On one hand you are correct, but on the other the retail chain committed some sort of crime (IANAL) by telling the customer they couldn't find a cheaper price anywhere else because Apple commanded this accessory purchasing for everyone and going to another store would not have fixed it. No one is forced to buy an iPad but you can't lie about Apple and say what you will, but Apple's choke hold on their products allows them to strike quickly on people like this who try and exploit their products. Something tells me Apple will not be happy with this store at all and this will probably benefit the consumer somehow.
I doubt they are Apple accessories as Apple really doesn't put out their own accessories. They have a case for the iPad that everyone apparently loves, but screen protectors and stuff have nothing to do with them. They advertise them on their online store from preferred providers but that is most likely more for the benefit of the consumer and to build up general hype for their product; I think they are probably happy to advertise third party accessories on their web site for free because everyone wins.
You can buy an OS X install easily; in fact it's a lot easier to get a fully working OS X disc than a Windows one. Windows has 15 million ways to lock you out and like 20 different "levels" of OS. OS X has the latest version. And it's just there on the disc. There aren't 50 million approval hoops to jump through.
In America, you can't get a lot of phones without contract. Or, you can (just like the iPhone) but they can only be used under one provider. This is the state of the cellular phone industry in America, not Apple.
The whole App Store thing is completely fair. You can choose not to buy an iPhone if you don't like the App Store concept and vote with your money, but it is made clear that the App Store is the one way to legally get applications so if you are too stupid to do research before getting the phone, too bad. I could buy a flip and start screeching loudly, too, because it doesn't have Flash and a limited distribution channel but I didn't have to buy the fucking phone.
What the article describes is an electronics store (aka a trashy, seedy money grubbing shit hole as is usually the case with electronics stores) lying to the customer, outright. This is completely different than anything in your post as your post covers complaints about a product not tailored to fit your needs whereas the electronics store was committing fraud and ripping off its customers.
This isn't insightful, it's a stupid attempt at being edgy. First of all, OS X software doesn't work like Windows software; the install process for most software packages does litter shit around your machine in the hopes that the application can take full control over everything. Secondly, the Pirate Bay is not safer for the average user.
OS X is based on BSD. Viruses aren't made for Apple but when they are, the whole system will be able to handle them a lot better than Windows can. Hopefully with Macs, a messy gigantic database of potential virus signatures and file scanning won't be the solution when OS X becomes a target.
If he displays his firearm in a way which causes the cashier to decide the best course of action is to give into his demands as opposed to correctly do her job than he has obviously threatened her and it is robbery. You think I could flash a gun at a bank after telling the teller to empty the safe?
You aren't the person AV expiration warnings are targets at then. You successfully ran a network connected Windows machine for years and only got one virus, so by definition you aren't the targeted audience.
All of your arguments rely on the concept that if something is marketed or pushed onto the population, it should be disqualified from the success race. It ignores that fact that this is exactly why anything would succeed; that and the fact that they made it to an already popular design (the iPhone). It combined two things; a device that already is similar enough to something already used by customers and hype. Apple has succeeded more than any other company in popularizing and selling a tablet. Because of it's popularity, others are now trying to piggy back off Apple's success now that they have paved the way for it with advertising. You really don't have a coherent argument here; at the end of your post you say "see I can do that" and replace Apple with Ubuntu in a quote I had in which I say everyone is now just playing catchup to Apple. The fact is, people aren't playing catch up to Ubuntu, creator of the uPad, so I don't quite understand your point. If Ubuntu and some hardware developer released an extremely successful tablet (let's say Asus built it) and then Apple rushed in with the iPad shortly afterwards, then Ubuntu would have paved the trail.
There may have been other tablets before the iPad, but none of them had such widespread hype. You even agree to this. But seeing as how that is my point, I don't know why you are arguing. Apple hyped up the iPad a lot. Apple sold millions of iPads within months of launch. Now everyone else wants to compete. This is fact. Any other tablets from X years ago are obsolete. They may have seen moderate success when they came out but where are they now and what did they do to really strongarm the market into competing with them? Why didn't Ubuntu come out with a tablet OS then?
Furthermore, Apple is important in the mobile world too. I know other companies are also important and the shift to mobile computing has been going on for a while, but Apple has forced ATT to expand their infrastructure and the iPhone and now iPad userbase has redefined mobile user in the sense that they use the most data out of any smart phone user out their. I know they are singlehandedly redefining mobile computing, but they have managed to strongarm American cellular providers, directly with ATT and by extension the rest of them because of the change in the marketplace. This is a great direction because it means that infrastructures will be built and artificial prices will drop for data transfer in the long run, leading to a world where mobile computing is faster, easier and less expensive in general.
