Your point about Apple rather than Sony or MS is interesting, because there was some hooplah a while back about Apple stating they had no interest in developing a "Media Center" OS X.
However, if one looks at the standard apps that come with OS X that deal with media, one will find that most of them have a full-screen or "tv-oriented" functionality already built into them. DVD Player will go full-screen with a remote thing and is very straight-forward. iPhoto will give you little forward/back buttons and let you navigate in full-screen with a media-center-oriented interface.
Personally, that's what makes sense to me for computers in the living room -- code the apps so there's little difference. People will want similar functionality whether they're showing off their stuff in the living room or in the office.
Not to mention other little things like the emphasis on color, etc. Anyone who has used OS X on a 640x480 TV compared to Windows can easily feel the difference in usability and viewability. It's striking in some cases.
But it does make more sense for the video game people to fight over this space first. They have a sellable product that brings in a crapton of revenue specifically for the console's use, unlike pretty much all other living-room oriented devices.
It took me a while to get used to it, I'll admit. In my case, it was held up from the idea that I had to lift my hand up.
The big difference, for me, is that so many basic functions are automatically tied to the apple key and another key that's close to the home row. Opening, quitting, closing, spawning new stuff, it's all tied to the apple key, and after I started doing a lot of shortcuts, I stopped and said to myself "hey... why does this feel like I'm working with these things so much easier?" Part of it is that OS X does a good job of emphasizing shortcuts (no underlined letters in menus, for example), but I realized that I was just naturally sliding my [left] thumb over to the key. Looking at a keyboard it makes sense, as the F key is right at the edge of the space bar and the J key is nearly in the middle. So for me I just got used to folding my thumb in, and now I will just automatically use hotkeys for things. It's nice that most developers for OS X will do standard hotkey practices, like apple-comma for preferences, which definitely helps, but I've talked to some people about the thumb-thing and after I've mentioned it, they've all noticed it too.
So part of my side might be that it worked for me, and by telling people about it they're becoming more aware than they would be otherwise. But your remapping control up to capslock is similar -- you just slide your pinky over and bam! Makes more sense, too, given how infrequently caps-lock comes into play and how often it's accidentally. I should look into doing that on my windows laptop;D
Well, ANYTHING would be better than the numpad's current position. Even putting it on the other side would make more sense, as the current position causes not only the actual position of the keyboard to be shifted to the left in a "right in front" scenario, but also means you need to take your hand off the mouse to use them.
Ideally you'd just be able to move your typing/shortcut hand to the numpad when you're mousing.
When I mouse left-handed, it's one of the things I really like.
it's also interesting that shortcuts on Windows are still bound to the control key. Everyone says "well the big difference between mac and windows is that everything is command/apple instead of control." They forget to mention that the control key requires you to use your pinky and take your hand off the home row, whereas the apple key resides next to the space bar and makes you simply slide your thumb over.
Hence, OS X is a LOT more shortcut friendly right out of the box. It's incredible how much of a difference it makes. It's a little thing but it's one of those "damn, why doesn't anyone else do stuff like this" situations.
While I agree that CEOs are drastically overpaid, it also doesn't help that health costs and other non-salary costs have gone up significantly in the past 2 decades, all of which will impact a worker's income negatively.
Of course, if we used a portion of our military budget to completely sponsor health care using tax dollars, all of those companies would suddenly have a lot more money... But we might as well vote against our interests.
That's because BT owns all of the lines so the rates end up rather similar. Broadband is priced quite differently in the US, so people would need to get broadband and then AOL on top of it, resulting in even more money.
The price difference between $23 and $10 for dialup may not be that big of a deal to some people (they might like the features of AOL, for instance), but paying $60 instead of $45 when you just want a fast connection?
Still, it would be quite ironic if AOL has to move to the UK in order to stick around as a company. They're likely to keep the name, I'm sure.
I was also under the impression that trademarks are market-specific. So a meat/food trademark has no impact on electronic product trademarks or vice versa.
One immediate snag with something dedicated would be controlling those files on people's computers. As in, what's to stop someone from deleting something important, or tampering with it in some way?
While there are certain to be backups (and likely a good chunk of people serving the same information, to reduce that likelyhood of error), I wonder if it could be introduced like a SETI@Home type of thing -- people serve intentionally or as a screensaver/when the computer isn't being used.
Probably would have a lot more immediate pickup, as people could download a few pages from someone else when it's activated, serve those in a little separate app, and when they're done, just delete the files or pass them on. While it's serving it's actively looking for other people to serve to.
