Video VOIP was around before that and the concept of video phones has been around for decades. It's funny that it probably won't really take off until Apple or Google add it to their devices though. Apple and Google have taken a lot of technology that's already been around or isn't particularly new, but they actually make that technology usable for the 95% of people who are non-technophiles.
If HP sells a few million of these devices in the first year of sales (Which really isn't a terribly large prediction considering that the iPad has probably sold close to two million units already.) that's several million people who might be interested in paying for apps. Since developers are people and people need to eat, sometimes it's better to go where the money is rather than basing development off of reasons such as openness of the platform or ease of development. If Android and iPhone marketplaces get crowded, WebOS might be an attractive platform for new developers who don't want to compete against several established developers.
Will be interesting to see what kind of approach HP takes with WebOS. They're in a unique position where they might have the best of both the iPad and Android tablet worlds in that they can provide a much more open experience akin to Android, but still be able to achieve the advantages Apple has from designing both the software and the hardware. Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
I'm aware that hard disk capacity follows a trend similar to Moore's law in that capacity roughly doubles every two years or thereabouts, but much like the CPU industry, does anyone know how far into the future magnetic storage will continue to scale at that pace? Even though solid state drives are becoming more affordable and the performance issues are being ironed out, when magnetic storage is only $70 / TB, it's hard to pass up. I'm just interested in how much longer we can expect to see capacity gains like this.
Is there anyone who currently works in that area or has a background in magnetic storage who has a better idea?
And if Moore's law continues to hold, within the next four years it won't be an issue to put both of those chips on the same die. Hell, that may even be the budget option.
Because having bad price to performance has killed Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, and other such manufacturers. Reports usually peg Apple has getting 10% of the market in terms of computers, but something ridiculous like 40% of the profit. If the other 90% of the market is only as good as their 10%, do they really care?
A quick Google search gave an article that says 7% revenue share, 35% profit. Maybe they're interested in sniping the high-margin sales from the other manufacturers, but they're probably content to let everyone else fight over the bottom half of the market.
Not to detract from your overall point, but there are plenty of alarm clock apps on the app store that will probably work for the iPad. The iPad could probably do about 90% of what the average person needed. If you were to allow me to use it to ssh into other machines, it could probably do about 90% of what I needed to do.
It's that 10% that I'm going to miss though. I don't think it's meant to be a replacement for general purpose computers. Yet. I have a feeling that Apple wants to move in that direction. OS X has been a good product for several years, but hasn't made much of a dent in Windows market share. Does it surprise anyone that Apple wants to completely change the game?
Microsoft is completely anemic in this market space, and it very well may be the future of computing. Apple is diving it head first, and it looks like Google and HP will be following shortly with Android and PalmOS. I'm willing to bet we'll see the "Year of the Linux Tablet" before we see it on notebooks or desktops. I'm guessing that in the next few years at least half of iPad-category devices will run some variant of Linux.
Most phones have rootability, just not as easily as the Nexus One. Suffice to say, anyone who would want to root a Nexus One can easily root their Droid, iPhone, or whatever else they might have. The only significant difference is that that you could get root on the Nexus One from day one. The Droid took a few weeks. I can't recall how long it took for the original iPhone, but the more recent versions of the iPhone OS have only taken a few weeks.
I don't own either a Droid or an iPhone, so I can't speak to the roadblocks you mention, but I have friends with both devices and neither has had any issues when rooting them. If you're the kind of person who needs root, there's a way to do so for pretty much any device. If you don't posses the ability to follow the basic steps needed to root the device, odds are you shouldn't have root anyway.
Doesn't really surprise me at all. Steve wants a controlled user experience and geeks want the freedom to do whatever the hell they want to do. The two clash. Steve is right though, we don't have to buy his devices, so don't. It's that easy. I do like Steve's quote at the end of the exchange, however. For as many people bitch about Apple here, there aren't enough that actually go out and do something about it. Even if you're not a developer, you can still vote with your wallet. If you want to drive FOSS to greater prominence, either help by using it or help by creating and fixing it. Complaining about Apple on the internet won't do much. Creating or helping to improve FOSS is only real way to stick it to Apple.