You can be bitter that gold digging trash will never sleep with you or you could accept that not all women are vapid counts (as internet denziens will generally refer to them).
I don't know shit about psychology. I just felt it was worth pointing out that your opinion contributed nothing and does not reflect the views of everyone although it was conveyed in a way that exuded superiority and righteousness.
This is why no one will ever take Linux seriously in a desktop environment. If the community hates users than a userfriendly version of Linux is doomed from the start.
This is why Apple works. They believe that you give the customer what they want, or tell them what they want and give that to them, barring everything else. This makes the customer happy and makes Apple money. P.S. The customer is not Apple hating Slashdotters, the customer is the person who already is open to Apple products or neutral, and wants an easy, chic computer. Pretentious? Who cares. It is a shrewd business model that works and quite frankly their systems are acceptable for anyone now seeing as how Vista bombed while Apple announced x86 arhictecture. Using a Mac is no longer a polarizing choose.
I'm using an iPad right now. It's lightweight, powerful and lets me do a lot of things I'd want to do that don't involve coding, developing or serious work. I don't own it for those reasons; I have an MBP for that. I have an iPad for web browsing, email, movies, and lightweight PC-as-an-appliance tasks. Just because I'm compsci and do serious work on computers doesn't mean I can't use a nice, simple sexy device for relaxing computing purposes. Thats what the iPad was made for and guess what: that's what people wanted, judging by sales. Why is this so hard to understand?
No. No one gave a shit about tablet computers until the iPad came out. The sales prove that for the first time ever, people did give a shit about tablet computers. No one else manages to implement a tablet computer in the way that Apple did that brought success. In the end, you may not be an Apple fan or hate the iPad, but it succeeded and now, thanks to it, people do give a shit about tablet computers. That is why Ubuntu is making one right now.
Instead of innovating, they are playing catchup. Because like you, they thought no one gave a shit about tablet computers.
Let me ask you a question. How old are you? I don't mean this as an insult, but I think that for older generations, (not elderly, but just GenX, some of GenY even and up) were right before the curve. Email isn't as popular today because it's easier to look up someones real name on Facebook then keep track of email addresses. I remember how happy Sconex made me because in 8th grade we would pass around papers with email addresses on them for the class and of course thats just clunky and annoying because emails scrawled on paper all like xxAngel5--Oxx or whatever just blur together and you don't know who is who (Sconex was a high school oriented Facebook-like site that collapsed recently that me and my friends used before Facebook became really big during my Senior Year of HS..2006/07). AIM screennames were the other big one. Even Xanga names for a bit.
When AIM, Myspace and Xanga and LJ came out, it changed the way middle schoolers and high schoolers could talk online, making email seem a bit clunkier because it was either not live chatting or too peer to peer (even with multiple To fields or CC). When Sconex, and later Facebook came out it was the end of cryptic screenname based webchat because now people had real pages in their name up. Some people (like me) knew how to create web pages but not many. These personal webpages don't even lend themselves to easy aggregation anyway.
Meanwhile, email is still used by older generations because that's the method of communication that was settled upon and older people are less likely to change their ways. This is fine because it works for them. But the creation of all of these sites and the social networking idea really work with the idea of free flowing information; it's just that the false sense of security and the idea that some information shouldn't be free flowing that really sets people on edge. This is easily remedied; only put information online that doesn't matter if it gets out. One day, hopefully, a court decision will cement user privacy specifically in the sense of social networks and then things that are semi-private (like phone numbers) will be able to put online for friends only without any realistic worry. Things like SSNs will obviously never be smart to put on Facebook in any context.
Don't you understand that you are projecting? If everyone you hated in high school or whatever is on Facebook and everyone who was too cool for school who you like aren't on Facebook, then Facebook serves no purpose to you. But you aren't separating your life from the lives of others; specifically a generation where everyone is on Facebook. Stop judging people who use it just because the social butterfly football player cheerleader vapid cunts or whatever you hate are still trying to connect with each other and you and your friends who were always living on the edge with apathetic social interaction are still Facebook free.
You will always be stuck using second tier software for the most part. You can talk about kernels and distros and that's fine. You can talk about gcc and some other globally adopted tools that are free and old and powerful. Once you get past that level, however, almost every FOSS alternative sucks.
FOSS isn't inherently wrong but you will not get far using only FOSS products in the real world for a lot of things. Sure you could find an occupation right now to prove me wrong as an example which fits your argument, but if you want to look in general, FOSS hasn't produced things that can replace a lot of powerful, commercially driven tools.
