I've got all three systems, and although I tend to enjoy playing the 360 and PS3 more when I'm gaming alone, when friends come over it's all about the Wii.
There are a disturbing number of games for PS3/360 that have left out local (couch based) multiplayer, choosing instead to focus on online gaming. Motorstorm comes to mind. I actually bought a second controller so that I could race against friends. I guess I should have checked beforehand, but who would have thought that they'd put out a racing game (one that was meant to sell the system, no less) where you can't race against the person sitting next to you! Crackdown for the 360 was another one where they only support 2 players online. Online gaming is fun (if you can stand the great unwashed that is Xbox Live), but none of my friends have any of the next-gen systems, and they're not planning on getting them until they get a lot cheaper. So when they come over and want to play a game, chances are we're playing the Wii.
It's not like nobody warned these people. In the comment section of every iPhone story (and there were a lot) people were saying that the smart thing to do was wait for the next revision and/or the price drop. Hell, most of the reviews said as much. But no. They marched to the Apple store, fingers in ears, singing the "I can't hear you" song.
You can feel cheated all you want, but don't make me listen to it. It's like when you're boss complains that he has buyers remorse from his brand new Mercedes. Great. You're rich. I get it. Now don't sob about being taken for a fool when you spend your money on frivolous things.
But this is also a cell phone, so you have to compare it to that market as well. I think you'll find it's much more in line with high end cell phones. They tend to launch at absurdly high prices, and then bring them down after a few months so carriers can sell them to normal people, and use them to hawk their networks.
That's funny. I was in a GameStop the other day where they have these massive Zune displays (2 walls with Zunes, accessories, a TV playing the ads, and multiple listening stations). Two girls were talking about the Zune, and one was explaining to the other about the 3 plays restriction (I don't think she knew about the 3 day thing) and they both agreed that the commercial made it look like you could just transfer songs willy nilly.
The problem with reviews of the Wii is that game reviews are meant for hard core gamers. Casual gamers don't read reviews, they buy what their friends say is cool. I've heard Wii Sports get panned and compared to a tech demo by reviewers. Compare that to the hundreds of stories of families and non-gamers (and people openly hostile towards video games) having a blast with Wii Sports.
It's even more interesting when you factor time in The 360 has been on sale for 18 months The PS3 and Wii have been on sale for 6 months
The Wii has sold about twice as much as the PS3 in about the same amount of time The Wii has sold about 2/3 as much as the 360 in about 1/3 of the time.
If nothing dramatic changes the Wii will be the best selling next-gen console by the end of the summer. Of course Halo 3 and GTA 4 could very well kick start the HD console sales in the fall. Either way, Xmas 2007 is when the first real battle of this generation will take place.
But you were still allowed to read encyclopedias right? Teachers can still tell their students that Wikipedia is an unacceptable source, but why remove access? Are you also blocking access to online forums? Are you taking all the fiction out of the library? I'm pretty sure that "my friend Bill who watches the History channel" isn't an acceptable source for my History class, but the school doesn't prevent me from talking to him.
OK, but given the choice, what format do you think a music store would choose? They know they have to make something that works with the iPod, which eliminates all of your list except for mp3. Mp3 is a great format for consumers, but not so much for content distributers. It has license fees while AAC does not. It is also the subject of a few ongoing legal battles, making it a risky choice for an online store. AAC was created as an open standard.
Again, given the iPod's utter dominance of the HD player market, why would any store choose to keep WMA? Also, is there any reason that says they can't have both? I don't see how this can do anything but grow support for AAC within the industry.
Yeah, but compare that to the price of a CD single. Previously that was your only choice for purchasing individual non-DRM tracks (assuming that you couldn't find it on eMusic).
Why are so many people so stupid when it comes to AAC? Everyone jumps on it as a proprietary format owned be Apple with license fees and can only be played on iPods.
NONE OF THIS IS TRUE.
It's an open standard, not owned by Apple, it's free to distribute content in AAC (not sure about fees for putting AAC support in a player), and there are plenty of AAC compatible players out there. The only thing nefarious about it was Apple's DRM, and hopefully that is on the way out.
"So what exactly is their justification for leaving DRM on the $0.99 tracks? It can't be that they are afraid people will release them into the wild if the higher quality tracks are now DRM free, so why not remove it?"
Apple doesn't really care about the price of the tracks on iTunes, they make very little from digital downloads and a lot on iPods. As long as they aren't getting screwed they don't care. So I don't think profit for Apple factors into it.
The real reason?
I'm 99% sure it has to do with secret terms of the agreement they made with all the labels when they started the iTunes store. If you see a Warners Bros track with DRM next to an EMI track without DRM for the same price, you're likely to go for the EMI and think "What's wrong with Warner?" and you'd be right. Warner knows this and, along with the other major labels, made sure that all the songs on the iTMS would be equal terms of use and equal quality for the same price. This is the same reason why the indies haven't been able to sell their tracks without DRM.
