Wow! If the stuent isn't enrolled during the 04-05 academic year, he/she must return the iPod to the university in good working condition?
They better hope and pray the university is pretty lenient with that interpretation of "good" condition! The 2nd. day I had my new 40GB iPod, I realized I'd already put several nasty-looking scratches in the polished chrome back.
In fact, if you research a bit, you'll find complaints of such things as rust forming on the engraved parts of iPod backs, and even Apple's standard iPod belt-clip case putting scratches on the backs of them, where the tag is sewn in the case.
I love the iPod, but that chrome back idea is way impractical. If I realized just how easily it gets smudged up or scratched in the beginning, I would have always kept my iPod in something like those "iSkin" rubber sleeves....
I agree with a portion of your post... Apple does often do "the right thing" for their customers. I think a prime example is the way they sell "family packs" of the OS X operating system, so you can install it on several systems for much less money than buying all the individual copies of the OS. (If only Microsoft would be so generous!)
On the other hand, one big reason Apple products are so enthusiastically welcomed by some of their fans are because they've won over a segment of the population that places a high value on style. For years, PC users have included the folks who don't care in the slightest what the machine looks like, or even what features it has, as long as it's as CHEAP as possible and can get the task(s) done they need done. PC users have also included the "power junkies" who are all about "substance over style". (It takes 6 noisy case fans to cool it down, but it'll outperform anything bought "off the shelf" by another 15 or 20%? Let's do it!)
Apple never really wins over many people from either of these crowds.... Instead, they cater to a group that's largely ignored in the "Wintel" PC world... People who insist on a beautiful-looking and thoughtfully engineered computer, even if it means a little less performance and a higher price tag than the competition.
The joke about the "Reality Distortion Field" has some validity. What I mean is, Jobs is a great public speaker and knows how to build up lots of excitement and hype over things that probably aren't nearly as big a deal as he builds them up to be. Look at the amazement/excitement he generated over the new 30" Cinema displays, for example. Before they were even available, you could get a 32" LCD display already from other vendors like NEC. Not to mention, as pricy as they are, not many people will ever really buy one for their Mac anyway. (Why would you, really? You can buy two of the 23" models and put them side by side for less money, and have more overall screen space.) Ok, let me answer my own question. It all goes back to "style over substance" again! Some people will be bothered by the fact that there's a small border between 2 monitors placed side by side, and want the "bragging rights" that they have the largest monitor Apple offers, etc. etc.
Well, it doesn't help that older system configurations don't die off easily or quickly. When I do on-site PC service (home and small business), I encounter at least one or two machines per week that run older versions of RealPlayer/Real Jukebox and they're as annoying as ever.
Even companies as large as Microsoft have to bow to this problem. (They tried to eliminate Windows '98 support but were forced to extend it, because so many people keep on using it!)
The lesson here is be very careful what software products you put out there. They stick around a lot longer than you might like, even when they're not very good....
Well, he is an amateur musician, and yes, he does use CuBase - but I don't even think that was a "deal breaker" for him.
He installed OpenOffice but didn't like the overall "look and feel" of the product. (I can sympathize with that myself. Last time I installed it, everything had more of a "Microsoft Works" feel to it, the way all the pieces were integrated around a single front-end.)
Among other things, he lost nearly all of his ability to play games on the laptop. (Yeah, yeah, you can play Quake, Doom, and so on... but those are exceptions to the rule.)
Furthermore, he ran into some issues getting things like his wi-fi card working, and had to monkey around with config files and a custom package installation to make it work right. Power management didn't seem as well supported either.
I also recall him being frustrated that Debian's style of package management wasn't used? (Like you said, no, I haven't personally used Gentoo - so I can't really speak with certainty on this.) It sounded to me like it was using an RPM style packaging system though? If so, that's a negative.... I've had countless times where RPM packages didn't install cleanly. Sometimes, you have to do a --force to get something to install, and sometimes you're just not sure if the libraries you have are going to work with a program or not....
That's insanity! You're proposing that government should decide what people should charge for the products they sell??!?
Who cares if someone sells a "loss leader" product for a limited time? It benefits the consumers who take advantage of the deal, getting a product they wanted anyway at a cut-rate price.
Same with "cash back" incentives.... I mean, sure, buying a car at a dealership with incentives and rebates doesn't mean you're necessarily getting the car at a great price. Why should it? Dealerships have lots of overhead. It's not like the cars are just sitting out in a rice paddy someplace, and you pick one out, do all the required paperwork yourself, and just mail in the payment. Dealerships have to pay for the land they're using, the building itself, the utilities, and even things like washing all the cars regularly before they're sold. Cars that don't sell quickly enough start becoming a liability too, since they take up valuable space they could otherwise use for a better selling vehicle.
From paperwork I've seen at local dealerships, they earn an average profit of between $1500-3000 on each used car sold. (I never saw figures for new car sales, but I'm sure it's in the same ballpark.) When you figure the salesperson has to earn his/her living too - I don't think that's really out of line for a purchase that's typically larger than anything else people buy other than their house.
It's hard to draw conclusions about a program you haven't even watched, so I'd suggest checking out an episode or two.
What Penn & Teller are doing is largely modeled after "The Amazing Randy" - who made a career out of debunking claims of "supernatural powers" and the like from psychics, magician con-artists, etc.
Much of their first season focused on such topics as Ouija boards, quack medicine (magnet therapy, for example) and UFO abductions. They weren't exactly topics that were tough to make some logical assumptions about from the start.
I'm sorry, but I'd almost have to call your post a "troll" - even though you're not necessarily wrong about everything you said....
Realistically, how is a Linux distro like Gentoo a real "alternative" at all, for the average PC user wanting a "workstation OS" that runs all of their purchased "off the shelf" software packages??
Just as one little example, a good friend of mine recently wiped Windows XP off his Dell Latitude laptop and replaced it with the latest Gentoo Linux distro. He could only stand it for about 3 days before deciding it just made his laptop *less functional* than it was worth, and went back to XP.
It's not that he dislikes Linux! He thinks it's great! (So do I, for that matter.) It's just that Linux is based on a *server-centric* OS (Unix), and all the attempts to reconstruct it as a desktop workstation OS with user-friendly GUI are less than fully realized.
