for open standards. I use Skype and iChat. Why can't I have one chat/video/audio standard, with a number of clients trying to figure out cheaper/faster/better ways to provide that? First, I'd start with iChat, because it's free. I could instantly talk to anybody, or video anybody. Somebody would recommend Google version 4, and I'd try that. I wouldn't lose my "buddies," I'd just see, wow, their audio codec rocks, or whatever.
In other words, this should be regulated by the FCC, to set the standards the same way they set the American gauge for railroads, or the voltages and other tech standards for the phone lines -- the goal is not, let the corporations find another way to rope their customers off from the world, but let the corporations figure out how best to attract people to their chat programs by DOING IT BETTER. Is that radical? Too much to ask? I don't think so.
They're a monopolist with a 3-5% market share? It may come as a surprise to you, but a company in that position cannot be a monopolist. Legally. Unfair trade practices? Yes, that could be.
If Samsung sold below cost to sink a competitor? Unfair. Dumping, or something like that. If Apple somehow dictated the price to Samsung, that might be wrong. If Apple, say, threatened Samsung with being excluded from future iPods, that could be wrong. None of which is, as lawyers say, "in evidence" here.
As for Apple being "just the same," well, it may come as a surprise to you, but Apple is a corporation, not an order of monks. Without profitable computers and software, they're gone. So, yeah, the computer business is very tough.
But I can just tell, you mean, "Microsoft isn't so bad, Apple is just the same," and there you're wrong. Learn what monopoly is. See why the courts found it guilty of being a monopoly, and suggested its breakup into three parts, I believe. Then see if you can still say, "Apple is just like Microsoft." Genghis Khan isn't just like Microsoft. Both Stalin and Roosevelt were on the left -- was FDR just the same as Joe Stalin?
Just a small contemporary example: the MSNBC channel and website. I can, on my Mac, watch CBS, ABC, AP, BBC, CNN -- all kinds of web-based video. The only one I can't watch? MSNBC. I have the Mac version of WMP. I have Flash, javascript, all kinds of stuff. But somehow, the geniuses at MS put up a a notice that their video is "incompatible with my OS." That's monopolistic behavior.
By the way, the latest reorg by MS seems suspiciously like a mammoth company preparing bite-sized bits to... split up and sell. So maybe Judge Jackson was on to something.
Aside from Apple's competitors complaining, where exactly is the monopoly behavior, or the unfair business practice? I'm no expert on Korean antitrust law -- I know zero -- but if it's like our monopoly law, then nothing wrong happened. A successful maker of mp3 players went to the maker of a new kind of memory -- or at least, very good memory -- and asked for a huge purchase. Samsung sold it at a discount, by which I infer there were competitors to whom Apple could also have gone, and they wanted the big sale. Samsung will make more of this memory, and I imagine the other 60% of the stock is also for sale to the other companies. So, what's the monopolistic practice?
MS was nabbed because they told computer makers, install our OS and you must also take IE and keep Netscape, etc., off of your computers, or we will stop giving you a price break on Windows. This is using market power to compel another company to exclude your competitor. Apple buys a heck of a lot of memory and will no doubt be back for more, because the nano is selling like, er, nanos. Did they say, "And don't you dare sell any to Creative?"
Another instance of possible monopolistic practice is what AMD alleges: that Intel forces Dell and other makers to sell only Intel-based computers, or lose their discount. See? Less competition. Unfair practices.
But unless there's some secret coercion involved, and it's not obvious here, then Apple and Samsung have just committed capitalism. The company at the top of sales bought up a sizable number of chips. They had the money to plunk down, and the maker of the chips said, here, thank you. Competitors are upset, I suspect, because they can't keep up with the big dog. Boo-hoo.
There are lots of people, like yourself, who hold Apple to an impossibly high standard. Sometimes saying untrue things along the way. Like the, uh, iPod battery people. The Cube WAS a non-serious molding defect. It failed and was withdrawn because the sales were low because it was expensive and it couldn't be easily upgraded. It still remains a cult hit, and people love finding hacks to extend its life and usefulness. Along with the people who are always claiming the new player with FM or some damn thing is an "iPod killer." Well, they're not there yet, and who gives a s__ about FM radio?
Well, it's cool. I don't care. The iPod sales are doing fine, and of course, there are plenty who resent its success, so they say bad things about Apple because they're bored playing with their Dells.
