Streaming really only works today because a majority of video watchers are not using streaming.
Where do you get that figure from? My understanding is that a huge percentage of people watching videos online are doing so via Netflix, Prime, Hulu, YouTube, etc. And with the exception of SOME Prime users (who can download for offline use), that's ALL, 100% streaming. Heck, we already know that Netflix has the single largest share of Internet bandwidth usage at 37%.
In the US we have a very large percentage of internet subscriber that can't download a two hour movie in two hours or less.
??? 4 megabits per second speed translates to roughly 1.8 gigabytes per hour, and it would seem that covers 80% of Americans. Seems like most Americans can download or stream 2 hour movies relatively easily.
It's just practical sense to download during off-peak hours and then watch whenever you want. Helps too if lots of people are downloading the same thing because then you can cache it on a local server, use multicast for a neighborhood, things like that.
Sure, unless you don't always know what you feel like watching ahead of time. Streaming services are popular because if I want to watch House of Cards tonight, but then actually change my mind tonight and want to watch Daredevil, well, no big deal. Offline playback capability is nice, but not the main feature for a lot of us.
Yeah. They could. They didn't. They might never. I just don't think everyone understands how little a market that is, and how unimportant it is. It's called atrophy. Phones have almost completely supplanted MP3 players. If you're looking for music playing innovation, watch the phone space. People are playing music on phones, largely by way of subscription services. That kind of leaves the non-Spotify, non-Apple Music running, non-cellular connected iPod Nano market as not an afterthought, but a non-thought. Apple doesn't care because hardly anybody else cares. Or maybe nobody else cares because Apple doesn't care. All I know is, the fact that they haven't discontinued the Nano or the Shuffle or the iPod Touch doesn't mean we should expect huge innovation in that space.
I don't even think they have competition anymore in that space. Is anybody seriously marketing an MP3 player? I don't think it's SanDisk's main target. Microsoft left. I don't think Sony ever did much in that space. Who is the major company that cares about this market right now? Samsung discontinued their non-phone music devices. I'm embarrassed I even type this much on the subject.
Apple's been slowly dying for many years now depending on who you ask. I hope I die that slowly. But even if they are (one "bad" quarter aside there's little evidence), it still doesn't mean there's a huge demand for iPod Classic. Even if they sell for a lot of money on eBay. That just means the extremely small base of people who want them are willing to pay a lot because of the relative sparse availability. MP3 players, especially HDD ones aren't big anymore. Ask SanDisk. Microsoft. Ask anyone.
Be honest, if Apple produced a $300 iPod "Classic" with a 256GB SSD and an option for a $400 512GB version... would they make a $10 billion business out of that? Because if it isn't that big, there's just no chance they are interested. When they did a billion in AppleTV a few years back it was a "hobby business".
Apple just loves to artificially inflate the cost of memory in it's devices to drive up profits. They could easily make a cheap, large iPod...but it would invalidate why they charge so much to get 128GB in an iPhone.
That is how YOU solve the problem of upgrading YOUR HDD designed iPod. That's really not the way a company would go about making an iPod Classic SSD edition. But hey, go for it. I'm sure iPod Classics are pretty easy to get on eBay.
Never said it was challenging to do. I said they didn't care to bother based on the way the market is today. I'm staring at my iPod right now. It probably hasn't been plugged in to charge for months. Truth is, I'm RARELY without WiFi or Cell coverage. When I am there's usually some cached music on my phone, plus tons of downloaded Podcasts. My bluetooth headphones have a few gigs of memory for downloaded music. And eventually, I'll get off the plane and go back to having my entire library available for streaming. And even THAT is old fashioned since it seems the market is moving away from streaming YOUR library and towards subscription services such as Spotify or Apple Music.
I know it's hard to believe, but Apple isn't going to just drop an SD card adapter into the iPod Classic manufacturing line. First of all, they'd have to spin up an iPod Classic manufacturing line. And right there is probably reason enough not to bother. It's just not worth it.
Millions of iPod Touches and tens of millions of iPhones. 128gb and less space because streaming. That's just what they're focused on. I'm not saying guys like you don't pine for an alternative. I'm just saying guys like you aren't really where Apple is focused.
