I don't mind so much when random bloggers get their facts wrong... but slashdot needs to start checking their facts and stop speculating:
I wonder if this will impact the discussion on cell phone usage in planes (which seems to be centered around the annoyance of people talking loudly on the phone)
This is simply wrong. I've heard a number of different speculations as to why this is: navigation interference, scam to make people use airphones, not annoying passangers. These are all incorrect. Now, I'm no expert on cell phone technology, but I've had a few explain it to me, so if I get any details wrong, please correct them:
When a cell phone is in activation, it attempts to connect with all nearby towers in order to find the strongest signal. Since the high-frequency in which cell phones operate at are primarily line-of-sight, when cell towers are spaced at their usual distance, somewhere around a mile or so depending upon the bandwidth needs, on the ground a phone is probably only going to connect with a limited amount of towers. Now, in the air, EVERYTHING is line-of-site, and thus the signal can go a much farther without becoming too obstructed, so a cell phone may be able to connect to towers much farther away. Let's say you are flying over the eastern sea board, where there are literally thousands of cell towers erected in a fairly small area, the moment your cell phone becomes active, it will attempt to connect with hundreds of towers, greatly clogging up the system, and in some extreme cases, causing parts of the system to shut down. This is where the "airphone network" comes in. The airphone network is identical in technology to a cell network, the only diference is that towers are spaced much farther apart to account for the longer range a cell phone has when in the air.
So, this is neither a plot to make you use their system, or shut up noisy customers, or even concern with navigation interference, cell phones simply "screw up" the system at high altitudes. The only way we'll ever see cell phones used on planes is under the chance that Airphone begins signing up individuals, or if the cell phone technology itself changed to take into concideration this problem. Don't expect to see either of these any time soon.
In any case, screw cellphones on planes, what I want to see is more 110 plugs in airports! Being from Alaska, I fly cross country a lot, and take my laptop along for work and entertainment. No matter how good a battery you have, there is no way a computer is going to keep charge in an over 15 hours of transit. I don't know how many times I've taken my laptop out searching for that PERFECT spot where there's a power outlet. I'm now beginning to see other people snooping around the same, you see this special look on their face.
The Price Arguement - This is probably the most largely considered. When you take everything into account, computer speed is driven not so much by military, business, or even the pro-CGI and audio industries, but by games. The amount of money spent by 13-25 year olds on gaming PCs (while I don't know any exact figures) is a huge slice of the technology market today. Unfortunately, this drives, if you do buy into the PC gaming industry, computer hardware into obsoletion extremely quickly. The average life-span for a console is usually around 5-6 years. A $2500 gaming PC may last you two to three without any upgrades, but after about 4, you're going to be hard pressed to be able to play the "latest and greatest" at all, throw out that mother and pay up another two to three grand. This is comparable to 10-times that of console. Some of us already need a computer with quite a bit of juice, so the magnitued isn't quite that great, but still, putting in so much time and money to keep up with the game is a little excesive.
Game quality arguement - Now, here's an interesting one, many scoff it off as a product of marketting, and while it most definitely is, it's still a reality none-the-less. Here's what it boils down to. In the PC market, software providers expect the consumer to do all the work, all the hardware specs have to be kept up with by the individual customer. Software developers ALWAYS have the most state-of-the-art and up to date machines, code on them relying on the brute force of the machines to do the work for them, and release the software expecting the consumer to supply equally up-to-date hardware. Things like cleanliness of code go out the door so that the developers can get the job done fast and without hastle. Not only does it, as described above, drive up hardware costs, but it makes for less than ingenious thinking when going into developing a game. Consoles, on the other hand, are set in their hardware, yet over the life of the current generation, software developers must come up with ingenious solutions to keep games current, sometimes this means spending more time cleaning code to make the software run more efficiently, and SOMETIMES (and most benefitial) it means, towards the end of a generation, forgoing the use of the latest and greatest graphical power, and using other solutions, entirely, to make the game a worthwhile purchase: new gameplay enhancements, spending more time in basic system developement to make the game more interesting. One of the best selling games this year was Warioware... a game that could have worked fine (if coded for) on the NES back in 1984, try that on for size!