While I'm not at all sure that people want video in their pockets, to be played on tiny screens and held about 18" from their faces, I think besides the industrial design problem, and the small but significant technical problems, I think those who have pointed to DRM as the problem are on to it. There is no content for anybody who is not a video hacker of some ability. Sony wants you to use a castrated DVD. No dice. Otherwise, those in the studios don't care whether you get your movie on there from a DVD you own or from an.iso file. It's all THEFT, they say. So it's clear that we won't have any decent video iPod until we have good content; and we won't have that until the present studios are destroyed to the last vice-president of development, and their entire legal staffs. And don't forget their lobbyists. That's why there's no content available.
Think about it. Who else uses the chips that Apple may want? Nobody. They're ordering an unspecified number for a period of time so they will be able to put a new motherboard in your uncle's iBook in 2007.
If they didn't get a deal like that, they'd be screwed if anything happened.
If so, they'd realize what a piece of spin/fluff this story is. MS has been turned down twice on this patent, which doesn't have anything to do with the iPod. If Apple wanted to make iTunes/iPod generate its own playlists automagically, then they'd be infringing. But Apple's getting along quite well with their metadata setup and "On-the-Go" playlists. Meanwhile, Apple is trying to patent the wheel/screen setup of the iPod. So far, they've failed once. But they'll almost certainly resubmit, if only to keep the other manufacturers away from something that will get them involved in a big lawsuit.
"MS has the patent for the iPod"? Ha!
In the long history of patent wars, it requires more than adjacent patents to make a claim. The FM patents were arguably stolen by NBC, but only by David Sarnoff actually building out an FM network, complete with financing, while the inventor couldn't get the capital he needed. IF the MS patent has anything to do with the iPod, which I doubt, the point is, where is the MS music player?
Read the Forbes story (they know a thing or two about patents) or the story in The Register. This is not true. It's a pleasing fantasy, for some reason. "This Just In: GM bought patents to car that runs on water, killed inventor!'
The patent that Apple lost (round one -- they'll refile) has to do with a round contoller wheel. The patent that MS has, which has already been rejected twice, is a way to make a playlist automatically. Not a "playlist" folder, not a "smart playlist," but an "automatic playlist." The iPod doesn't use this patent, and it has other patents on various parts of the iPod.
Now, the talk about whether patents do any good, or if the patent office is properly run, this is very debatable public policy. The fact that this "story" is popping up all over the place just means that this particular fiction is telling people something they want/don't want to believe.
I'm quite sure that many Apple people will keep using the one-button mouse, for the exact same reason you prefer the two-button one: they're used to it. BETTER doesn't enter into it.
Like the 13th-century dispute between nominalism and realism, this whole debate got out of hand. The truth is, if you started with the Mac, the whole architecture of the platform made two buttons unnecessary. Option-clicking is not a horrible ordeal, and you don't have to "right-click" to find the "properties" on the Mac. There was no huge chorus of Mac users demanding change. Ahem, recently, the Windows crowd started moving in. Apple gave away the one-button and supported just about every USB mouse you could imagine. Well, in case no one's noticed, the Mac's market share is now on its way up, and one button mice make Windows refugees gape in awe, like the apes before the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have a friend who bought a Dual 2.5 G5, and he immediately went out an bought a roller ball with more buttons that you have fingers. Any old port in a storm. I tried to use his computer to fix something, and I needed to read the blueprints before I did anything. It was nuts, to me.
That said, I was once a strict one-buttoner. Good enough for Andy Herzfeld, I said, good enough for me. But then I got used to the two-button mouse at work, and the thing that made me buy a Microsoft Mouse was the scroll wheel, not the buttons.
And now, this. It's sleek and cool, naturally. There seems to be a few interesting ideas. I ordered one this morning. So much for angels on the head of a pin. Hope y'all like this one, ex-Windows people. If not, buy one of the other gazillion mice that are supported by Tiger.
Calling Jobs a "failing management team" is really pretty laughable. He took over a business that was at death's door. The Mac is not at death's door anymore. And one of the first things he did was sink the Mac clones. They were doing nothing but sucking profits away. They were making money when the Mac was headed for the toilet. Is that a "strategy"?
So -- could OS X run on an average PC? I guess so. What would it be except a "subsidize manufacturers of PCs" program? Michael Dell would love it -- now that Apple's with Intel, so he doesn't have to defy Mama Intel on AMD chips. But who would benefit? Dell would probably want to get the OS for $10 per. Cui bono?
Really, most of this talk is sheer wool-gathering. It's like those brave people who want Apple to "open up" their DRM, so that all the people who have used their monopolies in the past can continue to screw the iTMS.
Apple's gotten back into the mainstream by a lot of frankly inspired decisions and hard work. Once we're onto OS XI? Then the Windows crowd can have OS X.
