The video tag always meant, that we should be able to assume the most widely used codec was in place.
Erm, no. The video tag always meant that we could assume that at least the codec specified in the standard itself (ie, Theora before Apple's bitchfest) was in place. It never was a popularity competition, and now that Apple managed to remove Theora from the standard and no particular codec is specified, it's all as it was before the days of Flash: a random coin toss as to whether it'll work or not, regardless of which codec(s) you use.
Instead killing off the video tag means we are LOCKED INTO h.264 in a way that would not have been true if the video tag really took off. It means we are LOCKED INTO flash players in a way that would not have been true if the video tag took off.
Don't like h.264? Then you of all people should be more angry at Google than I am, because they ensured the marginalization of WebM and VP8.
No, he should be angry at Apple, as without them there would have been a specific codec we could've relied upon even if all others were missing, one codec whose support would be universal among all HTML5-compliant browsers and devices, Ogg Theora. Instead, we get a return of "guess the codec" which, unlike what all the h.264 apologists try to claim, was pretty damn far from being universally supported even before Google's decision.
A beta with memory leaks? oh, the horror! what shall we have next, missing features in alphas? nightly builds that don't compile? cats and dogs living together!?
God damn you, video game industry, your habit of naming playable demos "beta", and your players that carry such expectations to the rest of the software industry.
That's your solution? No one has managed to write a compatible Flash implementation with Adobe's. It's a huge monster of spaghetti code that is bloated far beyond anything needed for a video playing codec. Moreover, it's a closed standard with more patent issues that h264. What problem, exactly, are you trying to solve here? This is about Google supporting Flash and not supporting h264, thus pushing the closed Flash over the open h264.
Step one: download video FLV from a website. Step two: drag&drop it to VLC. Step three: enjoy your video. Flash video (ie, the only problem HTML5/h.264 attempts to solve) has already been solved ages ago.
So is h264! Except H264 is already here and has good performance and stability on mobile devices, while Flash is a turd on mobile platforms. Are you being intentionally obtuse?
HTML5/h.264 is barely used outside of a few clips on Youtube, Flash is everywhere. Within the context of online video HTML5/h.264 is barely bigger than HTML5/WebM, don't bring up camcorders or any of that irrelevant trash here, you ain't gonna be watching the movie you just recorded on a freakin' web browser unless you're a tech-obsessed nerd.
Yes it is.
No it isn't. Flash is free to use and redistribute, (other) h.264 encoders and decoders are not. HTML5/h.264 is a much larger threat to the future of the internet than Flash, regardless of what your Google conspiracy theories may tell you.
Umm, great and all, except it doesn't make sense. Apple isn't using h264 support as a differentiator because almost everyone already supports it including YouTube and Chrome and Android. Rather, Google is pulling support for it to create a differentiator. What Apple isn't doing is supporting a single vendor locked in system called "Flash" and despite your rampant Google fanboyism you haven't been able to justify a good reason why Google who claims they're acting for the good of the people with open standards is pushing Flash other than to make money.
Everyone *but* Apple already supports Flash, so by the same argument Google can't be using it as a differentiator either. And the simple reason they support it, which you can't admit due to your hatred of it, is that Flash is everywhere, with over 99% of users having it installed and multiple websites taking advantage of that. HTML5/h.264 however is not, therefore they can kill it off right now rather than having to wait a few years until WebM is mature enough to replace it.
However it seems that the OSS types then get mad that any money is being charged. All of a sudden openness isn't what it is about. It is no longer a matter of "free as in speech" it is "free as in I want to sleep on your couch for a year." Only things which cost nothing are acceptable, for some reason "open but not zero cost," isn't ok anymore.
Wrong. From the Open Source Definition, article 1:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
Emphasis mine. OSS allows *you*, the distributor, to charge and profit from Open Source Software if you wish, but it does not allow you to impose a fee to subsequent users: if I get a hold of your software, even if I paid you $10k for it, I have to be free to give it away or sell it for $100k if I want, and they in turn do the same for anyone as they feel.
If anything, h.264's licensing terms are more reminescent of Microsoft's Shared Source initiative of a few years back. Look, but don't touch, touch, but don't distribute, distribute, but only if you pay us dearly for the right and make your users submit to our restrictions. We didn't like that back then, we don't like this right now, I see no contradiction.