Obvious examples: Photoshop (GIMP is not something that a designer would user. Designers use Photoshop because designers design, not navigate shitty interfaces)
Audio production (Audacity is useful for wave editing but it is not an audio production studio. Certain FOSS GarageBand wannabes exist but would not be used in a production environment.)
Flash is not replaced by Gnash. Gnash makes not having Flash bearable in some cases but that is it.
You don't need to pity me. I don't feel the need to define myself by the licensing of the software I use. Instead I choose to use software that works for me, FOSS or not and find much more interesting and worthwhile ways to define who I am.
Dude please show me evidence that people pissing in the forest at 3am get put on sex offender registries on a regular basis. I know in NYC that if I were to pee in public and get caught I'd be fined. My understanding (because I've heard this dumb argument before) is that there are laws in place the define public urination (maybe defecation) as a crime separate from any sort of sex crime. I really don't think there is an epidemic of people urinating in the woods and getting sex offender charges pressed against them and furthermore, I do not think any cop or judge would even pursue this route. Public urination is like getting a parking ticket for the most part.
Your missing a crucial point: no one cares, buddy. Chances are you are creating a world in your head where people want you to join Facebook and you refuse whereas in reality, you probably have no reason to join Facebook because you push people away in real life with the same attitude you post with on Slashdot, anonymously.
The trick may have been to embrace this as opposed to push it away. That's really whats different about me for college, than high school. I changed my tune being around all new people and started to actually not resent people who did things that were fun.
Have fun not using your computer for fun but to make a point. I feel like exclusively using FOSS to make a point is like standing in line to get into a Soviet drug store to buy school supplies. The only brand is USSR and all of the products suck but there is no alternative because they are the alternative. You would stand in line and enjoy it, because you think that your sacrifice of quality and ability is really helping the people and it's the one thing in life you can whole onto as a prole.
You can't be fucking serious. Hay look at Anerica, not letting me shit wherever I want unlike any other culture in the history of the world where making any place I desired a disease infested feces corner was completely acceptable!
Slashdot Mirror
On one hand you are correct, but on the other the retail chain committed some sort of crime (IANAL) by telling the customer they couldn't find a cheaper price anywhere else because Apple commanded this accessory purchasing for everyone and going to another store would not have fixed it. No one is forced to buy an iPad but you can't lie about Apple and say what you will, but Apple's choke hold on their products allows them to strike quickly on people like this who try and exploit their products. Something tells me Apple will not be happy with this store at all and this will probably benefit the consumer somehow.
I doubt they are Apple accessories as Apple really doesn't put out their own accessories. They have a case for the iPad that everyone apparently loves, but screen protectors and stuff have nothing to do with them. They advertise them on their online store from preferred providers but that is most likely more for the benefit of the consumer and to build up general hype for their product; I think they are probably happy to advertise third party accessories on their web site for free because everyone wins.
You can buy an OS X install easily; in fact it's a lot easier to get a fully working OS X disc than a Windows one. Windows has 15 million ways to lock you out and like 20 different "levels" of OS. OS X has the latest version. And it's just there on the disc. There aren't 50 million approval hoops to jump through.
In America, you can't get a lot of phones without contract. Or, you can (just like the iPhone) but they can only be used under one provider. This is the state of the cellular phone industry in America, not Apple.
The whole App Store thing is completely fair. You can choose not to buy an iPhone if you don't like the App Store concept and vote with your money, but it is made clear that the App Store is the one way to legally get applications so if you are too stupid to do research before getting the phone, too bad. I could buy a flip and start screeching loudly, too, because it doesn't have Flash and a limited distribution channel but I didn't have to buy the fucking phone.
What the article describes is an electronics store (aka a trashy, seedy money grubbing shit hole as is usually the case with electronics stores) lying to the customer, outright. This is completely different than anything in your post as your post covers complaints about a product not tailored to fit your needs whereas the electronics store was committing fraud and ripping off its customers.
Why are you so resentful of people who own Apple products? Why do you resent people who's parents have bought them things?
This isn't insightful, it's a stupid attempt at being edgy. First of all, OS X software doesn't work like Windows software; the install process for most software packages does litter shit around your machine in the hopes that the application can take full control over everything. Secondly, the Pirate Bay is not safer for the average user.
OS X is based on BSD. Viruses aren't made for Apple but when they are, the whole system will be able to handle them a lot better than Windows can. Hopefully with Macs, a messy gigantic database of potential virus signatures and file scanning won't be the solution when OS X becomes a target.