So how long do we wait for a better option? If you've got one I'd certainly like to hear it, because we've already passed the point where people's livelihoods are being ruined. This isn't exactly a problem where we can afford to spend several years debating the optimal solution. If no one else has a solution, then yes, "blowing something up" is certainly the best option.
Compared to the Droid, the sales weren't all that great and they do raise the excellent point that many people want to be able to hold it before they commit to the purchase. Also, there are several other Android phones (e.g. Droid Incredible) that have been described as better than the Nexus One and available on a wider range of carriers. By the end of the summer, the Nexus One won't be state of the art as far as Android phones go so there's no real reason for them to continue selling it.
I imagine that they're working on a Nexus Two, so they'll eventually replace it with something else. Hopefully they get the customer service bugs worked out next time around, as that may be one of the potential reasons the device didn't sell as well as I expected it to sell.
Stop and think about the number of people that use Wikipedia as their first stop shop for information about a topic with which they're not familiar. Then think about the number of people that extend that just a little farther and use Wikipedia as their *one* stop shop for information. This is not a small minority of people in my best estimates based on real world observations. Alexa ranks them sixth, behind only Google, Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo, and Live.com. Search engines tend to give Wikipedia articles a high placement when they correspond to search terms. Their mindshare is such that people will say something to the effect: "Why don't you just Wikipedia it?" They've become a verb, much like how Google is synonymous with search.
Wikipedia admins have the power to shape the information that a decent size of the world's population trusts and relies on for various reasons. They're almost an unofficial Ministry of Truth. The amount of power which they wield is terrifying, and the fact that so few people recognize this is utterly horrific. If you're the type of person that thinks that either Google or Facebook is untrustworthy, you must realize the Wikipedia is several times worse.
Find out what you didn't learn in college but the company expects you to know and start learning. Fast.
You've probably learned a lot in college, but there are plenty of things you weren't taught that you'll eventually need to learn in order to succeed. Some of them are related to programing, a few are related the the corporate culture of the place at which you're employed, but a lot are just people skills that are acquired the hard way.
Most importantly, don't be afraid to ask for help if you're in over your head. If there's something you don't understand, ask someone else for help. It's a good way to make friends/acquaintances within the company and saves you the time of wandering around clueless. Personal initiative and a good work ethic will get you far, but when you first start out there are a lot of things you won't know or have any experience with.
Best of luck to you on your new career. Hopefully you do well and can impart some advice of your own to future generations.
I'm assuming that the App would work on the iPod Touch since it too uses the iPhone OS. I'm guessing that the story name stems from this fact. If the device came out for the Droid or Nexus One, the story name would have probably been "Android App Helps To Cure Vertigo." I can see how the device and the operating system sharing the same name might be confusing.
Your assumption only holds true if end users expect the same out of the iPad that they would out of a netbook or notebook. I believe that the different form factor may cause a large percentage of buyers to separate the two into different categories. If people don't expect to be able to use an iPad (Or any other similar tablet device for that matter.) in the same way that they would use a notebook, they won't buy the netbook.
The majority of people in the world are consumers, not creators, and tablet devices provide a definite edge in terms of consumption. Tablet devices can handle the content creation in a pinch, but for any serious work I think most people would prefer a large notebook or a desktop over a netbook anyhow. Consumption ability on tablets is superior to netbooks and the creation ability on netbooks isn't honestly all that great compared to a notebook or a desktop. My own personal belief is that the iPad hasn't killed netbook sales so much as consumers have realized that netbooks aren't providing the experience that they were expecting. Any convenience factor they may have had has been largely eroded by tablet devices.
The only argument that really exists is that the iPad limits the software that can be installed. This argument against tablet devices disappears once Android tablets start hitting the market later this year. They won't have the same restrictions and multiple manufacturers will be able to compete on price, providing more affordable alternatives to the iPad. The netbook is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
I can understand the project team wanting to release some information to the press to garner support and perhaps additional funding, but much like the Edison quote, they may have only found a way that doesn't work, or at least not very well. They might devise several hundred other methods or processes for printing solar cells on paper before they manage to figure out how to produce efficient cells in a cost-effective manner. Having some initial success and publishing it in order to secure additional funding can go along way towards helping get through all of those other ways that don't work so that they can find the one that will.
