The market will grow but you need an e-mail to sign up at Facebook, and as such, some Facebook users will migrate from Gmail to Facebook mail. Therefore, the market is growing but Facebook will steal more than the growth that Eric is referring to.
On the other hand, I would love to break into the Apple storage facility and put recovery DVDs with every Macbook Air. Heck, I'd even throw in a coupon for an external DVD player.
Your argument would be completely valid, if it wasn't for a few things that you completely left out or didn't think of:
1) Unlike Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple and Opera, Google is actually not hyping new releases by calling it "the new Chrome 7", etc. They just say a new version is out. When you go to the Chrome site, it just lets you download Chrome. No special version. Just the latest. So for your argument to be valid at all, they would have to gloat about every new version.
2) As far as browsers go, it's actually better to tell a person that his browser version 5 is greatly outdated rather than saying that 5.000.052 is now available over his old 5.000.015. That will likely get more people to update their stuff.
3) I just installed version 7. It didn't say "welcome to version 7" or anything. In fact, if I hadn't read this news, I'd not notice the update and Chrome would do it for me without even telling me. Yet again, no gloating about numbers.
Last but not least, since when is a number supposed to define how much is in the software? And why the hell should anyone even give a crap if Chrome is at 1.94 or 7.0?
Why is this modded insightful anyway? All consoles are doomed at some point because they are not meant to last for a more than a few years.
I understand that the author of this post may have had something else in mind, but Nintendo penetrated/created a niche market and gets away with low costs and innovation.
Everytime i see an article like this all i can think is "what Microsoft backed puppet wrote this crap?". Microsoft is working very hard to make out Google as craptastic, greedy and customerhating as them.
Why are you diverting a serious matter like this into smearing a company that most likely had nothing to do with it? E-mail accounts can contain very sensitive data, ranging from bank papers to personal issues. And especially if people you know get access to this, it makes the problem more serious than ever.
I won't comment on Google's actions because I don't know enough details, but if I had my mails exposed, I would be pretty pissed. And the fact that it is free doesn't make it more acceptable. It's like saying that someone volunteering for a non-paid job can act whichever way he or she wants just because it's free. No, you still have to follow rules.
Comments like this make me realize why there are so many extremists in this world.
We still use the microwave, we still use the freezer, the cooktop, the oven, we mostly use the combustion engine, we still mostly use steam for power plants, computers have gotten faster and we have LCD's now but nothing huge has hapenned, we don't have anti-gravity, we don't have teleportation, we can't change one thing in to another (easily), medically we still aren't growing replacement bodies.
I would say that the rate of transportation and availability of things has improved greatly. If something was invented 50 years ago, it would take a long time for a product to reach us globally. Today, a new Apple product or an Xbox is spread throughout the world in days for immediate availability.
Combine this with the fact that we're living rather comfortable lives; we have ovens, cars, microwaves, food delivery, shopping malls, etcetera. Back in the good ol' days, we didn't have these things, which is why inventing it made sense. Today, new inventions aren't as necessary as they were before. More effective, compact and cheaper products are, however.
Also, I'd argue that the jump from a horse wagon to a car is smaller than from a car to a teleporter - and there aren't that many steps in between.
Wait until those same people with gambling problems get in front of a loan shark, or shot because they can't pay.
So, prior to the 'net, how many people were shot in the D.C. area per annum because they couldn't pay?
That wasn't his point (if you quote him properly). Regardless, it should be everyone's right to choose what to do with the money that he or she makes. Obviously to some extent, but in the long run, poker is a game of skill, and like any other sport, it takes money and patience to achieve something.
I have at least 5 different devices that cannot stream that I use weekly. Also why waste the bandwidth playing the same songs over and over again [..]
There's a difference between true streams and streams with cache. Applications like Spotify lets you choose whether you want to cache the songs you're listening to or not.
Slow connection? Use caching.
Running out of space? Disable caching!
Slow connection and low on disk space? Well, then this service is not aimed to people like you.
I'm sure it will work fine for some games, that is until someone walks behind you or moves around in the background to ruin your game.
Also, multiplayer will require a huge room and lots of sensors. But perhaps Microsoft expects people to play online, a console for people with no real friends.
Why are you bashing a product you haven't tried yet? I'm sure they've spent a lot of time and effort to make this work in a good way, similar to what Nintendo did with the Wiimote.
I'll admit that I love my PlayStation 3 and I don't own an Xbox 360, but this is a very tempting product if it gets enough games to support it with.
Last but not least, I doubt that the controller will be so unintelligent that it cannot distinguish you from other people in the background in the same way that it can tell the difference in multiplayer, which it is told to support. That is, of course, unless someone jerks around right behind you and sabotages your game. But that's nothing you can blame MS for.