It is for this reason that I believe the basic concepts and architecture behind console games to be noticably superior to that of most (not all) computer games. Developers are forced to come to terms with the abilities and limitations of very specific hardware, and do what they can to make it work the best with the concepts they put forth. Because of the lack of horsepower on consoles, I think there is much more of a push toward ingenious game design to sell products, instead of pure eye candy.
That said, I disagree that either PC or console games are "going down the drain" as many people these days seem to believe. Take any genre of entertainment, art, or technology, and you'll hear the same arguement throughout history. I remember people saying the same things when the SNES was released, again when the PS1 was released, when the PS2 was released. 15 years from now, we'll put Final Fantasy 9 right next to Mario 3 on our classics list, and not even care they were made a decade apart. There will always be classics, there will always be crap. Pick a system, pick a genre, start digging, and you'll be sure to find gold. Yes, even on the PC.
Lastly, I definitely disagree that the GameCube is superior in quality, much less 'extremely' superior. Being as sports, FPS, and '3rd person action' (think Ninja Gaiden) are my preferred console genres, I found the GameCube to be extremely lacking (if for no other reason than that the controller was not suited for them). Of course, I've also played and loved every one of the games I listed earlier on my box, with the exception of HL2 (own it for PC and it's great. who act like it's not major that it's exclusive for Xbox?). While yes, GameCube does have its own line of exclusive games, I prefer those listed to Zelda (the new one looks hot as shit, but the last one just wasn't my style), Mario, etc.
Well, that's simply where we differ in our aesthetic. I'm a big RPG and platformer buff: Zelda, Metroid, and Final Fantasy are my big three. While I have no problem, conceptually, with FPSs and sports games (though I find them kinda mindless, personally, why don't you actually go play the sport instead of pressing buttons?), these are markets that have always been pioneered and driven by the PC Gamer community, which is really a completely diferent world. I was actually a bit sad when I first saw 007 on the N64, not because it was a bad game, but because I thought it looked like the type of game that would be better suited for a keyboard and mouse.
I guess my biggest beef with the XBox is that it has no real style of it's own. Both Sony and Nintendo have put a lot of thought (especially Nintendo) into what kinds of games define their system, they attract the best designers in those areas, and market accordingly. Nintendo markets itself as a fun, friendly, and innovative toy. Sony markets the Playstation as a down and dirty, stick your head in for hours and don't come out, kind of system aimed at about a 10 years older crowd. Microsoft, on the other hand... well, over half the games you mentioned were already released on PC at the same time or not too long afterwards: Doom 3, KoTOR, Morrowind, Half-Life 2, Splinter Cell, and Halo (though released quite a long after it's debut on the XBox). It's simply an alternative to a PC, which is all and good, but simply ploping games from one market (PC) and sticking them in another (console) doesn't make for any new content. Plus, I've played Halo on XBox and on my Mac (the better of the two computer versions)... why would you want to use a console controller to play a game like that?
Sony cut into Nintendo a bit, yes, but they also created a new market toward older gamers, cutting a bit into Sega, which sorta bridged the gap (and failed). Microsoft is mostly cutting into their partners' own PC sales, and skimming some of Sony's. Nintendo and Microsoft are so drastically diferent that they don't really compete on the same market. To me, it's not a system that wasn't already in existance... it's just a PC that only plays games.
Also, I don't understand why everybody takes the numbers so seriously. Yes, granted, it does say something when you're almost twice as powerful. But the original Xbox is the most powerful of the current-gen consoles, and it didn't really matter.
While I whole-heartedly agree with you (I don't give much of a shit about stats, the SNES is still the best console ever released, after all), it's fairly obvious that sheer power was practically the ONLY thing that sold the XBox to non-gamers. Die-hard gamers don't really care much about relative specs, they recognize the quality of the games when they play them, and that's that. But non-gamers need quantitative statistics to be able to deside which system is "better" (and thus, which one to buy). The XBox sold many units on sheer numbers alone. Microsoft's sole market rests on those numbers (aside from the power of marketting). They're going to have a lot of work to do to convince anyone, gamers or non-gamers, of the superiority of this new system, since they're both outclassed in terms of power and game designers. PS3 even has some of the best XBox 360 games under it's belt without blinking an eye. Halo 2 was, from what I gather, a big disapointment, so Halo 3 may not be looked at as so much of a killer app anymore. Come GTA4 (or whatever the next one will be), Microsoft hardly stands a chance.