Well, that's where you're wrong. Windows wants to remain the great majority of the market? They've got to fix their virus and malware problem. Not for IT guys, not for knowledgable guys who know about AdAware and the like, but for Mom and Pop, for people who want to USE the computer, not program it.
Leo Laporte has a phone-in show on KFI Los Angeles. He takes one malware/adware/spyware/virus call per show. Otherwise, he tells us, he could spend the entire show talking about nothing but being a security professional for your own computer. This is miserable.
You're right about that comment, but the whole article he's replying to is pretty hysterical and mostly untrue. He reminded me of the guy in Monty Python with the handkerchief on his head.
Well, Apple did keep it to an operating system. Oh, and advertising the operating system.
What dorks we're becoming. Who owns the word Tiger? Who can?
Lawyers are often blamed for this, but they're just working for jerkwater opportunists like TigerDirect. Hey, everybody! Any chance that the new operating system will be confused with a third-rate, fraudulent mail-order outfit? Or with the Blake poem?
Except for the one I took out on Schadenfreude.
Think about it, though. What IS Microsoft except a huge rat's nest of intellectual property? Oh, and those mice and the X-box.
Free speech is absolute: "Congress shall make no law.."
But no right is absolute. You can't commit libel or slander. You can't scream obscenities in a schoolyard. Commercial speech is not on as high a level as political speech. Otherwise, you could never have a "do not call" list for junk calls.
And this is straight trade secret territory. More than that, whoever leaked this stuff from the inside must have signed an agreement not to leak such specific info that turned out to be almost exactly true. Apple has a right to fire that guy's ass, if not go after him for damages.
In the Pentagon Papers, the public's right to know what was contained in the report outweighed no matter how many "Top Secret" stamps there were on it, because it exposed the government's thinking about Vietnam, and that contradicted what they had told us for at least a decade. So the Times had a right to print it.
But in this case, there's no public interest served by knowing the details of the Mac mini a week or so ahead of time. But Apple legitimately doesn't want this employee free to leak something truly damaging to a competitor; and he (or she) has already shown himself to be less than honest.
Slashdot Mirror
for open standards. I use Skype and iChat. Why can't I have one chat/video/audio standard, with a number of clients trying to figure out cheaper/faster/better ways to provide that? First, I'd start with iChat, because it's free. I could instantly talk to anybody, or video anybody. Somebody would recommend Google version 4, and I'd try that. I wouldn't lose my "buddies," I'd just see, wow, their audio codec rocks, or whatever. In other words, this should be regulated by the FCC, to set the standards the same way they set the American gauge for railroads, or the voltages and other tech standards for the phone lines -- the goal is not, let the corporations find another way to rope their customers off from the world, but let the corporations figure out how best to attract people to their chat programs by DOING IT BETTER. Is that radical? Too much to ask? I don't think so.
So... why did you cite that page. I've had it with irony, you know.
Nah, that's just why Ayn Rand zombies luv Microsoft, no matter what they do.
They're a monopolist with a 3-5% market share? It may come as a surprise to you, but a company in that position cannot be a monopolist. Legally. Unfair trade practices? Yes, that could be. If Samsung sold below cost to sink a competitor? Unfair. Dumping, or something like that. If Apple somehow dictated the price to Samsung, that might be wrong. If Apple, say, threatened Samsung with being excluded from future iPods, that could be wrong. None of which is, as lawyers say, "in evidence" here. As for Apple being "just the same," well, it may come as a surprise to you, but Apple is a corporation, not an order of monks. Without profitable computers and software, they're gone. So, yeah, the computer business is very tough. But I can just tell, you mean, "Microsoft isn't so bad, Apple is just the same," and there you're wrong. Learn what monopoly is. See why the courts found it guilty of being a monopoly, and suggested its breakup into three parts, I believe. Then see if you can still say, "Apple is just like Microsoft." Genghis Khan isn't just like Microsoft. Both Stalin and Roosevelt were on the left -- was FDR just the same as Joe Stalin? Just a small contemporary example: the MSNBC channel and website. I can, on my Mac, watch CBS, ABC, AP, BBC, CNN -- all kinds of web-based video. The only one I can't watch? MSNBC. I have the Mac version of WMP. I have Flash, javascript, all kinds of stuff. But somehow, the geniuses at MS put up a a notice that their video is "incompatible with my OS." That's monopolistic behavior. By the way, the latest reorg by MS seems suspiciously like a mammoth company preparing bite-sized bits to... split up and sell. So maybe Judge Jackson was on to something.