In other words, they must think that adding that extra fuel weight (for landing) is worth the extra fuel weight that is needed to launch the rockets into space. After all, the landing fuel will cost them a lot of extra weight. I don't know how much extra it would be, but it doesn't sound like a good idea.
The biggest problem with Internet Explorer and other browsers is that there is no compatibility warning standard. The web should have taken the same approach as PC games; if you aren't using the required/latest version of DirectX, this game will not launch.
In comparison, web sites with new standards should prompt users to upgrade to the latest version in order to see the site as it was intended. It must not be forced, as with DirectX, but if users were prompted every time, I think we would see a large quantity of updated users.
It's a move that would make sense for everyone, because;
1) The user would be up-to-date and surfing on a secure browser. 2) Microsoft and other developers would spend less time on supporting outdated software. 3) Web developers would cut spending on making cross-browser version compatibility.
Agreed. Owning up to your mistakes, whether you're a company or an individual, is a sign of dependability and reliability. I don't know about you, but for me that's a major factor when I purchase something.
That would only work in a perfect world. It's like when IBM admitted to the scratching disk problems it had a few years ago. Even if they admitted the problem fairly early, it didn't stop people from dropping the brand.
In reality, if Intel admitted the problems, it would go from a rumor/forum discussion to public announcement with worldwide dirt on the company's drives. Furthermore, we don't really know how many drives are really affected by this problem. I have two X-25M disks myself and have not encountered any problems at all.
So if we look at it from their side, they may have had a problem which - for all they knew - was only limited to a very low percentage of their total shippings. Why would they then want to go public with it and cause a major upset? From a corporate's point of view, it would make no sense.
It's a sad day when Slashdot moderators mod parent post insightful. He is basically saying that he doesn't touch a feature that requires touches. On a related note, I am allergic to poison.
Why are people still modding these comments as funny? Granted, Vista required quite a bit of power on the day of its release, but performance has since then improved and new hardware is more than capable of handling Vista.
I bought a medium range computer a year and a half ago and it runs Vista as fast as XP.
I used to think just like you do now. When XP was released, I forced the ugly Windows 2000 theme because I didn't want graphical interfaces left and right. Then I realized that it's not really cluttering anything, just that I am not used to the looks.
I think that a modern operating system must look good and flashy, but more importantly, configurable. It should appeal as trendy and nice to those who don't care to look under the shell, yet configurable enough to appeal to geeks who want features on or off.
Finally, I'd like to say that features like the bat signal should be included in Windows 7, but disabled by default.
The RIAA can't win in the courts, with advertising, or education of the young. Lobbyists haven't been able to get new laws passed. So the CEOs get their guys into the DOJ.
What did we expect?
"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
Before you read my reply to your post, I must inform you that I am no "Microsoft fanboy", but I find your submission kind of disturbing.
Face it, the real reason that Windows 7 is leaner than Vista is that Vista was a market flop because it tried to do all sorts of things that Windows users were simply not ready for.
What exactly were we not ready for? Can you please give us a few items within the operating system that caused this "flop"? I would say that the long wait and the rather unsatisfying list of improvements caused it to "flop". Vista did many things that made me choose Vista over XP. Granted, it wasn't a smooth start for Vista, but today it's actually a very good operating system.
As for the word "flop", I wouldn't use that personally. It's actually selling really well. Look for older Slashdot articles on this topic. I think Vista is mostly a "flop" within the geeky community, which is hardly more than just a few percent of the market share.
There is nothing seriously wrong with Vista, and Windows 7 is mostly an optimized version 2 of Vista.
I am not going to whine directly at you on this one, but I find it interesting that people say this about Vista and not about OSX, which has received similar updates to Vista -> 7. Obviously, it would be silly if Microsoft changed the architecture completely with every new OS release.
Some people say that 7 is just a Vista upgrade and claim that they shouldn't have to pay for it. This is a bad statement for many reasons, but as a fan of car analogies, I would say that Vista and 7 is what a car model is to its replacement the following year. It's only slightly improved and looks about the same.
The Slashdot summary is absolute nonsense. It's like listening to complaints about MS Paint; that people are going to ruin their camera shots with its horrible tools.
This product is obviously not intended for the average Slashdot user, but rather to children, parties and whatnot. Furthermore, this tool has the potential of helping people understand how music is built up.
Personally, I think this is a really interesting idea and I wonder what the reception would look like if this was an iSongsmith product.
You see I don't get this comment. Since the operating system 7 years ago had to run on much slower hardware, well, don't expect that now?