I'm all for competition, but as much as some people want it to be, I don't think Linux is really the direct competition for Windows XP right now. If anything, it's poised more as a sensible alternative for something like Windows 2000 or 2003 Server.....
If you want a Unix type OS done right as a workstation, I think Apple already pulled it off better than anyone else -- but that's getting into a whole new hardware AND software investment.
I always take *anything* seen on television with a grain of salt... But from what I've seen of Penn & Teller's show, they're usually pretty much "on the money" in their main arguments.
No, it's not supposed to be an "unbiased" show at all. It's about expressing very Libertarian ideas and applying them to current events and political agendas seen in our daily lives.
Occasionally, sure, I think there are some strong arguments against points they're making which get glossed over or omitted. But in all fairness to the show they're trying to air, there's only so much you can cram in the short period of time they make each episode. It would be hard to so much as discern any "side" they were trying to take on a topic if they took out much more time than they do listening to the opposing views.
As it is, almost all their interviews with people (whether for or against their overall "argument" for the episode in question) are chopped up into little sound bytes/clips. I think their show would easily run at least twice the length it does now if it was done any other way.
King-manic, I think your main argument seems to be that PC's are somehow a "better choice" for most work, simply because they're dominant in the marketplace?
To me, this statement makes no more sense than saying McDonalds has the best quality, best tasting food that you'd want to eat for *most* of your meals, because they have *far* more conveniently located restaurants than any of the more expensive competitors.
Which applications are used most often in the general workplace? Well, certainly Microsoft Office is one, and the Mac has it. (Arguably, the latest Office for Mac is a superior product to the latest PC version. It has several innovative concepts coded into it, whereas the latest PC revision seems to be all "fluff" and nonsense features people don't want to pay to upgrade to.) Also, accounting types often use Quickbooks (or in some smaller offices, Quicken). Again, both are available for the Mac too. Want an alternative? MYOB is available for the Mac as well. Need a database? Well, true, lots of people are hooked on using MS Access, which has no Mac native version. But most PC people with database experience will also be quick to tell you that Access is a poor product, and makes databases that often become corrupt over time. In larger corporations, Access is usually used just so departments can build "proof of concept" databases, which eventually get ported to a "real" database product if they're proven to be worth using/keeping. On a Mac, you'd get similar results using FileMaker Pro (but you'd gain functionality such as web accessible databases!).
About the only area I can think of where a Mac might not fit well in the workplace is for CAD/CAM work. You can get Bentley Microstation for the Mac, but no - it doesn't have AutoCAD or Autodesk Inventor....
Once again, I could refer you to an episode of Penn & Teller's "Bullshit!" series on Showtime.... They bring up the whole topic of electromagnetic waves and microwave emissions from cellphones and potential to cause cancer or other illnesses.
As one research scientist said, the waves coming out of a cellular phone are simply too big to knock out individual parts of a DNA sequence and cause bodily harm, the way UV radiation from the sun does over time. The higher the frequency, the smaller in diameter the waves are, and cellphones just don't operate on a high enough frequency to cause this problem.
Even just anecdotal evidence seems to indicate cellphones don't cause much harm. Look how many people use their cellphones for hours every day, and have done so for years. Granted, they haven't been around for as long as something like cigarettes - but logic would tell you if they really casued cancer, you'd see at least a noticeable increase in reports of pre-cancerous growths by now. Doesn't seem to be the case.
IMHO, Doom 3 is *much* more of an evolution than a revolution. It's a worthy sequel, overall - and after you play far enough to finally get into hell itself, you start seeing some better action. (Finally, more of those roomfulls of baddies coming at you, like the old Doom - instead of dealing with people one at a time.)
But the lighting in the game is too dark. IMHO, you practically have to edit the config file manually and bump up the gamma settings before you can play without getting eyestrain and frustration at barely seeing anything.
I also thought the overall plot and storyline felt like a Half-Life ripoff, except not even as well put together.
I'm not too thrilled about the way these games let you talk to characters, yet their responses are so limited and canned. (EG. You click "talk" on someone 10 times in a row, and instead of them getting annoyed or anything, they just start repeating the same phrase, like "I'm sorry, but I can't talk to you right now. I'm busy.") For that matter, you can shoot one of your fellow marines, but it won't let you punch them. Where's the consistency in that?
Yeah, you're pretty much correct here - but frankly, I don't know why people keep blowing their money on systems like iMacs or eMacs and expecting to then play the latest 3D games on them?
The G5 is the obvious choice if you want to be a Mac user and still have it double as a "gaming computer". The Radeon 9800 cards in a G5 play everything I've ever seen ported to Mac just fine. Sure, you may not achieve "insane frame rates" like some PCs get - but that's more a wet-dream for benchmarking weenies than what you realistically need to enjoy a game.
In fact, my G5 only has the Radeon 9600 Pro in it, and I have no complaints about video speed with it either. I've played everything from Halo to UT2004 to Medal of Honor to Spiderman on it, and it all works fine for me.
I think the bottom line is this, though. Mac users aren't purchasing their Macs specifically to be a *game system*. They have other reasons they want a Mac, but they just feel it should be able to run some good games too. Everyone likes to have fun once in a while, but not everyone thinks gaming is so critical that it justifies building a second machine just for it.
Absolutely right.... but this AOL PC is hardly the first part of this problem! The consumer PC market, as a whole, is causing these issues for techs everywhere!
Not only are people expecting to buy a complete system for under $500, but then they don't understand why the phone-in support is so poor, with people answering the phones who can barely speak English, and waiting times of up to 2 hours on hold.
Just recently, I was asked to upgrade a hard drive in a person's PC. The machine was only identified by "PeoplePC" logos all over it, so it was obviously part of one of these PC + net access bundle offers from a few years ago. It took us nearly an hour of web searching to positively identify it as a particular model of Toshiba mini-tower, and then to locate an updated BIOS that would work in it - so it could recognize the larger size IDE drive we wanted to put in it.
Perhaps worse yet, it's difficult to charge a reasonable labor rate to repair and upgrade people's computers when the original price on them was so low. They still need the same help you'd give anyone else with issues like virus/spyware removal, training, and whatnot - but they strongly resist paying "almost as much as the computer!" for you to come out on-site and spend a few hours doing it for them.
I've been asked before why I think people have no big issue paying an auto mechanic a labor rate of $85/hr. - but moan/groan about even $50/hr. for a PC. Well, imagine if new cars sold for under $1000 each.....
