Any of this stuff makes the $99 a year "entry fee" seem laughably trivial if you're serious about what you're doing.
The same goes for the ongoing costs of MSDN, for instance, but Microsoft still allows free alternatives for those who merely want to write apps to 'scratch their own itch', so to speak.
The world isn't cleanly divided between "ignorant lusers happily living in a walled garden" and "professional developers with enough time and resources to devote to sell their work directly to the masses", and Apple screws everybody else in between with a $99/year price-tag.
It's kind of funny that prior to Apple's announcement there was commentary about how no one has been able to make tablet computers successful, and now after the announcement, when it's clear that Apple made the 'big iPod' instead, there's all kinds of complaints that they didn't build a tablet computer.
You're assuming the reason Tablet PCs weren't successful was somehow inherent to being a Tablet PC, rather than horrible pricing and utter lack of marketing. Apple had the chance to make a good one because they're excellent at the latter, and the product they did make was actually great on the former (and none of the things we complain are missing from it would've required a significant monetary investment either).
Instead we get an iPhone that doesn't make calls, an iPod that doesn't fit in your pocket, and a Kindle without an eInk screen.
I'd say most people do realize they multitask. I still remember when dual-core CPUs were all the rage, and salesman pitched them as "being able to play mp3s *while* browsing online!" or "read your email as you work on Office!", and people rushed to upgrade their single-core computers to these magical new devices on sale that were able to do the same thing a basic Pentium II worked fine for with a decent OS and extra RAM.
I'm betting the GP's wife is just doing what a sister post suggested and she's just trying to justify her purchase in front of her husband by acting stupid.
It's not about "do more things," it's about "do very few things better."
Wrong. It's about "do everything I need to do, in the best way possible". It's irrelevant how well does it do everything else, if it can't do the things I need.
And that's why it's Windows instead of OSX who holds over 90% of the world's desktop market. The few that can be satisfied with what Apple provides may love their little gadgets to death, but everybody else doesn't even see them as viable options in the first place.
No, your argument is that the system made it so income redistributed itself naturally: ie, that the breach between the 'rich' and the 'poor' became narrower without government intervention. For that, proving that the 'rich' spend isn't sufficient, you have to prove that the 'poor' gets richer faster than the one who's already 'rich' (or, alternatively, that the 'rich' becomes poorer faster than the 'poor').
Also, income redistributes itself naturally. Rich people spend money to get goods and services. These goods and services are almost always provided by people who are not rich. Rich people also invest money so they can stay rich. This means that jobs are opened up and filled by people who are usually not as rich as the owner of the company.
In theory. In practice however, we get to the current situation.
For instance if you really believed that embryos had the same worth as a fetus or a child and a hospital was burning and you could only rescue all the babies in the maternity ward(we'll say 24 of them) or all of the potential babies in the cryogenic freezer then you logically would rescue the freezer as you would save far more lives. I for one would choose the actual babies and save the maternity ward.
You would. Others wouldn't, and would see you as evil for making that choice.
"Ethics" != "my own morality". Learn and understand that.
Ridiculous and erroneous. There's nothing stopping you from adding muenster cheese to your Subway-bought sandwich, nor eating it while drinking beer.
There are, however, technical measures put in place by Apple to prevent you from installing whatever system or application you choose on the iPad, so the analogy breaks down.
How many people will happily grab tons of random free apps off the app-store? Would they have the same attitude if they didn't have apple saying "we've at least done a cursory check of this to make sure these free random apps won't *BLEEP* you up the rear"
As anybody who's ever done tech support for an ignorant user can attest: Yes, they would.
I like how you didn't refute his point about Slashdot's need to bash things as if it's some personal insult that the things exist in the first place.
He did, indirectly. I'll do it directly then: we don't, so stop taking any criticism of an Apple product as if its some sort of personal insult against you.
Remember the initial reaction around here to the iPod and iPod mini?
Yeah. Not at all different from the initial reaction around here to Windows XP, Vista, 7, the Xbox and Xbox360, the PS3 and PSP, Android, the Palm Pre, Amazon's Kindle... fuck, every single product relevant enough to have a Slashdot story posted about it ever.