It only makes it slightly harder to pirate something. If I can see or hear it, there's a way to record it. Killing off analogue is probably more about making you buy new versions of the same stuff more so than stopping piracy. I imagine some crafty bastard will develop a physical device that reopens the analogue hole for anyone who doesn't want to upgrade. The main issue is that the content companies will try to get such a device declared illegal, probably over piracy claims, but it's really about making everyone buy new hardware. Since the technical reasons for upgrading aren't overly compelling, it's necessary for them to do something to keep revenue up.
1. They look into it, but decide not to pursue legal action against Apple. I'd say there's a moderately good chance that they decide it's not worth bringing suit against Apple. Good for Apple, questionable for users, bad for third party developers. Nothing really changes.
2. They look into it, bring legal action against Apple and Apple is forced to change their policy. Bad for Apple, questionable for users, good for third party developers.
3. They look into it, threaten suit against Apple, and Apple meets them halfway by allowing third party apps to be installed outside of the App Store, possibly by downloading them to your computer and syncing them from there. Probably the solution where everyone is at least somewhat satisfied. Apple keeps control of their store, third party developers still have a way to get their software on the phone, and users can install anything they want without requiring Apple's permission.
I say questionable in cases 1 and 2 because it may reduce the overall quality of software on the App Store resulting in more choices for users and a larger selection of apps, but the possibility of getting craptacular cross-platform apps the run into the lowest common denominator issue Steve mentioned in his post. It really depends on your overall philosophy.
The game can be quite micro-heavy, especially for certain unit types, but with the matchmaking system if you're not capable of playing at that level, you will rarely get stuck playing against someone who is and is capable of easily wiping the floor with you. The general idea behind their match-making system is that you should win about as many games as you lose so that it will always be a challenging and enjoyable experience. At least that's the theory. We'll have to see how well it actually works when the game finally launches.
If you don't care to learn those abilities, you'll likely play other people who can't or can't be bothered to learn them either.The original Starcraft tended towards high micromanagement ability requirements at the highest levels of play, but it may just be that you never got that far or even thought about how to effectively micro the vanilla units. You should check out some of the video casts of the various SC tournaments if you're interested in seeing some great high-level play. It's absolutely crazy watching some of the best players.
The technology sounds impressive, but then they just give it the kiss of death by announcing that it's five years away. Five years from now it will still be five years away, probably because while it's possible to do, no one has been able to do it in a cost-effective manner. Also if Intel can keep up with their current roadmap, they'll probably be using something close to a 10 nm process. I know that both Global Foundaries and TSMC are working on their 28 nm process (Although they are behind schedule.) so it's not inconceivable that the rest of the industry will already be at that point anyhow.
It's not necessarily special to me; however, I see that you've listed your email address which makes it incredibly easy for me, a person with no other information about you, to invade your privacy. Going through your regular mail requires physical access to it. I can try getting at your email from almost anywhere on the planet, or probably even off of it. In that case, there may be some question about the precedence of local laws and such. Which state laws apply? The state of the accused, the state where the servers reside, or something else?
The only other difference I can think of off of the top of my head is that committing computer crimes may also include limitations to the offenders usage of a computer in the future to prevent them from being able to commit the crime again. This is probably reserved for more severe cases, but it's something. Someone more well versed in computer law would probably have a better answer.
You could always run a Windows VM and install iTunes, purchase some songs, move them over to your Linux partition and convert them to Ogg Vorbis. You could also use Audacity to stream rip the audio from the web player and save a local copy.
In the future just remember to be leery about purchasing things that you don't actually own, whether this is DRM-encumbered files or content you can only stream through the web. Eventually it'll go away, leaving you without much recourse.
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Video VOIP was around before that and the concept of video phones has been around for decades. It's funny that it probably won't really take off until Apple or Google add it to their devices though. Apple and Google have taken a lot of technology that's already been around or isn't particularly new, but they actually make that technology usable for the 95% of people who are non-technophiles.