Similar idea, but more "background" than asking people to specifically keep a torrent-like program open. Then again, you may be thinking of something similar anyway;D
That's what killed any interest I had in PC gaming a few years back. The single player games just aren't there for PCs and the multiplayer games are full of the crap you mentioned.
I currently get my online gaming fix with Xbox Live, and while there are still the jerks and griefers, there's a lot less of them, and the ways they have to grief and be assholes are significantly reduced -- much harder to cheat, easy to get games going without searching forever, etc.
I really enjoy Halo 2 because I've got a large "clan" set up that usually has at least 4-8 guys on any given night, so there's people to play with who aren't jerks and are there because it's fun, not because it's a competition. Sure, it's still fun to win, but there's a difference between winning and being a jerk about it.
But I play it exclusively for fun, not for stats or prestige, and it's really a disconnect between how I play and how others play. It's especially noticeable when you go up against people who can do nothing but spout racial slurs at you, making you wonder what these people do in real life.
Yeah, and given the ease of global software commerce, it's even easier for those India-based companies to compete with US companies without relying on a US parent company.
There's no need to worry about shipping charges or tax crap or any of that -- you just need to sell it online or send a disk image to a manufacturing plant. That will likely lead a faster developing IT market in India compared to, say, the clothing "markets" in china, upping the wages and subsequent costs rather sharply.
The precedent's been around for a while. EA was mentioned above, and Phantasy Star requires additional payments on top of the Live service.
I'm personally curious why they opted for this. Why would they want to launch with an old MMORPG that has already been played by those interested on either PS2 or Xbox? Is it to get those console-only players who didn't want to dish out for the HDD? And for anyone getting introduced to the Xbox, why would you ever want to allow them to log on to a different, non-Live service? It took EA years to realize that their own service was appallingly bad compared to the Live service, and they were getting a lot of bad press for it (and reduced sales for online games).
So now we know that one of the launch titles for the Brand New Xbox 360 that Microsoft hopes will cement a 1st place position is an aging MMORPG that looks just like the PC version and plays with a non-Live, pay-per-month system. Yeah... that's a system seller alright.
I believe the "return" issue has come up in the past. Since it's marked on the packaging, Walmart doesn't have to honor a return. And since you can't return DVDs that are opened, they don't need to allow consumers to return DVDs.
IIRC, Walmart's response is "they can buy their DVD somewhere else if they don't like it." Many of us do just that, although it doesn't deter many regular walmart shoppers.
Generally, those that disagree with Walmart's DVD and CD practices are those of us who also have a long-standing boycott on the company, so I'm not sure whether it really bothers them.
The latter is actually how it works. If there are two versions, Walmart will only stock the cleaner one. American Pie was an early example -- the "unrated" version is not available at walmart. That, of course, encourages movie publishers to push both to market.
Blockbuster does this to some degree, although it has changed its policies somewhat when the "unrated" version is the major release, or when a movie's popularity demands that either the better or at least both versions should be available.
While I'm not saying that Anime and even some TV show discs tend to use more discs than they need for sales purposes, a lot of the reason that you get fewer eps per disc has to do with audio choices. Each audio track requires the same amount of space on the disc, and it's not very compressed. Some anime cheaps out and uses it as a way to get the most amount of money out of fans. But there are plenty others who use that space for actual content.
I'm not the parent but I do deal in audio, and I can kind of understand what the parent meant.
If you're dealing with a mix of instruments from a studio recording session, it can often be difficult to get all of them to sit well with one another in a stereo mix. Gentle EQ'ing, compression, and so on, all go into making that mix sound good in stereo.
With more channels, you have more leeway on where to place sounds and it could be seen as easier to arrive at a final mix that sounds good, given the range of sources.
However, I'd argue that it's more a matter of personal preference and is based more on the source material and the mastering engineer's skill or abilities than an objective difference. To most people, more tracks equals more work.
Not to mention that it's ONLY going to work on a home theater setup or other 5 speaker setup. You'd need to rip to AC3 in order to get the files on your desktop, which aren't exactly as usable as MP3 or its equivalents, and nevermind cars, headphones, etc.
While I agree that having the 1-2 "sponsored links" that are little more than ads appearing at the top instead of off to the side is a pain, I doubt that MSN is going to be the bringer of an uncluttered, ad-free search.
Another company, perhaps. Although I think that Google has shown that text ads are a workable way of bringing in revenue, and any competitor/innovator is likely to follow a similar model. And for Google to compete, they just need to move those results -- a relatively easy task.