One thing I've learned over the years with car insurance is, *never* stop shopping around on it! The average insurance agency fully expects that customers won't stay with them for an average of more than 4 years anyway. They're out to make most of their profits on the people who are too lazy to switch (or falsely believe they're eventually going to save money by sticking with the same company for a long time).
Basically, I wouldn't even consider renewing an existing policy with whoever I used the last time around, without first calling for at least a few new quotes.
Also, it's tough to generalize and say "company X is expensive/a rip-off", because as I've bought and sold different vehicles, my results varied greatly with the same companies.
There are lots of factors in coming up with your rate, and some are totally unrelated to your driving history or type of car you drive. Some agencies take your credit history into account, and others (EG. American Family) don't use it at all.
I just switched *to* Progressive, and I have a very clean driving record. Why? Well, I was real happy with my previous choice, but I'm in the middle of a messy divorce where my (soon to be ex) wife took my sports car and subsequently sold it to somebody. My insurance co. it was insured with refused to let me remove the car from my policy though, because they weren't certain my wife didn't still have it in her possession and wasn't still driving it around! They demanded I fax them proof in the way of a letter from the Dept. of Motor Vehicles stating the car was re-titled to another person. Well, the DMV said "Sorry pal! That's confidential information and we can't give you a letter like that. Yes, your car was sold, but no you can't have any info about it."
It seemed to me the only sensible thing to do was cancel my policy and sign up with someone new. Progressive had a fairly competitive rate for the SUV I drive right now, and if they raise my rate next time around - fine. Away they go too....
Ah yeah.... If you caught the Penn & Teller TV series "Bullshit!" (occasionally airing on Showtime), they did an episode about the "war on drugs", complete with an interview with Joe Arpaio.
We were shocked at what a narrow-minded moron that guy comes off as when he speaks. As a defense attorney said on the show, Arpaio even thought it would be a good idea to stake out Arizona state troopers all over, to randomly stop people and screen them for drugs. They had to SLOWLY explain to him that doing such a thing wasn't constitutional.
To be honest with you, I suspect your colleague has some issues other than just "Windows XP" itself. If you were able to get his MRI scanner doing everything he needed with his old system running an outdated version of SunOS, there's no reason I can see why it shouldn't really work just as well under XP - unless the code wasn't well written/translated to his XP environment.
Windows has plenty of security issues still, but I've worked with enough XP boxes to know that stability issues are practically a non-issue, unless you use faulty device drivers or have poorly written applications involved (assuming no hardware problems like bad RAM, which can happen too).
I know this isn't exactly a "Windows friendly" crowd here, but those of us running XP on our own systems can probably back me up here. How often have you guys really seen it blue-screen and require a hard reboot? If/when you have, what did you track the problem down to? Only time in 2+ years my box has acted up like that, it was a failing IDE drive failing to write the temporary swap file properly.
When it comes to basic serial, parallel, or ethernet I/O (like it would typically be to interface with some external device like an MRI scanner), I see no reason to claim an old flavor of Unix would do a superior job to XP?
I've been telling people this for at least the last 3 years or so! The I.T. industry is basically "melting down" into a skillset employers just expect you to have, coupled with another skillset they claim to be hiring you for.
I watched it happen at a previous job, where the engineering staff were told to start picking up books on Visual Basic and Java programming, and actually started spending half of each week working along-side our software development team. Those who didn't show interest in "playing along" ended up looking elsewhere for work.
Not long afterwards, the "I.T. support" staff was cut - with much of the rationale being, "We've got things to the point now where most users just have thin clients on their desks, and all the control is done at the server side anyway. The engineering staff is the one group of real computer "power users" left who need support on their workstations, and they're learning to do it for themselves now."
To be honest, this trend disturbs me, because I've always considered myself a "hard core I.T./computer" guy. I really don't like math, nor do I really have any desire to try to get into another field at this point in time (in my 30's already). If I was talking to someone just going through college, I'd probably advise them to only get into computers secondarily, with a different primary career choice. But for folks like me, I don't see a real bright future.... No matter, I'm pretty stubborn, and if I become like one of those old TV repairmen still looking for old sets with tubes that need swapping out - so be it. That'll be me.
Yes - I'm in agreement with you on all of that! I've done work for a number of law firms over the years, and still find that most use WordPerfect on their PCs - even if they also have MS Word installed.
There are simply too many good legal secretaries/assistants out there who spent years getting good at using all the WordPerfect macros and shortcuts, and they've developed lots of great templates for cranking out forms, letterhead, etc.
It *could* probably all be done in MS Word, but there's no motivation to expend the effort to re-learn things and rewrite things to function identically to what they've already got in WordPerfect.
The core issue, I think is this: The "traditional" applications for computers are really just simulations of things done with dedicated office tools before. (A word processor, no matter how fancy, still boils down to a typewriter simulator. A database or address book acts like a giant card catalog or rolodex, ultimately.) We've reached the point where everything new that can be done to these apps just carries them further and further away from working as replacements for the original tools they're meant to simulate/replace.
When it comes to word processing, I think the biggest "innovations" that people *really* cared about were these:
1. spell checking 2. WYSIWYG 3. easy access to multiple font sizes/types 4. mail merge functionality
In the rush to keep adding new things, it seems these basics have gotten lost in the shuffle! What I mean is, spell checkers often seem to come with pretty poor default dictionaries. What's with that? With today's powerful PCs, it should be able to quickly scan pretty much *every* possible word in the language! Mail merge is still "tough to figure out" for most people. It's not something you need often enough to really memorize a lot of complex steps to do it. It needs to be "brainless" to get it working, because when you DO need it, you need it! WYSIWYG isn't even quite right, most of the time! With proportionately spaced type, people get all sorts of problems lining up columns and rows. What looks "lined up" on the screen doesn't always print that way on paper. People are forced, sometimes, to hit their TAB key instead of the spacebar 4 or 5 times, to get the desired indention on a line. (Can't today's software just deal with that in the background, seamlessly? People shouldn't have to understand how line breaks work in a program!)
I'm lucky that right now, I own a Panasonic (KX-TG1000N) 2.4Ghz cordless phone, and it never seems to cause my wi-fi network any problems at all. (I'm using a Linksys WRT-54G router, but also used a Lucent RG-1000 residential gateway before that, and had no problems with it either.)
