Intelligent Systems co. is a first party that design and distributes the official Nintendo dev kits and tools, including DS and GC tools. Many of these official Nintendo tools also exist for Mac OS. The actual Nintendo GameCube dev kit boxes are not PCs, they are custom boxes running a PowerPC and a Flipper GPU. Tools on PCs and Macs can be used to transfer data back and forth.
Nintendo's president, Mr. Iwata, delivered his last three keynotes standing behind his PowerBook/MacBook. Iwata quoted Steve Jobs at last year's E3 keynote, and said he admires him. Other Nintendo officials mentioned Apple a few times since then.
Shigeru Miyamoto is known to be a Mac user. I have a photo of him sitting at his desk at Nintendo and you can see a PowerMac there (It's an old photo I must admit)
Anyway I'm not trying to prove that there's a secret connection here, but certainly they share some of the same ideals.
The funny thing about the GameBoy Micro is that while it's obviously inspired by the iPod mini, the original iPod certainly was at least in part inspired by the GameBoy form factor, which itself may have been inspired by the original Macintosh shape:)
The important thing to remember is that Apple and Nintendo don't compete directly with one another, their markets don't overlap and are complementary. Apple now does most of what Microsoft and Sony do (Computers, OS, Music/Media distribution, consumer electronics) except games. On the other hand, Nintendo is focused on games and game consoles.
I think that the reason why nothing happens between Apple and Nintendo is that Steve Jobs didn't play enough Nintendo games in his life:)
While it was funny, I'm not sure what you meant with your "additional" editing. I'm not denying that the nano scratches easily. I just don't think it warranted a class action suit claiming that using it normally renders the screen unreadable in two weeks.
I have a 6 months old iPod nano, I use it almost everyday, without a protective case...Sure there are tiny scratches all over the surface, but the screen is still perfectly readable. It's only a cosmetic problem that can be taken care of with some $5 scratch repair kit. If you really care about this cosmetic aspect then buy a case or use the included one...
Steve Berman from Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro was one of the lawyers handling the nano suit. He's one of Microsoft's favorite lawyer, having defending MS in more than 50 class-action suits made by the states and consumers.
Let's say that the following is completely speculative and happens in fantasy-land. (I don't wan't to get sued!)
One day in autumn 2005, Bill Gates is playing golf with his lawyer friend Steve Berman.
-Steve: Did you see the new iPod nano?
-Bill: Yeah yeah I did...nice little player but you know my position about iPods... We had big plans with the RIAA to impose WMA as the audio standard, by this year we were supposed to drop Red-Book audio from all CD sold in the US, replacing the content with DRMed WMA. You can imagine how the iPod and iTMS screws up our plans badly.
-Steve: I guess many big-players are pissed-off by the iPod success.
-Bill: Yes they are, but the iPod seems unstoppable... Even with dozens of our ghost-writers publishing negative articles about the iPod, it keeps dominating the market.
-Steve: I've read that the iPod nano scratches very easily, and that some of the early batches had screens that spontaneously break.
-Bill: I know about it, our ghost-writers are already trying to spread the word... but we need something bigger, we don't have a choice.
-Steve: There's a guy that built a website to complain about his iPod nano screen problems and he's very vocal about it.
-Bill: What if your law firm gave him a hand to help him build a class-action suit against Apple?
-Steve: Yeah we could do that, but what if he doesn't want to be part of the lawsuit?
-Bill: I'm %100 sure your great firm will be able to "convince" him... And by the way, you owe me that, remember that "thing" I sent you last month?
-Steve: Oh right, that "thing" was very enjoyable... I guess I owe you that one...Let me see what I can do!
I may not get modded up because I have no obvious grammatical rule to back me up, but I think that "Le iPod est mort, vive le iPod" sounds better.
And yeah my native tongue is French. I know it's a common mistake for english speakers to say things like "le avion" when they should say "l'avion", but in this specific case I think that "Le iPod" is a better choice.
If you pronounce iPod in English the "i" sounds like a "h aspiré", in French, it's also close to an "h aspiré", but we cannot rename iPod to hiPod in French. With that kind of "h", you cannot make a liaison (link between words). Just like we say "la harpe joue de la musique", we can say "Le iPod joue de la musique". There are already exceptions for short words like some numbers like "onze" . You have to say "Le onze novembre", not "l'onze".
Anyway I guess it's a French Canadian thing, as I'm sure the French from France are more inclined to put a "liaison" when in doubt, because they like to gloat about correctly pronouncing every visible and hidden word "liaisons", comparing themselves to the French that's spoken in their colonies (like here in Quebec).
As for the original poster thinking the iPod was feminine in French. It's interesting to note that in France, video-game consoles are feminine. They say "La NES, la n64, la Playstation". In Canada/Quebec, we decided to use masculine for video-game consoles so we say "Le NES, Le n64, Le PS1", but we do say "La Xbox", since I guess box in French (boîte) is feminine.
Actually, if you try to open any app for the first time, it asks you first.
I feel like I'm repeating myself, but it doesn't display any dialog in this particular case. It should though and I hope Apple fixes this.
If I'm not mistaken it warns you that it "might be" an application, as it does with all archives in.zip,.gtz, or.dmg format. Also, not everyone uses Safari.
Safari will try to identify every file found in an archive. It can scan through a number of formats, including.dmg,.zip and.gz, to look for executables. If no executable is found and all files are identified as safe, the archive is decompressed and there is no warning. If an executable is found, and that include.exe files, a warning will say "This file contains an application."
Safari will also raise a flag if it cannot be sure everything contained in the file are safe files. This happens when it encounters a file it cannot decompress and scan itself, like in the discussed example, where a.tar file is contained inside a.gz file. Safari checks inside the.gz file, and since it cannot be sure of what's inside the.tar, it gives the warning: "This file might contain an application", with the option to cancel.
So you are right, this is what happen in this case.
But...
