Have you heard the speakers? Not that I have, but I'm waiting to do that before I actually go out and criticise them. Otherwise I'd look like some sort of ranting fool.
I'm not going to argue about fewer buttons = less efficient input; that's a given. Think cell phones vs. keyboards. Unless FrontRow can read my mind, it's going to need more menus for the same functionality when compared to a more complete remote.
Seriously? You equate more buttons with more efficient?
This is nothing like phones versus keyboards. It's about how you don't need thirty buttons for an interface to a media device. The Apple remote is pretty nice and it's actually all you need.
If you get the chance, try it out.
The contrary case can be illustrated by the iPod - an elegant, efficient interface with only the click wheel and one button. Compare that with the many-buttoned interfaces offered by competitors, who continually fail to scratch the iPod market.
If Dan Brown actually admitted that it was all fiction, he was very careful about it.
You're kidding here, aren't you?
I mean, the book is in the fiction section, on Amazon the title printed on the book is "The Da Vinci Code" and below that "A novel". The reviews on the back of the book call it a thriller.
How much more clear could it be that this is a novel?
I can only believe that you're kidding. You have to be.
I've seen people master them in under a minute, and navigate around the interface within ten seconds of picking one up. Non-technical people too, not just techs.
I'm hardly a fanboy, but I am happy to say that they're the best device out there today.
Sadly, it's fashionable in certain circles to write off the iPod as marketing hype rather than a really well-designed product. It's fair enough to criticise it on missing features (built-in radio would be nice, as would built-in ability to 'suck' images from a digital camera), but pointless if it's mere snobbery.
Not a great work of literature or high prose, just a novel that captured people's imagination and created something of a stir. I read it and found it enjoyable if slightly silly in some places.
Nowhere did he pass it off as fact though, unless you care to produce a direct quote from the book. From memory the only thing even close was a note saying that Opus Dei actually exists.
The thing I find most telling is how Christians reacted to the book. I've seen frothing at the mouth people who (in defiance of their own religion) are ready to hurt him and condemn him to Hell. Thankfully the vast majority accept the book as the fiction it is.
Lastly, he may not be massively talented, but Dan Brown is hardly a loser. He wrote a top-selling book, which catapulted his earlier books into the top ten for months on end. He's made massive amounts of money from this, and is apparently very happy about everything. Calling him a loser sounds like sour grapes to me.
Maybe you need to take a few deep breaths and try to calm down.
I'd have thought that the Church, or any branch of it, would be the absolute last people to sue over this. It's sold as a work of fiction, after all, and any attempts to suppress it would lend it an air of legitimacy that the church can't really afford.
I concede nothing. I thought the actual point not worth rebutting, as it's self-evidently false.
Yes, I attacked you rather than your message, but when your comment is to the effect that everyone is stupid but you (and those thinking like you) I think that's fair.
The iPod is not a software device only - the hardware is a big part of its success.
It doesn't take a genius to write the software for the iPod. It's well-written, yes, but my Nano has crashed a couple of times, so it's far from perfect.
The genius of the iPod comes from the hardware - the feel of the device when you first touch it, the click wheel that controls the menus so easily and intuitively (I've seen people learn to use the iPod is ten seconds from a standing start). The software is important, but the hardware is where the genius is.
Oh, and there's iTunes and the music store. They're good too!
Samsung employed the wrong person. They wanted Johnathan Ives, not some developer.
Okay, you give good points back from my somewhat flippant post.
My understanding can be illustrated with a little example.
Let's say I make toys. It costs me $100 to make 100 toys, from which I receive $500 revenue, or $400 profit.
I can outsource to China who will make these toys for $25. I still sell them for $500, making me $475 profit. That's money I return to my shareholders, and they do whatever they like with it.
The $25 that goes to China is weighed against $25 of toys that they deliver to me, balancing the trade.
In China, that $25 goes a lot further than in my country, but I also paid them a lot less than I would have paid people in my country, so everyone wins.... except the workers in my country. I sacked my small factory staff, and they now need to find work. If every factory owner does the same, then these people will be left with a stark choice - work in another field (and hope it's not outsourced) or starve to death. Not all people can re-train, for various reasons, so my decision hurts some people quite badly.... and it's debatable if the workers in China are better off. After reading No Logo (by Naomi Klein) years ago, and several other books, I'm inclined to think that outsourcing can work, but not if it's done to sweatshops in free-trade zones. You can cut this issue up in so many ways, and it goes down largely to opinions. Certainly the factory-owners win, but many of the workers are paid so poorly that they're barely able to eat.