This is more my fault for not explaining it, but we're under an education license at work, which means that while he could get it installed on his home computer, he would have to discuss it with the tech staff, explain with his superior why he would need it, and then bring the computer in so that the tech staff could enter in the key.
How do you get those pictures off the phones? in a lot of cases, you need to SMS them to yourself. Sure, the fancy phones let you plug them into your computer, but even those are in the minority.
The reason we see so many cheap camera phones is because the SMS charges are a huge source of income for wireless companies.
Ringtones, a 25 second selection from a popular song in low quality format, costs $4. Heck, my cell phone has a USB plug, but I'll be damned if I can't use it for more than just synchronizing my address book.
I agree with you, but a lot of the problem is in how these "regular people" find out about software.
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard someone say "Oh just use Photoshop. Oh, you don't have it? It's a great image app. Here, I'll give you a link (or other instructions)."
At work, my coworker/supervisor is against using pirated stuff, because he feels similar to you. He was in the same boat as the guy above, though. "Damn, I use Photoshop at work. What am I going to use at home?" So I told him about GIMP, and he tried it out, and said that he just couldn't get used to it. He's currently entertaining the idea of Elements.
But to many people like him, the $600 price jump from Elements to Photoshop makes them wonder why they should spend money on what is apparently a much worse program. Why buy the crappy cheap version? What are they missing?
Some companies are nice and will actually give you a comparison of what the different versions have, and compare the two/three versions directly. However, even those that do tend to do a poor job of explaining just what those features are that you're missing.
It's exceedingly difficult for consumers to get an honest answer from salespeople about what software does and how to use it. It's even more difficult to research and learn how to use some of these programs on their own without investing in a small personal library. Combine that with the friend online or down the street who says "Oh, just use photoshop, here I'll help you out," and it's little wonder that people will simply pirate the software.
Personally, I've been pleasantly surprised by a great deal of cheap software, especially in the audio world. A lot of times, new companies have the advantage of trying new and useful interfaces and can attempt new approaches to solve common problems. Sometimes it's novel, sometimes it's not, but there's a LOT going on in the cheap/free communities.
So, in a way, I wonder if as these apps get better, perhaps piracy will actually be reduced as a matter of course. Why pirate the expensive app when a cheaper app does the same thing AND has a better, more usable interface? We'll have to wait and see, I suppose.
None -- incorporating all of the RFID technology coupled with reduced sales due to consumer annoyance will offset the gains in "lost" revenue that is perceived from piracy.
Which means that since this really won't affect piracy, there'll be a net loss. Go DRM!
Many of those search engines died because their home pages were so cluttery with all of their 'added services.' On Yahoo, it's still not immediately obvious what you should be doing there -- the search box is towards the top but is crowded on all sides. Most other search engines fell into that same trap.
Google's kept their search page simple while continuing to add features. They simply put those features on other pages, and if people happen to find them, great! They don't put up 10 different search boxes on google.com for every single search -- they simply let you change the search on the results page if you want to use froogle instead, or a GIS.
That's one of the big reasons I started using google. And that's one of the big reasons that I keep using them.
The thing is, the iPod is already a good device with functionality that could be integrated into other devices.
The problem is that those other devices would have to drastically change how their services are being offered. I don't want to pay to transfer songs to my phone. I don't want to pay a monthly fee in order to keep my iPhone activated.
I trust Apple a great deal more than I trust any cell phone company.
While I agree that there's nothing wrong with more sources (this is more business oriented, epinions is more product oriented), keeping things too spread out, or unlinked, can definitely hurt. Why? Because then there are large gaps of information missing. I love epinions... when they have a review of something. Often they don't. If it's popular enough, sure, but then you can go anywhere to find reviews.
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However, if one looks at the standard apps that come with OS X that deal with media, one will find that most of them have a full-screen or "tv-oriented" functionality already built into them. DVD Player will go full-screen with a remote thing and is very straight-forward. iPhoto will give you little forward/back buttons and let you navigate in full-screen with a media-center-oriented interface.
Personally, that's what makes sense to me for computers in the living room -- code the apps so there's little difference. People will want similar functionality whether they're showing off their stuff in the living room or in the office.
Not to mention other little things like the emphasis on color, etc. Anyone who has used OS X on a 640x480 TV compared to Windows can easily feel the difference in usability and viewability. It's striking in some cases.
But it does make more sense for the video game people to fight over this space first. They have a sellable product that brings in a crapton of revenue specifically for the console's use, unlike pretty much all other living-room oriented devices.