So why would anyone choose to develop for it?
If HP sells a few million of these devices in the first year of sales (Which really isn't a terribly large prediction considering that the iPad has probably sold close to two million units already.) that's several million people who might be interested in paying for apps. Since developers are people and people need to eat, sometimes it's better to go where the money is rather than basing development off of reasons such as openness of the platform or ease of development. If Android and iPhone marketplaces get crowded, WebOS might be an attractive platform for new developers who don't want to compete against several established developers.
Will be interesting to see what kind of approach HP takes with WebOS. They're in a unique position where they might have the best of both the iPad and Android tablet worlds in that they can provide a much more open experience akin to Android, but still be able to achieve the advantages Apple has from designing both the software and the hardware. Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
I'm aware that hard disk capacity follows a trend similar to Moore's law in that capacity roughly doubles every two years or thereabouts, but much like the CPU industry, does anyone know how far into the future magnetic storage will continue to scale at that pace? Even though solid state drives are becoming more affordable and the performance issues are being ironed out, when magnetic storage is only $70 / TB, it's hard to pass up. I'm just interested in how much longer we can expect to see capacity gains like this.
Is there anyone who currently works in that area or has a background in magnetic storage who has a better idea?
And if Moore's law continues to hold, within the next four years it won't be an issue to put both of those chips on the same die. Hell, that may even be the budget option.
Because having bad price to performance has killed Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, and other such manufacturers. Reports usually peg Apple has getting 10% of the market in terms of computers, but something ridiculous like 40% of the profit. If the other 90% of the market is only as good as their 10%, do they really care?
A quick Google search gave an article that says 7% revenue share, 35% profit. Maybe they're interested in sniping the high-margin sales from the other manufacturers, but they're probably content to let everyone else fight over the bottom half of the market.
Not to detract from your overall point, but there are plenty of alarm clock apps on the app store that will probably work for the iPad. The iPad could probably do about 90% of what the average person needed. If you were to allow me to use it to ssh into other machines, it could probably do about 90% of what I needed to do.
It's that 10% that I'm going to miss though. I don't think it's meant to be a replacement for general purpose computers. Yet. I have a feeling that Apple wants to move in that direction. OS X has been a good product for several years, but hasn't made much of a dent in Windows market share. Does it surprise anyone that Apple wants to completely change the game?
Microsoft is completely anemic in this market space, and it very well may be the future of computing. Apple is diving it head first, and it looks like Google and HP will be following shortly with Android and PalmOS. I'm willing to bet we'll see the "Year of the Linux Tablet" before we see it on notebooks or desktops. I'm guessing that in the next few years at least half of iPad-category devices will run some variant of Linux.
Most phones have rootability, just not as easily as the Nexus One. Suffice to say, anyone who would want to root a Nexus One can easily root their Droid, iPhone, or whatever else they might have. The only significant difference is that that you could get root on the Nexus One from day one. The Droid took a few weeks. I can't recall how long it took for the original iPhone, but the more recent versions of the iPhone OS have only taken a few weeks.
I don't own either a Droid or an iPhone, so I can't speak to the roadblocks you mention, but I have friends with both devices and neither has had any issues when rooting them. If you're the kind of person who needs root, there's a way to do so for pretty much any device. If you don't posses the ability to follow the basic steps needed to root the device, odds are you shouldn't have root anyway.
Doesn't really surprise me at all. Steve wants a controlled user experience and geeks want the freedom to do whatever the hell they want to do. The two clash. Steve is right though, we don't have to buy his devices, so don't. It's that easy. I do like Steve's quote at the end of the exchange, however. For as many people bitch about Apple here, there aren't enough that actually go out and do something about it. Even if you're not a developer, you can still vote with your wallet. If you want to drive FOSS to greater prominence, either help by using it or help by creating and fixing it. Complaining about Apple on the internet won't do much. Creating or helping to improve FOSS is only real way to stick it to Apple.
