Thing that makes this dificult is that Theatre, itself, is entertainment... so training for entertainment, in itself, is likely entertaining.
On other things, if you think about it, a lot of what elementary school is, is entertainment. It's very difficult to keep an 8 year old focused for 6 hours, and simply "entertaining" children for a length of time can have it's positive results. All you have to do is throw in a few educational things, and you're set. Video games, simply by their very nature, force people to come to terms with unique elements in pattern recognition, spacial develepment, and various higher functioning skills. They're not yet sincere enough to do a good job teaching any moral guidence or social skills... some films are, but they're few and far between. But that aside, games are pretty damn good at teaching people, basically, how to "think".
Okay, every single one of those items a total bullshit, except for the "genious bar" thing (which I don't know anything about), I can call you on every one of those things. Why? I've had a lot of dealings with apple over the years, in most cases, they actually done MORE than their bottom line says. In fact, they're probably the only company I know that regularly goes against their own policies in favor of their customers:
After 90 days, no telephone support. If you post into the web forums about a problem Apple doesn't like to "discuss", expect it to be silently removed.
Have you ever experienced this first hand? At least the telephone support. Sure, they SAY they only give 90 days of telephone support to non-Apple Care customers. But try it sometime, they always say something like, "if it's not something huge, I'll see what I can do." And usually they'll give me a good 15 minutes or so, which is phenominal... have you ever dealt with Dell?
As a friend discovered, Apple's return policy is 14 days AFTER DATE OF SHIPMENT, not DATE OF RECIEPT, despite this being VERY clearly outlined on their store policies page. Her iBook took 7 days to arrive via UPS ground, and 4 days later called Apple to return it. No go. I even found the URL of the webpage on the store.apple.com website which reads "from date of reciept", and they refused to adhere to it. Slimy doesn't begin to cover it.
Bullshit. My first PowerBook, I bought from a place that sold both Macs and PCs was one of the unfortunate 2% that, because of a faulty screen, could be pronounced DOA. The thing had been sitting in the store for over a month. The store clerk (not an apple dealer by default), went on and on about how great apple was about returned products. If Apple hadn't been, he probably would have tried to get me to buy a PC instead, or at least told me that they were having problems, since it would be HIS loss.
You know that friendly bit about upgrading existing orders? Guess why she wanted to return her iBook? Answer: they started shipping iBooks with better processors and GPUs (or more VRAM, I forget) while her iBook was in transit. Her order certainly wasn't held or upgraded for free.
Okay, now this is ludicrus. I've never heard Apple say ANYTHING about upgrading existing orders, in fact, no company has ever had free upgrades for HARDWARE. Never-the-less, Apple has been known to do it on occation. My parents bought a MacMini a few months back, and Apple had secretly switched up a few, oh, hundred thousand orders with the newer generation, for free, without telling anyone. I saw an article about it, and sure enough, ours had twice the VRAM and a faster processor. Show me the part where Apple makes any claims about doing this on a regular basis. They will sometime do it if they upgrade the product line while you're order is being processing, sure, that makes sense. But after it ships, it's a done deal. I don't understand how you expect to hold any company to that. If done regularly, it's just a bad business practice.
The display on my $3k, 17-inch powerbook was very wobbly 9 months in, so I took it to the store. "Huh", says the genius. Walks over to the display model, which has been on the floor for over a year (and shows it.) That's 12 hours a day of geting wobbled, poked, prodded...whereas mine sat mostly on my desk and was closed+opened once a day on average. "Ours does the same thing. It's normal." Uh...what? So, I took it home, popped it open, tightened the bolts for the clutch mounts, and problem solved. Jerks.
And how is this Apple's fault? So the store clerk didn't live up to your expectations... although I probably would have done the same thing if it had I been in his shoes. Sure, I guess it would have been nice, had he gone the extra mile and actually tightened the bolts himself... wait, how is Apple to blame for this, again?
Don't count on it. The software that the carts interface with are totally different. You will never see a DS specific program on a GBA cart because the DSs software isn't designed to interface with it. Not only that, but Nintendo will get neverending law suits from GBA users who can't get the software to work on their GBA. We're not talking about PS2 games coming out on CD here (I think a few did), a GBA cartridge is a GBA cartridge; there has never been, and will never be, a "DS specific GBA cartridge".
Not only that, but DS cartridges are much smaller, sturdier, and are the prefered format these days. And, as a previous GBA owner, I personally have more GBA games, and end up switching out DS games LESS then GBA games, so, at least for me (and many others, seeing as that a large percentage of DS owners had a GBA first), it's more convenient.
I think you're absolutely correct. Silly comparison, as we're talking handheld here, but the similarities between Nintendo and Opera as companies have hit me before. Opera isn't exactly an underdog on the handheld market either, with its good grip on the cell phones, so.
Yeah, except that the market for cell phone browsers is still very small in comparison to desktop browsers, whereas handheld consoles outsell normal consoles something fierce (if my memory serves me, the GBA sold about 3x as many units as the PS2). So yeah, it's still a silly comparison; Nintendo is not an underdog (only in US sales of full sized gaming consoles, and that's only if you consider ~20% to be "underdog"), and Opera is about as underdog as it gets.
The company I've always seen an uncanny resemblence to is Apple. Both companies took (and retook, in Nintendos case) the handheld market by storm about the same time. They both concentrate heavily on making clean, easy to use UIs for their software and hardware, and in doing so, tend to be pioneers in different interfaces designs (jog wheel for a portable music player, touch screen for a gaming device). On more specific things, it's pretty wellknown that Nintendo used the iPod Mini as the basic footprint size for their GBA Micro (even the name suggests some influence). I think their design philosophies and concentration on aesthetics are, if not one and the same, then very similar.
Also, while not the leader in their primary market (Nintendo only by a small margin, Apple by quite a big margin), they've been extremely successful in their secondary markets, of which they practically created (Nintendo DID create the handheld gaming market, Apple made the portable digital music device market what it is). And they've made substantial profit from that secondary market. It should be noted that both companies, while not being the leader in their primary markets, still make a very comfortable profit off of them, none-the-less, and in some cases (like with the sales of the GameCube), sit much better than their competitors.
Most of all, they are loved by many for the exact same reasons (ease of use, intuitive design, quality software), and hated by many for a negative spin on those very same reasons ("kiddy", do not have the quantitave processing power of their competitors, too freindly).
You're much more likely to see Chrono Trigger on the GBA, as this system is designed from the ground up with the intention of easily porting SNES games. Chrono Trigger doesn't require the DSs power, which was designed with the intention of being able to emulate later generation games, such as N64 (Mario DS), and some simplified GameCube games. Putting it on the DS would be a huge mistake, as it would lock out the much larger GBA user base. Unless you are looking for some sort of remade, 3D version, which would be cool, though totally unneccessary.