The big difference, for me, is that so many basic functions are automatically tied to the apple key and another key that's close to the home row. Opening, quitting, closing, spawning new stuff, it's all tied to the apple key, and after I started doing a lot of shortcuts, I stopped and said to myself "hey... why does this feel like I'm working with these things so much easier?" Part of it is that OS X does a good job of emphasizing shortcuts (no underlined letters in menus, for example), but I realized that I was just naturally sliding my [left] thumb over to the key. Looking at a keyboard it makes sense, as the F key is right at the edge of the space bar and the J key is nearly in the middle. So for me I just got used to folding my thumb in, and now I will just automatically use hotkeys for things. It's nice that most developers for OS X will do standard hotkey practices, like apple-comma for preferences, which definitely helps, but I've talked to some people about the thumb-thing and after I've mentioned it, they've all noticed it too.
So part of my side might be that it worked for me, and by telling people about it they're becoming more aware than they would be otherwise. But your remapping control up to capslock is similar -- you just slide your pinky over and bam! Makes more sense, too, given how infrequently caps-lock comes into play and how often it's accidentally. I should look into doing that on my windows laptop ;D
Ideally you'd just be able to move your typing/shortcut hand to the numpad when you're mousing.
When I mouse left-handed, it's one of the things I really like.
I think what they're trying to say is that if you spend $80 on a black keyboard with no real features, you're an ubergeek.
Hence, OS X is a LOT more shortcut friendly right out of the box. It's incredible how much of a difference it makes. It's a little thing but it's one of those "damn, why doesn't anyone else do stuff like this" situations.
Of course, if we used a portion of our military budget to completely sponsor health care using tax dollars, all of those companies would suddenly have a lot more money... But we might as well vote against our interests.
The price difference between $23 and $10 for dialup may not be that big of a deal to some people (they might like the features of AOL, for instance), but paying $60 instead of $45 when you just want a fast connection?
Still, it would be quite ironic if AOL has to move to the UK in order to stick around as a company. They're likely to keep the name, I'm sure.
I was also under the impression that trademarks are market-specific. So a meat/food trademark has no impact on electronic product trademarks or vice versa.
While there are certain to be backups (and likely a good chunk of people serving the same information, to reduce that likelyhood of error), I wonder if it could be introduced like a SETI@Home type of thing -- people serve intentionally or as a screensaver/when the computer isn't being used.
Probably would have a lot more immediate pickup, as people could download a few pages from someone else when it's activated, serve those in a little separate app, and when they're done, just delete the files or pass them on. While it's serving it's actively looking for other people to serve to.
Similar idea, but more "background" than asking people to specifically keep a torrent-like program open. Then again, you may be thinking of something similar anyway ;D
I currently get my online gaming fix with Xbox Live, and while there are still the jerks and griefers, there's a lot less of them, and the ways they have to grief and be assholes are significantly reduced -- much harder to cheat, easy to get games going without searching forever, etc.
I really enjoy Halo 2 because I've got a large "clan" set up that usually has at least 4-8 guys on any given night, so there's people to play with who aren't jerks and are there because it's fun, not because it's a competition. Sure, it's still fun to win, but there's a difference between winning and being a jerk about it.
But I play it exclusively for fun, not for stats or prestige, and it's really a disconnect between how I play and how others play. It's especially noticeable when you go up against people who can do nothing but spout racial slurs at you, making you wonder what these people do in real life.
There's no need to worry about shipping charges or tax crap or any of that -- you just need to sell it online or send a disk image to a manufacturing plant. That will likely lead a faster developing IT market in India compared to, say, the clothing "markets" in china, upping the wages and subsequent costs rather sharply.
I'm personally curious why they opted for this. Why would they want to launch with an old MMORPG that has already been played by those interested on either PS2 or Xbox? Is it to get those console-only players who didn't want to dish out for the HDD? And for anyone getting introduced to the Xbox, why would you ever want to allow them to log on to a different, non-Live service? It took EA years to realize that their own service was appallingly bad compared to the Live service, and they were getting a lot of bad press for it (and reduced sales for online games).
So now we know that one of the launch titles for the Brand New Xbox 360 that Microsoft hopes will cement a 1st place position is an aging MMORPG that looks just like the PC version and plays with a non-Live, pay-per-month system. Yeah... that's a system seller alright.
IIRC, Walmart's response is "they can buy their DVD somewhere else if they don't like it." Many of us do just that, although it doesn't deter many regular walmart shoppers.
Generally, those that disagree with Walmart's DVD and CD practices are those of us who also have a long-standing boycott on the company, so I'm not sure whether it really bothers them.