So how long do we wait for a better option? If you've got one I'd certainly like to hear it, because we've already passed the point where people's livelihoods are being ruined. This isn't exactly a problem where we can afford to spend several years debating the optimal solution. If no one else has a solution, then yes, "blowing something up" is certainly the best option.
Compared to the Droid, the sales weren't all that great and they do raise the excellent point that many people want to be able to hold it before they commit to the purchase. Also, there are several other Android phones (e.g. Droid Incredible) that have been described as better than the Nexus One and available on a wider range of carriers. By the end of the summer, the Nexus One won't be state of the art as far as Android phones go so there's no real reason for them to continue selling it.
I imagine that they're working on a Nexus Two, so they'll eventually replace it with something else. Hopefully they get the customer service bugs worked out next time around, as that may be one of the potential reasons the device didn't sell as well as I expected it to sell.
It's okay. This is Slashdot. No one reads the actual article anyhow.
Stop and think about the number of people that use Wikipedia as their first stop shop for information about a topic with which they're not familiar. Then think about the number of people that extend that just a little farther and use Wikipedia as their *one* stop shop for information. This is not a small minority of people in my best estimates based on real world observations. Alexa ranks them sixth, behind only Google, Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo, and Live.com. Search engines tend to give Wikipedia articles a high placement when they correspond to search terms. Their mindshare is such that people will say something to the effect: "Why don't you just Wikipedia it?" They've become a verb, much like how Google is synonymous with search.
Wikipedia admins have the power to shape the information that a decent size of the world's population trusts and relies on for various reasons. They're almost an unofficial Ministry of Truth. The amount of power which they wield is terrifying, and the fact that so few people recognize this is utterly horrific. If you're the type of person that thinks that either Google or Facebook is untrustworthy, you must realize the Wikipedia is several times worse.
Find out what you didn't learn in college but the company expects you to know and start learning. Fast.
You've probably learned a lot in college, but there are plenty of things you weren't taught that you'll eventually need to learn in order to succeed. Some of them are related to programing, a few are related the the corporate culture of the place at which you're employed, but a lot are just people skills that are acquired the hard way.
Most importantly, don't be afraid to ask for help if you're in over your head. If there's something you don't understand, ask someone else for help. It's a good way to make friends/acquaintances within the company and saves you the time of wandering around clueless. Personal initiative and a good work ethic will get you far, but when you first start out there are a lot of things you won't know or have any experience with.
Best of luck to you on your new career. Hopefully you do well and can impart some advice of your own to future generations.
I'm assuming that the App would work on the iPod Touch since it too uses the iPhone OS. I'm guessing that the story name stems from this fact. If the device came out for the Droid or Nexus One, the story name would have probably been "Android App Helps To Cure Vertigo." I can see how the device and the operating system sharing the same name might be confusing.
Anandtech managed to get a stable 4.0 GHz overclock with air cooling. It makes an already great deal all that much better in my opinion.
Your assumption only holds true if end users expect the same out of the iPad that they would out of a netbook or notebook. I believe that the different form factor may cause a large percentage of buyers to separate the two into different categories. If people don't expect to be able to use an iPad (Or any other similar tablet device for that matter.) in the same way that they would use a notebook, they won't buy the netbook.
The majority of people in the world are consumers, not creators, and tablet devices provide a definite edge in terms of consumption. Tablet devices can handle the content creation in a pinch, but for any serious work I think most people would prefer a large notebook or a desktop over a netbook anyhow. Consumption ability on tablets is superior to netbooks and the creation ability on netbooks isn't honestly all that great compared to a notebook or a desktop. My own personal belief is that the iPad hasn't killed netbook sales so much as consumers have realized that netbooks aren't providing the experience that they were expecting. Any convenience factor they may have had has been largely eroded by tablet devices.
The only argument that really exists is that the iPad limits the software that can be installed. This argument against tablet devices disappears once Android tablets start hitting the market later this year. They won't have the same restrictions and multiple manufacturers will be able to compete on price, providing more affordable alternatives to the iPad. The netbook is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
I can understand the project team wanting to release some information to the press to garner support and perhaps additional funding, but much like the Edison quote, they may have only found a way that doesn't work, or at least not very well. They might devise several hundred other methods or processes for printing solar cells on paper before they manage to figure out how to produce efficient cells in a cost-effective manner. Having some initial success and publishing it in order to secure additional funding can go along way towards helping get through all of those other ways that don't work so that they can find the one that will.