PS: there is a bit of speculation about the XBox 1 though, even though the PS2 was quite obviously behind in hardware and SDK, there are quiet a few things that the NGC is better at the XBox in, lighting effects, for example. I, personally, always saw the XBox and NGC as pretty much neck and neck in the hardware war... and the NGC as extremely superior in quality.
They probably did hundreds of hours of user testing.
Well, I'll be the first one to defend the new controller and indorse a "let's wait and see" attitude, but that's not really a very good arguement for it. After all, fairly recently, companies have given us abobinations such as the Dream Cast controller, the original X-Box monstrosity, and, as much shit as I'm probably going to get for saying this, I thought the N64 controller was simply AWEFUL. I'm sure all those controllers had hundreds, if not thousands of hours of user testing on them as well.
Still, when I first looked at the controller, I was skeptical, but I started thinking about it's ergonomics. It's basically the same as the PSX/2 controller, though it continues the handles down the sides so your hand completely grips them, instead of the wings sticking into your palms (sometimes causing discomfort). The other thing is, even though there was a comment that "you're not supposed to use all four shoulder buttons at the same time", this should not an insentive for controller designers to make that an impracticality. All the shots of this controller are top view, so it's impossible to be sure where the L2/R2 buttons are, but from the bevelling of the controller, I'd be willing to guess that they've been shifted to a more downward facing angle, making it much more practical to push them in with the middle fingers, while maintaining a grip on the L1/R1 buttons with the index finger. We won't know for sure until we actually hold one in our hands, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until then.
Furthermore, just because they say it's "backwards compatable" doesn't mean the controller will be. I'm fairly certain that even though the molding and design is the same, the Dualshock 1 controllers are incompatable with the PS2, and vice-versa. There is also no mention of PS1/2 controller sockets on the PS3, so don't expect to be able to use your Dualshock 2, unless they release a wireless version specifically designed for the PS3. I do half-expect that they'll release a wireless "Dualshock 3" (if they're not calling the boomerang that).
On an amusing note, you might still be able to use the dualshock 2 controllers with the PS3... if you hook them up to PC designed USB converter!
This is truly sick. They've realized that every other OS is more secure on the virus front than them, so instead of FIXING the problem, they're going to charge YOU money to sell you software that fixes their software that they've already sold you.
This gives the perfect insentive to do the following things, and I don't doubt for a second they will:
They will stop giving support to anyone who catches a virus and doesn't have THEIR virus software installed, no matter how hard Symantec or Virex try, they can just say, "it's in the tech support license agreement, don't tell us we didn't warn you"
It gives them the perfect insentive to standbye and watch manevolent hackers go at it... or worse, aid hackers in sabotaging their own software so they can sell more anti-virus software. This folks, is extortion. It's basically the equivalent of thugs in a bad neighborhood selling you "insurence" against their own people.
I know I'm cynical, but history has shown you can never be too cynical about microsoft. Just think about it, who has more access to their own code to be able to hack into it? Who could now PROFIT off a huge computer plague, and suddenly come up with the perfect "antidote" that would protect you, and do this on a bi-yearly cycle.
If viri started running rampant on Windows and Microsoft offered a relatively "cheap" fix. Sure they might lose a few customers to linux or OS X, but the majority will hack up the couple hundred bucks.
Hell, planting virus's would be GREAT for business because they could always come up with the patch FIRST, being public heros and making Symantec, Norton, Virex, and other anti-virus providers look slow and moronic. Perfect stratagy to kill off more software providers to move in on their territory AND gain public support.
Windows users... get ready for your own self-perpetuated appocalypse. At least I won't be there to be "late paying the rent".
"Because XP came out about the same time OSX did (you didn't think the "X" in "XP" was an original marketing idea, did you?) this guy assumes OSX can't have progressed any faster than XP has."
Apple didn't come up with it either, obviously; in fact, there's really no evidance to show that Microsoft was copying Apple. No, they were aiming at something far lower, the X-TREME marketing boom around 2000. Think about it, every product that came out around 2000 had an "X" in it, sometimes two, maybe three Xs to enhance the X-TREMEness of the product. From computers to jock straps everything had to have an "X" in the name.