A good friend of mine, also using a Linksys WRT-54G has terrible problems with a 2.4Ghz cordless phone at his house. (I don't know the model, or I'd post it.) I was over there on his wi-fi network, and as soon as you'd pick that phone up off the hook, the whole network would instantly disappear! I couldn't even redetect the router, much less get a good connection to it. It came right back upon hanging the phone up.
Where I work, we've had issues too. A mortgage company moved into the office next door to us, and we discovered our 2.4Ghz phones were knocking out his wi-fi network temporarily, every time they rang. (He was using some type of US Robotics router.)
The problem seems to be a lot of 2.4Ghz phones are being really "sloppy" about transmitting across multiple frequencies at the same time. The wi-fi cards just can't seem to step out of their way.... I guess the phones with this new sticker on them have been built to tighter tolerances.
Re:Kinda gives a new meaning to '1337 hAx0r2'.
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Ready, Aim, HACK!
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Not to mention, even after they figure out what you're really trying to do with it, you're still left doing some serious explaining. I don't think a lame excuse like "My phone wasn't getting good enough reception, so I'm trying to bounce my call off another phone with a better antenna!" is gonna cut it....
(I guess they should be glad my 2 year old daughter has no say in things. She still thinks my stuffed Tux penguin is a duck, and most birds in my lawn get called "duck!" too.)
Eh.... Sometimes I'm tempted to make a similar statement, that "Today's PCs really aren't THAT much more useful than the ones I used 10 or 12 years ago!"
But then I think about the tasks people do with modern computers, and I realize that statement is short-sighted.
Yes, you can argue the old favorite, that "I could type a letter just as well on my old XXX system as on today's Pentium 4 3.0Ghz PC!", or "Spreadsheets worked just fine for me using Visicalc."
The value of faster machines becomes immediately apparent when you start talking about such things as editing DV video from a camcorder, or printing out photo quality prints after downloading from from your multi megapixel digital camera and editing them, or encoding your music CDs into MP3 format. Heck - try just *listening* to MP3s in the background while you work using anything older than a Pentium class PC. The older systems tie up their entire CPU just processing the music file.
Anyone developing software can surely tell you that compiling times are drastically reduced on modern PCs, as well. No more "Running off to eat dinner while my program compiles." And how about people composing music on their computer? Sure, the old machines handled MIDI data fairly well - but virtual instruments? That was just a fantasy before modern systems made it possible.
Gaming is always debatable, because it's subjective. One person can rave about how many thousands of times better new games are with near photo-realistic graphics and 3 dimensional surround sound, while another scoffs at that, and says they preferred the "block graphics" type games of the Atari 2600 game system era. But surely, it's clear that gaming has accomplished things that just weren't possible on older hardware. Network gameplay is vastly superior, for example. (I can remember trying to play the first 2-player modem-based games. You had to wait for the game to "synch up" with the other player before you could start, and then it often lost synch in the middle of playing, due to phone line noise or whatnot.)
You wouldn't even have things like usable broadband internet access if the world was still using 4.77Mhz XT class machines. It takes more CPU power than that to handle things like PPPoE protocol for DSL!
I, too, must agree! I went with the other end of the spectrum - buying a 17" Powerbook. But in its class, it's completely unique too. I've had several buddies criticize my decision, saying "You're paying too much for too little CPU power!" and so forth, but where else can I go to get a 17" LCD panel in a laptop this thin and lightweight? Furthermore, who else offers the backlit keyboard feature, or the slot-loading DVD burner (no flimsy tray to break off)?
One of my good friends bought a high-end Sager "gaming laptop", arguing it was a much better value for his $ than my Powerbook 17" was for mine. Only 2 or 3 months later, he's already talking about getting rid of the Sager. Why? He says "The fans are too loud!" (Not only that, but its battery life is abysmal, it's "thick as a brick", and as he also complained about, the speakers are terrible in it too.)
On the plus side, the Sager uses a higher-end LCD 17" panel than my Powerbook does. (The rumors have it, Sager originally spec'd their laptops with the exact same panel Apple uses, but Apple outbid them and bought up all the supply for their Powerbooks. At that point, Sager just ordered the next model up from what Apple used.) It really does look beautiful - but a display alone doesn't make the laptop.
Very good overview! Only thing I might "nitpick" on is the assumption that in these outsourcing cases, the only variable that can be tweaked to make one more competitive is "standard of living".
I daresay that there's actually a second variable in play here, and that variable is innovation. As long as a company continues incrementally improving and producing the same product, or provides the exact same service year after year, that company runs an ever increasing risk of becoming unprofitable or uncompetitive. Companies that really do hire the "best and brightest" have the ability to rise above this quagmire by constantly releasing *new* products or services, that others can't yet immitate. (Those that don't are forced to stoop to such practices as outsourcing "slave labor".)
The thing is, the true "best and brightest" at producing a product aimed at a domestic, U.S. audience, is generally going to be a U.S. citizen. It's not that outsourcing wouldn't also bring you very intelligent people. Surely it could/would. The problem is, it brings people who don't understand our culture as well as we do. A product's success is as much a result of clever marketing and the "sex appeal" of the packaging and product itself, as it is the technical engineering that went into it. Ease of use is *always* a critical consideration too; I'm not so sure other countries would value the same things as I do as important to make a device or piece of software "more user-friendly".
I went through a big hassle not too long after I started doing lots of eBay sales and accepting payment via PayPal, years ago. They froze my account (apparently because a buyer of one of my items was suspected of cheating some other eBay buyers, but never did find out anything definitive).
I filed a complaint and heard absolutely nothing back from PayPal. After a few weeks though, my account was suddenly un-frozen again and everything was back to normal ever since.
What this taught me was, don't keep money in PayPal that you can't afford to lose. Above all, stop trying to PRETEND THEY'RE A BANK! PayPal considers themselves a facilitator of funds transfers. EG. They're a way for the "average Joe" to accept credit card payments and "click to pay" type Internet transactions.
Once I came to grips with what PayPal really was and wasn't, I was fine with their service. Yeah, their customer service pretty much sucks, but that's true of most companies I deal with nowdays. They usually outsource everything to other countries anyway, so you're lucky if you can even understand the cust. service rep. at all!