H.264's licensing terms are anything but "reasonable", given its context. HTTP is free, HTML is free, FTP is free, every single protocol and format standardized for its use on online communication has been free since the inception of the Internet, demanding now the use of a codec that requires monetary payment to create, distribute and display content using it is outrageous, particularly when valid, Free alternatives exist and have already begun to be put in place.
Control of the format is irrelevant, as both sides are trying to push their format onto the HTML5 standard, and whatever gets put there will become the actual standard regardless of what anyone else does afterwards. In that context, Flash is irrelevant as its closedness is so obvious as to not make it even a potential candidate for the HTML5 standard.
What matters however is the licensing, and while WebM is available under a BSD license for anyone wanting to use it for any purpose whatsoever, h.264 is known to depend on patents held by an oligopoly formed by some of the largest players on the industry which are very much *NOT* available to anyone, at least not without a significant monetary fee.
I'd say they're more interested in raising the barrier of entry to the market than they are in money per se. We've always known Microsoft is perfectly willing to spend a few millions just to get rid of a competitor, so the MPEG LA licensing fees must look like a bargain to them, given the effect they're having on the market.
Flash is likewise not supported by hardware decoders on many platforms and worse, since there is only one implementation of note, it is slow, crashy, and resource intensive.
Adobe's Flash implementation, there's nothing stopping Apple et al from writing their own. Vector graphics and animation are more complex of course, but as far as online video is concerned FLV is nothing but a thin container over the same old h.264 they're trying to promote.
Why Flash at all? Anyway, Google is not willing to do that since they say they're pulling support for h.264. If Google actually cared about the users, they'd commit to supporting h.264 until a specific date in order to benefit end users so those users aren't stuck with Flash.
Because Flash is already here and in place on all major platforms. The real problem here isn't Flash, it's h.264 so continuing support for HTML5 h.264 would not only do nothing to solve the major problem here, it'd divert resources and focus from the true solution: WebM. Well, or Theora, but WebM is technically superior without any of the legal disadvantages of other "solutions".
They don't really care about either. They care about profits and they're fighting that battle the right way this time, by trying to make a better product. It just so happens that h264 is the only codec that works best for their customers NOW. And you expect them to agree to a standard that has worse battery life or is closed and under the control of a company that has been ignoring the need for security and stability and performance forever? Sorry, but you're completely blinded by partisanship on this one.
They care about increasing their profits at the expense of enterpreneurs and the free market itself. You really expect Google to agree to a so-called "standard" that forces anyone making tools even remotely related to internet video to pay a fee to an oligopoly or risk bankrupcy in a patent lawsuit?
You're so focused on your illogical hatred for Flash that you're willing to hand over the free market to an oligopoly just to see it dissapear a couple years sooner.
Apple can easily broker a better solution, one that benefits customers, but they won't and this is because they are intentionally promoting h.264 and using HTML5 h.264 support as a differentiating feature to try to gain market share in the mobile OS market... at the expense of open standards and users.
You are still being limited by your character attributes. If you were playing an evil character and did something good for people then you would be penalized by the game master.
Depending on your reasoning and consequences. Still, the option *should* be there on a CRPG, railroading the plot based on a choice you made (likely) at the beginning of the game stinks of poor writing.
I've never seen an RPG that doesn't have character evolution. Do you know any?
Other than ME2? the only ones I can remember right now are some japanese Visual Novels, at least under my definition of RPG.
The TFS shows your choices affecting companions, not the main quest.
Your companions' survival during the final mission of the game, which will almost surely affect the main plot of ME3 just as the decisions taken during ME1 affected ME2 in turn.
How do you play a role without a story?
You create your own. That's the whole appeal of sandbox games, and it's not even limited to them: nearly all the characterization on Nethack is made by your own actions and decisions during the game rather than forced on you by triggered events and cutscenes.
- Player actions must be limited by character attributes;
That'd be an example of playing a role rather than role playing. Just because I set myself up as "Chaotic Evil" doesn't mean I won't help my teammate with her family issues, I may just do it to get into her pants, and I may still choose to skip on it even if I'm a "Lawful Good" character simply because I consider my mission more important at the moment.
- Player character must be able to evolve his attributes and skills;
That's completely orthogonal from role playing. The CoD series gives you that in MP, and nobody would call it an RPG. Mass Effect 2 simply decides not to, and similarly that doesn't make it *not* an RPG.