Try a Linux dist with a spiffy look and you'll notice that even this won't run that well on an older machine. It's ridiculously obvious that if computers improve, developers have more resources at their disposal.
WHY F***G NOT! What on earth does an operating system have to do so that it sucks up ever bit of my quad core machine?
Vista runs really well on all of my computers. How exactly did you manage to get Vista run slowly on a quad core?
I would actually like a faster operating system! I have a hate list of Vista, and not a single thing has changed in Windows 7 beta! Windows 7 beta is literally putting lipstick on a pig!
There, fixed that for you. I have Windows 7 along with Vista on one of my machines and to my experience, it works incredibly well.
But it's not really just a game, is it? People are paying a premium price because they need the controllers for it as well. And where's Halo 3 on that list? After all, it sold for 300 million in just one week.
My experience doesn't match their assessment. I'm running Windows 7 on my Dell Mini and it runs faster than Windows XP Home ran on this exact same machine.
I experienced the same thing as you and so did a lot of other people. The thing is that Anandtech doesn't mention what system they tested Windows 7 on, but it sounded like a decent machine. Vista runs really well on modern computers so it's obvious that you won't notice a difference if you already have a speedy system.
If you test it on a Dell Mini or a netbook, here's where the little extra matters. I installed it on my Eee and noticed a LOT of extra speed that I didn't have with Vista.
Also, the summary at Slashdot is really misleading. They say Windows 7 wasn't slower than Vista and also claimed 10% speed increase here and there, so what they are basically saying is that you won't notice the speed-up on a fast machine and it IS faster than Vista.
Last but not least, I agree with people that Microsoft needs to be roasted over its many disappointments, but we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt when we're talking about a pre-RC release as many things are yet to be improved. And at least this public beta release is a step in the right direction, because now they will have a plethora of feedback and enough time to make the changes that need to be done. However, if they fail despite this, I bet the pro-Linux community at Slashdot will have hot finger tips for a few more years.
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The market will grow but you need an e-mail to sign up at Facebook, and as such, some Facebook users will migrate from Gmail to Facebook mail. Therefore, the market is growing but Facebook will steal more than the growth that Eric is referring to.
On the other hand, I would love to break into the Apple storage facility and put recovery DVDs with every Macbook Air. Heck, I'd even throw in a coupon for an external DVD player.
Your argument would be completely valid, if it wasn't for a few things that you completely left out or didn't think of:
1) Unlike Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple and Opera, Google is actually not hyping new releases by calling it "the new Chrome 7", etc. They just say a new version is out. When you go to the Chrome site, it just lets you download Chrome. No special version. Just the latest. So for your argument to be valid at all, they would have to gloat about every new version.
2) As far as browsers go, it's actually better to tell a person that his browser version 5 is greatly outdated rather than saying that 5.000.052 is now available over his old 5.000.015. That will likely get more people to update their stuff.
3) I just installed version 7. It didn't say "welcome to version 7" or anything. In fact, if I hadn't read this news, I'd not notice the update and Chrome would do it for me without even telling me. Yet again, no gloating about numbers.
Last but not least, since when is a number supposed to define how much is in the software? And why the hell should anyone even give a crap if Chrome is at 1.94 or 7.0?
I'm assuming that you don't make enough money, or lack the interest. Or both.
This case is for that kind of people and it's painfully obvious even without having people pointing out the price tag.
Why is this modded insightful anyway? All consoles are doomed at some point because they are not meant to last for a more than a few years.
I understand that the author of this post may have had something else in mind, but Nintendo penetrated/created a niche market and gets away with low costs and innovation.
Everytime i see an article like this all i can think is "what Microsoft backed puppet wrote this crap?". Microsoft is working very hard to make out Google as craptastic, greedy and customerhating as them.
Why are you diverting a serious matter like this into smearing a company that most likely had nothing to do with it? E-mail accounts can contain very sensitive data, ranging from bank papers to personal issues. And especially if people you know get access to this, it makes the problem more serious than ever.
I won't comment on Google's actions because I don't know enough details, but if I had my mails exposed, I would be pretty pissed. And the fact that it is free doesn't make it more acceptable. It's like saying that someone volunteering for a non-paid job can act whichever way he or she wants just because it's free. No, you still have to follow rules.
Comments like this make me realize why there are so many extremists in this world.
We still use the microwave, we still use the freezer, the cooktop, the oven, we mostly use the combustion engine, we still mostly use steam for power plants, computers have gotten faster and we have LCD's now but nothing huge has hapenned, we don't have anti-gravity, we don't have teleportation, we can't change one thing in to another (easily), medically we still aren't growing replacement bodies.