Oh, I would keep an eye out for CT on the GBA, it's not at all unlikely, seeing as though Square is going down the list with FF 4, 5, and 6. The way they've marketted CT in the past (PS ports, among other things), is almost like it's "that other FF game on the SNES".
The only condition in which a game isn't a game in the traditional sense if it is used for some sort of training...
Since when? Many games have a purpose outside their entertainment value, which it seems you are referring to. Explain "theatre games" to me then? Everyone tends to agree that they're games, yet they're used to train different dramatic and theatrical responses. I don't think the qualifications of a game have anything to do with it's connection to real world material.
This latest wash of sequals, re-releases (some of which were, admittedly, a good thing), and spinnoffs has me really pissed at Square. I love the Final Fantasy series. Call me a purist, but I'm not touching their cheesy spinnoff market. No balls, I tell you, they don't have the guts to make a game that will be judged by it's merrits alone, they have to have it be connected in someway to a previous game (not even designed to have a sequal). It's bad enough the whole series, of which there's very little connection, falls under the same umbrella title.
But seriously, I thought FFVI -> FFIX were all 5-star games, FFX was a bit of a dissapointment, and I'll have to get my hands on FFXII, but considering the crap that they've put out under the FF name in between X and XII, I think Square may have lost me.
iTMS is responsible for a huge percentage of downloadable music, they don't sell MP3s, never have, never will (as they shouldn't). Almost everyone who buys an iPod rips their music to AAC, if not simply because that's iTunes' default setting. I'd be willing to bet that the number of AACs surpasses the number of MP3s here in a couple of years. It baffles me that very few other companies make players that use AAC, it's such a huge improvement over MP3.
I don't know if you're trying to be funny or not, but what you described really isn't "problem solving" in the psychological sense. When I talk about problem solving, I'm refering to having to use both right and left brain together to come up with a creative, yet calculated solution to solve a particular problem. What you described is a series of pre-perscribed solutions that a floor manager in a job would have learned by wrote, "if this happens, do this; if this happens, do this", he just has to follow through with each problem with one specific pre-perscribed answer. Sure, there are subtleties that force him to be creative (figuring out how to talk to your employees to get them to do their job correctly), but beyond that, it doesn't require much engagement on the part of the right brain.
Zelda isn't problem solving, it's more "find this object in the dungeon and return it to me."
When was the last time you played a Zelda game? Yes, that may be the overarching goal of a whole section of the game, but the series of things you have to do find and get said item (which takes up about 95% of the game), are pure problem solving. An average situation at a given time in a Zelda game is more like this:
I walk into a large room with a ledge 3 floors up, there is a catwalk one floor up, two large blocks on the ground, and a switch on the ceiling. I currently have x tools and items at my disposal, which do y things. What do I have to do to get to the 3rd floor ledge?.
If that isn't problem solving, or puzzle solving (a kind of problem solving), I don't know what is. You have to use many different sections of your brain to figure out what to do next. The spacial and directional parts of your brain are having to work to imprint an accurate layout of the entire room (since you may only be seeing some of it), and your relation to everying in it. You may have been in some similar situations before, so parts may be simply calling up pre-perscribed responses (switches are activated by hitting them with a sword, arrow, or grappling hook), but the relation between these learned skills may not be clear, which requires parts of the right brain to think creatively to be able to put these things together in a way that will achieve the desired result.
Last night, I ran into fairly similar type of problem at work, that I think used quite a bit of the same skills I would need in a puzzle game like Zelda:
I manage the control board at a local TV station. I do things like run commercial blocks, start the tapes for the different programming, record tapes of feeds from other time zones to play later, things like that. We're running the olympic games right now, of which commercials are $300-$500 a piece, so we can't discard any, or change their position, and at the same time, we could be in big trouble with NBC if we cut into any Olympic coverage.
The girl who puts together the final version of our local news was late getting the tape to me, so she could only give me one tape for every news block as it came out of the computer. At the end of the 3rd block, she got extremely behind because the weather block requires lots of graphics. Now, I'm minutes away from having nothing but dead air. Now, to keep from having dead air, I can put PSAs into the playlist, so I start piling them on. As for getting the final news block on air, I had a number of different options: the traditional method we use, which requires recording the section to beta tape in real-time from the computer, then playing it on air. I could try to figure out how to route the computer's output to go out on air, of which I didn't know how to do, or even knew if was possible in our routing setup, I could try to get simply the voiceover that our Anchor had recorded, and manually pop up the weather graphics as they needed to come up (which would require using a piece of fairly buggy software that wasn't configured properly for this at the time). I even considered grabbing a microph
What kinds of games are you playing? Two hours? The games I play are short if they fall below 40. I do really think that different kinds of games train different skills. Shooters, arcade games, racing games, tend to train more immediate mental tasks, since they tend to be repetative in nature, mostly reaction to stimuli. While Adventure Games, many RPGs, things like Zelda, GTA, Metroid, Myst, Final Fantasy, tend to be workouts in problem-solving, since a large part of the game is figuring out HOW to play the game, or at least how to continue playing the game. I don't think games it much more cerebral than Zelda or Myst, in those cases, a lot of the game is made up of puzzles that would rival some of the problem solving puzzles on the SAT.
So I do think it really depends upon the type of game being played. The rise of FPSs, and the fall in popularity adventure games does worry me a bit that games are becoming lower mental functioning in nature as a whole. That's not to say that FPSs don't require problem solving, on the contrary, some are very advanced, although on average, the standard multiplayer deathmatch FPS is pretty reaction based in nature.
I think the most intriguing part is where he reviewed about 5 minutes in the mind of someone playing Wind Waker. He litterally has to use up pages and pages of hierarchical lists to demonstrate the thought process, and then at the end says, "this is something like 1/100th of the entire game". Having played games in the series, I think he hit the nail on the head.
My only qualm with the book is that he originally had setout to do a book about video games, but then realized that his theories paralleled other entertainment mediums as well, and then devoted about 1/4 of the book on games. He didn't really dive into the psychology nearly as much as he could have; he could have easily written an entire book just using gaming, and it probably would have been a lot more informative.
I don't remember him talking much about GTA, except for trying to gently curb its negative media coverage towards the beginning of the book. I don't remember him really going into detail on it, though.
I have ADD, I have a terrible time focusing my attention, but when I do, it locks on harder than a bell hop at a bunny club. In any case, I tend to play games for the exact reason that they give me something to focus on. Gaming really helps me to relax at the end of the day and gives me a bit of a break from the maelstrom of conflicting signals we encounter throughout our day to day lives. I'm guessing that I'm not the only one, and that many people with concentration issues are drawn to gaming as a kind of self-medication.