Aside from Apple's competitors complaining, where exactly is the monopoly behavior, or the unfair business practice? I'm no expert on Korean antitrust law -- I know zero -- but if it's like our monopoly law, then nothing wrong happened. A successful maker of mp3 players went to the maker of a new kind of memory -- or at least, very good memory -- and asked for a huge purchase. Samsung sold it at a discount, by which I infer there were competitors to whom Apple could also have gone, and they wanted the big sale. Samsung will make more of this memory, and I imagine the other 60% of the stock is also for sale to the other companies. So, what's the monopolistic practice? MS was nabbed because they told computer makers, install our OS and you must also take IE and keep Netscape, etc., off of your computers, or we will stop giving you a price break on Windows. This is using market power to compel another company to exclude your competitor. Apple buys a heck of a lot of memory and will no doubt be back for more, because the nano is selling like, er, nanos. Did they say, "And don't you dare sell any to Creative?" Another instance of possible monopolistic practice is what AMD alleges: that Intel forces Dell and other makers to sell only Intel-based computers, or lose their discount. See? Less competition. Unfair practices. But unless there's some secret coercion involved, and it's not obvious here, then Apple and Samsung have just committed capitalism. The company at the top of sales bought up a sizable number of chips. They had the money to plunk down, and the maker of the chips said, here, thank you. Competitors are upset, I suspect, because they can't keep up with the big dog. Boo-hoo.
In other words, unless Apple's marketing department suspends the second law of thermodynamics, I'm not playing!
There are lots of people, like yourself, who hold Apple to an impossibly high standard. Sometimes saying untrue things along the way. Like the, uh, iPod battery people. The Cube WAS a non-serious molding defect. It failed and was withdrawn because the sales were low because it was expensive and it couldn't be easily upgraded. It still remains a cult hit, and people love finding hacks to extend its life and usefulness. Along with the people who are always claiming the new player with FM or some damn thing is an "iPod killer." Well, they're not there yet, and who gives a s__ about FM radio? Well, it's cool. I don't care. The iPod sales are doing fine, and of course, there are plenty who resent its success, so they say bad things about Apple because they're bored playing with their Dells.
While I'm not at all sure that people want video in their pockets, to be played on tiny screens and held about 18" from their faces, I think besides the industrial design problem, and the small but significant technical problems, I think those who have pointed to DRM as the problem are on to it. There is no content for anybody who is not a video hacker of some ability. Sony wants you to use a castrated DVD. No dice. Otherwise, those in the studios don't care whether you get your movie on there from a DVD you own or from an .iso file. It's all THEFT, they say. So it's clear that we won't have any decent video iPod until we have good content; and we won't have that until the present studios are destroyed to the last vice-president of development, and their entire legal staffs. And don't forget their lobbyists. That's why there's no content available.
Think about it. Who else uses the chips that Apple may want? Nobody. They're ordering an unspecified number for a period of time so they will be able to put a new motherboard in your uncle's iBook in 2007. If they didn't get a deal like that, they'd be screwed if anything happened.
If so, they'd realize what a piece of spin/fluff this story is. MS has been turned down twice on this patent, which doesn't have anything to do with the iPod. If Apple wanted to make iTunes/iPod generate its own playlists automagically, then they'd be infringing. But Apple's getting along quite well with their metadata setup and "On-the-Go" playlists. Meanwhile, Apple is trying to patent the wheel/screen setup of the iPod. So far, they've failed once. But they'll almost certainly resubmit, if only to keep the other manufacturers away from something that will get them involved in a big lawsuit. "MS has the patent for the iPod"? Ha! In the long history of patent wars, it requires more than adjacent patents to make a claim. The FM patents were arguably stolen by NBC, but only by David Sarnoff actually building out an FM network, complete with financing, while the inventor couldn't get the capital he needed. IF the MS patent has anything to do with the iPod, which I doubt, the point is, where is the MS music player?
Read the Forbes story (they know a thing or two about patents) or the story in The Register. This is not true. It's a pleasing fantasy, for some reason. "This Just In: GM bought patents to car that runs on water, killed inventor!' The patent that Apple lost (round one -- they'll refile) has to do with a round contoller wheel. The patent that MS has, which has already been rejected twice, is a way to make a playlist automatically. Not a "playlist" folder, not a "smart playlist," but an "automatic playlist." The iPod doesn't use this patent, and it has other patents on various parts of the iPod. Now, the talk about whether patents do any good, or if the patent office is properly run, this is very debatable public policy. The fact that this "story" is popping up all over the place just means that this particular fiction is telling people something they want/don't want to believe.
It's H.264, according to QT 7. You probably can get it to play with VLC.
I'm quite sure that many Apple people will keep using the one-button mouse, for the exact same reason you prefer the two-button one: they're used to it. BETTER doesn't enter into it.