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Wow! If the stuent isn't enrolled during the 04-05 academic year, he/she must return the iPod to the university in good working condition?
They better hope and pray the university is pretty lenient with that interpretation of "good" condition! The 2nd. day I had my new 40GB iPod, I realized I'd already put several nasty-looking scratches in the polished chrome back.
In fact, if you research a bit, you'll find complaints of such things as rust forming on the engraved parts of iPod backs, and even Apple's standard iPod belt-clip case putting scratches on the backs of them, where the tag is sewn in the case.
I love the iPod, but that chrome back idea is way impractical. If I realized just how easily it gets smudged up or scratched in the beginning, I would have always kept my iPod in something like those "iSkin" rubber sleeves....
I agree with a portion of your post... Apple does often do "the right thing" for their customers. I think a prime example is the way they sell "family packs" of the OS X operating system, so you can install it on several systems for much less money than buying all the individual copies of the OS. (If only Microsoft would be so generous!)
On the other hand, one big reason Apple products are so enthusiastically welcomed by some of their fans are because they've won over a segment of the population that places a high value on style. For years, PC users have included the folks who don't care in the slightest what the machine looks like, or even what features it has, as long as it's as CHEAP as possible and can get the task(s) done they need done. PC users have also included the "power junkies" who are all about "substance over style". (It takes 6 noisy case fans to cool it down, but it'll outperform anything bought "off the shelf" by another 15 or 20%? Let's do it!)
Apple never really wins over many people from either of these crowds.... Instead, they cater to a group that's largely ignored in the "Wintel" PC world... People who insist on a beautiful-looking and thoughtfully engineered computer, even if it means a little less performance and a higher price tag than the competition.
The joke about the "Reality Distortion Field" has some validity. What I mean is, Jobs is a great public speaker and knows how to build up lots of excitement and hype over things that probably aren't nearly as big a deal as he builds them up to be. Look at the amazement/excitement he generated over the new 30" Cinema displays, for example. Before they were even available, you could get a 32" LCD display already from other vendors like NEC. Not to mention, as pricy as they are, not many people will ever really buy one for their Mac anyway. (Why would you, really? You can buy two of the 23" models and put them side by side for less money, and have more overall screen space.) Ok, let me answer my own question. It all goes back to "style over substance" again! Some people will be bothered by the fact that there's a small border between 2 monitors placed side by side, and want the "bragging rights" that they have the largest monitor Apple offers, etc. etc.
Well, it doesn't help that older system configurations don't die off easily or quickly. When I do on-site PC service (home and small business), I encounter at least one or two machines per week that run older versions of RealPlayer/Real Jukebox and they're as annoying as ever.
Even companies as large as Microsoft have to bow to this problem. (They tried to eliminate Windows '98 support but were forced to extend it, because so many people keep on using it!)
The lesson here is be very careful what software products you put out there. They stick around a lot longer than you might like, even when they're not very good....
Well, he is an amateur musician, and yes, he does use CuBase - but I don't even think that was a "deal breaker" for him.
He installed OpenOffice but didn't like the overall "look and feel" of the product. (I can sympathize with that myself. Last time I installed it, everything had more of a "Microsoft Works" feel to it, the way all the pieces were integrated around a single front-end.)
Among other things, he lost nearly all of his ability to play games on the laptop. (Yeah, yeah, you can play Quake, Doom, and so on... but those are exceptions to the rule.)
Furthermore, he ran into some issues getting things like his wi-fi card working, and had to monkey around with config files and a custom package installation to make it work right. Power management didn't seem as well supported either.
I also recall him being frustrated that Debian's style of package management wasn't used? (Like you said, no, I haven't personally used Gentoo - so I can't really speak with certainty on this.) It sounded to me like it was using an RPM style packaging system though? If so, that's a negative.... I've had countless times where RPM packages didn't install cleanly. Sometimes, you have to do a --force to get something to install, and sometimes you're just not sure if the libraries you have are going to work with a program or not....
That's insanity! You're proposing that government should decide what people should charge for the products they sell??!?
Who cares if someone sells a "loss leader" product for a limited time? It benefits the consumers who take advantage of the deal, getting a product they wanted anyway at a cut-rate price.
Same with "cash back" incentives.... I mean, sure, buying a car at a dealership with incentives and rebates doesn't mean you're necessarily getting the car at a great price. Why should it? Dealerships have lots of overhead. It's not like the cars are just sitting out in a rice paddy someplace, and you pick one out, do all the required paperwork yourself, and just mail in the payment. Dealerships have to pay for the land they're using, the building itself, the utilities, and even things like washing all the cars regularly before they're sold. Cars that don't sell quickly enough start becoming a liability too, since they take up valuable space they could otherwise use for a better selling vehicle.
From paperwork I've seen at local dealerships, they earn an average profit of between $1500-3000 on each used car sold. (I never saw figures for new car sales, but I'm sure it's in the same ballpark.) When you figure the salesperson has to earn his/her living too - I don't think that's really out of line for a purchase that's typically larger than anything else people buy other than their house.
It's hard to draw conclusions about a program you haven't even watched, so I'd suggest checking out an episode or two.
What Penn & Teller are doing is largely modeled after "The Amazing Randy" - who made a career out of debunking claims of "supernatural powers" and the like from psychics, magician con-artists, etc.
Much of their first season focused on such topics as Ouija boards, quack medicine (magnet therapy, for example) and UFO abductions. They weren't exactly topics that were tough to make some logical assumptions about from the start.
I'm sorry, but I'd almost have to call your post a "troll" - even though you're not necessarily wrong about everything you said....
Realistically, how is a Linux distro like Gentoo a real "alternative" at all, for the average PC user wanting a "workstation OS" that runs all of their purchased "off the shelf" software packages??
Just as one little example, a good friend of mine recently wiped Windows XP off his Dell Latitude laptop and replaced it with the latest Gentoo Linux distro. He could only stand it for about 3 days before deciding it just made his laptop *less functional* than it was worth, and went back to XP.
It's not that he dislikes Linux! He thinks it's great! (So do I, for that matter.) It's just that Linux is based on a *server-centric* OS (Unix), and all the attempts to reconstruct it as a desktop workstation OS with user-friendly GUI are less than fully realized.