It appears that Apple has found a hole in the contract that allows them to sell these DRMless tracks at a higher price. They probably decided to make them higher quality to help justify the price. Frankly, I'm surprised that they were able to get away with this without violating one of those secret agreements.
Also, although this wasn't discussed at the event, all iTunes tracks are already tagged with information about who purchased them. I'm sure this information will be included in the non-DRM tracks as well. This makes it easier for them to find the correct person to sue when they find one of these tracks on a P2P network. You paid for it, you agreed to the user agreement, so if you share the track, it's pretty much and open and shut case against you.
Although there's probably no way to know for sure, I'd be willing to bet that this was a requirement in getting the labels to agree to the iTMS in the first place. They want their tracks to have DRM, but they don't want the consumer to see that it's possible to buy a song without it.
I don't think you understand what he's talking about. You're talking about booting off of an external drive.
Target Disk Mode is different. It allows you to use your laptop (or desktop) *as* an external firewire drive with another computer. If you hold the 'T' key when you turn on the computer it will go into target mode and display the firewire symbol on the screen. You can then use a firewire cable to plug it into another machine and access the hard drive. When you're done you press power to turn the machine off, then you can boot up normally. Because this is part of the Mac hardware (firmware?) it works regardless of what state your OS is in, or even if you don't have one. This comes in handy for pulling your data from a machine in emergency situations, such as an OS dying, the screen on a laptop breaking, etc. As far as I know this cannot be done over USB.
Such a notice is moot, since generally speaking any submissions to a teacher become permanent property of the school.
I keep seeing this mentioned, and I'm not sure where the idea comes from, but it's wrong. Please back this statement up. Generally speaking, the student retains the rights to their work. Any school that tries to take that away would be the execption (and avoided by any serious academic).
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I've got all three systems, and although I tend to enjoy playing the 360 and PS3 more when I'm gaming alone, when friends come over it's all about the Wii. There are a disturbing number of games for PS3/360 that have left out local (couch based) multiplayer, choosing instead to focus on online gaming. Motorstorm comes to mind. I actually bought a second controller so that I could race against friends. I guess I should have checked beforehand, but who would have thought that they'd put out a racing game (one that was meant to sell the system, no less) where you can't race against the person sitting next to you! Crackdown for the 360 was another one where they only support 2 players online. Online gaming is fun (if you can stand the great unwashed that is Xbox Live), but none of my friends have any of the next-gen systems, and they're not planning on getting them until they get a lot cheaper. So when they come over and want to play a game, chances are we're playing the Wii.
It's not like nobody warned these people. In the comment section of every iPhone story (and there were a lot) people were saying that the smart thing to do was wait for the next revision and/or the price drop. Hell, most of the reviews said as much. But no. They marched to the Apple store, fingers in ears, singing the "I can't hear you" song.
You can feel cheated all you want, but don't make me listen to it. It's like when you're boss complains that he has buyers remorse from his brand new Mercedes. Great. You're rich. I get it. Now don't sob about being taken for a fool when you spend your money on frivolous things.
Baby, meet bottle.
But this is also a cell phone, so you have to compare it to that market as well. I think you'll find it's much more in line with high end cell phones. They tend to launch at absurdly high prices, and then bring them down after a few months so carriers can sell them to normal people, and use them to hawk their networks.
Probably the one who pled guilty, not the one who's crimes have yet to be confirmed by anyone but a right wing attack dog.
Yeah, but that's a meaningless measure. You can name any consumer electronics product, and most "normal" people don't buy it.
I can't attribute such a thorough deletion of emails to ignorance.
If you hate it so much why did you enter your email address? It's not required.
That's funny. I was in a GameStop the other day where they have these massive Zune displays (2 walls with Zunes, accessories, a TV playing the ads, and multiple listening stations). Two girls were talking about the Zune, and one was explaining to the other about the 3 plays restriction (I don't think she knew about the 3 day thing) and they both agreed that the commercial made it look like you could just transfer songs willy nilly.
HACK!
Good for him. Now start a blog!
The problem with reviews of the Wii is that game reviews are meant for hard core gamers. Casual gamers don't read reviews, they buy what their friends say is cool. I've heard Wii Sports get panned and compared to a tech demo by reviewers. Compare that to the hundreds of stories of families and non-gamers (and people openly hostile towards video games) having a blast with Wii Sports.
It's even more interesting when you factor time in
The 360 has been on sale for 18 months
The PS3 and Wii have been on sale for 6 months
The Wii has sold about twice as much as the PS3 in about the same amount of time
The Wii has sold about 2/3 as much as the 360 in about 1/3 of the time.