Gaming did wonders for me back in college, by the way. I was struggling to get by because of lack of focus—I couldn't pull myself together to get my work in on time—yet, the semester I finally started gaming (plodded my way through the Final Fantasy series, if anyone's interested), my work habbits shot up, my grades improved, and I started getting back on track. There were other reasons too, but I think I owe quite a lot of my improvement to daily gaming.
Why the hell is bullying not more of sign of mental health issues?? Do bullies ever turn out to be healthy adults? Dumbass. Yet how many introverted kids, not only turn out fine, but end up doing great things... like say Abraham Lincoln? Dumbass.
Interesting that you chose Abraham Lincoln, since he had depression. I think the parent post was using "mental health issues" very broadly. Social Anxiety and Depression are "mental health issues", we're not just talking schizophrenia here. And yes, many would consider social withdrawl to be a social anxiety problem, maybe not a "mental illness" but an obvious mental health issue with some possibly negative consiquences (although maybe some positive as well).
The biggest concern is that we NEED socially withdrawn people in a society, it's often withdrawl that leads to creativity, be it artistic, scientific, or even social. We shouldn't be too quick to try to "cure" them, since social withdrawl is part of their personality.
That said, you can't deny that bullies have a larger social role as well, bullies become a focus of anger and frustration for groups of people, who may bond together against a common foe. Having a common enemy (whether it be a person, political issue, or otherwise), is one of the most common reasons for friendships to occur. I'm not advocating bullying, violence needs to be curbed, to be sure, and I'm not sure that the meathead culture has many positive effects on society (hell, it gets people like Bush elected), but we do need to realize, and to a DEGREE, respect social roles.
I couldn't have said it better myself. It always pisses me off to hear people talk about Nintendo as kiddy games. I'm starting to associate "kiddy" with "fun", which is exactly what I expect from a good game. It's starting to feel like, "if you're having fun, you're just being immature"... isn't "to have fun" the whole point of gaming in the first place?
Let's look at the gaming industry in comparison to the film industry, of which there is a lot of parallel. The average XBox or PS2 game is pretty much on the level of a summer action blockbuster... not too intelligent, not too difficult to digest, fairly unsophisticated dialog, one dimensional characterisation. At best, you get something on the level of The Matrix, which, though for a considerable part of the population is deemed "intelligent", in the grand scheme is pretty simplistic.
The closest comparison I can draw from the average Nintendo game is Pixar or oldschool Disney. Sure, it's animated, it values innocence, but if you look underneith the innocent veniere, the average Pixar movie has a whole lot more depth and sophisticated than the average summer blockbuster. I mean, really, are people actually claiming that Stealth is more mature than Finding Nemo?
I've always associated Pixar and Nintendo with innocence with a sense of sophistication. The average summer blockbuster just serves to make pre-teens suddenly think they're mature because they're watching someone's head get split open. It's all an illusion. I'd say that the average Pixar film is FAR more mature than the average hollywood bluckbuster. In fact, if you look at the REAL demographics outlined by movie sales, the average age of a Pixar audience member is a lot older than the average age of a bluckbuster's audience (which comprises primarilly of teenagers).
Now, until we have games that parallel movies like Good Night & Good Luck or Capote, I wouldn't talk about sophistication and maturity OUTSIDE of the context of the Pixar-esque Nintendo genre. I'd like to see some real world stastics, but I'm going to guess that the average age of GTA players is around 13, and the average age of Zelda players is somewhere around 19. Innocence is looked down upon by the 11-17 year old crowd, which, unfortunately, makes up a substantial part of the gaming demographic.
Which, yeah, btw, when are we going to get a video game that's on the level of sophistication as a good indie movie?
I don't see PC games, themselves, as being any more technically minded than console games. I don't play games for what system it's on, I play a game for the game itself. Sure, setting up a gaming PC may require more technical sophistication, but at the end of the day, all I see on PCs are fairly brainless games that are more based on reflexes and repetative tasks than intelligence, problem solving, and technical sophistication. Obviously, I'm generalizing, things like The Sims, Darwinia, and Sim City do require a lot of ongoing problem solving, but most of the time, when I think of PC games, I think of generic first person shooters, which, IMO are the least technically minded GAMES on the market.
I read an interesting psychology book, recently, called "Everything Bad for you is Good", which outlines the thinking patterns in various types of games. At one point, it outlines 5 minutes in the mind of someone playing Zelda: Wind Waker, and demonstrates that the game requires a fairly sophisticated level of problem solving. This is Wind Waker we're talking about, the game hailed by most "hardcore gamers" to be childsplay, just before they go off to their gaming PCs to blow things up in half-life.
I think we need to redefine what we mean by "hardcore gamers" and the "technically minded". I used to think of "hardcore gamers" as people who wanted to challange themselves to the latest, and most difficult games... now, I more associate it with the mindlessness of hardcore porn. Most console gamers I've ever known in my life were extremely intelligent, technically minded people, people who would rather spend their lives problem solving in a game, then trouble shooting a computer just to play the game!
Is the hardcore gamer the chick next door who can beat Ikaruga on the hardest difficulty with over 40 chains per level?
Is the hardcore gamer your friend who, back in the day, beat Ocarina of Time on the day it came out, with every heart piece, without once looking at an FAQ?
Is the hardcore gamer the guy down the road who just spent $5000 on a custom-made gaming PC, of which he uses to play games with the latest graphics, even though they're virtually the same games that have been remade for the past 6 years, that requires little to no new problem solving.
Or is the hardcore gamer the latest reminant of the xXx-treme movement, who buys all the most violent games in the book and impresses their friends by shooting hookers in the face?
I dunno, but I've heard the term "hardcore gamer" used to refer to a lot of different types of people.
Nintendo didn't alienate the market in the slightest, they didn't lose anything. The reality is that the market grew into something that encompassed more than Nintendo's original target demographic. If you want to look at raw statistics, if I recall, the GameCube sold more units than any of Nintendo's previous systems, and made more of a profit, as well. Not all companies benefit by expanding into new territory if a market widens, some, like Nintendo and Apple, concentrate on the market that was their original target, and grow a strong, small, but loyal user base. In many ways, Nintendo's future is much more secure than both Sony's gaming devision and Microsoft's. Precisely for the same reason you are suggesting.
But if you want to talk about lack of innovation, Nintendo is probably the last company you should finger. They simply have no interest (and for good reason) in adopting the same 'new technologies' that everyone else has. Years after the Revolution is released, there's a good chance that many people will talk about how the XBox 360 and PS3 failed because they didn't integrate newer 3D input technologies, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
Seriously, keep the internet AWAY from my console! I play games to escape society and reality, not to reintegrate myself back in! All this hullibaloo about MMP games is really starting to alienate a lot of people like me. Console games have always been, primarilly, about solitary fun on a rainy sunday afternoon, secondly, and much more recently, something you pull out during a small party with a small group of friends. Modern consoles are starting to be marketted like gaming PCs, which is funny, because I play console games for the precise reason that they're NOT GAMING PCs! 95% or so of console games (yes, even XBox games) are solitary or local multiplayer, 95% of PC games these days are MMP. You have two separate markets that are currently pretty fat and happy. If you try to force those markets together, you're going to wind up with a lot of people feeling left out. There is a VERY large part of the gaming industry (I would say most of the Playstation crowd, and probably all of the Nintendo crowd), who buy consoles to get away from gaming PCs, we don't want to be lumped in with the PC gaming crowd.