But I get more money! So I shouldn't care. That's the beauty of outsourcing - the people who make such decisions are usually so far removed from the people they affect that they only ever see numbers on a page, not actual people struggling to find money for rent and food.
I'm not actually a fan of outsourcing. I see why it happens, but I also see a huge potential for problems. If your food is produced in other countries, you're beholden to those countries and you need to keep them on-side. If your data centres sit in another country, you lose control of your data and that could be lethal. Sure, self-interest will help keep things going (as long as everyone plays merrily, the gravy train rolls on) but a chain is built through outsourcing, and as control recedes further, the chain grows longer and a weak link becomes more likely.
Since you're the arbiter of what's right for others, we need to give you authority over them. You alone can decide right and wrong, smart and dumb. Their personal priorities are, quite clearly, irrelevant.
You need to get over yourself and accept that people aren't dumb or sad for buying things that are convenient and useful for them. Not for you, but for them.
I love your last point. Cynical, gloating and reeking of superiority. Is that really how you want to portray yourself?
You're kidding, right? Or did you miss the entire outsourcing thing that's been going on for the past 25 years?
I'm not a fan of outsourcing, but you're obviously looking at it through a bad telescope from another galaxy entirely.
The factories are contracted by a company (such as Apple) to produce items, and they're paid per item. They are paid a price that covers components and labour for production, but nothing else. They see some profit (they're businesses, after all) but they see far less profit than Apple does.
Apple make far less money on the content though, a few cents in the dollar. The rest goes to the RIAA and the credit card companies.
I'm astounded at your grasp of how outsourcing works. It's truly novel.
Do you SERIOUSLY think the iPod is as successful as it is because it's a better player than the others out there?
Absolutely.
It's the easiest to use and has the complete package - a music store, a music manager and a music player. No-one else does it.
You can call it marketing if you like, but Apple marketing wouldn't account for the success of the product if it were inferior. It'd also fail to explain why the advertising blitz from Creative failed to make even a tiny dent in iPod sales.
Face facts. The iPod is a great device, supported by a great music store and a great piece of software. It's not the right choice for everyone, but it's the right choice for most people.
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features.
on
MacBook Pro Benchmarks
·
· Score: 1
You're only proving plasmacutter's point about Apple zealots and DRM. DRM does matter. It matters because DRM tells us what we can and cannot do with the software/media that we bought. It matters because we, as in the user, have to give up control of our computers and files when we accept DRM. It matters because if nothing changes within the next few years, we're all going to be using locked down computers. I have lusted for Macs since OS X was released years ago, but since the Intel switch and Apple's stance with DRM, I have lost much of my enthusiasm with Macs and Apple in general. I don't want to buy a machine with TPM chips that may be used for much more evil purposes (such as locking down my media). I want to buy a machine that does what I, the customer wants, not what Apple or Microsoft or the **AA wants. Thankfully I can still buy and build some computers that aren't DRM-encumbered.
That's all very nice, but the post I replied to was about why plasmacutter was modded down. It's obvious that it's the bit about the DRM that got him modded down, not his other points which would probably not be modded down if they stood alone.
I think the whole DRM issue is unimportant right now. You think its critical. That's fine - we disagree. But you don't have to go on and on about how you can never buy a Mac now or how Apple somehow abused a trust or whatever.
But the bit that gets my goat is the way you drop the word 'zealot' in there, and then start frothing at the mouth about DRM. Clearly I can accept Apple has faults (and yes - it's not my bestest friend ever!). You seem unable to accept any other points of view about DRM.
There's a zealot here, but it's not I.
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features.
on
MacBook Pro Benchmarks
·
· Score: 1
You were probably modded 'troll' because you started on about DRM as if it actually mattered. If you had ended on the point about missing features, you'd probably have been modded up because that's a solid point to make.
Compatibility with more games. Other than WoW, what popular MMORPG runs on Mac OS X? There's that Second Life one, but most others are Mac-only.