Other browsers will throw "might contain programs or bad things" dialogs for just about everything you try to download. Inexperienced users will see the message, and might decide to stop downloading files from fear of viruses. But those who decide to download files anyway will face up this dialog each time, to a point where clicking OK becomes automatic, and the original message loses its meaning.
On Safari, the warning only appears when an application is downloaded, or when the archive contains some compressed file in a seldom used format like.tar. So the most inexperienced users will rarely get a warning when downloading files, except when downloading an application.
That makes it a learning process to the user. They will learn that only applications or files containing obscure files like.tar trigger the warning, and that a.zip folder full of text, images or movies don't. In that case, most Safari users will find abnormal that this supposed gziped folder that is supposed to contain photos instead contains a.tar and triggers a warning.
I'm not saying that it's 100 percent idiot proof. But it's certainly better than the "every file on the internet can be bad" simplistic approach taken by other browsers.
"Interfaces are going to become more refined and they'll be standardized accross players."
Just like TV's, VCR's, DVD players and cell-phones have standardized interfaces across manufacturers?
Now seriously, if you look at the consumer electronic industry, you'll see that the tendency is not toward standardization of interface elements like menus and button layouts on the device or its remote control.
It seems that the standard model in consumer electronics is to experiment many things and try to see what sticks. The result is that the public is often used as guinea pigs. These companies constantly have to switch to new buttons, menu layouts and case designs to try to lure people into thinking that these are an improvement over the older models. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, most of these companies don't care much about because it's the way the industry works.
Many people (that also don't like Apple) are arguing that "choice is better", and that's what consumer want, a great variety of interfaces and form-factors so they can choose the one that better suit their need.
The reality is that the majority of people doesn't even want to have a choice when it comes to these kind of devices, few people have the time to research and compare products, and for many, having to chose in that jungle of products is an annoying experience.
At this point, many people buy iPods because it's what other people use, not only in a "trendy" kind of way, but because they can share tips and tricks about the iPod interface and iTunes, and because there is a lot more accessories for it that people can buy and discuss about. Consumers have choice even after buying the iPod to change the look of it and add uniqueness to it using cases, while keeping the same interface "everyone uses".
This is also one of the main reasons why people use Windows, but computers are different beasts. They are highly configurable multi-purpose devices that now have deep implications in modern societies, so it can't be left in the hands of a single company. But for portable music and video players, so what if %80 of consumers use the same brand of portable music player? As long as it's not Microsoft, since it would enable them to tie it to Windows.
People imagining brainwashed masses all using the same bland device forget about one thing, the main experience of the iPod is listening to YOUR music. iPods are "unique like you" where it counts, in their content.
As for FairPlay and the iTunes/iPod lock-in, I don't think that Apple thinks it can go on forever, but they will hold on to it as long as they have to, because as time passes they get more leverage for when they'll have to open it.
I read many comments saying "But isn't it what MS was accused of doing with the OS?". First, as previously said, the computer market is a different beast. Secondly, MS wasn't de-mantled by the DOJ, so it still exists and could easily impose DRMed WMA as an audio standard because it dominates the OS market. They would have got away with this because MS and the RIAA would have pleaded in front of the DOJ that this use of their monopoly is the only way to stop the "evil" piracy, and that's only if the DOJ actually reacted...
It's very possible that a few years ago, MS, the RIAA (and possibly Sony) planned to phase out standard audio CD's by 2004 or something, replacing all them with DRMed WMA (no need for root-kits etc since there wouldn't be any raw audio to hide). The plan was that by that time, MS would have dominated the portable and living-room digital audio device market trough WMA licensees. I guess that Sony's part in this plan was to stay with ATRAC for a few years, then they would have made a big fanfare when they would switch to WMA, to make it look more like an industry standard than a MS-only affair, and to show the way to other asian manufacturers. And by that time also, MS would have probably dropped MP3 support on their players
Now this plan failed, because of the iPod and FairPlay
Mac developers avoid asking for the admin password as much as they can. Bigger apps tend to ask it more because they need to modify the System folder for some reason.
On OS X, programs rarely need to do that, most applications (even big ones) are contained in a single icon you can drag to your application folder without needing an installer.
I think he meant that Apple may be in position to tell the music industry: "Look, if we all stop using DRM, MS, Napster, Real and Sony included, we'll all sell more tunes and it will solve the compatibility problem in a fair manner."
But I think they will wait as much as they can before doing that because as time goes by they get more negotiation power by holding onto the current model and expanding their market share.
I'm sure my theory wont fit in the minds of those who think that Apple and Steve Jobs is pro-DRM.
Jobs made a few (almost) anti-DRM statements in its career. When he said something like "you wouldn't want to burn in hell", when talking about piracy, what he was really saying is that "this copyright protection stuff has gone too far, people always get around it anyway, and because of that the music labels have decided to use scare tactics which is sad".
You overestimate the "stranglehold" effect that the iTMS DRM and AAC format provide. The iPod was as successful in countries that didn't have access to the online store for years. While the iTMS dominates the online music market, it's still a small part of the music that can be found on people's iPods and a very small part of the overall music market.
As for people ripping their CD's to AAC because it's default in iTunes (they can also use MP3 and other formats supported by the iPod), this is what Microsoft planned to do with WMA.
Apple has to compete against MS in the MP3 player/online music store market, and MS has the huge advantage of monopolizing the PC OS market, and that has much more implications than the iPod/iTMS dominance.
AAC is open enough that other competing players could support it if the need was there. But there is not much need for it and they are probably under some pressure from some "lonely over-zealous MS employee" not to include AAC in their PlayForSure players. So it works both ways...
In reality most people that own an iPod and have CD's ripped in AAC by default don't even realize that they could not directly use those tunes on a competing player. If they buy other iPods it's mostly because they are satisfied with their first iPod and the iTunes software, but also because of a conjecture of other factors not related to DRM and file format.