I'm all for competition, but as much as some people want it to be, I don't think Linux is really the direct competition for Windows XP right now. If anything, it's poised more as a sensible alternative for something like Windows 2000 or 2003 Server.....
If you want a Unix type OS done right as a workstation, I think Apple already pulled it off better than anyone else -- but that's getting into a whole new hardware AND software investment.
I always take *anything* seen on television with a grain of salt... But from what I've seen of Penn & Teller's show, they're usually pretty much "on the money" in their main arguments.
No, it's not supposed to be an "unbiased" show at all. It's about expressing very Libertarian ideas and applying them to current events and political agendas seen in our daily lives.
Occasionally, sure, I think there are some strong arguments against points they're making which get glossed over or omitted. But in all fairness to the show they're trying to air, there's only so much you can cram in the short period of time they make each episode. It would be hard to so much as discern any "side" they were trying to take on a topic if they took out much more time than they do listening to the opposing views.
As it is, almost all their interviews with people (whether for or against their overall "argument" for the episode in question) are chopped up into little sound bytes/clips. I think their show would easily run at least twice the length it does now if it was done any other way.
King-manic, I think your main argument seems to be that PC's are somehow a "better choice" for most work, simply because they're dominant in the marketplace?
To me, this statement makes no more sense than saying McDonalds has the best quality, best tasting food that you'd want to eat for *most* of your meals, because they have *far* more conveniently located restaurants than any of the more expensive competitors.
Which applications are used most often in the general workplace? Well, certainly Microsoft Office is one, and the Mac has it. (Arguably, the latest Office for Mac is a superior product to the latest PC version. It has several innovative concepts coded into it, whereas the latest PC revision seems to be all "fluff" and nonsense features people don't want to pay to upgrade to.) Also, accounting types often use Quickbooks (or in some smaller offices, Quicken). Again, both are available for the Mac too. Want an alternative? MYOB is available for the Mac as well. Need a database? Well, true, lots of people are hooked on using MS Access, which has no Mac native version. But most PC people with database experience will also be quick to tell you that Access is a poor product, and makes databases that often become corrupt over time. In larger corporations, Access is usually used just so departments can build "proof of concept" databases, which eventually get ported to a "real" database product if they're proven to be worth using/keeping. On a Mac, you'd get similar results using FileMaker Pro (but you'd gain functionality such as web accessible databases!).
About the only area I can think of where a Mac might not fit well in the workplace is for CAD/CAM work. You can get Bentley Microstation for the Mac, but no - it doesn't have AutoCAD or Autodesk Inventor....
Once again, I could refer you to an episode of Penn & Teller's "Bullshit!" series on Showtime.... They bring up the whole topic of electromagnetic waves and microwave emissions from cellphones and potential to cause cancer or other illnesses.
As one research scientist said, the waves coming out of a cellular phone are simply too big to knock out individual parts of a DNA sequence and cause bodily harm, the way UV radiation from the sun does over time. The higher the frequency, the smaller in diameter the waves are, and cellphones just don't operate on a high enough frequency to cause this problem.
Even just anecdotal evidence seems to indicate cellphones don't cause much harm. Look how many people use their cellphones for hours every day, and have done so for years. Granted, they haven't been around for as long as something like cigarettes - but logic would tell you if they really casued cancer, you'd see at least a noticeable increase in reports of pre-cancerous growths by now. Doesn't seem to be the case.
IMHO, Doom 3 is *much* more of an evolution than a revolution. It's a worthy sequel, overall - and after you play far enough to finally get into hell itself, you start seeing some better action. (Finally, more of those roomfulls of baddies coming at you, like the old Doom - instead of dealing with people one at a time.)
But the lighting in the game is too dark. IMHO, you practically have to edit the config file manually and bump up the gamma settings before you can play without getting eyestrain and frustration at barely seeing anything.
I also thought the overall plot and storyline felt like a Half-Life ripoff, except not even as well put together.
I'm not too thrilled about the way these games let you talk to characters, yet their responses are so limited and canned. (EG. You click "talk" on someone 10 times in a row, and instead of them getting annoyed or anything, they just start repeating the same phrase, like "I'm sorry, but I can't talk to you right now. I'm busy.") For that matter, you can shoot one of your fellow marines, but it won't let you punch them. Where's the consistency in that?
Yeah, you're pretty much correct here - but frankly, I don't know why people keep blowing their money on systems like iMacs or eMacs and expecting to then play the latest 3D games on them?
The G5 is the obvious choice if you want to be a Mac user and still have it double as a "gaming computer". The Radeon 9800 cards in a G5 play everything I've ever seen ported to Mac just fine. Sure, you may not achieve "insane frame rates" like some PCs get - but that's more a wet-dream for benchmarking weenies than what you realistically need to enjoy a game.
In fact, my G5 only has the Radeon 9600 Pro in it, and I have no complaints about video speed with it either. I've played everything from Halo to UT2004 to Medal of Honor to Spiderman on it, and it all works fine for me.
I think the bottom line is this, though. Mac users aren't purchasing their Macs specifically to be a *game system*. They have other reasons they want a Mac, but they just feel it should be able to run some good games too. Everyone likes to have fun once in a while, but not everyone thinks gaming is so critical that it justifies building a second machine just for it.
Absolutely right.... but this AOL PC is hardly the first part of this problem! The consumer PC market, as a whole, is causing these issues for techs everywhere!
Not only are people expecting to buy a complete system for under $500, but then they don't understand why the phone-in support is so poor, with people answering the phones who can barely speak English, and waiting times of up to 2 hours on hold.
Just recently, I was asked to upgrade a hard drive in a person's PC. The machine was only identified by "PeoplePC" logos all over it, so it was obviously part of one of these PC + net access bundle offers from a few years ago. It took us nearly an hour of web searching to positively identify it as a particular model of Toshiba mini-tower, and then to locate an updated BIOS that would work in it - so it could recognize the larger size IDE drive we wanted to put in it.
Perhaps worse yet, it's difficult to charge a reasonable labor rate to repair and upgrade people's computers when the original price on them was so low. They still need the same help you'd give anyone else with issues like virus/spyware removal, training, and whatnot - but they strongly resist paying "almost as much as the computer!" for you to come out on-site and spend a few hours doing it for them.
I've been asked before why I think people have no big issue paying an auto mechanic a labor rate of $85/hr. - but moan/groan about even $50/hr. for a PC. Well, imagine if new cars sold for under $1000 each.....