Blockbuster does this to some degree, although it has changed its policies somewhat when the "unrated" version is the major release, or when a movie's popularity demands that either the better or at least both versions should be available.
HD content requires ungodly amounts of space. 1 minute of HDTV content uses about 1GB of space, uncompressed. So you could fit some movies...
While I'm not saying that Anime and even some TV show discs tend to use more discs than they need for sales purposes, a lot of the reason that you get fewer eps per disc has to do with audio choices. Each audio track requires the same amount of space on the disc, and it's not very compressed. Some anime cheaps out and uses it as a way to get the most amount of money out of fans. But there are plenty others who use that space for actual content.
If you're dealing with a mix of instruments from a studio recording session, it can often be difficult to get all of them to sit well with one another in a stereo mix. Gentle EQ'ing, compression, and so on, all go into making that mix sound good in stereo.
With more channels, you have more leeway on where to place sounds and it could be seen as easier to arrive at a final mix that sounds good, given the range of sources.
However, I'd argue that it's more a matter of personal preference and is based more on the source material and the mastering engineer's skill or abilities than an objective difference. To most people, more tracks equals more work.
Not to mention that it's ONLY going to work on a home theater setup or other 5 speaker setup. You'd need to rip to AC3 in order to get the files on your desktop, which aren't exactly as usable as MP3 or its equivalents, and nevermind cars, headphones, etc.
Another company, perhaps. Although I think that Google has shown that text ads are a workable way of bringing in revenue, and any competitor/innovator is likely to follow a similar model. And for Google to compete, they just need to move those results -- a relatively easy task.
This is more my fault for not explaining it, but we're under an education license at work, which means that while he could get it installed on his home computer, he would have to discuss it with the tech staff, explain with his superior why he would need it, and then bring the computer in so that the tech staff could enter in the key.
The reason we see so many cheap camera phones is because the SMS charges are a huge source of income for wireless companies.
Ringtones, a 25 second selection from a popular song in low quality format, costs $4. Heck, my cell phone has a USB plug, but I'll be damned if I can't use it for more than just synchronizing my address book.
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard someone say "Oh just use Photoshop. Oh, you don't have it? It's a great image app. Here, I'll give you a link (or other instructions)."
At work, my coworker/supervisor is against using pirated stuff, because he feels similar to you. He was in the same boat as the guy above, though. "Damn, I use Photoshop at work. What am I going to use at home?" So I told him about GIMP, and he tried it out, and said that he just couldn't get used to it. He's currently entertaining the idea of Elements.
But to many people like him, the $600 price jump from Elements to Photoshop makes them wonder why they should spend money on what is apparently a much worse program. Why buy the crappy cheap version? What are they missing?
Some companies are nice and will actually give you a comparison of what the different versions have, and compare the two/three versions directly. However, even those that do tend to do a poor job of explaining just what those features are that you're missing.
It's exceedingly difficult for consumers to get an honest answer from salespeople about what software does and how to use it. It's even more difficult to research and learn how to use some of these programs on their own without investing in a small personal library. Combine that with the friend online or down the street who says "Oh, just use photoshop, here I'll help you out," and it's little wonder that people will simply pirate the software.
Personally, I've been pleasantly surprised by a great deal of cheap software, especially in the audio world. A lot of times, new companies have the advantage of trying new and useful interfaces and can attempt new approaches to solve common problems. Sometimes it's novel, sometimes it's not, but there's a LOT going on in the cheap/free communities.
So, in a way, I wonder if as these apps get better, perhaps piracy will actually be reduced as a matter of course. Why pirate the expensive app when a cheaper app does the same thing AND has a better, more usable interface? We'll have to wait and see, I suppose.
Which means that since this really won't affect piracy, there'll be a net loss. Go DRM!
Google's kept their search page simple while continuing to add features. They simply put those features on other pages, and if people happen to find them, great! They don't put up 10 different search boxes on google.com for every single search -- they simply let you change the search on the results page if you want to use froogle instead, or a GIS.
That's one of the big reasons I started using google. And that's one of the big reasons that I keep using them.
The problem is that those other devices would have to drastically change how their services are being offered. I don't want to pay to transfer songs to my phone. I don't want to pay a monthly fee in order to keep my iPhone activated.
I trust Apple a great deal more than I trust any cell phone company.
While I agree that there's nothing wrong with more sources (this is more business oriented, epinions is more product oriented), keeping things too spread out, or unlinked, can definitely hurt. Why? Because then there are large gaps of information missing. I love epinions... when they have a review of something. Often they don't. If it's popular enough, sure, but then you can go anywhere to find reviews.