What are you talking about? When you burn a FairPlay song to a CD, it strips away the DRM and produce a standard audio CD. From that point, FairPlay doesn't do anything to prevent from ripping the audio back to AIFF or MP3.
If you are saying that the newer version of FairPlay causes you problems when ripping from an audio CD you burned from iTMS tunes, please provide more details, because nobody ever reported anything like that.
The PowerPC in the XBox 360 will still run at the same speed in 3 years... IBM just has to produce the same chip over and over for MS, Sony and Nintendo.
Microsoft and Sony paid a huge amount to IBM just so that they build factories to produce their CPU's, which won't change in the life of the console. Apple already paid IBM a good amount for them to produce the G5, and they couldn't reach 3.0Ghz like they promised, and it's almost like they invested Apple's money the video-game console chips...
IBM asked Apple for more money to get past 3.0GHz, and Apple decided that they paid them enough already. Despite all the investments they did in the PowerPC platform over the years, Moto and IBM always ran into supply problems, and the clock speed being stuck for months if not a whole year at a time.
IBM and Freescale seem to have trouble scaling the frequency on CPU's in a gradual manner, which is not good in the computer industry, but perfect for embedded application and video-game consoles.
Another thing is that the XBox 360 won't fit in a portable for sure, and IBM had no long term plan to produce low-power G5s and the PowerBooks are getting behind because of this. There was a long period where Apple's laptops were getting much better battery life than intel and AMD based laptops, and intel is beating the **** out of IBM on power-consumption.
Microsoft chose the PowerPC in part because they want to be sure people don't hack it to install Windows like people did on the original XBox.
Apple won't have to pay intel to build factories for them and scale the clock-speed, and they will be in sync with the majority of the PC industry, which is what people use for comparison.
I had already my own crazy theory about the inspiration for the iPod. (Note that I don't think it's necessarily the case, but the similarities are nonetheless interesting, at least to people that knows this synth! If you don't care, stop reading now and sorry for the two clicks you wasted!)
The Casio VL-Tone (aka VL-1) was the first Casio synth released, in 1981, at a time when they only made watches and calculator. It has been very popular and sold more than a million in the first half of the 80's and one of it's high-pitched rhythm was popularized by the German band Trio, in a song called "Da Da Da".
How is it similar to the iPod? Both are "portable" digital music playing gadget encased in white plastic and featuring LCD screens. Granted, one is a music instrument and the other a music juke-box, and the VL-Tone is too big to fit in ones pocket. Still the rounded white plastic case, gives a similar feeling to the synth. I don't think it was the first white synth, but still one of the rare synth primarily sold in white at the time. Just like the iPod, it really stood out of the crowd, when at the time. The VL-Tone came with a fake-leather sleeve, so you could avoid scratching it:)
Functionally, while the original iPod could hold 1000 songs, the VL-1 could store a whopping 99 notes, and that even when the power was turned off! Both have headphone jacks. The screen displayed notes on the VL-1 while on the iPod it can be song titles and lyrics. Both had non-music secondary functions, the iPod has a clock, a calendar and contacts, on the VL-Tone it was a built-in calculator, on a synth! (The story goes that Casio was afraid to go in the synth market, and this has been like a compromise) While the iPod has Linux as a geeky feature, one of the instrument included in the VL-1 had a programmable ADSR instrument, where each digit of the number stored in the calculator memory (M+) would modify an instrument property like, attack, decay, sustain, release and others.
About 1 or 2 years after the release of the VL-1, Casio released a functionally identical but much more portable version of the VL-1, called the VL-10, it was small enough so you could actually put it in your pocket and had an aluminum casing, just like the iPod mini.
Obviously there are also many things that are not similar... The VL-1 runs on AA batteries, it has much more buttons (but it's a synth keyboard!). Though it had some professional features like a screen, a real-time and step note sequencer and ADSR programming, the basic sound engine was ehmmm primitive but can be powerfull, very Nintendo-ish, and you couldn't play two notes at the same time. I actually suspect that many japanese NES music composers used the VL-1 to compose some of their tunes.
Anyhow, since the UK is a very synth-friendly country, and that the VL-Tone design is very iconic and a classic in electronic product design of the 80's, I wouldn't be surprised that Jonathan Ive, owned one of these and was inspired by it.
Oh well you may be right about the overlapping windows. But I never implied that Xerox didn't have them first or independently of Apple. I still think that some of the elements in the screenshot you provided were inspired by Apple's work. Also, you presented the screenshot like a living proof that Apple took it all from Xerox, and I felt like some little Apple history would help counter balance that.
In any-case the rest of my post was deemed informative by some mod:) (not that I like to brag about these things, but it's my first mod point on Slashdot)
Funny how these days I read those same examples everywhere about Mac OS X interface inconstancies.
Think about it, seriously... These are just changes in the way some buttons and windows look. Do you really imagine people being confused by this? "Oh no! this window has a grayscale gradient on it while this other window as some metal texture! What will I do, what will I do!!!".
Compare that to the web: just about every site uses a different look and layout for buttons, background and content!
Consistency doesn't supersede everything in human interface design. I think that OS X is consistent in the right areas (or at least tries to). I don't want every single app and window to always look the same and use the same set of standard buttons and widgets, that would result in a bland interface, and it would slow down innovation in interface elements.
This Xerox star picture dates from after Apple implemented the desktop metaphor in the Lisa and the Mac. The Xerox Palo Alto stuff Jobs saw was much more primitive than that. Apple actually implemented overlapping windows thinking that Xerox had it, but actually the first Xerox GUI computers didn't have overlapping windows. Just as Apple was inspired by the original Xerox work (which didn't feature overlapping windows and a desktop metaphor like in this late picture), Xerox was "inspired" by Apple's work on prototype interfaces , and Apple had a direct influence in the later Xerox Star OS.