If they're going to do new iPhones, they need one that costs $99 or less. He spends time talking about the Chinese market, but they're not going to grow in that market anytime soon unless:
1) the phone is capable and cheap, as the market of Chinese people who can afford a $699 phone is saturated
2) the phone is made in China and likely co-marketed by a Chinese phone manufacturing company as the Chinese government wants to move their industry up the value chain
Oh stop. Just stop. They don't want a $99 iPhone. I don't mean Chinese people, or Slashdot users... some of them certainly do. But Apple isn't interested in that market. They don't NEED one (I wish my company's revenue dipped to barely $50 billion in one quarter). I just don't understand the logic that company A "HAS" to do something. They really don't. They make so much money now, I can't imagine why they would be interested in a higher volume, lower margin segment. Does Ferrari look at all those Toyota Camry's moving each month and say "man, where did we go wrong?"
Seriously. Their excuse was "we can't get the parts/drives to make them anymore". Ummm... they have hard drives on chips now. At work some of our laptops have "hard drives" that are nothing more than a chip about the size of a laptop DIMM physically with 256GB or more space.
You don't just put a new drive or new drive technology in an existing device. There's engineering and testing and all that good stuff out there. And no doubt, they looked at the size of that market and said no thanks, we'll spend our time elsewhere. I'm not saying there aren't hundreds of thousands or possibly even millions of people who would like an iPod Classic sized device with a 512GB SSD, but that's probably not a big enough market for Apple to care about. Also, while coming down, the price of a 256GB or 512GB SSD compared to an equivalent spinning disk would probably remove many of those potential buyers anyway.
In fairness to Apple, all those products you just described are multi-billion dollars lines of business for Apple. Computers both desktop and notebook, smart watches, phones, TV set top boxes, tablets, music subscriptions, TV and movie sales/rentals, music sales, all measured in billions not thousands or millions. And with the exception of computers, all things that weren't offered 15 years ago. Heck they still book a lot of iPod Touch sales. I guess I'd love to spin around Cook does, and the way Jobs did before him. I mean, they're no Michael Spindler, but they do ok...
That's NOT what you signed up for, however. I realize it's what many people THOUGHT they signed up for. But the reality is, and the fine print states that BingeOn customers get 480P streams of video, which helps conserve data caps for services that count towards your cap, and is a consequence of them offering unlimited streaming via other providers. In other words, you want this bone, it's not going to be a 1080P bone.
I absolutely, positively, 100% agree with people that it should be both OPT IN and better DISCLOSED, but yeah, that's how it works. I know we all wish it worked differently (I'll take 480P for Netflix but would like 1080P for YouTube), but that's not a feature. You'd have to opt out and manage your own data cap, or opt out and upgrade to unlimited.
I give up trying to figure out why. My kid has an iPad logged into my account. For years. Since she doesn't have my password she's never spent $1 on in app purchases or anything else. If I had turned off passwords, or given her my password, or turned off the feature that makes you repeat your password every time instead of caching it for fifteen minutes then I'd have to worry.
I just leave my key printed out and taped to the side of my computer, in case I ever need it. But seriously... for the vast majority of users, having it backed up to OneDrive is a great, great thing. I'm talking about the 99% of computer users who don't really know what this stuff is or how it works. For the rest of us, we can always follow the instructions, remove the key from OneDrive and ALSO change it to a new key.
Incidentally, I understand how all of this stuff works, and really don't care, personally. I use Win 10 in a VM for work purposes, and don't store documents there, but I am using a similar feature on my main machine which is OS X. I do store my recovery key in iCloud. If my device was stolen, and they hacked iCloud, or social engineered their way in, they'd get banking information, credit card data, tax returns. I get all that. To me, there's such a minimal risk (the chance of my laptop being stolen is small. The chance of it being stolen by someone with hacking ability even smaller. The chance that someone with all those skills cares about my data is even smaller still) - I just don't care.
