a vague threat, which proves Mac users are all rabid dogs.
AS: Put up or shut up. Admit you're lying!
DM:...
A year passes, seasons come and go, the planet traces a circle of about 450M km around the Sun, people fall in and out of love, some are born, some die, interests change and people forget the whole thing.
DM: Hey everyone! It turns out I can talk now because an NDA (won't say who with, but you can probably guess) is over! My reputation is intact because here are all the documents I've held onto for a year! But I don't care what any of you think.
AS: O... kay... Would've been nice to know this all back then, and if you played it better you may have looked less like a publicity-seeking asshat and more like a responsible researcher with real information. The flaw was real, but you never reported it to Apple, Microsoft or any other OS vendor. People suspect the NDA was with Atheros but you haven't even said this much. It's still very suspicious, and you've never accounted properly for the use of that WiFi card.
And why did he sign an NDA and then play it up for the crowds so much? He knew he couldn't talk, but he dropped hints and made veiled references. Wouldn't the right thing, the responsible thing, have been to not make lots of public statements about something he signed an NDA not to detail?
Maynor played the publicity game with a hand he couldn't reveal for a year. By the time he could show his hand, the game had ended and everyone else had left the table. We all moved on. He could've done things a lot better, but he seems to have wanted shock and awe. It still stinks, and he's in no way off the hook for the farrago that whole incident became.
Come on, it looked pretty suspicious. He demonstrated a security hole, refused to detail it, it turns out he used a third-party WiFi card instead of the built-in card... Who would just accept that and say "well, it's a fair cop?"
Some Apple fans got a bit rabid. Not because a security flaw was found - there have been a good number of those since OS X started, and resposible disclosure has never caused users to go apeshit before - but because of the way the flaw was publicised without any real information. On top of that, he made that crack about stabbing Mac users in the eye with a pencil. What was that about? Who says these things and expects no reaction whatsoever?
Then he started saying he'd had death threats. Still haven't seen the threats and apparently they were serious enough to publicise but not enough to call the police in. I lost touch with the story when it seemed to be just poor reporting with low information content and pissy blog wars.
And now a secret NDA is up and he can talk about it. Well, good for him. It's about a year too late, but there's still publicity to be made I see.
"Great! Send it to last year, when I might have cared."
Okay, I changed "week" to "year."
Develop your games on spec for your customers. Once you get paid, they get the game and can do whatever they want with it and then it doesn't matter one bit what a million pirates do
Are you advocating that each customer gets to outline their game, and the developer will design and code it, along with all artwork, sounds, etc? I suppose people might pay $100,000 for a game, but I'm pretty sure they'd rather pay just $20. I can't afford to pay for a year's worth of coding, art and sound design just to play some bespoke FPS or car game.
If you're advocating that a group of customers design a game, then we're now into the world of design-by-committee, and the reason most independant game developers write games is to get their own designs out. Games would be a terrible group to design a game, and every gamer willing to put money in would think they've got a stake in the final design. It'd be a nightmare just to manage the expectations, let alone the process around it! In any project you've got to have a single, clear vision of the endpoint. Getting that vision signed off by 5,000 people is not possible.
Are you advocating that a single, high-level customer specs and pays for the game, then on-sells copies to the wider public? If so, that's the model most game companies use and it suffers from piracy. The developer just shifts the impacts of piracy to the publisher, which is nice for the dev, but not practical for independant developers who both write and publish their games.
I cannot see how your idea of coding games to a customer spec could possibly work in reality.
Ah. I clicked the 'Demo' button and a .exe file started downloading, so I assumed (wrongly) that it was PC only. Well, the game looks interesting and the reviews look good and I'm feeling daring this morning, so I bought a copy to try out. Good luck with everything.
Interesting post. I've often wondered how people can protect digital content without something like the DMCA. It's not an answer to just trust people, because time and again there are people who are just untrustworthy. There needs to be something with teeth and fairness. The DMCA seems to have the teeth, but I'm not sure the level of fairness is right for enough people (it is for you, which is a definite positive).
I was interested in your political sim game, but there's no Mac version and I don't use my Vista partition for games. It looks very nice though.
Pricing? My MacBook Pro 17" cost a bit, but so does a comparable machine from other quality suppliers. I don't think I paid over the odds for it.
OS X updates are free between major versions. The major versions are the first number after the "Mac OS X 10." - that is 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 and soon 10.5. These are each huge overhauls and upgrades, not little service packs, which are free on OS X, Windows and (of course) Linux.
Holier-than-thou attitude? O...kay... I don't see that in practice, except on forums where Windows fans bait Mac fans. But consider this - since going Mac in '92, I've been called a noob-user (because the Mac didn't need a command line for everything), a toy owner (because oddly the Mac's not as good for games - I never understood this, surely PC gamers are toy owners), a sheep (despite bucking the Wintel trend), a Macalot (for defending myself against the former insults) and many other things besides. Not once did I start the tirade with anything more than mentioning that I've got a Mac.
After a while, many Mac owners go through a period of responding poorly to heavy insults. I've generally given up on responding to people trolling for reactions, but every now and then someone raises my ire and then the chorus of 'holier than thou! Macalot!' springs up because I don't choose to be insulted.
"Holier than thou" is an unfair comment, yet another insult.
The stories about service and returns you listed (if true) are damning, and I'd hope that people got their arses kicked over their failure to deal with their customers. But that's the same in any retail company. I worked in retail for a bit, and refused refunds for things obviously smashed up by customers. It should be clear when to help and when not to help a customer (they're not always right, but they are critical to success and you have to deal fairly). After my iBook fiasco (three motherboards, two hard drives, two power circuits, two screens, two little sensors in the lid) I was close to the edge with Apple but they treated me well, acknowledged the issues and lived up to their extended warranty without fuss. My experience with Apple retail and support has been very good.
Lastly, I agree that Apple don't want to be #1. Why do they have to win to be successful? That's a false argument, and I'm not sure why people promote it. This is a big market, with plenty of room for Apple, Microsoft, all the Linux variants and (hopefully) new competitors besides. So long as the companies are profitable and have good future prospects, who cares about some fake 'winner takes all' concept?