Like the 13th-century dispute between nominalism and realism, this whole debate got out of hand. The truth is, if you started with the Mac, the whole architecture of the platform made two buttons unnecessary. Option-clicking is not a horrible ordeal, and you don't have to "right-click" to find the "properties" on the Mac. There was no huge chorus of Mac users demanding change. Ahem, recently, the Windows crowd started moving in. Apple gave away the one-button and supported just about every USB mouse you could imagine. Well, in case no one's noticed, the Mac's market share is now on its way up, and one button mice make Windows refugees gape in awe, like the apes before the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have a friend who bought a Dual 2.5 G5, and he immediately went out an bought a roller ball with more buttons that you have fingers. Any old port in a storm. I tried to use his computer to fix something, and I needed to read the blueprints before I did anything. It was nuts, to me. That said, I was once a strict one-buttoner. Good enough for Andy Herzfeld, I said, good enough for me. But then I got used to the two-button mouse at work, and the thing that made me buy a Microsoft Mouse was the scroll wheel, not the buttons. And now, this. It's sleek and cool, naturally. There seems to be a few interesting ideas. I ordered one this morning. So much for angels on the head of a pin. Hope y'all like this one, ex-Windows people. If not, buy one of the other gazillion mice that are supported by Tiger.
Calling Jobs a "failing management team" is really pretty laughable. He took over a business that was at death's door. The Mac is not at death's door anymore. And one of the first things he did was sink the Mac clones. They were doing nothing but sucking profits away. They were making money when the Mac was headed for the toilet. Is that a "strategy"? So -- could OS X run on an average PC? I guess so. What would it be except a "subsidize manufacturers of PCs" program? Michael Dell would love it -- now that Apple's with Intel, so he doesn't have to defy Mama Intel on AMD chips. But who would benefit? Dell would probably want to get the OS for $10 per. Cui bono? Really, most of this talk is sheer wool-gathering. It's like those brave people who want Apple to "open up" their DRM, so that all the people who have used their monopolies in the past can continue to screw the iTMS. Apple's gotten back into the mainstream by a lot of frankly inspired decisions and hard work. Once we're onto OS XI? Then the Windows crowd can have OS X.
Well, that's where you're wrong. Windows wants to remain the great majority of the market? They've got to fix their virus and malware problem. Not for IT guys, not for knowledgable guys who know about AdAware and the like, but for Mom and Pop, for people who want to USE the computer, not program it. Leo Laporte has a phone-in show on KFI Los Angeles. He takes one malware/adware/spyware/virus call per show. Otherwise, he tells us, he could spend the entire show talking about nothing but being a security professional for your own computer. This is miserable.
Actually, Umax and the other clone-makers were the only moneymakers in or near Apple until Jobs killed the clones. It was self-preservation.
You're right about that comment, but the whole article he's replying to is pretty hysterical and mostly untrue. He reminded me of the guy in Monty Python with the handkerchief on his head.
Well, Apple did keep it to an operating system. Oh, and advertising the operating system. What dorks we're becoming. Who owns the word Tiger? Who can? Lawyers are often blamed for this, but they're just working for jerkwater opportunists like TigerDirect. Hey, everybody! Any chance that the new operating system will be confused with a third-rate, fraudulent mail-order outfit? Or with the Blake poem?
The Texas Longhorns filed suit against Microsoft for... ah, who cares?
They did the same with Motion when it came out, and the site says they'll soon be posting a 30-day demo of Motion 2.0.
Except for the one I took out on Schadenfreude. Think about it, though. What IS Microsoft except a huge rat's nest of intellectual property? Oh, and those mice and the X-box.
Free speech is absolute: "Congress shall make no law.." But no right is absolute. You can't commit libel or slander. You can't scream obscenities in a schoolyard. Commercial speech is not on as high a level as political speech. Otherwise, you could never have a "do not call" list for junk calls. And this is straight trade secret territory. More than that, whoever leaked this stuff from the inside must have signed an agreement not to leak such specific info that turned out to be almost exactly true. Apple has a right to fire that guy's ass, if not go after him for damages. In the Pentagon Papers, the public's right to know what was contained in the report outweighed no matter how many "Top Secret" stamps there were on it, because it exposed the government's thinking about Vietnam, and that contradicted what they had told us for at least a decade. So the Times had a right to print it. But in this case, there's no public interest served by knowing the details of the Mac mini a week or so ahead of time. But Apple legitimately doesn't want this employee free to leak something truly damaging to a competitor; and he (or she) has already shown himself to be less than honest.