I would say that the rate of transportation and availability of things has improved greatly. If something was invented 50 years ago, it would take a long time for a product to reach us globally. Today, a new Apple product or an Xbox is spread throughout the world in days for immediate availability.
Combine this with the fact that we're living rather comfortable lives; we have ovens, cars, microwaves, food delivery, shopping malls, etcetera. Back in the good ol' days, we didn't have these things, which is why inventing it made sense. Today, new inventions aren't as necessary as they were before. More effective, compact and cheaper products are, however.
Also, I'd argue that the jump from a horse wagon to a car is smaller than from a car to a teleporter - and there aren't that many steps in between.
They don't blame the planet, they blame a planet or a big body that passed its orbit.
The star is not a likely cause for its abnormal rotation, although that would make it far more interesting.
Wait until those same people with gambling problems get in front of a loan shark, or shot because they can't pay.
So, prior to the 'net, how many people were shot in the D.C. area per annum because they couldn't pay?
That wasn't his point (if you quote him properly). Regardless, it should be everyone's right to choose what to do with the money that he or she makes. Obviously to some extent, but in the long run, poker is a game of skill, and like any other sport, it takes money and patience to achieve something.
I have at least 5 different devices that cannot stream that I use weekly. Also why waste the bandwidth playing the same songs over and over again [..]
There's a difference between true streams and streams with cache. Applications like Spotify lets you choose whether you want to cache the songs you're listening to or not.
Slow connection? Use caching.
Running out of space? Disable caching!
Slow connection and low on disk space? Well, then this service is not aimed to people like you.
I'm sure it will work fine for some games, that is until someone walks behind you or moves around in the background to ruin your game. Also, multiplayer will require a huge room and lots of sensors. But perhaps Microsoft expects people to play online, a console for people with no real friends.
Why are you bashing a product you haven't tried yet? I'm sure they've spent a lot of time and effort to make this work in a good way, similar to what Nintendo did with the Wiimote.
I'll admit that I love my PlayStation 3 and I don't own an Xbox 360, but this is a very tempting product if it gets enough games to support it with.
Last but not least, I doubt that the controller will be so unintelligent that it cannot distinguish you from other people in the background in the same way that it can tell the difference in multiplayer, which it is told to support. That is, of course, unless someone jerks around right behind you and sabotages your game. But that's nothing you can blame MS for.
In other words, they must think that adding that extra fuel weight (for landing) is worth the extra fuel weight that is needed to launch the rockets into space. After all, the landing fuel will cost them a lot of extra weight. I don't know how much extra it would be, but it doesn't sound like a good idea.
The biggest problem with Internet Explorer and other browsers is that there is no compatibility warning standard. The web should have taken the same approach as PC games; if you aren't using the required/latest version of DirectX, this game will not launch.
In comparison, web sites with new standards should prompt users to upgrade to the latest version in order to see the site as it was intended. It must not be forced, as with DirectX, but if users were prompted every time, I think we would see a large quantity of updated users.
It's a move that would make sense for everyone, because;
1) The user would be up-to-date and surfing on a secure browser.
2) Microsoft and other developers would spend less time on supporting outdated software.
3) Web developers would cut spending on making cross-browser version compatibility.
Agreed. Owning up to your mistakes, whether you're a company or an individual, is a sign of dependability and reliability. I don't know about you, but for me that's a major factor when I purchase something.
That would only work in a perfect world. It's like when IBM admitted to the scratching disk problems it had a few years ago. Even if they admitted the problem fairly early, it didn't stop people from dropping the brand.
In reality, if Intel admitted the problems, it would go from a rumor/forum discussion to public announcement with worldwide dirt on the company's drives. Furthermore, we don't really know how many drives are really affected by this problem. I have two X-25M disks myself and have not encountered any problems at all.
So if we look at it from their side, they may have had a problem which - for all they knew - was only limited to a very low percentage of their total shippings. Why would they then want to go public with it and cause a major upset? From a corporate's point of view, it would make no sense.
It's a sad day when Slashdot moderators mod parent post insightful. He is basically saying that he doesn't touch a feature that requires touches. On a related note, I am allergic to poison.
Why are people still modding these comments as funny? Granted, Vista required quite a bit of power on the day of its release, but performance has since then improved and new hardware is more than capable of handling Vista.
I bought a medium range computer a year and a half ago and it runs Vista as fast as XP.
I used to think just like you do now. When XP was released, I forced the ugly Windows 2000 theme because I didn't want graphical interfaces left and right. Then I realized that it's not really cluttering anything, just that I am not used to the looks.