Unlike the myth that continue to be repeated here every single day, Apple didn't "steal" the GUI from Xerox. Steve Jobs paid Xerox for the privilege of it's visit to Palo Alto, and some information was knowingly shared between the two companies while the Lisa and the Mac evolved. A couple of engineers from Xerox went to work to Apple as Xerox started to downsize it's computer research division. Many of them ended up designing the concepts behind the original Mac OS GUI. The desktop metaphor as we still see it today and on the Xerox Star picture is from Apple. And yeah some of it's elements comes from prior work from others, but the whole layout and the real-world details of it's workings. The devil is in the details as they say.
There was no consumer-targeted GUI based computer selling and documented at the time, aside from basic but sometime unpractical ideas that were experimented at a very basic level since the 60's. So the Mac and Lisa team had to "invent" many things and find ways to implement UI concepts into actual software. Microsoft on the other hand, had early access to the Mac and devkits, a near final product. Windows 1.0 was created to run cross platform applications that originated on the Mac (Word, Excel etc.). Microsoft built some byte-code-like API's that interfaced with the Mac OS in a deep way, so to run it on intel they essentially had to recreate part of the Mac ToolBox in Windows 1.0! I heard that you can even spot similar 4 letters resource types inside Win 1.0...
I'm tired of seeing people trying to dumb down the work on the original Mac OS. Go read http://folklore.org/ and try to open your mind a little. Things that are obvious now and were not obvious then. I don't think that Mac users claim that Apple invented it all, they will give Xerox and others. On the other hand, I see many people repeating falsities like "A stole it from X", and people that will invariably reply "Apple didn't invent that" at every single possible interface parts found in the original Mac system software.
The Mac.Simpson worm was running in OS 7-9, when it was easy for a program to install itself in the StarupItems folder. On OS X it's different, a program needs admin privileges to install and run itself automatically when you reboot the computer.
At the time, there were much less Macs connected to the internet. There are more Macs in use than ever and OS X still didn't have even one virus.
Even if security trough obscurity was the real reason behind it, it doesn't make the Mac less secure or more prone to viruses. An OS X virus wouldn't necessarily need Macs to send itself, it could piggyback on a Windows virus. But it wouldn't work, because it could not install itself to run in the background at startup.
Anyway why not recommend Macs to Grandmas and people who don't understand much about computers? Do you think the whole world will suddenly all switch to the Mac just because of you?
It should be a crime to recommend a Windows computer to a grandma:)
Somehow, I'm sure I read what I was writing about... And in my mind it made no sense for Apple to have ever announced a Win32 implementation in the Mac OS.
But yeah I got my boxes mixed up...(I bet won't get any good Karma for this post!)
I did google intel and Xenon before posting to be sure, and found hundreds of article about the "intel Xenon" chip. I guess these are all typos... Still the naming is close enough to confuse people it seems.
Microsoft never sold computer hardware, nor licenses to make "IBM compatible" hardware. (I'm sure someone will mention one of those ill-fated Microsoft ventures where they co-branded someone else's hardware, but last I checked, they only ever co-branded appliance devices, not general purpose personal computers.)
I was talking about MS-DOS, not hardware.
More like they called the Xenon processor a "G5-class" processor, but even that is stretching the truth a bit. (That's more my opinion than fact.) But I challenge you to cite Microsoft marketing material that actually uses the "G5" designation. You'll only find material relating to their use of Apple's G5 PowerMac hardware as their development system, most likely.
I got under the impression that MS officially used G5 to designate their processor. But you are right I can't find anything... Anyway my post was not about counter-arguments, as I agree with you that the XBOX 360 CPU is not a G5. I just thought you went too far and gave the impression it was a completely different architecture down to the instruction set. I think you also should have written about things that were obvious or implied to you, like the fact that it use mostly the same instruction set including VMX.
Also highly doubtful, as it makes no sense for Microsoft to cash in on an Apple naming scheme (which may in fact be trademarked). Furthermore, I don't see Microsoft's marketing machine trumpeting that the Xbox 360 is a "G5" hardware platform.
Well as I thought that MS already used G5 extensively in their marketing I assumed that G5 was not trademarked. Now I know that it's not true.
In any case, the word on the street is that the XBOX 360 runs on a triple-core G5, and it sure helps MS (compared to another non-x86 CPU platform). You said it yourself, it's easier to call a chip by this kind of name...
The only thing that is different now is that the proprietary UI and random Apple code (quartz, etc.) is now ported to x86/intel.
I'm tired of reading things similar to this phrase. Mac OS X is so much more than Darwin + proprietary UI and random Apple code. If you really think that OS X is just a cute windows manager on Darwin then you really don't know much about OS X. I would suggest you to read some Apple developer documentation about OS X's architecture.
"The similarity between the G5 and the Xenon core is that they both support the PowerPC instruction set and they both are 64-bit capable. That's about it."
Weird, isn't the Xenon an intel CPU? Oh well it's just the code-name...
You also forgot one thing... The Xbox 360 CPU will have three VMX units...What is VMX? Altivec or Velocity Engine...
But in any cases, Apple was the one that used the Gx monicker, Moto and IBM had other names for their chips (though the G3 was really code-named G3).
Microsoft just took the "G5" name prestige and ran with it. Kinda like they used the IBM name in the 80's to sell licenses to make "IBM compatible" machines. I guess they are also trying this with the "Xenon" name?
Funny thing, if it was not for MS, the Gx monicker would fade out just as Apple would stop selling PPC machines. Let's see... the machine after the Xbox 360 will feature a processor called the G6?
The Red Box is definitely not Carbon. Whatever the copy of Macworld you have in your mind reads.
At the time when Apple used the Red, Yellow Blue Box names there wasn't any (official) plans about Carbon. Apple first expected developers to port/rewrite all their apps to Cocoa API's!
Red Box was to be the Cocoa API's running in Windows, much like WINE would be on OS X intel but doing the opposite thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Intelligent Systems co. is a first party that design and distributes the official Nintendo dev kits and tools, including DS and GC tools. Many of these official Nintendo tools also exist for Mac OS. The actual Nintendo GameCube dev kit boxes are not PCs, they are custom boxes running a PowerPC and a Flipper GPU. Tools on PCs and Macs can be used to transfer data back and forth.