If he displays his firearm in a way which causes the cashier to decide the best course of action is to give into his demands as opposed to correctly do her job than he has obviously threatened her and it is robbery. You think I could flash a gun at a bank after telling the teller to empty the safe?
You aren't the person AV expiration warnings are targets at then. You successfully ran a network connected Windows machine for years and only got one virus, so by definition you aren't the targeted audience.
Stop being so melodramatic and get over yourself. Seriously.
All of your arguments rely on the concept that if something is marketed or pushed onto the population, it should be disqualified from the success race. It ignores that fact that this is exactly why anything would succeed; that and the fact that they made it to an already popular design (the iPhone). It combined two things; a device that already is similar enough to something already used by customers and hype. Apple has succeeded more than any other company in popularizing and selling a tablet. Because of it's popularity, others are now trying to piggy back off Apple's success now that they have paved the way for it with advertising. You really don't have a coherent argument here; at the end of your post you say "see I can do that" and replace Apple with Ubuntu in a quote I had in which I say everyone is now just playing catchup to Apple. The fact is, people aren't playing catch up to Ubuntu, creator of the uPad, so I don't quite understand your point. If Ubuntu and some hardware developer released an extremely successful tablet (let's say Asus built it) and then Apple rushed in with the iPad shortly afterwards, then Ubuntu would have paved the trail.
There may have been other tablets before the iPad, but none of them had such widespread hype. You even agree to this. But seeing as how that is my point, I don't know why you are arguing. Apple hyped up the iPad a lot. Apple sold millions of iPads within months of launch. Now everyone else wants to compete. This is fact. Any other tablets from X years ago are obsolete. They may have seen moderate success when they came out but where are they now and what did they do to really strongarm the market into competing with them? Why didn't Ubuntu come out with a tablet OS then?
Furthermore, Apple is important in the mobile world too. I know other companies are also important and the shift to mobile computing has been going on for a while, but Apple has forced ATT to expand their infrastructure and the iPhone and now iPad userbase has redefined mobile user in the sense that they use the most data out of any smart phone user out their. I know they are singlehandedly redefining mobile computing, but they have managed to strongarm American cellular providers, directly with ATT and by extension the rest of them because of the change in the marketplace. This is a great direction because it means that infrastructures will be built and artificial prices will drop for data transfer in the long run, leading to a world where mobile computing is faster, easier and less expensive in general.
You can be bitter that gold digging trash will never sleep with you or you could accept that not all women are vapid counts (as internet denziens will generally refer to them).
Gotcha bro you know what you're totally right.
I don't know shit about psychology. I just felt it was worth pointing out that your opinion contributed nothing and does not reflect the views of everyone although it was conveyed in a way that exuded superiority and righteousness.
This is why no one will ever take Linux seriously in a desktop environment. If the community hates users than a userfriendly version of Linux is doomed from the start.
This is why Apple works. They believe that you give the customer what they want, or tell them what they want and give that to them, barring everything else. This makes the customer happy and makes Apple money. P.S. The customer is not Apple hating Slashdotters, the customer is the person who already is open to Apple products or neutral, and wants an easy, chic computer. Pretentious? Who cares. It is a shrewd business model that works and quite frankly their systems are acceptable for anyone now seeing as how Vista bombed while Apple announced x86 arhictecture. Using a Mac is no longer a polarizing choose.
I'm using an iPad right now. It's lightweight, powerful and lets me do a lot of things I'd want to do that don't involve coding, developing or serious work. I don't own it for those reasons; I have an MBP for that. I have an iPad for web browsing, email, movies, and lightweight PC-as-an-appliance tasks. Just because I'm compsci and do serious work on computers doesn't mean I can't use a nice, simple sexy device for relaxing computing purposes. Thats what the iPad was made for and guess what: that's what people wanted, judging by sales. Why is this so hard to understand?
No. No one gave a shit about tablet computers until the iPad came out. The sales prove that for the first time ever, people did give a shit about tablet computers. No one else manages to implement a tablet computer in the way that Apple did that brought success. In the end, you may not be an Apple fan or hate the iPad, but it succeeded and now, thanks to it, people do give a shit about tablet computers. That is why Ubuntu is making one right now.
Instead of innovating, they are playing catchup. Because like you, they thought no one gave a shit about tablet computers.
This is where you get into scaring away real users with semantics arguments like this. This is where the year of the Linux desktop never comes around.