- Player actions must be able to change the *main* story completely, not just side quests (companion stories are side quests);
ME2 fits that perfectly, as TFA (and even TFS) show, though I must note an RPG doesn't even need a "main" story to begin with (see also: M&B Warband).
- Player character attributes and skills must be considered during conversations with key NPCs adding and removing dialog options and changing the *main* story;
See my reply to your first point, on limiting possible outcomes by character attributes.
Actually, kids in Sudan won't have a problem with h.264 as its royalties and the whole licensing mess are only enforceable on countries that support software patents. Meaning the US, and... not much else. So far.
The biggest problem are US-based startups planning on making a new product involving video or online streaming in any form, since they'd have to license a bunch of patents owned by very large corporations that do *not* appreciate competition and that, without WebM, have the means necessary to crush it at will.
I haven't tried streaming video yet though, but given how much of a resource hog h.264 is, I doubt it'll work very well. Still, I'm sure it'll do just fine with all other HTML5 features, far better than IE5 does for you Mac users thanks to Apple's planned obsolescence.
Sure, it's kind of off-topic on this discussion, but do keep in mind HTML5 is far more than a video codec or two.
Two, MS Java and MS HTML, as neither supported the original, clean standard, only Microsoft's bastardized version of them. Microsoft's C# implementation does support the published standard to the letter, as does Silverlight, though that's unsurprising given that Microsoft wrote the standards themselves. Just like Google did with WebM, while we're at it.
Thankfully, I am certain they wouldn't. Google can certainly afford to pay MPEG LA's fees for themselves, if they're doing this its to protect their users because they know that if they had to pay to publish or browse videos on YouTube the website would die faster than a heartbeat, and that the only thing keeping MPEG LA's fees away so far is the fact that WebM is providing a strong, Free alternative to it.
So what will you use? Apple and Microsoft have refused to support WebM so far (and given their mutual hatred of Google, are unlikely to ever do so) and neither Firefox nor Opera can support h.264.
Temporary measures seldom are, and for anyone that wants h.264 that badly there's always Flash anyways, it's just Apple refuses to implement *that* one due to their personal vendetta against Adobe.
The obvious solution would be to adopt WebM as the official standard, work on putting both software and hardware in place over the next couple years, and implement Flash/h.264 as an interim solution while HTML5 is finished, to take advantage of any pre-existing h.264 acceleration. Which was exactly what we had before Apple's bitchfest except with Theora rather than WebM, what Google seems to be going for, and what Apple would be going for if they were really interested in furthering open standards on the web, rather than abusing their position on standard bodies to further their own personal wars against Adobe and Google.
Agreed, pity Apple decided to pull their little political stunt with the W3C last year rather than just deliver a working Theora codec (or just bundle the Free one) and calling it a day, we could've avoided this whole mess from the start.
So is WebM, with the advantage that we wouldn't have to deal with shady licensing issues for the next 20 years.
H.264's only advantage is that it's the current state-of-the-art, and only a fool would believe that'd still be the case five years from now, let alone twenty.
Should we really be trading out gadgets every year?
No, we should not. Thankfully, chances are the iPad one will keep working long after the iPad two is released, so as long as you're able to keep your own tecnophile, consumerist urges in check there shouldn't be any problem.
Fujifilm has updated their digital camera lineup three times since I bought my current camera, IBM did it twice for my laptop before selling out the business to Lenovo, who did it another few times afterwards, and if I had a buck for everytime LG has updated their DVD players since I bought mine, I could probably buy a top-of-the-line BluRay player today and have money to spare.
Repeat after me: I don't have to stay on the bleeding edge of technology, I am not a dirty, commie hippie if I stay with last year's smartphone rather than moving on to the latest model, and if my friends look at me funny because I'm not wearing the latest fashion in Milan, it only means I need to get better friends.
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The video tag always meant, that we should be able to assume the most widely used codec was in place.
Erm, no. The video tag always meant that we could assume that at least the codec specified in the standard itself (ie, Theora before Apple's bitchfest) was in place. It never was a popularity competition, and now that Apple managed to remove Theora from the standard and no particular codec is specified, it's all as it was before the days of Flash: a random coin toss as to whether it'll work or not, regardless of which codec(s) you use.
Instead killing off the video tag means we are LOCKED INTO h.264 in a way that would not have been true if the video tag really took off. It means we are LOCKED INTO flash players in a way that would not have been true if the video tag took off.