To be fair, Apple had a number of legitimate reasons to use "X" in their OS name, one is to give it association to the other popular Unix interface, "X Windows", probably a good marketting stratagy towards Linux users (though I'm guessing most Linux users are two savvy to be bought by names alone, though no-one really excapes advertising). The other legitimate reason was... well, 10 comes after 9, but since it was a totally new OS, they wanted to write it diferently, hence the roman numeral.
This is not to say that there wasn't a bit of X-TREME marketting that went into the name, after all, they could have come up with a totally new OS name and restarted the numbering at "1". They were justifiably reluctant to do so, though, since it might scare off many Mac OS Classic users, especially with all the "rumors" that it was based on a high-level operating system that only geeks use. All and all, "OS X" was a good choice for an OS name for Apple, even if it is a bit bland.
Microsoft, on the other hand, had no legitimate reason for calling their operating system "XP" other than:
X-TREME Marketing
Their competetor has an "X" in their name -- this is a sorry reason since Windows has a vast majority of the market share... they should name their poducts and act as if they're the leaders, even if they aren't.
XP Rhymes with NT -- I dunno, maybe if they're lucky, it'll appear in a hit rap song.
These kind of hacks may indeed turn out to be very usefull--I'm certainly eager to see what they can do with the touch screen--but they will never leave the computer elite community. If you think that the whole world is going to run out and grab a DS because it will run linux, you're seriously deluding yourself. It won't make a noticable dent in product sales even if they were to figure out how to use the touch screen and WiFi to their maximum capability.
Now, if Nintendo somehow took interest in the project, bought into it, put linux on a DS cartridge, and marketted it, then it MIGHT see a sales increase of a few percentage points. But there's no question in my mind that Nintendo would have no interest in such a project, they have no intention of breaking into the business PDA market any time soon.
Why Apple will never make a Portable Video Player
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What's Next At Apple
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· Score: 4, Interesting
...because they're too intelligent to do so, and here's why:
As a composer, as much as I hate to admit it: for most people, music is no more than a background to their day to day lives. If you think about it, you could, feasibly, listen to music about 80% of your waking life, and still remain productive in most individual activities (most jobs, driving, walking/exercising). Most humans only need their hearing for communication, but solitary activity--which takes up most people's time--requires little to no communication, meaning the aural senses are free to do other things, like listen to music. However, most tasks, individual or cooperative, require constant usage of the visual senses, making video far less attractive as a background activity while doing other things. Think about your day to day life, how much time, do you think, you could spend, while not at home or at a computer, watching video? It requires a time in which both the visual or auditory senses are free. For a huge majority of people, that period of time is extremely small. The only market for a portable video player is for those that use mass transit, this may seem substantial in some cities, but it's still a very small percentage of the American population. Also consider that the smallest unit of video is 30 minutes, so a video player is only reasonable for a person who can find time on the go for 30 minutes or more of visual distraction. People do not have to change their day to day routines for portable audio, but they would have to "find time" for portable video.
Apple have always seen themselves as a champion of the common people, in a similar fashion to Ford Motor Company when it first began. Their original intention was to create a computer which everyone (at least a large majority of people) could use... their only mistake (as opposed to Henry Ford's success) was that they didn't create a computer which everyone could afford. Apple have never been, and never will be, intentionally a provider of hardware products for niche markets. The iPod built on a mainstream market that was already there: portable audio, something that's been around since Sony's "Walkman" in the early 80s. There is to date, no mainstream market for portable video, and there isn't nearly enough public outcry to create one.
The only mainstream market for portable entertainment devices other than purely auditory hardware is video games. The unit of measurement in playing a video game is one level, usually around 2-4 minutes tops for most portable games, a chunk of time that's much more manageable while on the go. Also, consider that a huge majority of school age children are either driven or take a bus to school every morning, so having a portable video game unit aimed at children has a huge market. Playing games is also, obviously, an offshoot of solitary play, something that children have always done on busses, or when they have free time. Being entertained, however, is not something that children have done on a regular basis while away from a house. Even so, don't expect Apple to get in on the portable video game market any time soon. Nintendo's Gameboy Advance SP is already the iPod of the industry, and arguably does everything that it needs to in a simplistic and portable form which seems uncannily similar to Apple's line of development. This is also the same reason why I believe, without question, that the Sony PSP will fail as a mainstream device, it does far more and is far more complicated than the average child (the bulk of the market) has use for during transit, but that's another topic.