This system is just fine for almost everybody. And the few that it isn't good for (not counting corporations who ought to be on Professional or Enterprise, and aren't subject to this system anyway) - they are smart enough (hopefully) to be here, and if they couldn't figure it out on their own, they've now seen 100 people link to 50 different blogs instructing them how to reinstall Windows without a Live account, decrypt and recrypt, remove the key from OneDrive, etc - there's half a dozen ways out of it even if you already had it happen to you and OH KNOWS my key is on OneDrive.
I suppose a non-technical leaning child pornographer may have a problem one day stemming from this. Good.
You would probably -- at the very least -- want to encrypt things like credit cards, banking passwords, bank statements and so on. You never know who might be poking around your hard drive. It's a very connected world.
That's not the same thing as needing to encrypt your entire hard drive.
That person probably recommended not using Windows 10 Home. He or she probably recommends Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise, BitLocker, or a third party encryption solution.
Well you're right and you're wrong. You're certainly right in terms of Linux. You're certainly wrong in terms of Ubuntu. But I realize the conversation was bouncing between both.
Stolen cash is reimbursed by your bank at a rate of $0 reimbursed for every $1 lost. Credit cards are reimbursed at $1 to $1. I'm not advocating running up a lot of debt and paying interest, but man, would my business travel be almost impossible without the cards I use (and pay off 100% every month once I get my expense check deposited).
I'd also miss out on all the great deals, like the 60,000 miles I got for AA, plus priority boarding and free checked bags for using their Citi sponsored card. Try booking a flight, hotel and car without a card. And the companies don't care... yeah they don't get 19% interest off of me, but they still get a few points off the merchant.
I also found more favorable exchange rates in Europe, speaking of Europe using my card and getting billed direct in € than going through banks and exchange counters.
Incidentally... hoping that was a typo. € 2000 to rent a car?
Step 1: Don't put your payment processing system / nuclear reactor C&C / pacemaker on the internet.
Step 2: Profit.
I think step 1 cancels step 2. I'd go elsewhere. "Thank you for booking online at Hyatt.com for your discounted, prepaid hotel reservation. Please call 1-800-HYATT in the next 2 hours to secure your room by reading us your credit card number over the phone."
Payment processing systems need to have links to the Internet. Inbound (yes you can have firewalls and proxy servers in between) to receive payment information and outbound (so you can authorize transactions to your merchant processor).
IBM said the same thing about PCs and windows in the '80s. History has shown them to be morons. Do you want to reconsider your position?
In fairness, if you look at the rise of the PC desktop running DOS then Windows vs. the rise of Linux on the desktop, IBM has been proven wrong, and the poster you are responding to, far from a moron, since there hasn't been a corresponding meteoric rise.
It's been so long people have been waiting for Linux on the Desktop to be completely mainstream, that it's not even a goal anymore, since laptops and tablets have all but supplanted desktops, people should be clamoring for Linux on the Notebook these days. I realize I'm just mincing words, but the truth is the desktop came and went before Linux became a real mainstream thing.
Celebrate what it is. A fantastic server OS. A viable desktop for the technologically savvy. The fact that we _COULD_ force it on our grandmothers who don't really use computers we give them anyway isn't really the point.
Also having a user id doesn't make you a user. I just created (don't get excited, I subsequently deleted it) a user on my server called freeze128. You aren't a user of my server.
Exactly. And even beyond that, counting tablets and IoT devices is over counting. If the metric is "# of Ubuntu devices deployed", then it's fine. If it's the # of Ubuntu users, it's over counting. If I have a Linux media server, a desktop running Linux and a tablet running Linux, that's three devices. But one user.
It depends. You might ask Siri to recommend a restaurant. You might already know where you want to eat and just ask Siri to find it (for directions, to get the number to make a reservation, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
Streaming really only works today because a majority of video watchers are not using streaming.
Where do you get that figure from? My understanding is that a huge percentage of people watching videos online are doing so via Netflix, Prime, Hulu, YouTube, etc. And with the exception of SOME Prime users (who can download for offline use), that's ALL, 100% streaming. Heck, we already know that Netflix has the single largest share of Internet bandwidth usage at 37%.
In the US we have a very large percentage of internet subscriber that can't download a two hour movie in two hours or less.