:)
:)
Nintendo's president, Mr. Iwata, delivered his last three keynotes standing behind his PowerBook/MacBook. Iwata quoted Steve Jobs at last year's E3 keynote, and said he admires him. Other Nintendo officials mentioned Apple a few times since then.
Shigeru Miyamoto is known to be a Mac user. I have a photo of him sitting at his desk at Nintendo and you can see a PowerMac there (It's an old photo I must admit)
Anyway I'm not trying to prove that there's a secret connection here, but certainly they share some of the same ideals.
The funny thing about the GameBoy Micro is that while it's obviously inspired by the iPod mini, the original iPod certainly was at least in part inspired by the GameBoy form factor, which itself may have been inspired by the original Macintosh shape
The important thing to remember is that Apple and Nintendo don't compete directly with one another, their markets don't overlap and are complementary. Apple now does most of what Microsoft and Sony do (Computers, OS, Music/Media distribution, consumer electronics) except games. On the other hand, Nintendo is focused on games and game consoles.
I think that the reason why nothing happens between Apple and Nintendo is that Steve Jobs didn't play enough Nintendo games in his life
While it was funny, I'm not sure what you meant with your "additional" editing. I'm not denying that the nano scratches easily. I just don't think it warranted a class action suit claiming that using it normally renders the screen unreadable in two weeks.
I have a 6 months old iPod nano, I use it almost everyday, without a protective case...Sure there are tiny scratches all over the surface, but the screen is still perfectly readable. It's only a cosmetic problem that can be taken care of with some $5 scratch repair kit. If you really care about this cosmetic aspect then buy a case or use the included one...
Steve Berman from Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro was one of the lawyers handling the nano suit. He's one of Microsoft's favorite lawyer, having defending MS in more than 50 class-action suits made by the states and consumers.
Let's say that the following is completely speculative and happens in fantasy-land. (I don't wan't to get sued!)
One day in autumn 2005, Bill Gates is playing golf with his lawyer friend Steve Berman.
-Steve: Did you see the new iPod nano?
-Bill: Yeah yeah I did...nice little player but you know my position about iPods... We had big plans with the RIAA to impose WMA as the audio standard, by this year we were supposed to drop Red-Book audio from all CD sold in the US, replacing the content with DRMed WMA. You can imagine how the iPod and iTMS screws up our plans badly.
-Steve: I guess many big-players are pissed-off by the iPod success.
-Bill: Yes they are, but the iPod seems unstoppable... Even with dozens of our ghost-writers publishing negative articles about the iPod, it keeps dominating the market.
-Steve: I've read that the iPod nano scratches very easily, and that some of the early batches had screens that spontaneously break.
-Bill: I know about it, our ghost-writers are already trying to spread the word... but we need something bigger, we don't have a choice.
-Steve: There's a guy that built a website to complain about his iPod nano screen problems and he's very vocal about it.
-Bill: What if your law firm gave him a hand to help him build a class-action suit against Apple?
-Steve: Yeah we could do that, but what if he doesn't want to be part of the lawsuit?
-Bill: I'm %100 sure your great firm will be able to "convince" him... And by the way, you owe me that, remember that "thing" I sent you last month?
-Steve: Oh right, that "thing" was very enjoyable... I guess I owe you that one...Let me see what I can do!
I may not get modded up because I have no obvious grammatical rule to back me up, but I think that "Le iPod est mort, vive le iPod" sounds better.
And yeah my native tongue is French. I know it's a common mistake for english speakers to say things like "le avion" when they should say "l'avion", but in this specific case I think that "Le iPod" is a better choice.
If you pronounce iPod in English the "i" sounds like a "h aspiré", in French, it's also close to an "h aspiré", but we cannot rename iPod to hiPod in French. With that kind of "h", you cannot make a liaison (link between words). Just like we say "la harpe joue de la musique", we can say "Le iPod joue de la musique". There are already exceptions for short words like some numbers like "onze" . You have to say "Le onze novembre", not "l'onze".
Anyway I guess it's a French Canadian thing, as I'm sure the French from France are more inclined to put a "liaison" when in doubt, because they like to gloat about correctly pronouncing every visible and hidden word "liaisons", comparing themselves to the French that's spoken in their colonies (like here in Quebec).
As for the original poster thinking the iPod was feminine in French. It's interesting to note that in France, video-game consoles are feminine. They say "La NES, la n64, la Playstation". In Canada/Quebec, we decided to use masculine for video-game consoles so we say "Le NES, Le n64, Le PS1", but we do say "La Xbox", since I guess box in French (boîte) is feminine.
Actually, if you try to open any app for the first time, it asks you first.
I feel like I'm repeating myself, but it doesn't display any dialog in this particular case. It should though and I hope Apple fixes this.
Clicking on the executable will also prompt you with the "you haven't run this application before" dialog.
No true in this case.
It doesn't display the dialog for a unix script...That's the problem with this one.
If I'm not mistaken it warns you that it "might be" an application, as it does with all archives in .zip, .gtz, or .dmg format. Also, not everyone uses Safari.
Safari will try to identify every file found in an archive. It can scan through a number of formats, including .dmg, .zip and .gz, to look for executables. If no executable is found and all files are identified as safe, the archive is decompressed and there is no warning. If an executable is found, and that include .exe files, a warning will say "This file contains an application."
Safari will also raise a flag if it cannot be sure everything contained in the file are safe files. This happens when it encounters a file it cannot decompress and scan itself, like in the discussed example, where a .tar file is contained inside a .gz file. Safari checks inside the .gz file, and since it cannot be sure of what's inside the .tar, it gives the warning: "This file might contain an application", with the option to cancel.
So you are right, this is what happen in this case.