To sum things up, the only way Apple will ever make anything close to a portable video device is that in the next year or two they will undoubtedly add video support to the iPod Photo. Like video confrencing in iChat, it will be a gimmick, and no one will ever use it, but it won't matter anyway because that isn't the reason people buy an iPod in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, not every enemy feels the same way.
Sure they do, they just want you to listen to what they have to say... and you probably should...
...especially when they're pointing one of those things at your head and yelling in your ear.
I don't mind so much when random bloggers get their facts wrong... but slashdot needs to start checking their facts and stop speculating:
I wonder if this will impact the discussion on cell phone usage in planes (which seems to be centered around the annoyance of people talking loudly on the phone)
This is simply wrong. I've heard a number of different speculations as to why this is: navigation interference, scam to make people use airphones, not annoying passangers. These are all incorrect. Now, I'm no expert on cell phone technology, but I've had a few explain it to me, so if I get any details wrong, please correct them:
When a cell phone is in activation, it attempts to connect with all nearby towers in order to find the strongest signal. Since the high-frequency in which cell phones operate at are primarily line-of-sight, when cell towers are spaced at their usual distance, somewhere around a mile or so depending upon the bandwidth needs, on the ground a phone is probably only going to connect with a limited amount of towers. Now, in the air, EVERYTHING is line-of-site, and thus the signal can go a much farther without becoming too obstructed, so a cell phone may be able to connect to towers much farther away. Let's say you are flying over the eastern sea board, where there are literally thousands of cell towers erected in a fairly small area, the moment your cell phone becomes active, it will attempt to connect with hundreds of towers, greatly clogging up the system, and in some extreme cases, causing parts of the system to shut down. This is where the "airphone network" comes in. The airphone network is identical in technology to a cell network, the only diference is that towers are spaced much farther apart to account for the longer range a cell phone has when in the air.
So, this is neither a plot to make you use their system, or shut up noisy customers, or even concern with navigation interference, cell phones simply "screw up" the system at high altitudes. The only way we'll ever see cell phones used on planes is under the chance that Airphone begins signing up individuals, or if the cell phone technology itself changed to take into concideration this problem. Don't expect to see either of these any time soon.
In any case, screw cellphones on planes, what I want to see is more 110 plugs in airports! Being from Alaska, I fly cross country a lot, and take my laptop along for work and entertainment. No matter how good a battery you have, there is no way a computer is going to keep charge in an over 15 hours of transit. I don't know how many times I've taken my laptop out searching for that PERFECT spot where there's a power outlet. I'm now beginning to see other people snooping around the same, you see this special look on their face.
- EricBTW: I just lost the game
The Price Arguement - This is probably the most largely considered. When you take everything into account, computer speed is driven not so much by military, business, or even the pro-CGI and audio industries, but by games. The amount of money spent by 13-25 year olds on gaming PCs (while I don't know any exact figures) is a huge slice of the technology market today. Unfortunately, this drives, if you do buy into the PC gaming industry, computer hardware into obsoletion extremely quickly. The average life-span for a console is usually around 5-6 years. A $2500 gaming PC may last you two to three without any upgrades, but after about 4, you're going to be hard pressed to be able to play the "latest and greatest" at all, throw out that mother and pay up another two to three grand. This is comparable to 10-times that of console. Some of us already need a computer with quite a bit of juice, so the magnitued isn't quite that great, but still, putting in so much time and money to keep up with the game is a little excesive.
Game quality arguement - Now, here's an interesting one, many scoff it off as a product of marketting, and while it most definitely is, it's still a reality none-the-less. Here's what it boils down to. In the PC market, software providers expect the consumer to do all the work, all the hardware specs have to be kept up with by the individual customer. Software developers ALWAYS have the most state-of-the-art and up to date machines, code on them relying on the brute force of the machines to do the work for them, and release the software expecting the consumer to supply equally up-to-date hardware. Things like cleanliness of code go out the door so that the developers can get the job done fast and without hastle. Not only does it, as described above, drive up hardware costs, but it makes for less than ingenious thinking when going into developing a game. Consoles, on the other hand, are set in their hardware, yet over the life of the current generation, software developers must come up with ingenious solutions to keep games current, sometimes this means spending more time cleaning code to make the software run more efficiently, and SOMETIMES (and most benefitial) it means, towards the end of a generation, forgoing the use of the latest and greatest graphical power, and using other solutions, entirely, to make the game a worthwhile purchase: new gameplay enhancements, spending more time in basic system developement to make the game more interesting. One of the best selling games this year was Warioware... a game that could have worked fine (if coded for) on the NES back in 1984, try that on for size!