Unfortunately, as gaming becomes more widespread, and starts to encompass the frat boys, the trend setters, the bumkins, the Jones's, it will inevitably alienate the very group of people who started gaming in the first place, those of us TRYING desparately to get away from everyone else.
Genesis (Band): Ushered in the era of HORRID 80's music
Well, sure, but they also gave us "Lamb Lies Down in Broadway". They also gave us Peter Gabrial, one of the greatest philanthropists ever to walk this planet (from the interviews I've seen, his work even puts Bono to shame).
For instance, Carter was famously a micro-managing president. Look how that worked out. The Soviet economy was micro-managed from the top (and they even started out as a culture with some very good designers). Results? Nada.
The two examples of which you spoke aren't very fair, to say the least. Carter didn't fail as a president because he tried to micromanage (in fact, that's one thing I really appreciate about him), he failed because he did not find his legs in Washington, and couldn't communicate with politicians to save his life (not neccessarilly a bad thing, but a bad thing if you are one). The USSR was never designed to be micromanaged, in fact, the original philosophy was completely opposite. But one person changed all that, Stalin, of which all the original revolutionaries hated and advised the party not to trust. Unfortunately, the politician most suited for the job, Trotsky, was hunted down and killed by Stalin, who basically took over the country by force. There is little doubt that if Trotsky had become the rightful leader, as Lenin had suggested, there would have been no cold war. Fear of communism only started AFTER Stalin entered the picture. Fascists have to micromanage to stay in power. But that's not to say that micromanaging can't be used for a possitive outcome.
True. On the other hand, at the time NeXT bought Apple there was a lot more than computers to Apple. Newton PDAs, clone licensing...I'm not suggesting that the same will happen with Disney, but perhaps some spinning-off might occur.
Hardly, I'll remind you that the Newton was a total marketting failour, the clone licensing probably hurt Apple, and their public image more than helped it. Apple were ALL about desktop/laptop computers at that time Newton was a tiny exception that never took off.
Now look it them today: they're at the forefront of the portable audio market, the biggest digital media distributer on the planet, the industry standard for video software (now with the new FCC requirements regarding closed captioning, even more so, since they're the only game in town that supports closed captioning). I'm not going to say that this was ALL Steve, but they wouldn't have gotten here without him. They're much less of a computer company now than before Steve was on board.
One of which is that it is not going to be portable players that decide the digital music issue, it is going to be car stereos, home stereos, etc.
If that's the case, than Apple already has one home run, and Microsoft already has one major strike against them. Many car stereo companies have already signed onto iPod integration. Just look at how many manufacturers are touting in advertisements that you can play an iPod in their car? It's a huge selling point, and it seems to be only beginning to take off. Meanwhile, all the biggest third party vendours (Pioneer, Alpine, etc.) are going OUT OF THEIR WAY to create iPod integration products for their aftermarket systems.
The home theatre department has yet to be decided, as there hasn't been such a vigorous attempt to integrate the iPod into the home as the car. But also remember who controls a huge plurality of the home theatre system market: Sony. Now, Sony may not give a damn about Apple, but they'd rather be damned to hell than throw in with Microsoft, a company in which they're battling fiercely on many fronts (namely game consoles and HD Media). I also heard, somewhere, that they're switching over some of their computers to Linux (I'm not sure about this, though). In any case, they currently have little competition with Apple and would probably gladly throw in with them if not simply to try and stick it to MS, the way MS threw in with Toshiba to stick it to Sony in the HD Media wars. You can be sure, if MS ever tried to concure the home theatre market, Sony would make sure that Apple came out on top. Now, sure, Sony wants to make an iPod killer too, but I'm saying that they'd rather lose that battle with Apple on top than lose that battle with M$ on top. In fact, if Microsoft really went after the iPod with some gadget, I bet you'd see Sony drop the mp3 Walkman faster than a gay cowboy and get behind the iPod.
The bottom line is that whoever wins these battles is always the company that is the most successfull at getting 3rd party support to the point that everyone in the industry NEEDS for that company to stay on top. The reason Apple didn't succeed in beating out IBM in the PC wars was because they worked completely unalatorally, they closed off so many doors to 3rd party support that every other company had to throw in with IBM. This is the opposite. Everyone has been throwing in with Apple to the point that Wallstreet declared, a few months back, a new "iPod Ecconomy" (reffering to the exploding 3rd party market). I would say that the iPod's future is quite possibly more solid than Microsoft's future in OSs. Even if Windows is 80% of the market (with iPod only 74%), they have competitors with well established 3rd party supporters. I've not seen a single car stereo that tries to integrate with the iRiver, Rio, or any other digital music player.
I've had a changer in my living room for years, and I've NEVER stuck more than one disc in at a time. I've used changers in cars, and more often then not, every time I finish a disc, I end up putting in another that I didn't remember to load into the changer. Unlike you, I don't plan my listening experience 5 hours in advance. The beauty of an iPod or any digital music player is that you can listen to any track of any album you have whenver you want. I no longer have to spend time organizing my CDs before I go on a car trip. I don't even make playlists for my iPod. I have thousands of tracks on it, and I don't know which one I'm going to want to listen to until probably 30 seconds before I put it on.
The only good things that came out of changers are the changer ports on factory installed car CD players. I'm ordering a BlitzSafe adaptor for my iPod to my Camry (Toyota is in the process of tieing the knot with apple at the moment, but my car's still a '99, so it's not supported). That is the ONLY good thing that ever came out of the changer, the ability to NOT use one and use an iPod instead!
The iPod is an AAC player that also happens to play mp3s as an added bonus. I cringe every time people call the iPod an mp3 player. The irony is that the very people who probably call their iPod an mp3 player are filling them up with AACs off iTMS (which doesn't even offer mp3s, btw).
Fuck MP3s, there's no reason for them to exist anymore. And if you haven't noticed, since the popularity of the iTMS, AACs (MP4s) are spreading like wildfire. Okay, I've seen the stats, and yes, Ogg SLIGHTLY beats out AAC for quality/size, but they are also exteremely processor intensive, and thus reduce battery life on portables. Ya know, I wouldn't mind if my iPod could play Oggs, but if it did, I'd probably end up converting all my Oggs to AAC anyway. I don't remember if iRivers can play AAC, but no AAC would kill it for me.