But...Other browsers will throw "might contain programs or bad things" dialogs for just about everything you try to download. Inexperienced users will see the message, and might decide to stop downloading files from fear of viruses. But those who decide to download files anyway will face up this dialog each time, to a point where clicking OK becomes automatic, and the original message loses its meaning.
On Safari, the warning only appears when an application is downloaded, or when the archive contains some compressed file in a seldom used format likeThat makes it a learning process to the user. They will learn that only applications or files containing obscure files like .tar trigger the warning, and that a .zip folder full of text, images or movies don't. In that case, most Safari users will find abnormal that this supposed gziped folder that is supposed to contain photos instead contains a .tar and triggers a warning.
I'm not saying that it's 100 percent idiot proof. But it's certainly better than the "every file on the internet can be bad" simplistic approach taken by other browsers.
"Interfaces are going to become more refined and they'll be standardized accross players."
Just like TV's, VCR's, DVD players and cell-phones have standardized interfaces across manufacturers?
Now seriously, if you look at the consumer electronic industry, you'll see that the tendency is not toward standardization of interface elements like menus and button layouts on the device or its remote control.
It seems that the standard model in consumer electronics is to experiment many things and try to see what sticks. The result is that the public is often used as guinea pigs. These companies constantly have to switch to new buttons, menu layouts and case designs to try to lure people into thinking that these are an improvement over the older models. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, most of these companies don't care much about because it's the way the industry works.
Many people (that also don't like Apple) are arguing that "choice is better", and that's what consumer want, a great variety of interfaces and form-factors so they can choose the one that better suit their need.
The reality is that the majority of people doesn't even want to have a choice when it comes to these kind of devices, few people have the time to research and compare products, and for many, having to chose in that jungle of products is an annoying experience.
At this point, many people buy iPods because it's what other people use, not only in a "trendy" kind of way, but because they can share tips and tricks about the iPod interface and iTunes, and because there is a lot more accessories for it that people can buy and discuss about. Consumers have choice even after buying the iPod to change the look of it and add uniqueness to it using cases, while keeping the same interface "everyone uses".
This is also one of the main reasons why people use Windows, but computers are different beasts. They are highly configurable multi-purpose devices that now have deep implications in modern societies, so it can't be left in the hands of a single company. But for portable music and video players, so what if %80 of consumers use the same brand of portable music player? As long as it's not Microsoft, since it would enable them to tie it to Windows.
People imagining brainwashed masses all using the same bland device forget about one thing, the main experience of the iPod is listening to YOUR music. iPods are "unique like you" where it counts, in their content.
As for FairPlay and the iTunes/iPod lock-in, I don't think that Apple thinks it can go on forever, but they will hold on to it as long as they have to, because as time passes they get more leverage for when they'll have to open it.
I read many comments saying "But isn't it what MS was accused of doing with the OS?". First, as previously said, the computer market is a different beast. Secondly, MS wasn't de-mantled by the DOJ, so it still exists and could easily impose DRMed WMA as an audio standard because it dominates the OS market. They would have got away with this because MS and the RIAA would have pleaded in front of the DOJ that this use of their monopoly is the only way to stop the "evil" piracy, and that's only if the DOJ actually reacted...
It's very possible that a few years ago, MS, the RIAA (and possibly Sony) planned to phase out standard audio CD's by 2004 or something, replacing all them with DRMed WMA (no need for root-kits etc since there wouldn't be any raw audio to hide). The plan was that by that time, MS would have dominated the portable and living-room digital audio device market trough WMA licensees. I guess that Sony's part in this plan was to stay with ATRAC for a few years, then they would have made a big fanfare when they would switch to WMA, to make it look more like an industry standard than a MS-only affair, and to show the way to other asian manufacturers. And by that time also, MS would have probably dropped MP3 support on their players
Now this plan failed, because of the iPod and FairPlay
It's not about being a big or small company.
Mac developers avoid asking for the admin password as much as they can. Bigger apps tend to ask it more because they need to modify the System folder for some reason.
On OS X, programs rarely need to do that, most applications (even big ones) are contained in a single icon you can drag to your application folder without needing an installer.
I think he meant that Apple may be in position to tell the music industry: "Look, if we all stop using DRM, MS, Napster, Real and Sony included, we'll all sell more tunes and it will solve the compatibility problem in a fair manner."
But I think they will wait as much as they can before doing that because as time goes by they get more negotiation power by holding onto the current model and expanding their market share.
I'm sure my theory wont fit in the minds of those who think that Apple and Steve Jobs is pro-DRM.
Jobs made a few (almost) anti-DRM statements in its career. When he said something like "you wouldn't want to burn in hell", when talking about piracy, what he was really saying is that "this copyright protection stuff has gone too far, people always get around it anyway, and because of that the music labels have decided to use scare tactics which is sad".
You overestimate the "stranglehold" effect that the iTMS DRM and AAC format provide. The iPod was as successful in countries that didn't have access to the online store for years. While the iTMS dominates the online music market, it's still a small part of the music that can be found on people's iPods and a very small part of the overall music market. As for people ripping their CD's to AAC because it's default in iTunes (they can also use MP3 and other formats supported by the iPod), this is what Microsoft planned to do with WMA. Apple has to compete against MS in the MP3 player/online music store market, and MS has the huge advantage of monopolizing the PC OS market, and that has much more implications than the iPod/iTMS dominance. AAC is open enough that other competing players could support it if the need was there. But there is not much need for it and they are probably under some pressure from some "lonely over-zealous MS employee" not to include AAC in their PlayForSure players. So it works both ways... In reality most people that own an iPod and have CD's ripped in AAC by default don't even realize that they could not directly use those tunes on a competing player. If they buy other iPods it's mostly because they are satisfied with their first iPod and the iTunes software, but also because of a conjecture of other factors not related to DRM and file format.
What are you talking about? When you burn a FairPlay song to a CD, it strips away the DRM and produce a standard audio CD. From that point, FairPlay doesn't do anything to prevent from ripping the audio back to AIFF or MP3.