I knew several people with pet ferrets, and their *favorite* thing to do was steal your keys!
Hmm......
One thing I've learned over the years with car insurance is, *never* stop shopping around on it! The average insurance agency fully expects that customers won't stay with them for an average of more than 4 years anyway. They're out to make most of their profits on the people who are too lazy to switch (or falsely believe they're eventually going to save money by sticking with the same company for a long time).
Basically, I wouldn't even consider renewing an existing policy with whoever I used the last time around, without first calling for at least a few new quotes.
Also, it's tough to generalize and say "company X is expensive/a rip-off", because as I've bought and sold different vehicles, my results varied greatly with the same companies.
There are lots of factors in coming up with your rate, and some are totally unrelated to your driving history or type of car you drive. Some agencies take your credit history into account, and others (EG. American Family) don't use it at all.
I just switched *to* Progressive, and I have a very clean driving record. Why? Well, I was real happy with my previous choice, but I'm in the middle of a messy divorce where my (soon to be ex) wife took my sports car and subsequently sold it to somebody. My insurance co. it was insured with refused to let me remove the car from my policy though, because they weren't certain my wife didn't still have it in her possession and wasn't still driving it around! They demanded I fax them proof in the way of a letter from the Dept. of Motor Vehicles stating the car was re-titled to another person. Well, the DMV said "Sorry pal! That's confidential information and we can't give you a letter like that. Yes, your car was sold, but no you can't have any info about it."
It seemed to me the only sensible thing to do was cancel my policy and sign up with someone new. Progressive had a fairly competitive rate for the SUV I drive right now, and if they raise my rate next time around - fine. Away they go too....
Ah yeah.... If you caught the Penn & Teller TV series "Bullshit!" (occasionally airing on Showtime), they did an episode about the "war on drugs", complete with an interview with Joe Arpaio.
We were shocked at what a narrow-minded moron that guy comes off as when he speaks. As a defense attorney said on the show, Arpaio even thought it would be a good idea to stake out Arizona state troopers all over, to randomly stop people and screen them for drugs. They had to SLOWLY explain to him that doing such a thing wasn't constitutional.
To be honest with you, I suspect your colleague has some issues other than just "Windows XP" itself. If you were able to get his MRI scanner doing everything he needed with his old system running an outdated version of SunOS, there's no reason I can see why it shouldn't really work just as well under XP - unless the code wasn't well written/translated to his XP environment.
Windows has plenty of security issues still, but I've worked with enough XP boxes to know that stability issues are practically a non-issue, unless you use faulty device drivers or have poorly written applications involved (assuming no hardware problems like bad RAM, which can happen too).
I know this isn't exactly a "Windows friendly" crowd here, but those of us running XP on our own systems can probably back me up here. How often have you guys really seen it blue-screen and require a hard reboot? If/when you have, what did you track the problem down to? Only time in 2+ years my box has acted up like that, it was a failing IDE drive failing to write the temporary swap file properly.
When it comes to basic serial, parallel, or ethernet I/O (like it would typically be to interface with some external device like an MRI scanner), I see no reason to claim an old flavor of Unix would do a superior job to XP?
I've been telling people this for at least the last 3 years or so! The I.T. industry is basically "melting down" into a skillset employers just expect you to have, coupled with another skillset they claim to be hiring you for.
I watched it happen at a previous job, where the engineering staff were told to start picking up books on Visual Basic and Java programming, and actually started spending half of each week working along-side our software development team. Those who didn't show interest in "playing along" ended up looking elsewhere for work.
Not long afterwards, the "I.T. support" staff was cut - with much of the rationale being, "We've got things to the point now where most users just have thin clients on their desks, and all the control is done at the server side anyway. The engineering staff is the one group of real computer "power users" left who need support on their workstations, and they're learning to do it for themselves now."
To be honest, this trend disturbs me, because I've always considered myself a "hard core I.T./computer" guy. I really don't like math, nor do I really have any desire to try to get into another field at this point in time (in my 30's already). If I was talking to someone just going through college, I'd probably advise them to only get into computers secondarily, with a different primary career choice. But for folks like me, I don't see a real bright future.... No matter, I'm pretty stubborn, and if I become like one of those old TV repairmen still looking for old sets with tubes that need swapping out - so be it. That'll be me.
Yes - I'm in agreement with you on all of that! I've done work for a number of law firms over the years, and still find that most use WordPerfect on their PCs - even if they also have MS Word installed.
There are simply too many good legal secretaries/assistants out there who spent years getting good at using all the WordPerfect macros and shortcuts, and they've developed lots of great templates for cranking out forms, letterhead, etc.
It *could* probably all be done in MS Word, but there's no motivation to expend the effort to re-learn things and rewrite things to function identically to what they've already got in WordPerfect.
The core issue, I think is this: The "traditional" applications for computers are really just simulations of things done with dedicated office tools before. (A word processor, no matter how fancy, still boils down to a typewriter simulator. A database or address book acts like a giant card catalog or rolodex, ultimately.) We've reached the point where everything new that can be done to these apps just carries them further and further away from working as replacements for the original tools they're meant to simulate/replace.
When it comes to word processing, I think the biggest "innovations" that people *really* cared about were these:
1. spell checking
2. WYSIWYG
3. easy access to multiple font sizes/types
4. mail merge functionality
In the rush to keep adding new things, it seems these basics have gotten lost in the shuffle! What I mean is, spell checkers often seem to come with pretty poor default dictionaries. What's with that? With today's powerful PCs, it should be able to quickly scan pretty much *every* possible word in the language! Mail merge is still "tough to figure out" for most people. It's not something you need often enough to really memorize a lot of complex steps to do it. It needs to be "brainless" to get it working, because when you DO need it, you need it! WYSIWYG isn't even quite right, most of the time! With proportionately spaced type, people get all sorts of problems lining up columns and rows. What looks "lined up" on the screen doesn't always print that way on paper. People are forced, sometimes, to hit their TAB key instead of the spacebar 4 or 5 times, to get the desired indention on a line. (Can't today's software just deal with that in the background, seamlessly? People shouldn't have to understand how line breaks work in a program!)