??? 4 megabits per second speed translates to roughly 1.8 gigabytes per hour, and it would seem that covers 80% of Americans. Seems like most Americans can download or stream 2 hour movies relatively easily.
It's just practical sense to download during off-peak hours and then watch whenever you want. Helps too if lots of people are downloading the same thing because then you can cache it on a local server, use multicast for a neighborhood, things like that.
Sure, unless you don't always know what you feel like watching ahead of time. Streaming services are popular because if I want to watch House of Cards tonight, but then actually change my mind tonight and want to watch Daredevil, well, no big deal. Offline playback capability is nice, but not the main feature for a lot of us.
My browser lets me ignore the fact that an SSL cert is expired.
And their app won't let you. Of course, I haven't seen it. But it's a safe assumption.
But, I thought local storage was dead and everything was going to the cloud. Ah, whats old is new again.
I fly all the time. You can't rely on the cloud whilst in the clouds.
Yeah. They could. They didn't. They might never. I just don't think everyone understands how little a market that is, and how unimportant it is. It's called atrophy. Phones have almost completely supplanted MP3 players. If you're looking for music playing innovation, watch the phone space. People are playing music on phones, largely by way of subscription services. That kind of leaves the non-Spotify, non-Apple Music running, non-cellular connected iPod Nano market as not an afterthought, but a non-thought. Apple doesn't care because hardly anybody else cares. Or maybe nobody else cares because Apple doesn't care. All I know is, the fact that they haven't discontinued the Nano or the Shuffle or the iPod Touch doesn't mean we should expect huge innovation in that space.
I don't even think they have competition anymore in that space. Is anybody seriously marketing an MP3 player? I don't think it's SanDisk's main target. Microsoft left. I don't think Sony ever did much in that space. Who is the major company that cares about this market right now? Samsung discontinued their non-phone music devices. I'm embarrassed I even type this much on the subject.
Apple's been slowly dying for many years now depending on who you ask. I hope I die that slowly. But even if they are (one "bad" quarter aside there's little evidence), it still doesn't mean there's a huge demand for iPod Classic. Even if they sell for a lot of money on eBay. That just means the extremely small base of people who want them are willing to pay a lot because of the relative sparse availability. MP3 players, especially HDD ones aren't big anymore. Ask SanDisk. Microsoft. Ask anyone.
Be honest, if Apple produced a $300 iPod "Classic" with a 256GB SSD and an option for a $400 512GB version... would they make a $10 billion business out of that? Because if it isn't that big, there's just no chance they are interested. When they did a billion in AppleTV a few years back it was a "hobby business".
The tech 'challenges' in getting an iPod classic to accept flash are ... uhm ... how to put it. Solved.
They use a standard (in antiquated) interface which you can readily buy an adapter to use an SD card.
http://www.imore.com/iflash-co... $60 buys you a 256GB flash drive from a dozen different retailers
Apple just loves to artificially inflate the cost of memory in it's devices to drive up profits. They could easily make a cheap, large iPod ...but it would invalidate why they charge so much to get 128GB in an iPhone.
That is how YOU solve the problem of upgrading YOUR HDD designed iPod. That's really not the way a company would go about making an iPod Classic SSD edition. But hey, go for it. I'm sure iPod Classics are pretty easy to get on eBay.
Never said it was challenging to do. I said they didn't care to bother based on the way the market is today. I'm staring at my iPod right now. It probably hasn't been plugged in to charge for months. Truth is, I'm RARELY without WiFi or Cell coverage. When I am there's usually some cached music on my phone, plus tons of downloaded Podcasts. My bluetooth headphones have a few gigs of memory for downloaded music. And eventually, I'll get off the plane and go back to having my entire library available for streaming. And even THAT is old fashioned since it seems the market is moving away from streaming YOUR library and towards subscription services such as Spotify or Apple Music.
I know it's hard to believe, but Apple isn't going to just drop an SD card adapter into the iPod Classic manufacturing line. First of all, they'd have to spin up an iPod Classic manufacturing line. And right there is probably reason enough not to bother. It's just not worth it.