Compatibility with more vertical-market apps such as the one used by your employer. My employer actively discourages staff taking work home. But I'm in a financial company, so that's not surprising. I can run Office though, which is the most I'd ever need for work at home.
Is this really an issue? Do companies buy licences for custom vertical-market apps for employees' home computers?
Compatibility with more peripherals sold at retail stores. Such as? Just about anything USB or Firewire will be fine, internal hard drives are fine, most RAM is fine. What peripherals are you talking about here?
Compatibility with web sites that are made exclusively for Microsoft Internet Explorer technology and for which there are no close substitutes. That's not a feature! It's a bug.
Websites made with IE "technology" are made with IE "proprietary extensions that either step well outside the standards or work differently to the standards." That is not something people should trumpet as a feature.
Any global mandates like this require exemptions. That's part of life - there's no 'one size fits all' policy in IT security.
The thing is to minimise risk. You remove options for the general staff, as they're probably your biggest risk (temp staff in the call centre I work at). At some point you have to trust some of your staff. Minimise the number and you minimise the risk.
But in the context of the actual article, the USB lock-out is a good thing for corporations. Use it with other policies for better results, cleaner clothes and whiter whites.
1 - you buy the software, and disregard your version of morality 2 - you do not buy the software and keep your version of morality 3 - you pirate the software and become a complete hypocrite, denying your morality
What do you choose?
I think you lean towards option 2 myself, which is good and moral for you (as far as I can tell from your posts).
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say that if your cold & flu tablets are a pain in the arse, you're probably taking them the wrong way.
bada-ching! I'm here all night! Try the fish, it's great.
You're right. I fully expected quad NV7800s, 16 10,000rpm SATA2 drives in RAID and 48GB of RAM.
And they failed me! It's like a slap in the face.
Apple won't get my money! Come on Apple - I've got the money! Why won't you fulfil my ridiculous expectations?
Bastards.
Have you heard the speakers? Not that I have, but I'm waiting to do that before I actually go out and criticise them. Otherwise I'd look like some sort of ranting fool.
I'm not going to argue about fewer buttons = less efficient input; that's a given. Think cell phones vs. keyboards. Unless FrontRow can read my mind, it's going to need more menus for the same functionality when compared to a more complete remote.
Seriously? You equate more buttons with more efficient?
This is nothing like phones versus keyboards. It's about how you don't need thirty buttons for an interface to a media device. The Apple remote is pretty nice and it's actually all you need.
If you get the chance, try it out.
The contrary case can be illustrated by the iPod - an elegant, efficient interface with only the click wheel and one button. Compare that with the many-buttoned interfaces offered by competitors, who continually fail to scratch the iPod market.
If Dan Brown actually admitted that it was all fiction, he was very careful about it.
You're kidding here, aren't you?
I mean, the book is in the fiction section, on Amazon the title printed on the book is "The Da Vinci Code" and below that "A novel". The reviews on the back of the book call it a thriller.
How much more clear could it be that this is a novel?
I can only believe that you're kidding. You have to be.
I wasn't a fan of the iPod until I used one.
I've seen people master them in under a minute, and navigate around the interface within ten seconds of picking one up. Non-technical people too, not just techs.
I'm hardly a fanboy, but I am happy to say that they're the best device out there today.
Sadly, it's fashionable in certain circles to write off the iPod as marketing hype rather than a really well-designed product. It's fair enough to criticise it on missing features (built-in radio would be nice, as would built-in ability to 'suck' images from a digital camera), but pointless if it's mere snobbery.
It was a novel.
Not a great work of literature or high prose, just a novel that captured people's imagination and created something of a stir. I read it and found it enjoyable if slightly silly in some places.
Nowhere did he pass it off as fact though, unless you care to produce a direct quote from the book. From memory the only thing even close was a note saying that Opus Dei actually exists.
The thing I find most telling is how Christians reacted to the book. I've seen frothing at the mouth people who (in defiance of their own religion) are ready to hurt him and condemn him to Hell. Thankfully the vast majority accept the book as the fiction it is.
Lastly, he may not be massively talented, but Dan Brown is hardly a loser. He wrote a top-selling book, which catapulted his earlier books into the top ten for months on end. He's made massive amounts of money from this, and is apparently very happy about everything. Calling him a loser sounds like sour grapes to me.