Don't like h.264? Then you of all people should be more angry at Google than I am, because they ensured the marginalization of WebM and VP8.
No, he should be angry at Apple, as without them there would have been a specific codec we could've relied upon even if all others were missing, one codec whose support would be universal among all HTML5-compliant browsers and devices, Ogg Theora. Instead, we get a return of "guess the codec" which, unlike what all the h.264 apologists try to claim, was pretty damn far from being universally supported even before Google's decision.
A beta with memory leaks? oh, the horror! what shall we have next, missing features in alphas? nightly builds that don't compile? cats and dogs living together!?
God damn you, video game industry, your habit of naming playable demos "beta", and your players that carry such expectations to the rest of the software industry.
That's your solution? No one has managed to write a compatible Flash implementation with Adobe's. It's a huge monster of spaghetti code that is bloated far beyond anything needed for a video playing codec. Moreover, it's a closed standard with more patent issues that h264. What problem, exactly, are you trying to solve here? This is about Google supporting Flash and not supporting h264, thus pushing the closed Flash over the open h264.
Step one: download video FLV from a website. Step two: drag&drop it to VLC. Step three: enjoy your video. Flash video (ie, the only problem HTML5/h.264 attempts to solve) has already been solved ages ago.
So is h264! Except H264 is already here and has good performance and stability on mobile devices, while Flash is a turd on mobile platforms. Are you being intentionally obtuse?
HTML5/h.264 is barely used outside of a few clips on Youtube, Flash is everywhere. Within the context of online video HTML5/h.264 is barely bigger than HTML5/WebM, don't bring up camcorders or any of that irrelevant trash here, you ain't gonna be watching the movie you just recorded on a freakin' web browser unless you're a tech-obsessed nerd.
Yes it is.
No it isn't. Flash is free to use and redistribute, (other) h.264 encoders and decoders are not. HTML5/h.264 is a much larger threat to the future of the internet than Flash, regardless of what your Google conspiracy theories may tell you.
Umm, great and all, except it doesn't make sense. Apple isn't using h264 support as a differentiator because almost everyone already supports it including YouTube and Chrome and Android. Rather, Google is pulling support for it to create a differentiator. What Apple isn't doing is supporting a single vendor locked in system called "Flash" and despite your rampant Google fanboyism you haven't been able to justify a good reason why Google who claims they're acting for the good of the people with open standards is pushing Flash other than to make money.
Everyone *but* Apple already supports Flash, so by the same argument Google can't be using it as a differentiator either. And the simple reason they support it, which you can't admit due to your hatred of it, is that Flash is everywhere, with over 99% of users having it installed and multiple websites taking advantage of that. HTML5/h.264 however is not, therefore they can kill it off right now rather than having to wait a few years until WebM is mature enough to replace it.
However it seems that the OSS types then get mad that any money is being charged. All of a sudden openness isn't what it is about. It is no longer a matter of "free as in speech" it is "free as in I want to sleep on your couch for a year." Only things which cost nothing are acceptable, for some reason "open but not zero cost," isn't ok anymore.
Wrong. From the Open Source Definition, article 1:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
Emphasis mine. OSS allows *you*, the distributor, to charge and profit from Open Source Software if you wish, but it does not allow you to impose a fee to subsequent users: if I get a hold of your software, even if I paid you $10k for it, I have to be free to give it away or sell it for $100k if I want, and they in turn do the same for anyone as they feel.
If anything, h.264's licensing terms are more reminescent of Microsoft's Shared Source initiative of a few years back. Look, but don't touch, touch, but don't distribute, distribute, but only if you pay us dearly for the right and make your users submit to our restrictions. We didn't like that back then, we don't like this right now, I see no contradiction.
It's open to look at, not open to use and implement.
H.264's licensing terms are anything but "reasonable", given its context. HTTP is free, HTML is free, FTP is free, every single protocol and format standardized for its use on online communication has been free since the inception of the Internet, demanding now the use of a codec that requires monetary payment to create, distribute and display content using it is outrageous, particularly when valid, Free alternatives exist and have already begun to be put in place.
Control of the format is irrelevant, as both sides are trying to push their format onto the HTML5 standard, and whatever gets put there will become the actual standard regardless of what anyone else does afterwards. In that context, Flash is irrelevant as its closedness is so obvious as to not make it even a potential candidate for the HTML5 standard.