If you are saying that the newer version of FairPlay causes you problems when ripping from an audio CD you burned from iTMS tunes, please provide more details, because nobody ever reported anything like that.
The PowerPC in the XBox 360 will still run at the same speed in 3 years... IBM just has to produce the same chip over and over for MS, Sony and Nintendo.
Microsoft and Sony paid a huge amount to IBM just so that they build factories to produce their CPU's, which won't change in the life of the console. Apple already paid IBM a good amount for them to produce the G5, and they couldn't reach 3.0Ghz like they promised, and it's almost like they invested Apple's money the video-game console chips...
IBM asked Apple for more money to get past 3.0GHz, and Apple decided that they paid them enough already. Despite all the investments they did in the PowerPC platform over the years, Moto and IBM always ran into supply problems, and the clock speed being stuck for months if not a whole year at a time.
IBM and Freescale seem to have trouble scaling the frequency on CPU's in a gradual manner, which is not good in the computer industry, but perfect for embedded application and video-game consoles.
Another thing is that the XBox 360 won't fit in a portable for sure, and IBM had no long term plan to produce low-power G5s and the PowerBooks are getting behind because of this. There was a long period where Apple's laptops were getting much better battery life than intel and AMD based laptops, and intel is beating the **** out of IBM on power-consumption.
Microsoft chose the PowerPC in part because they want to be sure people don't hack it to install Windows like people did on the original XBox.
Apple won't have to pay intel to build factories for them and scale the clock-speed, and they will be in sync with the majority of the PC industry, which is what people use for comparison.
I had already my own crazy theory about the inspiration for the iPod. (Note that I don't think it's necessarily the case, but the similarities are nonetheless interesting, at least to people that knows this synth! If you don't care, stop reading now and sorry for the two clicks you wasted!)
:)
The Casio VL-Tone (aka VL-1) was the first Casio synth released, in 1981, at a time when they only made watches and calculator. It has been very popular and sold more than a million in the first half of the 80's and one of it's high-pitched rhythm was popularized by the German band Trio, in a song called "Da Da Da".
http://www.synthmuseum.com/casio/casvltone01.html
http://www.hollowsun.com/vintage/casio_vl1/
(the seconth linked page says it was released in 1979, but I think it's a mistake)
How is it similar to the iPod? Both are "portable" digital music playing gadget encased in white plastic and featuring LCD screens. Granted, one is a music instrument and the other a music juke-box, and the VL-Tone is too big to fit in ones pocket. Still the rounded white plastic case, gives a similar feeling to the synth. I don't think it was the first white synth, but still one of the rare synth primarily sold in white at the time. Just like the iPod, it really stood out of the crowd, when at the time. The VL-Tone came with a fake-leather sleeve, so you could avoid scratching it
Functionally, while the original iPod could hold 1000 songs, the VL-1 could store a whopping 99 notes, and that even when the power was turned off! Both have headphone jacks. The screen displayed notes on the VL-1 while on the iPod it can be song titles and lyrics. Both had non-music secondary functions, the iPod has a clock, a calendar and contacts, on the VL-Tone it was a built-in calculator, on a synth! (The story goes that Casio was afraid to go in the synth market, and this has been like a compromise) While the iPod has Linux as a geeky feature, one of the instrument included in the VL-1 had a programmable ADSR instrument, where each digit of the number stored in the calculator memory (M+) would modify an instrument property like, attack, decay, sustain, release and others.
About 1 or 2 years after the release of the VL-1, Casio released a functionally identical but much more portable version of the VL-1, called the VL-10, it was small enough so you could actually put it in your pocket and had an aluminum casing, just like the iPod mini.
Obviously there are also many things that are not similar... The VL-1 runs on AA batteries, it has much more buttons (but it's a synth keyboard!). Though it had some professional features like a screen, a real-time and step note sequencer and ADSR programming, the basic sound engine was ehmmm primitive but can be powerfull, very Nintendo-ish, and you couldn't play two notes at the same time. I actually suspect that many japanese NES music composers used the VL-1 to compose some of their tunes.
Anyhow, since the UK is a very synth-friendly country, and that the VL-Tone design is very iconic and a classic in electronic product design of the 80's, I wouldn't be surprised that Jonathan Ive, owned one of these and was inspired by it.
Oh well you may be right about the overlapping windows. But I never implied that Xerox didn't have them first or independently of Apple. I still think that some of the elements in the screenshot you provided were inspired by Apple's work. Also, you presented the screenshot like a living proof that Apple took it all from Xerox, and I felt like some little Apple history would help counter balance that.
:) (not that I like to brag about these things, but it's my first mod point on Slashdot)
In any-case the rest of my post was deemed informative by some mod
Funny how these days I read those same examples everywhere about Mac OS X interface inconstancies.
Think about it, seriously... These are just changes in the way some buttons and windows look. Do you really imagine people being confused by this? "Oh no! this window has a grayscale gradient on it while this other window as some metal texture! What will I do, what will I do!!!".
Compare that to the web: just about every site uses a different look and layout for buttons, background and content!
Consistency doesn't supersede everything in human interface design. I think that OS X is consistent in the right areas (or at least tries to). I don't want every single app and window to always look the same and use the same set of standard buttons and widgets, that would result in a bland interface, and it would slow down innovation in interface elements.
You know, as time progresses, things change :)
This Xerox star picture dates from after Apple implemented the desktop metaphor in the Lisa and the Mac. The Xerox Palo Alto stuff Jobs saw was much more primitive than that. Apple actually implemented overlapping windows thinking that Xerox had it, but actually the first Xerox GUI computers didn't have overlapping windows. Just as Apple was inspired by the original Xerox work (which didn't feature overlapping windows and a desktop metaphor like in this late picture), Xerox was "inspired" by Apple's work on prototype interfaces , and Apple had a direct influence in the later Xerox Star OS.