Do not forget that Apple DOES have a $500 computer, a perfectly legitimate working one that is actually of surprisingly good quality. I've heard nothing but great things about the MacMini, and from personal experience, it's a fine computer (I talked my folks into getting one, and they love it). What's more is that Apple goes a long way to supply low end buyers with the most they're going to need for as little possible. For example, many low end PCs have PCI slots up the wazzu, aimed toward a market that will most likely never use them. So Apple ditches all that wasted space, insures that if people do need to expand, they can still do it externally, and can therefor deliver a smaller product, something that's probably of more value to low-end consumers than PCI slots are.
I don't think it's fair to call Apple the "expensive computer company" anymore. While definitely true in the mid 90s, the iMac really has done a lot to lesson the price gap between Apple and PC manufacurers. And now the MacMini serves to compete head to head with PC manufacturers in terms of price. Also, sure that $1000 is expensive for a desktop, but for a laptop, the best you're going to get, that isn't incredibly outdated or underpowered, is going to be about $800. Last I checked, iBooks (soon to be MacBook) were selling at around $1000, and tended to be, for quality, pretty close to pc laptops at the same price.
Then there's also the issue of longevity and frequency of repair. Apple is similar to Toyota (or Honda or Subaru), would you rather get a new mid-sized Ford sadan for $15k that will last you for 100,000 miles, or a new mid-sized Toyota sadan for $20k that will last you for 200,000 miles. As a proud owner of a '99 Camry, I can attest to paying for quality. And all that, and Toyota is severely lacking in something that Apple has plenty of: style. Most people who buy Toyotas do because their reliable, they feel incredibly sturdy, but they've also lost a lot because they're not very interesting cars to drive or to look at. They lose out in the image department where Apple thrives. The only real thing that keeps apple down is, I don't have to worry about compatability when I buy a car, I do when I buy a computer.
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Thing that makes this dificult is that Theatre, itself, is entertainment... so training for entertainment, in itself, is likely entertaining.
On other things, if you think about it, a lot of what elementary school is, is entertainment. It's very difficult to keep an 8 year old focused for 6 hours, and simply "entertaining" children for a length of time can have it's positive results. All you have to do is throw in a few educational things, and you're set. Video games, simply by their very nature, force people to come to terms with unique elements in pattern recognition, spacial develepment, and various higher functioning skills. They're not yet sincere enough to do a good job teaching any moral guidence or social skills... some films are, but they're few and far between. But that aside, games are pretty damn good at teaching people, basically, how to "think".
I'd stick it in my Apple bong and smoke it all day long!
Have you ever experienced this first hand? At least the telephone support. Sure, they SAY they only give 90 days of telephone support to non-Apple Care customers. But try it sometime, they always say something like, "if it's not something huge, I'll see what I can do." And usually they'll give me a good 15 minutes or so, which is phenominal... have you ever dealt with Dell?
Bullshit. My first PowerBook, I bought from a place that sold both Macs and PCs was one of the unfortunate 2% that, because of a faulty screen, could be pronounced DOA. The thing had been sitting in the store for over a month. The store clerk (not an apple dealer by default), went on and on about how great apple was about returned products. If Apple hadn't been, he probably would have tried to get me to buy a PC instead, or at least told me that they were having problems, since it would be HIS loss.
Okay, now this is ludicrus. I've never heard Apple say ANYTHING about upgrading existing orders, in fact, no company has ever had free upgrades for HARDWARE. Never-the-less, Apple has been known to do it on occation. My parents bought a MacMini a few months back, and Apple had secretly switched up a few, oh, hundred thousand orders with the newer generation, for free, without telling anyone. I saw an article about it, and sure enough, ours had twice the VRAM and a faster processor. Show me the part where Apple makes any claims about doing this on a regular basis. They will sometime do it if they upgrade the product line while you're order is being processing, sure, that makes sense. But after it ships, it's a done deal. I don't understand how you expect to hold any company to that. If done regularly, it's just a bad business practice.
And how is this Apple's fault? So the store clerk didn't live up to your expectations... although I probably would have done the same thing if it had I been in his shoes. Sure, I guess it would have been nice, had he gone the extra mile and actually tightened the bolts himself... wait, how is Apple to blame for this, again?
Don't count on it. The software that the carts interface with are totally different. You will never see a DS specific program on a GBA cart because the DSs software isn't designed to interface with it. Not only that, but Nintendo will get neverending law suits from GBA users who can't get the software to work on their GBA. We're not talking about PS2 games coming out on CD here (I think a few did), a GBA cartridge is a GBA cartridge; there has never been, and will never be, a "DS specific GBA cartridge".
Not only that, but DS cartridges are much smaller, sturdier, and are the prefered format these days. And, as a previous GBA owner, I personally have more GBA games, and end up switching out DS games LESS then GBA games, so, at least for me (and many others, seeing as that a large percentage of DS owners had a GBA first), it's more convenient.
I think you're absolutely correct. Silly comparison, as we're talking handheld here, but the similarities between Nintendo and Opera as companies have hit me before. Opera isn't exactly an underdog on the handheld market either, with its good grip on the cell phones, so.
Yeah, except that the market for cell phone browsers is still very small in comparison to desktop browsers, whereas handheld consoles outsell normal consoles something fierce (if my memory serves me, the GBA sold about 3x as many units as the PS2). So yeah, it's still a silly comparison; Nintendo is not an underdog (only in US sales of full sized gaming consoles, and that's only if you consider ~20% to be "underdog"), and Opera is about as underdog as it gets.
The company I've always seen an uncanny resemblence to is Apple. Both companies took (and retook, in Nintendos case) the handheld market by storm about the same time. They both concentrate heavily on making clean, easy to use UIs for their software and hardware, and in doing so, tend to be pioneers in different interfaces designs (jog wheel for a portable music player, touch screen for a gaming device). On more specific things, it's pretty wellknown that Nintendo used the iPod Mini as the basic footprint size for their GBA Micro (even the name suggests some influence). I think their design philosophies and concentration on aesthetics are, if not one and the same, then very similar.
Also, while not the leader in their primary market (Nintendo only by a small margin, Apple by quite a big margin), they've been extremely successful in their secondary markets, of which they practically created (Nintendo DID create the handheld gaming market, Apple made the portable digital music device market what it is). And they've made substantial profit from that secondary market. It should be noted that both companies, while not being the leader in their primary markets, still make a very comfortable profit off of them, none-the-less, and in some cases (like with the sales of the GameCube), sit much better than their competitors.
Most of all, they are loved by many for the exact same reasons (ease of use, intuitive design, quality software), and hated by many for a negative spin on those very same reasons ("kiddy", do not have the quantitave processing power of their competitors, too freindly).