Maybe you need to take a few deep breaths and try to calm down.
I'd have thought that the Church, or any branch of it, would be the absolute last people to sue over this. It's sold as a work of fiction, after all, and any attempts to suppress it would lend it an air of legitimacy that the church can't really afford.
Wow. Someone sure feels threatened by this book. Maybe there's a reason for this insecurity?
Oh, someone who thinks the iPod is just a marketing thing.
How quaint.
I concede nothing. I thought the actual point not worth rebutting, as it's self-evidently false.
Yes, I attacked you rather than your message, but when your comment is to the effect that everyone is stupid but you (and those thinking like you) I think that's fair.
The iPod is not a software device only - the hardware is a big part of its success.
It doesn't take a genius to write the software for the iPod. It's well-written, yes, but my Nano has crashed a couple of times, so it's far from perfect.
The genius of the iPod comes from the hardware - the feel of the device when you first touch it, the click wheel that controls the menus so easily and intuitively (I've seen people learn to use the iPod is ten seconds from a standing start). The software is important, but the hardware is where the genius is.
Oh, and there's iTunes and the music store. They're good too!
Samsung employed the wrong person. They wanted Johnathan Ives, not some developer.
Okay, you give good points back from my somewhat flippant post.
... except the workers in my country. I sacked my small factory staff, and they now need to find work. If every factory owner does the same, then these people will be left with a stark choice - work in another field (and hope it's not outsourced) or starve to death. Not all people can re-train, for various reasons, so my decision hurts some people quite badly. ... and it's debatable if the workers in China are better off. After reading No Logo (by Naomi Klein) years ago, and several other books, I'm inclined to think that outsourcing can work, but not if it's done to sweatshops in free-trade zones. You can cut this issue up in so many ways, and it goes down largely to opinions. Certainly the factory-owners win, but many of the workers are paid so poorly that they're barely able to eat.
My understanding can be illustrated with a little example.
Let's say I make toys. It costs me $100 to make 100 toys, from which I receive $500 revenue, or $400 profit.
I can outsource to China who will make these toys for $25. I still sell them for $500, making me $475 profit. That's money I return to my shareholders, and they do whatever they like with it.
The $25 that goes to China is weighed against $25 of toys that they deliver to me, balancing the trade.
In China, that $25 goes a lot further than in my country, but I also paid them a lot less than I would have paid people in my country, so everyone wins.
But I get more money! So I shouldn't care. That's the beauty of outsourcing - the people who make such decisions are usually so far removed from the people they affect that they only ever see numbers on a page, not actual people struggling to find money for rent and food.
I'm not actually a fan of outsourcing. I see why it happens, but I also see a huge potential for problems. If your food is produced in other countries, you're beholden to those countries and you need to keep them on-side. If your data centres sit in another country, you lose control of your data and that could be lethal. Sure, self-interest will help keep things going (as long as everyone plays merrily, the gravy train rolls on) but a chain is built through outsourcing, and as control recedes further, the chain grows longer and a weak link becomes more likely.
Since you're the arbiter of what's right for others, we need to give you authority over them. You alone can decide right and wrong, smart and dumb. Their personal priorities are, quite clearly, irrelevant.
You need to get over yourself and accept that people aren't dumb or sad for buying things that are convenient and useful for them. Not for you, but for them.
I love your last point. Cynical, gloating and reeking of superiority. Is that really how you want to portray yourself?
You're kidding, right? Or did you miss the entire outsourcing thing that's been going on for the past 25 years?
I'm not a fan of outsourcing, but you're obviously looking at it through a bad telescope from another galaxy entirely.
The factories are contracted by a company (such as Apple) to produce items, and they're paid per item. They are paid a price that covers components and labour for production, but nothing else. They see some profit (they're businesses, after all) but they see far less profit than Apple does.
Apple make far less money on the content though, a few cents in the dollar. The rest goes to the RIAA and the credit card companies.
I'm astounded at your grasp of how outsourcing works. It's truly novel.
Steve Wozniak wouldn't have gotten anywhere without Steve Jobs pushing him.
Steve Jobs wouldn't have gotten anywhere without Steve Wozniak's ability.