It is for this reason that I believe the basic concepts and architecture behind console games to be noticably superior to that of most (not all) computer games. Developers are forced to come to terms with the abilities and limitations of very specific hardware, and do what they can to make it work the best with the concepts they put forth. Because of the lack of horsepower on consoles, I think there is much more of a push toward ingenious game design to sell products, instead of pure eye candy. That said, I disagree that either PC or console games are "going down the drain" as many people these days seem to believe. Take any genre of entertainment, art, or technology, and you'll hear the same arguement throughout history. I remember people saying the same things when the SNES was released, again when the PS1 was released, when the PS2 was released. 15 years from now, we'll put Final Fantasy 9 right next to Mario 3 on our classics list, and not even care they were made a decade apart. There will always be classics, there will always be crap. Pick a system, pick a genre, start digging, and you'll be sure to find gold. Yes, even on the PC.
- EricLastly, I definitely disagree that the GameCube is superior in quality, much less 'extremely' superior. Being as sports, FPS, and '3rd person action' (think Ninja Gaiden) are my preferred console genres, I found the GameCube to be extremely lacking (if for no other reason than that the controller was not suited for them). Of course, I've also played and loved every one of the games I listed earlier on my box, with the exception of HL2 (own it for PC and it's great. who act like it's not major that it's exclusive for Xbox?). While yes, GameCube does have its own line of exclusive games, I prefer those listed to Zelda (the new one looks hot as shit, but the last one just wasn't my style), Mario, etc.
Well, that's simply where we differ in our aesthetic. I'm a big RPG and platformer buff: Zelda, Metroid, and Final Fantasy are my big three. While I have no problem, conceptually, with FPSs and sports games (though I find them kinda mindless, personally, why don't you actually go play the sport instead of pressing buttons?), these are markets that have always been pioneered and driven by the PC Gamer community, which is really a completely diferent world. I was actually a bit sad when I first saw 007 on the N64, not because it was a bad game, but because I thought it looked like the type of game that would be better suited for a keyboard and mouse.
I guess my biggest beef with the XBox is that it has no real style of it's own. Both Sony and Nintendo have put a lot of thought (especially Nintendo) into what kinds of games define their system, they attract the best designers in those areas, and market accordingly. Nintendo markets itself as a fun, friendly, and innovative toy. Sony markets the Playstation as a down and dirty, stick your head in for hours and don't come out, kind of system aimed at about a 10 years older crowd. Microsoft, on the other hand... well, over half the games you mentioned were already released on PC at the same time or not too long afterwards: Doom 3, KoTOR, Morrowind, Half-Life 2, Splinter Cell, and Halo (though released quite a long after it's debut on the XBox). It's simply an alternative to a PC, which is all and good, but simply ploping games from one market (PC) and sticking them in another (console) doesn't make for any new content. Plus, I've played Halo on XBox and on my Mac (the better of the two computer versions)... why would you want to use a console controller to play a game like that?
Sony cut into Nintendo a bit, yes, but they also created a new market toward older gamers, cutting a bit into Sega, which sorta bridged the gap (and failed). Microsoft is mostly cutting into their partners' own PC sales, and skimming some of Sony's. Nintendo and Microsoft are so drastically diferent that they don't really compete on the same market. To me, it's not a system that wasn't already in existance... it's just a PC that only plays games.
Also, I don't understand why everybody takes the numbers so seriously. Yes, granted, it does say something when you're almost twice as powerful. But the original Xbox is the most powerful of the current-gen consoles, and it didn't really matter.
While I whole-heartedly agree with you (I don't give much of a shit about stats, the SNES is still the best console ever released, after all), it's fairly obvious that sheer power was practically the ONLY thing that sold the XBox to non-gamers. Die-hard gamers don't really care much about relative specs, they recognize the quality of the games when they play them, and that's that. But non-gamers need quantitative statistics to be able to deside which system is "better" (and thus, which one to buy). The XBox sold many units on sheer numbers alone. Microsoft's sole market rests on those numbers (aside from the power of marketting). They're going to have a lot of work to do to convince anyone, gamers or non-gamers, of the superiority of this new system, since they're both outclassed in terms of power and game designers. PS3 even has some of the best XBox 360 games under it's belt without blinking an eye. Halo 2 was, from what I gather, a big disapointment, so Halo 3 may not be looked at as so much of a killer app anymore. Come GTA4 (or whatever the next one will be), Microsoft hardly stands a chance.