You're much more likely to see Chrono Trigger on the GBA, as this system is designed from the ground up with the intention of easily porting SNES games. Chrono Trigger doesn't require the DSs power, which was designed with the intention of being able to emulate later generation games, such as N64 (Mario DS), and some simplified GameCube games. Putting it on the DS would be a huge mistake, as it would lock out the much larger GBA user base. Unless you are looking for some sort of remade, 3D version, which would be cool, though totally unneccessary.
Oh, I would keep an eye out for CT on the GBA, it's not at all unlikely, seeing as though Square is going down the list with FF 4, 5, and 6. The way they've marketted CT in the past (PS ports, among other things), is almost like it's "that other FF game on the SNES".
The only condition in which a game isn't a game in the traditional sense if it is used for some sort of training...
Since when? Many games have a purpose outside their entertainment value, which it seems you are referring to. Explain "theatre games" to me then? Everyone tends to agree that they're games, yet they're used to train different dramatic and theatrical responses. I don't think the qualifications of a game have anything to do with it's connection to real world material.
I'm an FF fan. Thus I DON'T care.
This latest wash of sequals, re-releases (some of which were, admittedly, a good thing), and spinnoffs has me really pissed at Square. I love the Final Fantasy series. Call me a purist, but I'm not touching their cheesy spinnoff market. No balls, I tell you, they don't have the guts to make a game that will be judged by it's merrits alone, they have to have it be connected in someway to a previous game (not even designed to have a sequal). It's bad enough the whole series, of which there's very little connection, falls under the same umbrella title.
But seriously, I thought FFVI -> FFIX were all 5-star games, FFX was a bit of a dissapointment, and I'll have to get my hands on FFXII, but considering the crap that they've put out under the FF name in between X and XII, I think Square may have lost me.
Yeah, except NO.
iTMS is responsible for a huge percentage of downloadable music, they don't sell MP3s, never have, never will (as they shouldn't). Almost everyone who buys an iPod rips their music to AAC, if not simply because that's iTunes' default setting. I'd be willing to bet that the number of AACs surpasses the number of MP3s here in a couple of years. It baffles me that very few other companies make players that use AAC, it's such a huge improvement over MP3.
I don't know if you're trying to be funny or not, but what you described really isn't "problem solving" in the psychological sense. When I talk about problem solving, I'm refering to having to use both right and left brain together to come up with a creative, yet calculated solution to solve a particular problem. What you described is a series of pre-perscribed solutions that a floor manager in a job would have learned by wrote, "if this happens, do this; if this happens, do this", he just has to follow through with each problem with one specific pre-perscribed answer. Sure, there are subtleties that force him to be creative (figuring out how to talk to your employees to get them to do their job correctly), but beyond that, it doesn't require much engagement on the part of the right brain.
Zelda isn't problem solving, it's more "find this object in the dungeon and return it to me."
When was the last time you played a Zelda game? Yes, that may be the overarching goal of a whole section of the game, but the series of things you have to do find and get said item (which takes up about 95% of the game), are pure problem solving. An average situation at a given time in a Zelda game is more like this:
If that isn't problem solving, or puzzle solving (a kind of problem solving), I don't know what is. You have to use many different sections of your brain to figure out what to do next. The spacial and directional parts of your brain are having to work to imprint an accurate layout of the entire room (since you may only be seeing some of it), and your relation to everying in it. You may have been in some similar situations before, so parts may be simply calling up pre-perscribed responses (switches are activated by hitting them with a sword, arrow, or grappling hook), but the relation between these learned skills may not be clear, which requires parts of the right brain to think creatively to be able to put these things together in a way that will achieve the desired result.
Last night, I ran into fairly similar type of problem at work, that I think used quite a bit of the same skills I would need in a puzzle game like Zelda:
What kinds of games are you playing? Two hours? The games I play are short if they fall below 40. I do really think that different kinds of games train different skills. Shooters, arcade games, racing games, tend to train more immediate mental tasks, since they tend to be repetative in nature, mostly reaction to stimuli. While Adventure Games, many RPGs, things like Zelda, GTA, Metroid, Myst, Final Fantasy, tend to be workouts in problem-solving, since a large part of the game is figuring out HOW to play the game, or at least how to continue playing the game. I don't think games it much more cerebral than Zelda or Myst, in those cases, a lot of the game is made up of puzzles that would rival some of the problem solving puzzles on the SAT.
So I do think it really depends upon the type of game being played. The rise of FPSs, and the fall in popularity adventure games does worry me a bit that games are becoming lower mental functioning in nature as a whole. That's not to say that FPSs don't require problem solving, on the contrary, some are very advanced, although on average, the standard multiplayer deathmatch FPS is pretty reaction based in nature.
I think the most intriguing part is where he reviewed about 5 minutes in the mind of someone playing Wind Waker. He litterally has to use up pages and pages of hierarchical lists to demonstrate the thought process, and then at the end says, "this is something like 1/100th of the entire game". Having played games in the series, I think he hit the nail on the head.
My only qualm with the book is that he originally had setout to do a book about video games, but then realized that his theories paralleled other entertainment mediums as well, and then devoted about 1/4 of the book on games. He didn't really dive into the psychology nearly as much as he could have; he could have easily written an entire book just using gaming, and it probably would have been a lot more informative.
I don't remember him talking much about GTA, except for trying to gently curb its negative media coverage towards the beginning of the book. I don't remember him really going into detail on it, though.
I have ADD, I have a terrible time focusing my attention, but when I do, it locks on harder than a bell hop at a bunny club. In any case, I tend to play games for the exact reason that they give me something to focus on. Gaming really helps me to relax at the end of the day and gives me a bit of a break from the maelstrom of conflicting signals we encounter throughout our day to day lives. I'm guessing that I'm not the only one, and that many people with concentration issues are drawn to gaming as a kind of self-medication.
Gaming did wonders for me back in college, by the way. I was struggling to get by because of lack of focus—I couldn't pull myself together to get my work in on time—yet, the semester I finally started gaming (plodded my way through the Final Fantasy series, if anyone's interested), my work habbits shot up, my grades improved, and I started getting back on track. There were other reasons too, but I think I owe quite a lot of my improvement to daily gaming.
Why the hell is bullying not more of sign of mental health issues?? Do bullies ever turn out to be healthy adults? Dumbass. Yet how many introverted kids, not only turn out fine, but end up doing great things... like say Abraham Lincoln? Dumbass.
Interesting that you chose Abraham Lincoln, since he had depression. I think the parent post was using "mental health issues" very broadly. Social Anxiety and Depression are "mental health issues", we're not just talking schizophrenia here. And yes, many would consider social withdrawl to be a social anxiety problem, maybe not a "mental illness" but an obvious mental health issue with some possibly negative consiquences (although maybe some positive as well).