I think that a modern operating system must look good and flashy, but more importantly, configurable. It should appeal as trendy and nice to those who don't care to look under the shell, yet configurable enough to appeal to geeks who want features on or off.
Finally, I'd like to say that features like the bat signal should be included in Windows 7, but disabled by default.
The RIAA can't win in the courts, with advertising, or education of the young. Lobbyists haven't been able to get new laws passed. So the CEOs get their guys into the DOJ. What did we expect?
"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
- Ronald Reagan
Face it, the real reason that Windows 7 is leaner than Vista is that Vista was a market flop because it tried to do all sorts of things that Windows users were simply not ready for.
What exactly were we not ready for? Can you please give us a few items within the operating system that caused this "flop"? I would say that the long wait and the rather unsatisfying list of improvements caused it to "flop". Vista did many things that made me choose Vista over XP. Granted, it wasn't a smooth start for Vista, but today it's actually a very good operating system.
As for the word "flop", I wouldn't use that personally. It's actually selling really well. Look for older Slashdot articles on this topic. I think Vista is mostly a "flop" within the geeky community, which is hardly more than just a few percent of the market share.
There is nothing seriously wrong with Vista, and Windows 7 is mostly an optimized version 2 of Vista.
I am not going to whine directly at you on this one, but I find it interesting that people say this about Vista and not about OSX, which has received similar updates to Vista -> 7. Obviously, it would be silly if Microsoft changed the architecture completely with every new OS release.
Some people say that 7 is just a Vista upgrade and claim that they shouldn't have to pay for it. This is a bad statement for many reasons, but as a fan of car analogies, I would say that Vista and 7 is what a car model is to its replacement the following year. It's only slightly improved and looks about the same.
My 5c.
I wouldn't class Sony's rootkit 'malware' as much as it was a security risk. This is not even remotely close to how stupid Sony's decision was.
Having said that, I wonder if this update is stated anywhere in the ToA.
The Slashdot summary is absolute nonsense. It's like listening to complaints about MS Paint; that people are going to ruin their camera shots with its horrible tools.
This product is obviously not intended for the average Slashdot user, but rather to children, parties and whatnot. Furthermore, this tool has the potential of helping people understand how music is built up.
Personally, I think this is a really interesting idea and I wonder what the reception would look like if this was an iSongsmith product.
You see I don't get this comment. Since the operating system 7 years ago had to run on much slower hardware, well, don't expect that now?
Try a Linux dist with a spiffy look and you'll notice that even this won't run that well on an older machine. It's ridiculously obvious that if computers improve, developers have more resources at their disposal.
WHY F***G NOT! What on earth does an operating system have to do so that it sucks up ever bit of my quad core machine?
Vista runs really well on all of my computers. How exactly did you manage to get Vista run slowly on a quad core?
I would actually like a faster operating system! I have a hate list of Vista, and not a single thing has changed in Windows 7 beta! Windows 7 beta is literally putting lipstick on a pig!
There, fixed that for you. I have Windows 7 along with Vista on one of my machines and to my experience, it works incredibly well.
But it's not really just a game, is it? People are paying a premium price because they need the controllers for it as well. And where's Halo 3 on that list? After all, it sold for 300 million in just one week.
My experience doesn't match their assessment. I'm running Windows 7 on my Dell Mini and it runs faster than Windows XP Home ran on this exact same machine.
I experienced the same thing as you and so did a lot of other people. The thing is that Anandtech doesn't mention what system they tested Windows 7 on, but it sounded like a decent machine. Vista runs really well on modern computers so it's obvious that you won't notice a difference if you already have a speedy system.
If you test it on a Dell Mini or a netbook, here's where the little extra matters. I installed it on my Eee and noticed a LOT of extra speed that I didn't have with Vista.
Also, the summary at Slashdot is really misleading. They say Windows 7 wasn't slower than Vista and also claimed 10% speed increase here and there, so what they are basically saying is that you won't notice the speed-up on a fast machine and it IS faster than Vista.
Last but not least, I agree with people that Microsoft needs to be roasted over its many disappointments, but we ought to give them the benefit of the doubt when we're talking about a pre-RC release as many things are yet to be improved. And at least this public beta release is a step in the right direction, because now they will have a plethora of feedback and enough time to make the changes that need to be done. However, if they fail despite this, I bet the pro-Linux community at Slashdot will have hot finger tips for a few more years.
Dear Sir/Madam,
Please note that we are working hard to provide you with state of the art firewalls. As you may know, the internet consists of literately THOUSANDS of web sites and it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to tell you what you may and may not read.
Kindly report this issue to the authorities and we will take the necessary steps to ensure that your REGULARIZED FREEDOM is maintained at the highest level.
Best regards,
Mao