I'm lucky that right now, I own a Panasonic (KX-TG1000N) 2.4Ghz cordless phone, and it never seems to cause my wi-fi network any problems at all. (I'm using a Linksys WRT-54G router, but also used a Lucent RG-1000 residential gateway before that, and had no problems with it either.)
A good friend of mine, also using a Linksys WRT-54G has terrible problems with a 2.4Ghz cordless phone at his house. (I don't know the model, or I'd post it.) I was over there on his wi-fi network, and as soon as you'd pick that phone up off the hook, the whole network would instantly disappear! I couldn't even redetect the router, much less get a good connection to it. It came right back upon hanging the phone up.
Where I work, we've had issues too. A mortgage company moved into the office next door to us, and we discovered our 2.4Ghz phones were knocking out his wi-fi network temporarily, every time they rang. (He was using some type of US Robotics router.)
The problem seems to be a lot of 2.4Ghz phones are being really "sloppy" about transmitting across multiple frequencies at the same time. The wi-fi cards just can't seem to step out of their way.... I guess the phones with this new sticker on them have been built to tighter tolerances.
Not to mention, even after they figure out what you're really trying to do with it, you're still left doing some serious explaining. I don't think a lame excuse like "My phone wasn't getting good enough reception, so I'm trying to bounce my call off another phone with a better antenna!" is gonna cut it....
(I guess they should be glad my 2 year old daughter has no say in things. She still thinks my stuffed Tux penguin is a duck, and most birds in my lawn get called "duck!" too.)
Eh.... Sometimes I'm tempted to make a similar statement, that "Today's PCs really aren't THAT much more useful than the ones I used 10 or 12 years ago!"
But then I think about the tasks people do with modern computers, and I realize that statement is short-sighted.
Yes, you can argue the old favorite, that "I could type a letter just as well on my old XXX system as on today's Pentium 4 3.0Ghz PC!", or "Spreadsheets worked just fine for me using Visicalc."
The value of faster machines becomes immediately apparent when you start talking about such things as editing DV video from a camcorder, or printing out photo quality prints after downloading from from your multi megapixel digital camera and editing them, or encoding your music CDs into MP3 format. Heck - try just *listening* to MP3s in the background while you work using anything older than a Pentium class PC. The older systems tie up their entire CPU just processing the music file.
Anyone developing software can surely tell you that compiling times are drastically reduced on modern PCs, as well. No more "Running off to eat dinner while my program compiles." And how about people composing music on their computer? Sure, the old machines handled MIDI data fairly well - but virtual instruments? That was just a fantasy before modern systems made it possible.
Gaming is always debatable, because it's subjective. One person can rave about how many thousands of times better new games are with near photo-realistic graphics and 3 dimensional surround sound, while another scoffs at that, and says they preferred the "block graphics" type games of the Atari 2600 game system era. But surely, it's clear that gaming has accomplished things that just weren't possible on older hardware. Network gameplay is vastly superior, for example. (I can remember trying to play the first 2-player modem-based games. You had to wait for the game to "synch up" with the other player before you could start, and then it often lost synch in the middle of playing, due to phone line noise or whatnot.)
You wouldn't even have things like usable broadband internet access if the world was still using 4.77Mhz XT class machines. It takes more CPU power than that to handle things like PPPoE protocol for DSL!
I, too, must agree! I went with the other end of the spectrum - buying a 17" Powerbook. But in its class, it's completely unique too. I've had several buddies criticize my decision, saying "You're paying too much for too little CPU power!" and so forth, but where else can I go to get a 17" LCD panel in a laptop this thin and lightweight? Furthermore, who else offers the backlit keyboard feature, or the slot-loading DVD burner (no flimsy tray to break off)?
One of my good friends bought a high-end Sager "gaming laptop", arguing it was a much better value for his $ than my Powerbook 17" was for mine. Only 2 or 3 months later, he's already talking about getting rid of the Sager. Why? He says "The fans are too loud!" (Not only that, but its battery life is abysmal, it's "thick as a brick", and as he also complained about, the speakers are terrible in it too.)
On the plus side, the Sager uses a higher-end LCD 17" panel than my Powerbook does. (The rumors have it, Sager originally spec'd their laptops with the exact same panel Apple uses, but Apple outbid them and bought up all the supply for their Powerbooks. At that point, Sager just ordered the next model up from what Apple used.) It really does look beautiful - but a display alone doesn't make the laptop.
Very good overview! Only thing I might "nitpick" on is the assumption that in these outsourcing cases, the only variable that can be tweaked to make one more competitive is "standard of living".
I daresay that there's actually a second variable in play here, and that variable is innovation. As long as a company continues incrementally improving and producing the same product, or provides the exact same service year after year, that company runs an ever increasing risk of becoming unprofitable or uncompetitive. Companies that really do hire the "best and brightest" have the ability to rise above this quagmire by constantly releasing *new* products or services, that others can't yet immitate. (Those that don't are forced to stoop to such practices as outsourcing "slave labor".)
The thing is, the true "best and brightest" at producing a product aimed at a domestic, U.S. audience, is generally going to be a U.S. citizen. It's not that outsourcing wouldn't also bring you very intelligent people. Surely it could/would. The problem is, it brings people who don't understand our culture as well as we do. A product's success is as much a result of clever marketing and the "sex appeal" of the packaging and product itself, as it is the technical engineering that went into it. Ease of use is *always* a critical consideration too; I'm not so sure other countries would value the same things as I do as important to make a device or piece of software "more user-friendly".
I went through a big hassle not too long after I started doing lots of eBay sales and accepting payment via PayPal, years ago. They froze my account (apparently because a buyer of one of my items was suspected of cheating some other eBay buyers, but never did find out anything definitive).
I filed a complaint and heard absolutely nothing back from PayPal. After a few weeks though, my account was suddenly un-frozen again and everything was back to normal ever since.
What this taught me was, don't keep money in PayPal that you can't afford to lose. Above all, stop trying to PRETEND THEY'RE A BANK! PayPal considers themselves a facilitator of funds transfers. EG. They're a way for the "average Joe" to accept credit card payments and "click to pay" type Internet transactions.
Once I came to grips with what PayPal really was and wasn't, I was fine with their service. Yeah, their customer service pretty much sucks, but that's true of most companies I deal with nowdays. They usually outsource everything to other countries anyway, so you're lucky if you can even understand the cust. service rep. at all!