The biggest concern is that we NEED socially withdrawn people in a society, it's often withdrawl that leads to creativity, be it artistic, scientific, or even social. We shouldn't be too quick to try to "cure" them, since social withdrawl is part of their personality.
That said, you can't deny that bullies have a larger social role as well, bullies become a focus of anger and frustration for groups of people, who may bond together against a common foe. Having a common enemy (whether it be a person, political issue, or otherwise), is one of the most common reasons for friendships to occur. I'm not advocating bullying, violence needs to be curbed, to be sure, and I'm not sure that the meathead culture has many positive effects on society (hell, it gets people like Bush elected), but we do need to realize, and to a DEGREE, respect social roles.
I couldn't have said it better myself. It always pisses me off to hear people talk about Nintendo as kiddy games. I'm starting to associate "kiddy" with "fun", which is exactly what I expect from a good game. It's starting to feel like, "if you're having fun, you're just being immature"... isn't "to have fun" the whole point of gaming in the first place?
Let's look at the gaming industry in comparison to the film industry, of which there is a lot of parallel. The average XBox or PS2 game is pretty much on the level of a summer action blockbuster... not too intelligent, not too difficult to digest, fairly unsophisticated dialog, one dimensional characterisation. At best, you get something on the level of The Matrix, which, though for a considerable part of the population is deemed "intelligent", in the grand scheme is pretty simplistic.
The closest comparison I can draw from the average Nintendo game is Pixar or oldschool Disney. Sure, it's animated, it values innocence, but if you look underneith the innocent veniere, the average Pixar movie has a whole lot more depth and sophisticated than the average summer blockbuster. I mean, really, are people actually claiming that Stealth is more mature than Finding Nemo?
I've always associated Pixar and Nintendo with innocence with a sense of sophistication. The average summer blockbuster just serves to make pre-teens suddenly think they're mature because they're watching someone's head get split open. It's all an illusion. I'd say that the average Pixar film is FAR more mature than the average hollywood bluckbuster. In fact, if you look at the REAL demographics outlined by movie sales, the average age of a Pixar audience member is a lot older than the average age of a bluckbuster's audience (which comprises primarilly of teenagers).
Now, until we have games that parallel movies like Good Night & Good Luck or Capote, I wouldn't talk about sophistication and maturity OUTSIDE of the context of the Pixar-esque Nintendo genre. I'd like to see some real world stastics, but I'm going to guess that the average age of GTA players is around 13, and the average age of Zelda players is somewhere around 19. Innocence is looked down upon by the 11-17 year old crowd, which, unfortunately, makes up a substantial part of the gaming demographic.
Which, yeah, btw, when are we going to get a video game that's on the level of sophistication as a good indie movie?
I don't see PC games, themselves, as being any more technically minded than console games. I don't play games for what system it's on, I play a game for the game itself. Sure, setting up a gaming PC may require more technical sophistication, but at the end of the day, all I see on PCs are fairly brainless games that are more based on reflexes and repetative tasks than intelligence, problem solving, and technical sophistication. Obviously, I'm generalizing, things like The Sims, Darwinia, and Sim City do require a lot of ongoing problem solving, but most of the time, when I think of PC games, I think of generic first person shooters, which, IMO are the least technically minded GAMES on the market.
I read an interesting psychology book, recently, called "Everything Bad for you is Good", which outlines the thinking patterns in various types of games. At one point, it outlines 5 minutes in the mind of someone playing Zelda: Wind Waker, and demonstrates that the game requires a fairly sophisticated level of problem solving. This is Wind Waker we're talking about, the game hailed by most "hardcore gamers" to be childsplay, just before they go off to their gaming PCs to blow things up in half-life.
I think we need to redefine what we mean by "hardcore gamers" and the "technically minded". I used to think of "hardcore gamers" as people who wanted to challange themselves to the latest, and most difficult games... now, I more associate it with the mindlessness of hardcore porn. Most console gamers I've ever known in my life were extremely intelligent, technically minded people, people who would rather spend their lives problem solving in a game, then trouble shooting a computer just to play the game!
I dunno, but I've heard the term "hardcore gamer" used to refer to a lot of different types of people.
Nintendo didn't alienate the market in the slightest, they didn't lose anything. The reality is that the market grew into something that encompassed more than Nintendo's original target demographic. If you want to look at raw statistics, if I recall, the GameCube sold more units than any of Nintendo's previous systems, and made more of a profit, as well. Not all companies benefit by expanding into new territory if a market widens, some, like Nintendo and Apple, concentrate on the market that was their original target, and grow a strong, small, but loyal user base. In many ways, Nintendo's future is much more secure than both Sony's gaming devision and Microsoft's. Precisely for the same reason you are suggesting.
But if you want to talk about lack of innovation, Nintendo is probably the last company you should finger. They simply have no interest (and for good reason) in adopting the same 'new technologies' that everyone else has. Years after the Revolution is released, there's a good chance that many people will talk about how the XBox 360 and PS3 failed because they didn't integrate newer 3D input technologies, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
Seriously, keep the internet AWAY from my console! I play games to escape society and reality, not to reintegrate myself back in! All this hullibaloo about MMP games is really starting to alienate a lot of people like me. Console games have always been, primarilly, about solitary fun on a rainy sunday afternoon, secondly, and much more recently, something you pull out during a small party with a small group of friends. Modern consoles are starting to be marketted like gaming PCs, which is funny, because I play console games for the precise reason that they're NOT GAMING PCs! 95% or so of console games (yes, even XBox games) are solitary or local multiplayer, 95% of PC games these days are MMP. You have two separate markets that are currently pretty fat and happy. If you try to force those markets together, you're going to wind up with a lot of people feeling left out. There is a VERY large part of the gaming industry (I would say most of the Playstation crowd, and probably all of the Nintendo crowd), who buy consoles to get away from gaming PCs, we don't want to be lumped in with the PC gaming crowd.
Unfortunately, as gaming becomes more widespread, and starts to encompass the frat boys, the trend setters, the bumkins, the Jones's, it will inevitably alienate the very group of people who started gaming in the first place, those of us TRYING desparately to get away from everyone else.
Genesis (Band): Ushered in the era of HORRID 80's music
Well, sure, but they also gave us "Lamb Lies Down in Broadway". They also gave us Peter Gabrial, one of the greatest philanthropists ever to walk this planet (from the interviews I've seen, his work even puts Bono to shame).For instance, Carter was famously a micro-managing president. Look how that worked out. The Soviet economy was micro-managed from the top (and they even started out as a culture with some very good designers). Results? Nada.