What matters however is the licensing, and while WebM is available under a BSD license for anyone wanting to use it for any purpose whatsoever, h.264 is known to depend on patents held by an oligopoly formed by some of the largest players on the industry which are very much *NOT* available to anyone, at least not without a significant monetary fee.
I'd say they're more interested in raising the barrier of entry to the market than they are in money per se. We've always known Microsoft is perfectly willing to spend a few millions just to get rid of a competitor, so the MPEG LA licensing fees must look like a bargain to them, given the effect they're having on the market.
Google's position isn't due to Chrome but to Youtube, in particular their desire not to be fucked over by MPEG LA in licensing fees over it.
The fees for those that actually produce content rather than simply consume it as you do are much higher.
Flash is likewise not supported by hardware decoders on many platforms and worse, since there is only one implementation of note, it is slow, crashy, and resource intensive.
Adobe's Flash implementation, there's nothing stopping Apple et al from writing their own. Vector graphics and animation are more complex of course, but as far as online video is concerned FLV is nothing but a thin container over the same old h.264 they're trying to promote.
Why Flash at all? Anyway, Google is not willing to do that since they say they're pulling support for h.264. If Google actually cared about the users, they'd commit to supporting h.264 until a specific date in order to benefit end users so those users aren't stuck with Flash.
Because Flash is already here and in place on all major platforms. The real problem here isn't Flash, it's h.264 so continuing support for HTML5 h.264 would not only do nothing to solve the major problem here, it'd divert resources and focus from the true solution: WebM. Well, or Theora, but WebM is technically superior without any of the legal disadvantages of other "solutions".
They don't really care about either. They care about profits and they're fighting that battle the right way this time, by trying to make a better product. It just so happens that h264 is the only codec that works best for their customers NOW. And you expect them to agree to a standard that has worse battery life or is closed and under the control of a company that has been ignoring the need for security and stability and performance forever? Sorry, but you're completely blinded by partisanship on this one.
They care about increasing their profits at the expense of enterpreneurs and the free market itself. You really expect Google to agree to a so-called "standard" that forces anyone making tools even remotely related to internet video to pay a fee to an oligopoly or risk bankrupcy in a patent lawsuit?
You're so focused on your illogical hatred for Flash that you're willing to hand over the free market to an oligopoly just to see it dissapear a couple years sooner.
Apple can easily broker a better solution, one that benefits customers, but they won't and this is because they are intentionally promoting h.264 and using HTML5 h.264 support as a differentiating feature to try to gain market share in the mobile OS market... at the expense of open standards and users.
Fixed that for you.
You are still being limited by your character attributes. If you were playing an evil character and did something good for people then you would be penalized by the game master.
Depending on your reasoning and consequences. Still, the option *should* be there on a CRPG, railroading the plot based on a choice you made (likely) at the beginning of the game stinks of poor writing.
I've never seen an RPG that doesn't have character evolution. Do you know any?
Other than ME2? the only ones I can remember right now are some japanese Visual Novels, at least under my definition of RPG.
The TFS shows your choices affecting companions, not the main quest.
Your companions' survival during the final mission of the game, which will almost surely affect the main plot of ME3 just as the decisions taken during ME1 affected ME2 in turn.
How do you play a role without a story?
You create your own. That's the whole appeal of sandbox games, and it's not even limited to them: nearly all the characterization on Nethack is made by your own actions and decisions during the game rather than forced on you by triggered events and cutscenes.
- Player actions must be limited by character attributes;
That'd be an example of playing a role rather than role playing. Just because I set myself up as "Chaotic Evil" doesn't mean I won't help my teammate with her family issues, I may just do it to get into her pants, and I may still choose to skip on it even if I'm a "Lawful Good" character simply because I consider my mission more important at the moment.
- Player character must be able to evolve his attributes and skills;
That's completely orthogonal from role playing. The CoD series gives you that in MP, and nobody would call it an RPG. Mass Effect 2 simply decides not to, and similarly that doesn't make it *not* an RPG.
- Player actions must be able to change the *main* story completely, not just side quests (companion stories are side quests);
ME2 fits that perfectly, as TFA (and even TFS) show, though I must note an RPG doesn't even need a "main" story to begin with (see also: M&B Warband).