PS: there is a bit of speculation about the XBox 1 though, even though the PS2 was quite obviously behind in hardware and SDK, there are quiet a few things that the NGC is better at the XBox in, lighting effects, for example. I, personally, always saw the XBox and NGC as pretty much neck and neck in the hardware war... and the NGC as extremely superior in quality.
They probably did hundreds of hours of user testing.
Well, I'll be the first one to defend the new controller and indorse a "let's wait and see" attitude, but that's not really a very good arguement for it. After all, fairly recently, companies have given us abobinations such as the Dream Cast controller, the original X-Box monstrosity, and, as much shit as I'm probably going to get for saying this, I thought the N64 controller was simply AWEFUL. I'm sure all those controllers had hundreds, if not thousands of hours of user testing on them as well.
Still, when I first looked at the controller, I was skeptical, but I started thinking about it's ergonomics. It's basically the same as the PSX/2 controller, though it continues the handles down the sides so your hand completely grips them, instead of the wings sticking into your palms (sometimes causing discomfort). The other thing is, even though there was a comment that "you're not supposed to use all four shoulder buttons at the same time", this should not an insentive for controller designers to make that an impracticality. All the shots of this controller are top view, so it's impossible to be sure where the L2/R2 buttons are, but from the bevelling of the controller, I'd be willing to guess that they've been shifted to a more downward facing angle, making it much more practical to push them in with the middle fingers, while maintaining a grip on the L1/R1 buttons with the index finger. We won't know for sure until we actually hold one in our hands, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until then.
Furthermore, just because they say it's "backwards compatable" doesn't mean the controller will be. I'm fairly certain that even though the molding and design is the same, the Dualshock 1 controllers are incompatable with the PS2, and vice-versa. There is also no mention of PS1/2 controller sockets on the PS3, so don't expect to be able to use your Dualshock 2, unless they release a wireless version specifically designed for the PS3. I do half-expect that they'll release a wireless "Dualshock 3" (if they're not calling the boomerang that).
On an amusing note, you might still be able to use the dualshock 2 controllers with the PS3... if you hook them up to PC designed USB converter!
- EricThis is truly sick. They've realized that every other OS is more secure on the virus front than them, so instead of FIXING the problem, they're going to charge YOU money to sell you software that fixes their software that they've already sold you.
This gives the perfect insentive to do the following things, and I don't doubt for a second they will:
I know I'm cynical, but history has shown you can never be too cynical about microsoft. Just think about it, who has more access to their own code to be able to hack into it? Who could now PROFIT off a huge computer plague, and suddenly come up with the perfect "antidote" that would protect you, and do this on a bi-yearly cycle.
If viri started running rampant on Windows and Microsoft offered a relatively "cheap" fix. Sure they might lose a few customers to linux or OS X, but the majority will hack up the couple hundred bucks.
Hell, planting virus's would be GREAT for business because they could always come up with the patch FIRST, being public heros and making Symantec, Norton, Virex, and other anti-virus providers look slow and moronic. Perfect stratagy to kill off more software providers to move in on their territory AND gain public support.
Windows users... get ready for your own self-perpetuated appocalypse. At least I won't be there to be "late paying the rent".
- Eric
"Because XP came out about the same time OSX did (you didn't think the "X" in "XP" was an original marketing idea, did you?) this guy assumes OSX can't have progressed any faster than XP has."
Apple didn't come up with it either, obviously; in fact, there's really no evidance to show that Microsoft was copying Apple. No, they were aiming at something far lower, the X-TREME marketing boom around 2000. Think about it, every product that came out around 2000 had an "X" in it, sometimes two, maybe three Xs to enhance the X-TREMEness of the product. From computers to jock straps everything had to have an "X" in the name.
To be fair, Apple had a number of legitimate reasons to use "X" in their OS name, one is to give it association to the other popular Unix interface, "X Windows", probably a good marketting stratagy towards Linux users (though I'm guessing most Linux users are two savvy to be bought by names alone, though no-one really excapes advertising). The other legitimate reason was... well, 10 comes after 9, but since it was a totally new OS, they wanted to write it diferently, hence the roman numeral.