They needed each other.
Then again, maybe Jobs would have gone on to huge things anyway. Wozniak probably would have stayed with HP though.
Compared to what?
O-(crash, restart app)
-pen-(crash, restart app)
-Off-(crash, restart app)
-ice(crash, restart app)
Do you SERIOUSLY think the iPod is as successful as it is because it's a better player than the others out there?
Absolutely.
It's the easiest to use and has the complete package - a music store, a music manager and a music player. No-one else does it.
You can call it marketing if you like, but Apple marketing wouldn't account for the success of the product if it were inferior. It'd also fail to explain why the advertising blitz from Creative failed to make even a tiny dent in iPod sales.
Face facts. The iPod is a great device, supported by a great music store and a great piece of software. It's not the right choice for everyone, but it's the right choice for most people.
You're only proving plasmacutter's point about Apple zealots and DRM. DRM does matter. It matters because DRM tells us what we can and cannot do with the software/media that we bought. It matters because we, as in the user, have to give up control of our computers and files when we accept DRM. It matters because if nothing changes within the next few years, we're all going to be using locked down computers. I have lusted for Macs since OS X was released years ago, but since the Intel switch and Apple's stance with DRM, I have lost much of my enthusiasm with Macs and Apple in general. I don't want to buy a machine with TPM chips that may be used for much more evil purposes (such as locking down my media). I want to buy a machine that does what I, the customer wants, not what Apple or Microsoft or the **AA wants. Thankfully I can still buy and build some computers that aren't DRM-encumbered.
That's all very nice, but the post I replied to was about why plasmacutter was modded down. It's obvious that it's the bit about the DRM that got him modded down, not his other points which would probably not be modded down if they stood alone.
I think the whole DRM issue is unimportant right now. You think its critical. That's fine - we disagree. But you don't have to go on and on about how you can never buy a Mac now or how Apple somehow abused a trust or whatever.
But the bit that gets my goat is the way you drop the word 'zealot' in there, and then start frothing at the mouth about DRM. Clearly I can accept Apple has faults (and yes - it's not my bestest friend ever!). You seem unable to accept any other points of view about DRM.
There's a zealot here, but it's not I.
You were probably modded 'troll' because you started on about DRM as if it actually mattered. If you had ended on the point about missing features, you'd probably have been modded up because that's a solid point to make.
Damn! Must be amazing, because everything crashed and I've only now gotten my computer back up again.
You win this round, but I'll be back!
Oh, this is going to be so good - I'm readying a whole series of probes and attacks against your IP address right now!
You're going to regret posting that out in the open!
Compatibility with more games. Other than WoW, what popular MMORPG runs on Mac OS X?
There's that Second Life one, but most others are Mac-only.
Compatibility with more vertical-market apps such as the one used by your employer.
My employer actively discourages staff taking work home. But I'm in a financial company, so that's not surprising. I can run Office though, which is the most I'd ever need for work at home.
Is this really an issue? Do companies buy licences for custom vertical-market apps for employees' home computers?
Compatibility with more peripherals sold at retail stores.
Such as? Just about anything USB or Firewire will be fine, internal hard drives are fine, most RAM is fine. What peripherals are you talking about here?
Compatibility with web sites that are made exclusively for Microsoft Internet Explorer technology and for which there are no close substitutes.
That's not a feature! It's a bug.
Websites made with IE "technology" are made with IE "proprietary extensions that either step well outside the standards or work differently to the standards." That is not something people should trumpet as a feature.
Any global mandates like this require exemptions. That's part of life - there's no 'one size fits all' policy in IT security.
The thing is to minimise risk. You remove options for the general staff, as they're probably your biggest risk (temp staff in the call centre I work at). At some point you have to trust some of your staff. Minimise the number and you minimise the risk.
But in the context of the actual article, the USB lock-out is a good thing for corporations. Use it with other policies for better results, cleaner clothes and whiter whites.
I didn't miss your point at all.
You've got three options here.
1 - you buy the software, and disregard your version of morality
2 - you do not buy the software and keep your version of morality
3 - you pirate the software and become a complete hypocrite, denying your morality
What do you choose?
I think you lean towards option 2 myself, which is good and moral for you (as far as I can tell from your posts).