- Player character attributes and skills must be considered during conversations with key NPCs adding and removing dialog options and changing the *main* story;
See my reply to your first point, on limiting possible outcomes by character attributes.
Actually, kids in Sudan won't have a problem with h.264 as its royalties and the whole licensing mess are only enforceable on countries that support software patents. Meaning the US, and... not much else. So far.
The biggest problem are US-based startups planning on making a new product involving video or online streaming in any form, since they'd have to license a bunch of patents owned by very large corporations that do *not* appreciate competition and that, without WebM, have the means necessary to crush it at will.
I seriously suggest you try running Chrome 9, Firefox 4 or IE9 under Win7 or Ubuntu 10.04 a P2-400 with 256 to 512MB RAM.
It works very well, thank you.
I haven't tried streaming video yet though, but given how much of a resource hog h.264 is, I doubt it'll work very well. Still, I'm sure it'll do just fine with all other HTML5 features, far better than IE5 does for you Mac users thanks to Apple's planned obsolescence.
Sure, it's kind of off-topic on this discussion, but do keep in mind HTML5 is far more than a video codec or two.
Two, MS Java and MS HTML, as neither supported the original, clean standard, only Microsoft's bastardized version of them. Microsoft's C# implementation does support the published standard to the letter, as does Silverlight, though that's unsurprising given that Microsoft wrote the standards themselves. Just like Google did with WebM, while we're at it.
Thankfully, I am certain they wouldn't. Google can certainly afford to pay MPEG LA's fees for themselves, if they're doing this its to protect their users because they know that if they had to pay to publish or browse videos on YouTube the website would die faster than a heartbeat, and that the only thing keeping MPEG LA's fees away so far is the fact that WebM is providing a strong, Free alternative to it.
The first hit is always free.
After that you are stuck with one company who owns the patents to your codec.
WebM is at least independent from any one company.
Fixed that for you.
So what will you use? Apple and Microsoft have refused to support WebM so far (and given their mutual hatred of Google, are unlikely to ever do so) and neither Firefox nor Opera can support h.264.
Temporary measures seldom are, and for anyone that wants h.264 that badly there's always Flash anyways, it's just Apple refuses to implement *that* one due to their personal vendetta against Adobe.
The obvious solution would be to adopt WebM as the official standard, work on putting both software and hardware in place over the next couple years, and implement Flash/h.264 as an interim solution while HTML5 is finished, to take advantage of any pre-existing h.264 acceleration. Which was exactly what we had before Apple's bitchfest except with Theora rather than WebM, what Google seems to be going for, and what Apple would be going for if they were really interested in furthering open standards on the web, rather than abusing their position on standard bodies to further their own personal wars against Adobe and Google.
You do know Theora was part of the official HTML5 standard until Apple raised a bitchfest of epic proportions to usurp it for their own gain, right?
It's not Mozilla and Google who are getting a 'free pass' here, they're just trying to fix the mess Apple created.
Agreed, pity Apple decided to pull their little political stunt with the W3C last year rather than just deliver a working Theora codec (or just bundle the Free one) and calling it a day, we could've avoided this whole mess from the start.
So is WebM, with the advantage that we wouldn't have to deal with shady licensing issues for the next 20 years.
H.264's only advantage is that it's the current state-of-the-art, and only a fool would believe that'd still be the case five years from now, let alone twenty.
Should we really be trading out gadgets every year?
No, we should not. Thankfully, chances are the iPad one will keep working long after the iPad two is released, so as long as you're able to keep your own tecnophile, consumerist urges in check there shouldn't be any problem.
Fujifilm has updated their digital camera lineup three times since I bought my current camera, IBM did it twice for my laptop before selling out the business to Lenovo, who did it another few times afterwards, and if I had a buck for everytime LG has updated their DVD players since I bought mine, I could probably buy a top-of-the-line BluRay player today and have money to spare.
Repeat after me: I don't have to stay on the bleeding edge of technology, I am not a dirty, commie hippie if I stay with last year's smartphone rather than moving on to the latest model, and if my friends look at me funny because I'm not wearing the latest fashion in Milan, it only means I need to get better friends.
I agree. Apple II or Apple ][, sure. Apple '2'? What's an Apple '2'?
How anyone with half a brain called the Apple II.
In fact, I doubt even the most hardcore Apple loyalist ever called it the "Apple bracket-bracket", or that Apple actually intented it to be so.