This is not to say that there wasn't a bit of X-TREME marketting that went into the name, after all, they could have come up with a totally new OS name and restarted the numbering at "1". They were justifiably reluctant to do so, though, since it might scare off many Mac OS Classic users, especially with all the "rumors" that it was based on a high-level operating system that only geeks use. All and all, "OS X" was a good choice for an OS name for Apple, even if it is a bit bland.
Microsoft, on the other hand, had no legitimate reason for calling their operating system "XP" other than:
For more commentary on X-TREME marketing, visit:t
http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=xtreme_bullshi
I know that when I'm looking at porn, I already have more than enough to handle just from one big 'pop up'...
...oh, were we talking about windows, here?
These kind of hacks may indeed turn out to be very usefull--I'm certainly eager to see what they can do with the touch screen--but they will never leave the computer elite community. If you think that the whole world is going to run out and grab a DS because it will run linux, you're seriously deluding yourself. It won't make a noticable dent in product sales even if they were to figure out how to use the touch screen and WiFi to their maximum capability.
Now, if Nintendo somehow took interest in the project, bought into it, put linux on a DS cartridge, and marketted it, then it MIGHT see a sales increase of a few percentage points. But there's no question in my mind that Nintendo would have no interest in such a project, they have no intention of breaking into the business PDA market any time soon.
...because they're too intelligent to do so, and here's why:
As a composer, as much as I hate to admit it: for most people, music is no more than a background to their day to day lives. If you think about it, you could, feasibly, listen to music about 80% of your waking life, and still remain productive in most individual activities (most jobs, driving, walking/exercising). Most humans only need their hearing for communication, but solitary activity--which takes up most people's time--requires little to no communication, meaning the aural senses are free to do other things, like listen to music. However, most tasks, individual or cooperative, require constant usage of the visual senses, making video far less attractive as a background activity while doing other things. Think about your day to day life, how much time, do you think, you could spend, while not at home or at a computer, watching video? It requires a time in which both the visual or auditory senses are free. For a huge majority of people, that period of time is extremely small. The only market for a portable video player is for those that use mass transit, this may seem substantial in some cities, but it's still a very small percentage of the American population. Also consider that the smallest unit of video is 30 minutes, so a video player is only reasonable for a person who can find time on the go for 30 minutes or more of visual distraction. People do not have to change their day to day routines for portable audio, but they would have to "find time" for portable video.
Apple have always seen themselves as a champion of the common people, in a similar fashion to Ford Motor Company when it first began. Their original intention was to create a computer which everyone (at least a large majority of people) could use... their only mistake (as opposed to Henry Ford's success) was that they didn't create a computer which everyone could afford. Apple have never been, and never will be, intentionally a provider of hardware products for niche markets. The iPod built on a mainstream market that was already there: portable audio, something that's been around since Sony's "Walkman" in the early 80s. There is to date, no mainstream market for portable video, and there isn't nearly enough public outcry to create one.
The only mainstream market for portable entertainment devices other than purely auditory hardware is video games. The unit of measurement in playing a video game is one level, usually around 2-4 minutes tops for most portable games, a chunk of time that's much more manageable while on the go. Also, consider that a huge majority of school age children are either driven or take a bus to school every morning, so having a portable video game unit aimed at children has a huge market. Playing games is also, obviously, an offshoot of solitary play, something that children have always done on busses, or when they have free time. Being entertained, however, is not something that children have done on a regular basis while away from a house. Even so, don't expect Apple to get in on the portable video game market any time soon. Nintendo's Gameboy Advance SP is already the iPod of the industry, and arguably does everything that it needs to in a simplistic and portable form which seems uncannily similar to Apple's line of development. This is also the same reason why I believe, without question, that the Sony PSP will fail as a mainstream device, it does far more and is far more complicated than the average child (the bulk of the market) has use for during transit, but that's another topic.
To sum things up, the only way Apple will ever make anything close to a portable video device is that in the next year or two they will undoubtedly add video support to the iPod Photo. Like video confrencing in iChat, it will be a gimmick, and no one will ever use it, but it won't matter anyway because that isn't the reason people buy an iPod in the first place.