Unlike the myth that continue to be repeated here every single day, Apple didn't "steal" the GUI from Xerox. Steve Jobs paid Xerox for the privilege of it's visit to Palo Alto, and some information was knowingly shared between the two companies while the Lisa and the Mac evolved. A couple of engineers from Xerox went to work to Apple as Xerox started to downsize it's computer research division. Many of them ended up designing the concepts behind the original Mac OS GUI. The desktop metaphor as we still see it today and on the Xerox Star picture is from Apple. And yeah some of it's elements comes from prior work from others, but the whole layout and the real-world details of it's workings. The devil is in the details as they say.
There was no consumer-targeted GUI based computer selling and documented at the time, aside from basic but sometime unpractical ideas that were experimented at a very basic level since the 60's. So the Mac and Lisa team had to "invent" many things and find ways to implement UI concepts into actual software. Microsoft on the other hand, had early access to the Mac and devkits, a near final product. Windows 1.0 was created to run cross platform applications that originated on the Mac (Word, Excel etc.). Microsoft built some byte-code-like API's that interfaced with the Mac OS in a deep way, so to run it on intel they essentially had to recreate part of the Mac ToolBox in Windows 1.0! I heard that you can even spot similar 4 letters resource types inside Win 1.0...
I'm tired of seeing people trying to dumb down the work on the original Mac OS. Go read http://folklore.org/ and try to open your mind a little. Things that are obvious now and were not obvious then. I don't think that Mac users claim that Apple invented it all, they will give Xerox and others. On the other hand, I see many people repeating falsities like "A stole it from X", and people that will invariably reply "Apple didn't invent that" at every single possible interface parts found in the original Mac system software.
The Mac.Simpson worm was running in OS 7-9, when it was easy for a program to install itself in the StarupItems folder. On OS X it's different, a program needs admin privileges to install and run itself automatically when you reboot the computer.
:)
At the time, there were much less Macs connected to the internet. There are more Macs in use than ever and OS X still didn't have even one virus.
Even if security trough obscurity was the real reason behind it, it doesn't make the Mac less secure or more prone to viruses. An OS X virus wouldn't necessarily need Macs to send itself, it could piggyback on a Windows virus. But it wouldn't work, because it could not install itself to run in the background at startup.
Anyway why not recommend Macs to Grandmas and people who don't understand much about computers? Do you think the whole world will suddenly all switch to the Mac just because of you?
It should be a crime to recommend a Windows computer to a grandma
Ok I admit I was all wrong... :)
Somehow, I'm sure I read what I was writing about... And in my mind it made no sense for Apple to have ever announced a Win32 implementation in the Mac OS.
But yeah I got my boxes mixed up...(I bet won't get any good Karma for this post!)
Well you can see how clueless I am about intel :)
I did google intel and Xenon before posting to be sure, and found hundreds of article about the "intel Xenon" chip. I guess these are all typos... Still the naming is close enough to confuse people it seems.
Microsoft never sold computer hardware, nor licenses to make "IBM compatible" hardware. (I'm sure someone will mention one of those ill-fated Microsoft ventures where they co-branded someone else's hardware, but last I checked, they only ever co-branded appliance devices, not general purpose personal computers.)
I was talking about MS-DOS, not hardware.
More like they called the Xenon processor a "G5-class" processor, but even that is stretching the truth a bit. (That's more my opinion than fact.) But I challenge you to cite Microsoft marketing material that actually uses the "G5" designation. You'll only find material relating to their use of Apple's G5 PowerMac hardware as their development system, most likely.
I got under the impression that MS officially used G5 to designate their processor. But you are right I can't find anything... Anyway my post was not about counter-arguments, as I agree with you that the XBOX 360 CPU is not a G5. I just thought you went too far and gave the impression it was a completely different architecture down to the instruction set. I think you also should have written about things that were obvious or implied to you, like the fact that it use mostly the same instruction set including VMX.
Also highly doubtful, as it makes no sense for Microsoft to cash in on an Apple naming scheme (which may in fact be trademarked). Furthermore, I don't see Microsoft's marketing machine trumpeting that the Xbox 360 is a "G5" hardware platform.
Well as I thought that MS already used G5 extensively in their marketing I assumed that G5 was not trademarked. Now I know that it's not true.
In any case, the word on the street is that the XBOX 360 runs on a triple-core G5, and it sure helps MS (compared to another non-x86 CPU platform). You said it yourself, it's easier to call a chip by this kind of name...
The only thing that is different now is that the proprietary UI and random Apple code (quartz, etc.) is now ported to x86/intel.
I'm tired of reading things similar to this phrase. Mac OS X is so much more than Darwin + proprietary UI and random Apple code. If you really think that OS X is just a cute windows manager on Darwin then you really don't know much about OS X. I would suggest you to read some Apple developer documentation about OS X's architecture.
"The similarity between the G5 and the Xenon core is that they both support the PowerPC instruction set and they both are 64-bit capable. That's about it." Weird, isn't the Xenon an intel CPU? Oh well it's just the code-name... You also forgot one thing... The Xbox 360 CPU will have three VMX units...What is VMX? Altivec or Velocity Engine... But in any cases, Apple was the one that used the Gx monicker, Moto and IBM had other names for their chips (though the G3 was really code-named G3). Microsoft just took the "G5" name prestige and ran with it. Kinda like they used the IBM name in the 80's to sell licenses to make "IBM compatible" machines. I guess they are also trying this with the "Xenon" name? Funny thing, if it was not for MS, the Gx monicker would fade out just as Apple would stop selling PPC machines. Let's see... the machine after the Xbox 360 will feature a processor called the G6?
The Red Box is definitely not Carbon. Whatever the copy of Macworld you have in your mind reads. At the time when Apple used the Red, Yellow Blue Box names there wasn't any (official) plans about Carbon. Apple first expected developers to port/rewrite all their apps to Cocoa API's! Red Box was to be the Cocoa API's running in Windows, much like WINE would be on OS X intel but doing the opposite thing.