The two examples of which you spoke aren't very fair, to say the least. Carter didn't fail as a president because he tried to micromanage (in fact, that's one thing I really appreciate about him), he failed because he did not find his legs in Washington, and couldn't communicate with politicians to save his life (not neccessarilly a bad thing, but a bad thing if you are one). The USSR was never designed to be micromanaged, in fact, the original philosophy was completely opposite. But one person changed all that, Stalin, of which all the original revolutionaries hated and advised the party not to trust. Unfortunately, the politician most suited for the job, Trotsky, was hunted down and killed by Stalin, who basically took over the country by force. There is little doubt that if Trotsky had become the rightful leader, as Lenin had suggested, there would have been no cold war. Fear of communism only started AFTER Stalin entered the picture. Fascists have to micromanage to stay in power. But that's not to say that micromanaging can't be used for a possitive outcome.
Hardly, I'll remind you that the Newton was a total marketting failour, the clone licensing probably hurt Apple, and their public image more than helped it. Apple were ALL about desktop/laptop computers at that time Newton was a tiny exception that never took off.
Now look it them today: they're at the forefront of the portable audio market, the biggest digital media distributer on the planet, the industry standard for video software (now with the new FCC requirements regarding closed captioning, even more so, since they're the only game in town that supports closed captioning). I'm not going to say that this was ALL Steve, but they wouldn't have gotten here without him. They're much less of a computer company now than before Steve was on board.
If that's the case, than Apple already has one home run, and Microsoft already has one major strike against them. Many car stereo companies have already signed onto iPod integration. Just look at how many manufacturers are touting in advertisements that you can play an iPod in their car? It's a huge selling point, and it seems to be only beginning to take off. Meanwhile, all the biggest third party vendours (Pioneer, Alpine, etc.) are going OUT OF THEIR WAY to create iPod integration products for their aftermarket systems.
The home theatre department has yet to be decided, as there hasn't been such a vigorous attempt to integrate the iPod into the home as the car. But also remember who controls a huge plurality of the home theatre system market: Sony. Now, Sony may not give a damn about Apple, but they'd rather be damned to hell than throw in with Microsoft, a company in which they're battling fiercely on many fronts (namely game consoles and HD Media). I also heard, somewhere, that they're switching over some of their computers to Linux (I'm not sure about this, though). In any case, they currently have little competition with Apple and would probably gladly throw in with them if not simply to try and stick it to MS, the way MS threw in with Toshiba to stick it to Sony in the HD Media wars. You can be sure, if MS ever tried to concure the home theatre market, Sony would make sure that Apple came out on top. Now, sure, Sony wants to make an iPod killer too, but I'm saying that they'd rather lose that battle with Apple on top than lose that battle with M$ on top. In fact, if Microsoft really went after the iPod with some gadget, I bet you'd see Sony drop the mp3 Walkman faster than a gay cowboy and get behind the iPod.
The bottom line is that whoever wins these battles is always the company that is the most successfull at getting 3rd party support to the point that everyone in the industry NEEDS for that company to stay on top. The reason Apple didn't succeed in beating out IBM in the PC wars was because they worked completely unalatorally, they closed off so many doors to 3rd party support that every other company had to throw in with IBM. This is the opposite. Everyone has been throwing in with Apple to the point that Wallstreet declared, a few months back, a new "iPod Ecconomy" (reffering to the exploding 3rd party market). I would say that the iPod's future is quite possibly more solid than Microsoft's future in OSs. Even if Windows is 80% of the market (with iPod only 74%), they have competitors with well established 3rd party supporters. I've not seen a single car stereo that tries to integrate with the iRiver, Rio, or any other digital music player.
I've had a changer in my living room for years, and I've NEVER stuck more than one disc in at a time. I've used changers in cars, and more often then not, every time I finish a disc, I end up putting in another that I didn't remember to load into the changer. Unlike you, I don't plan my listening experience 5 hours in advance. The beauty of an iPod or any digital music player is that you can listen to any track of any album you have whenver you want. I no longer have to spend time organizing my CDs before I go on a car trip. I don't even make playlists for my iPod. I have thousands of tracks on it, and I don't know which one I'm going to want to listen to until probably 30 seconds before I put it on.
The only good things that came out of changers are the changer ports on factory installed car CD players. I'm ordering a BlitzSafe adaptor for my iPod to my Camry (Toyota is in the process of tieing the knot with apple at the moment, but my car's still a '99, so it's not supported). That is the ONLY good thing that ever came out of the changer, the ability to NOT use one and use an iPod instead!
-- EricThe iPod is an AAC player that also happens to play mp3s as an added bonus. I cringe every time people call the iPod an mp3 player. The irony is that the very people who probably call their iPod an mp3 player are filling them up with AACs off iTMS (which doesn't even offer mp3s, btw).
Fuck MP3s, there's no reason for them to exist anymore. And if you haven't noticed, since the popularity of the iTMS, AACs (MP4s) are spreading like wildfire. Okay, I've seen the stats, and yes, Ogg SLIGHTLY beats out AAC for quality/size, but they are also exteremely processor intensive, and thus reduce battery life on portables. Ya know, I wouldn't mind if my iPod could play Oggs, but if it did, I'd probably end up converting all my Oggs to AAC anyway. I don't remember if iRivers can play AAC, but no AAC would kill it for me.
Do not forget that Apple DOES have a $500 computer, a perfectly legitimate working one that is actually of surprisingly good quality. I've heard nothing but great things about the MacMini, and from personal experience, it's a fine computer (I talked my folks into getting one, and they love it). What's more is that Apple goes a long way to supply low end buyers with the most they're going to need for as little possible. For example, many low end PCs have PCI slots up the wazzu, aimed toward a market that will most likely never use them. So Apple ditches all that wasted space, insures that if people do need to expand, they can still do it externally, and can therefor deliver a smaller product, something that's probably of more value to low-end consumers than PCI slots are.
I don't think it's fair to call Apple the "expensive computer company" anymore. While definitely true in the mid 90s, the iMac really has done a lot to lesson the price gap between Apple and PC manufacurers. And now the MacMini serves to compete head to head with PC manufacturers in terms of price. Also, sure that $1000 is expensive for a desktop, but for a laptop, the best you're going to get, that isn't incredibly outdated or underpowered, is going to be about $800. Last I checked, iBooks (soon to be MacBook) were selling at around $1000, and tended to be, for quality, pretty close to pc laptops at the same price.
Then there's also the issue of longevity and frequency of repair. Apple is similar to Toyota (or Honda or Subaru), would you rather get a new mid-sized Ford sadan for $15k that will last you for 100,000 miles, or a new mid-sized Toyota sadan for $20k that will last you for 200,000 miles. As a proud owner of a '99 Camry, I can attest to paying for quality. And all that, and Toyota is severely lacking in something that Apple has plenty of: style. Most people who buy Toyotas do because their reliable, they feel incredibly sturdy, but they've also lost a lot because they're not very interesting cars to drive or to look at. They lose out in the image department where Apple thrives. The only real thing that keeps apple down is, I don't have to worry about compatability when I buy a car, I do when I buy a computer.