If nothing dramatic changes the Wii will be the best selling next-gen console by the end of the summer. Of course Halo 3 and GTA 4 could very well kick start the HD console sales in the fall. Either way, Xmas 2007 is when the first real battle of this generation will take place.
But you were still allowed to read encyclopedias right? Teachers can still tell their students that Wikipedia is an unacceptable source, but why remove access? Are you also blocking access to online forums? Are you taking all the fiction out of the library? I'm pretty sure that "my friend Bill who watches the History channel" isn't an acceptable source for my History class, but the school doesn't prevent me from talking to him.
Does the current Zune have a 'disk mode' so that I can use it to store and transport large files?
They made a backup during the cold war. It's in a fire safe in Putin's office.
OK, but given the choice, what format do you think a music store would choose? They know they have to make something that works with the iPod, which eliminates all of your list except for mp3. Mp3 is a great format for consumers, but not so much for content distributers. It has license fees while AAC does not. It is also the subject of a few ongoing legal battles, making it a risky choice for an online store. AAC was created as an open standard. Again, given the iPod's utter dominance of the HD player market, why would any store choose to keep WMA? Also, is there any reason that says they can't have both? I don't see how this can do anything but grow support for AAC within the industry.
Yeah, but compare that to the price of a CD single. Previously that was your only choice for purchasing individual non-DRM tracks (assuming that you couldn't find it on eMusic).
Why are so many people so stupid when it comes to AAC? Everyone jumps on it as a proprietary format owned be Apple with license fees and can only be played on iPods.
NONE OF THIS IS TRUE.
It's an open standard, not owned by Apple, it's free to distribute content in AAC (not sure about fees for putting AAC support in a player), and there are plenty of AAC compatible players out there. The only thing nefarious about it was Apple's DRM, and hopefully that is on the way out.
Install it on someone else's computer?
"So what exactly is their justification for leaving DRM on the $0.99 tracks? It can't be that they are afraid people will release them into the wild if the higher quality tracks are now DRM free, so why not remove it?"
Apple doesn't really care about the price of the tracks on iTunes, they make very little from digital downloads and a lot on iPods. As long as they aren't getting screwed they don't care. So I don't think profit for Apple factors into it.
The real reason?
I'm 99% sure it has to do with secret terms of the agreement they made with all the labels when they started the iTunes store. If you see a Warners Bros track with DRM next to an EMI track without DRM for the same price, you're likely to go for the EMI and think "What's wrong with Warner?" and you'd be right. Warner knows this and, along with the other major labels, made sure that all the songs on the iTMS would be equal terms of use and equal quality for the same price. This is the same reason why the indies haven't been able to sell their tracks without DRM.
It appears that Apple has found a hole in the contract that allows them to sell these DRMless tracks at a higher price. They probably decided to make them higher quality to help justify the price. Frankly, I'm surprised that they were able to get away with this without violating one of those secret agreements.
Also, although this wasn't discussed at the event, all iTunes tracks are already tagged with information about who purchased them. I'm sure this information will be included in the non-DRM tracks as well. This makes it easier for them to find the correct person to sue when they find one of these tracks on a P2P network. You paid for it, you agreed to the user agreement, so if you share the track, it's pretty much and open and shut case against you.
Although there's probably no way to know for sure, I'd be willing to bet that this was a requirement in getting the labels to agree to the iTMS in the first place. They want their tracks to have DRM, but they don't want the consumer to see that it's possible to buy a song without it.
"How about buying a beer in a bar - do you pass your card to be swiped for each drink you purchase?"
No... You hand them your card when you order your first drink. You get it back when you're done and you pay. It's called a tab.
I don't think you understand what he's talking about. You're talking about booting off of an external drive.
Target Disk Mode is different. It allows you to use your laptop (or desktop) *as* an external firewire drive with another computer. If you hold the 'T' key when you turn on the computer it will go into target mode and display the firewire symbol on the screen. You can then use a firewire cable to plug it into another machine and access the hard drive. When you're done you press power to turn the machine off, then you can boot up normally. Because this is part of the Mac hardware (firmware?) it works regardless of what state your OS is in, or even if you don't have one. This comes in handy for pulling your data from a machine in emergency situations, such as an OS dying, the screen on a laptop breaking, etc. As far as I know this cannot be done over USB.
Such a notice is moot, since generally speaking any submissions to a teacher become permanent property of the school.
I keep seeing this mentioned, and I'm not sure where the idea comes from, but it's wrong. Please back this statement up. Generally speaking, the student retains the rights to their work. Any school that tries to take that away would be the execption (and avoided by any serious academic).