Millions of iPod Touches and tens of millions of iPhones. 128gb and less space because streaming. That's just what they're focused on. I'm not saying guys like you don't pine for an alternative. I'm just saying guys like you aren't really where Apple is focused.
I'm sure performance is key on his mind with that machine.
If they're going to do new iPhones, they need one that costs $99 or less. He spends time talking about the Chinese market, but they're not going to grow in that market anytime soon unless:
1) the phone is capable and cheap, as the market of Chinese people who can afford a $699 phone is saturated 2) the phone is made in China and likely co-marketed by a Chinese phone manufacturing company as the Chinese government wants to move their industry up the value chain
Oh stop. Just stop. They don't want a $99 iPhone. I don't mean Chinese people, or Slashdot users... some of them certainly do. But Apple isn't interested in that market. They don't NEED one (I wish my company's revenue dipped to barely $50 billion in one quarter). I just don't understand the logic that company A "HAS" to do something. They really don't. They make so much money now, I can't imagine why they would be interested in a higher volume, lower margin segment. Does Ferrari look at all those Toyota Camry's moving each month and say "man, where did we go wrong?"
Seriously. Their excuse was "we can't get the parts/drives to make them anymore". Ummm... they have hard drives on chips now. At work some of our laptops have "hard drives" that are nothing more than a chip about the size of a laptop DIMM physically with 256GB or more space.
You don't just put a new drive or new drive technology in an existing device. There's engineering and testing and all that good stuff out there. And no doubt, they looked at the size of that market and said no thanks, we'll spend our time elsewhere. I'm not saying there aren't hundreds of thousands or possibly even millions of people who would like an iPod Classic sized device with a 512GB SSD, but that's probably not a big enough market for Apple to care about. Also, while coming down, the price of a 256GB or 512GB SSD compared to an equivalent spinning disk would probably remove many of those potential buyers anyway.
In fairness to Apple, all those products you just described are multi-billion dollars lines of business for Apple. Computers both desktop and notebook, smart watches, phones, TV set top boxes, tablets, music subscriptions, TV and movie sales/rentals, music sales, all measured in billions not thousands or millions. And with the exception of computers, all things that weren't offered 15 years ago. Heck they still book a lot of iPod Touch sales. I guess I'd love to spin around Cook does, and the way Jobs did before him. I mean, they're no Michael Spindler, but they do ok...
That's NOT what you signed up for, however. I realize it's what many people THOUGHT they signed up for. But the reality is, and the fine print states that BingeOn customers get 480P streams of video, which helps conserve data caps for services that count towards your cap, and is a consequence of them offering unlimited streaming via other providers. In other words, you want this bone, it's not going to be a 1080P bone.
I absolutely, positively, 100% agree with people that it should be both OPT IN and better DISCLOSED, but yeah, that's how it works. I know we all wish it worked differently (I'll take 480P for Netflix but would like 1080P for YouTube), but that's not a feature. You'd have to opt out and manage your own data cap, or opt out and upgrade to unlimited.
I give up trying to figure out why. My kid has an iPad logged into my account. For years. Since she doesn't have my password she's never spent $1 on in app purchases or anything else. If I had turned off passwords, or given her my password, or turned off the feature that makes you repeat your password every time instead of caching it for fifteen minutes then I'd have to worry.
I just leave my key printed out and taped to the side of my computer, in case I ever need it. But seriously... for the vast majority of users, having it backed up to OneDrive is a great, great thing. I'm talking about the 99% of computer users who don't really know what this stuff is or how it works. For the rest of us, we can always follow the instructions, remove the key from OneDrive and ALSO change it to a new key.
Incidentally, I understand how all of this stuff works, and really don't care, personally. I use Win 10 in a VM for work purposes, and don't store documents there, but I am using a similar feature on my main machine which is OS X. I do store my recovery key in iCloud. If my device was stolen, and they hacked iCloud, or social engineered their way in, they'd get banking information, credit card data, tax returns. I get all that. To me, there's such a minimal risk (the chance of my laptop being stolen is small. The chance of it being stolen by someone with hacking ability even smaller. The chance that someone with all those skills cares about my data is even smaller still) - I just don't care.