It only makes it slightly harder to pirate something. If I can see or hear it, there's a way to record it. Killing off analogue is probably more about making you buy new versions of the same stuff more so than stopping piracy. I imagine some crafty bastard will develop a physical device that reopens the analogue hole for anyone who doesn't want to upgrade. The main issue is that the content companies will try to get such a device declared illegal, probably over piracy claims, but it's really about making everyone buy new hardware. Since the technical reasons for upgrading aren't overly compelling, it's necessary for them to do something to keep revenue up.
1. They look into it, but decide not to pursue legal action against Apple. I'd say there's a moderately good chance that they decide it's not worth bringing suit against Apple. Good for Apple, questionable for users, bad for third party developers. Nothing really changes.
2. They look into it, bring legal action against Apple and Apple is forced to change their policy. Bad for Apple, questionable for users, good for third party developers.
3. They look into it, threaten suit against Apple, and Apple meets them halfway by allowing third party apps to be installed outside of the App Store, possibly by downloading them to your computer and syncing them from there. Probably the solution where everyone is at least somewhat satisfied. Apple keeps control of their store, third party developers still have a way to get their software on the phone, and users can install anything they want without requiring Apple's permission.
I say questionable in cases 1 and 2 because it may reduce the overall quality of software on the App Store resulting in more choices for users and a larger selection of apps, but the possibility of getting craptacular cross-platform apps the run into the lowest common denominator issue Steve mentioned in his post. It really depends on your overall philosophy.
The game can be quite micro-heavy, especially for certain unit types, but with the matchmaking system if you're not capable of playing at that level, you will rarely get stuck playing against someone who is and is capable of easily wiping the floor with you. The general idea behind their match-making system is that you should win about as many games as you lose so that it will always be a challenging and enjoyable experience. At least that's the theory. We'll have to see how well it actually works when the game finally launches.
If you don't care to learn those abilities, you'll likely play other people who can't or can't be bothered to learn them either.The original Starcraft tended towards high micromanagement ability requirements at the highest levels of play, but it may just be that you never got that far or even thought about how to effectively micro the vanilla units. You should check out some of the video casts of the various SC tournaments if you're interested in seeing some great high-level play. It's absolutely crazy watching some of the best players.
The technology sounds impressive, but then they just give it the kiss of death by announcing that it's five years away. Five years from now it will still be five years away, probably because while it's possible to do, no one has been able to do it in a cost-effective manner. Also if Intel can keep up with their current roadmap, they'll probably be using something close to a 10 nm process. I know that both Global Foundaries and TSMC are working on their 28 nm process (Although they are behind schedule.) so it's not inconceivable that the rest of the industry will already be at that point anyhow.
If you're going to do this, at least become a telecom company first. When they pull this kind of shit, they get a pat on the back.
It's not necessarily special to me; however, I see that you've listed your email address which makes it incredibly easy for me, a person with no other information about you, to invade your privacy. Going through your regular mail requires physical access to it. I can try getting at your email from almost anywhere on the planet, or probably even off of it. In that case, there may be some question about the precedence of local laws and such. Which state laws apply? The state of the accused, the state where the servers reside, or something else?
The only other difference I can think of off of the top of my head is that committing computer crimes may also include limitations to the offenders usage of a computer in the future to prevent them from being able to commit the crime again. This is probably reserved for more severe cases, but it's something. Someone more well versed in computer law would probably have a better answer.
You could always run a Windows VM and install iTunes, purchase some songs, move them over to your Linux partition and convert them to Ogg Vorbis. You could also use Audacity to stream rip the audio from the web player and save a local copy.
In the future just remember to be leery about purchasing things that you don't actually own, whether this is DRM-encumbered files or content you can only stream through the web. Eventually it'll go away, leaving you without much recourse.