Let me ask you a question. How old are you? I don't mean this as an insult, but I think that for older generations, (not elderly, but just GenX, some of GenY even and up) were right before the curve. Email isn't as popular today because it's easier to look up someones real name on Facebook then keep track of email addresses. I remember how happy Sconex made me because in 8th grade we would pass around papers with email addresses on them for the class and of course thats just clunky and annoying because emails scrawled on paper all like xxAngel5--Oxx or whatever just blur together and you don't know who is who (Sconex was a high school oriented Facebook-like site that collapsed recently that me and my friends used before Facebook became really big during my Senior Year of HS..2006/07). AIM screennames were the other big one. Even Xanga names for a bit.
When AIM, Myspace and Xanga and LJ came out, it changed the way middle schoolers and high schoolers could talk online, making email seem a bit clunkier because it was either not live chatting or too peer to peer (even with multiple To fields or CC). When Sconex, and later Facebook came out it was the end of cryptic screenname based webchat because now people had real pages in their name up. Some people (like me) knew how to create web pages but not many. These personal webpages don't even lend themselves to easy aggregation anyway.
Meanwhile, email is still used by older generations because that's the method of communication that was settled upon and older people are less likely to change their ways. This is fine because it works for them. But the creation of all of these sites and the social networking idea really work with the idea of free flowing information; it's just that the false sense of security and the idea that some information shouldn't be free flowing that really sets people on edge. This is easily remedied; only put information online that doesn't matter if it gets out. One day, hopefully, a court decision will cement user privacy specifically in the sense of social networks and then things that are semi-private (like phone numbers) will be able to put online for friends only without any realistic worry. Things like SSNs will obviously never be smart to put on Facebook in any context.
Don't you understand that you are projecting? If everyone you hated in high school or whatever is on Facebook and everyone who was too cool for school who you like aren't on Facebook, then Facebook serves no purpose to you. But you aren't separating your life from the lives of others; specifically a generation where everyone is on Facebook. Stop judging people who use it just because the social butterfly football player cheerleader vapid cunts or whatever you hate are still trying to connect with each other and you and your friends who were always living on the edge with apathetic social interaction are still Facebook free.
You will always be stuck using second tier software for the most part. You can talk about kernels and distros and that's fine. You can talk about gcc and some other globally adopted tools that are free and old and powerful. Once you get past that level, however, almost every FOSS alternative sucks.
FOSS isn't inherently wrong but you will not get far using only FOSS products in the real world for a lot of things. Sure you could find an occupation right now to prove me wrong as an example which fits your argument, but if you want to look in general, FOSS hasn't produced things that can replace a lot of powerful, commercially driven tools.
Obvious examples: Photoshop (GIMP is not something that a designer would user. Designers use Photoshop because designers design, not navigate shitty interfaces)
Audio production (Audacity is useful for wave editing but it is not an audio production studio. Certain FOSS GarageBand wannabes exist but would not be used in a production environment.)
Flash is not replaced by Gnash. Gnash makes not having Flash bearable in some cases but that is it.
You don't need to pity me. I don't feel the need to define myself by the licensing of the software I use. Instead I choose to use software that works for me, FOSS or not and find much more interesting and worthwhile ways to define who I am.
Dude please show me evidence that people pissing in the forest at 3am get put on sex offender registries on a regular basis. I know in NYC that if I were to pee in public and get caught I'd be fined. My understanding (because I've heard this dumb argument before) is that there are laws in place the define public urination (maybe defecation) as a crime separate from any sort of sex crime. I really don't think there is an epidemic of people urinating in the woods and getting sex offender charges pressed against them and furthermore, I do not think any cop or judge would even pursue this route. Public urination is like getting a parking ticket for the most part.
That works for you. It doesn't work for a lot of people.
Your missing a crucial point: no one cares, buddy. Chances are you are creating a world in your head where people want you to join Facebook and you refuse whereas in reality, you probably have no reason to join Facebook because you push people away in real life with the same attitude you post with on Slashdot, anonymously.
The trick may have been to embrace this as opposed to push it away. That's really whats different about me for college, than high school. I changed my tune being around all new people and started to actually not resent people who did things that were fun.
Have fun not using your computer for fun but to make a point. I feel like exclusively using FOSS to make a point is like standing in line to get into a Soviet drug store to buy school supplies. The only brand is USSR and all of the products suck but there is no alternative because they are the alternative. You would stand in line and enjoy it, because you think that your sacrifice of quality and ability is really helping the people and it's the one thing in life you can whole onto as a prole.
You can't be fucking serious. Hay look at Anerica, not letting me shit wherever I want unlike any other culture in the history of the world where making any place I desired a disease infested feces corner was completely acceptable!