This system is just fine for almost everybody. And the few that it isn't good for (not counting corporations who ought to be on Professional or Enterprise, and aren't subject to this system anyway) - they are smart enough (hopefully) to be here, and if they couldn't figure it out on their own, they've now seen 100 people link to 50 different blogs instructing them how to reinstall Windows without a Live account, decrypt and recrypt, remove the key from OneDrive, etc - there's half a dozen ways out of it even if you already had it happen to you and OH KNOWS my key is on OneDrive.
I suppose a non-technical leaning child pornographer may have a problem one day stemming from this. Good.
You would probably -- at the very least -- want to encrypt things like credit cards, banking passwords, bank statements and so on. You never know who might be poking around your hard drive. It's a very connected world.
That's not the same thing as needing to encrypt your entire hard drive.
Completely false. In your defense, the installer hides it a bit.
That person probably recommended not using Windows 10 Home. He or she probably recommends Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise, BitLocker, or a third party encryption solution.
So if you owe large sums of money they don't want you fleeing the country? Yeah. I'm ok with that.
Well you're right and you're wrong. You're certainly right in terms of Linux. You're certainly wrong in terms of Ubuntu. But I realize the conversation was bouncing between both.
Stolen cash is reimbursed by your bank at a rate of $0 reimbursed for every $1 lost. Credit cards are reimbursed at $1 to $1. I'm not advocating running up a lot of debt and paying interest, but man, would my business travel be almost impossible without the cards I use (and pay off 100% every month once I get my expense check deposited).
I'd also miss out on all the great deals, like the 60,000 miles I got for AA, plus priority boarding and free checked bags for using their Citi sponsored card. Try booking a flight, hotel and car without a card. And the companies don't care... yeah they don't get 19% interest off of me, but they still get a few points off the merchant.
I also found more favorable exchange rates in Europe, speaking of Europe using my card and getting billed direct in € than going through banks and exchange counters.
Incidentally... hoping that was a typo. € 2000 to rent a car?
Step 1: Don't put your payment processing system / nuclear reactor C&C / pacemaker on the internet.
Step 2: Profit.
I think step 1 cancels step 2. I'd go elsewhere. "Thank you for booking online at Hyatt.com for your discounted, prepaid hotel reservation. Please call 1-800-HYATT in the next 2 hours to secure your room by reading us your credit card number over the phone."
Payment processing systems need to have links to the Internet. Inbound (yes you can have firewalls and proxy servers in between) to receive payment information and outbound (so you can authorize transactions to your merchant processor).
Ubuntu is a toy.
IBM said the same thing about PCs and windows in the '80s. History has shown them to be morons. Do you want to reconsider your position?
In fairness, if you look at the rise of the PC desktop running DOS then Windows vs. the rise of Linux on the desktop, IBM has been proven wrong, and the poster you are responding to, far from a moron, since there hasn't been a corresponding meteoric rise.
It's been so long people have been waiting for Linux on the Desktop to be completely mainstream, that it's not even a goal anymore, since laptops and tablets have all but supplanted desktops, people should be clamoring for Linux on the Notebook these days. I realize I'm just mincing words, but the truth is the desktop came and went before Linux became a real mainstream thing.
Celebrate what it is. A fantastic server OS. A viable desktop for the technologically savvy. The fact that we _COULD_ force it on our grandmothers who don't really use computers we give them anyway isn't really the point.
Also having a user id doesn't make you a user. I just created (don't get excited, I subsequently deleted it) a user on my server called freeze128. You aren't a user of my server.
Exactly. And even beyond that, counting tablets and IoT devices is over counting. If the metric is "# of Ubuntu devices deployed", then it's fine. If it's the # of Ubuntu users, it's over counting. If I have a Linux media server, a desktop running Linux and a tablet running Linux, that's three devices. But one user.
It depends. You might ask Siri to recommend a restaurant. You might already know where you want to eat and just ask Siri to find it (for directions, to get the number to make a reservation, etc).
Yeah whatever. You probably made that up. Like someone on Slashdot would actually read the article. Please!