No, actually, useful for the intelligent as means to control the stupid. Joe Average's idea of morality is as twisted as they come, so religion serves to make him a bit less dangerous for the rest of us.
Think of it like jails: if you commit a 'crime' you'll be 'punished', except the punishment here is merely in make-believe land so there are no human rights to concern oneself with if you threaten them with eternal burning in a lake of fire or some crap like that.
Not that I'm in favor of religion, in this day of mass-consumption media there *are* better forms of keeping the dumb masses in their place, but religion ain't that bad a solution either.
Browser toolbars are a lot like Office suites: they're stupid little pieces of software that no sane person in their right mind would ever want near their computer, but the masses want 'em for some bloody reason so if you want their money you must make one.
Go take a look at any iPhone-related story, and count the comments of "I love my iPhone and its the best phone on the planet". Now go take a look at any Android-related story, and count the occurrences of the same comment. Now replace "iPhone" with "Android phone" and count the mentions of such phrases in both groups of stories.
It's like a superhero stepping in to save the day... and then demanding monetary compensation.
From the villain.
It's likely that if the money had to come out of the defendant's pocket they'd do some accounting magic to reduce it to a reasonable fee, if anything at all. But from the RIAA? milk 'em for all they're worth and then some.
Hell, I'd say Superman ought to do the same thing with Lex Luthor, don't ya think?
So the anti-Apple crowd purchases Apple products just to shove them into other people's faces to complain about shoving Apple products on other people's faces? riiiiiight.
And if you haven't met some moron shoving their shiny new iPhone in your face while going on and on about how "cool" and "easy to use" it is, I truly envy you. Though the virtual equivalent was posted in, oh, every single iPhone-related story posted here on Slashdot since its launch so even if you missed the actual, physical shoving-in-your-face you can get the virtual equivalent easily and painlessly.
UNIX isn't a trademark, UNIX isn't a certification, UNIX is a design philosophy and one that OSX trashes utterly with its entire GUI. For better or worse depends on your personal opinion, of course, but OSX is clearly a Mac before a UNIX machine.
True, but when you start associating the company's customer base "free thinking individuals" you were already absorbed by the hive mind, you just haven't realized it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Any of this stuff makes the $99 a year "entry fee" seem laughably trivial if you're serious about what you're doing.
The same goes for the ongoing costs of MSDN, for instance, but Microsoft still allows free alternatives for those who merely want to write apps to 'scratch their own itch', so to speak.
The world isn't cleanly divided between "ignorant lusers happily living in a walled garden" and "professional developers with enough time and resources to devote to sell their work directly to the masses", and Apple screws everybody else in between with a $99/year price-tag.
It's kind of funny that prior to Apple's announcement there was commentary about how no one has been able to make tablet computers successful, and now after the announcement, when it's clear that Apple made the 'big iPod' instead, there's all kinds of complaints that they didn't build a tablet computer.
You're assuming the reason Tablet PCs weren't successful was somehow inherent to being a Tablet PC, rather than horrible pricing and utter lack of marketing. Apple had the chance to make a good one because they're excellent at the latter, and the product they did make was actually great on the former (and none of the things we complain are missing from it would've required a significant monetary investment either).
Instead we get an iPhone that doesn't make calls, an iPod that doesn't fit in your pocket, and a Kindle without an eInk screen.
I'd say most people do realize they multitask. I still remember when dual-core CPUs were all the rage, and salesman pitched them as "being able to play mp3s *while* browsing online!" or "read your email as you work on Office!", and people rushed to upgrade their single-core computers to these magical new devices on sale that were able to do the same thing a basic Pentium II worked fine for with a decent OS and extra RAM.
I'm betting the GP's wife is just doing what a sister post suggested and she's just trying to justify her purchase in front of her husband by acting stupid.
It's not about "do more things," it's about "do very few things better."
Wrong. It's about "do everything I need to do, in the best way possible". It's irrelevant how well does it do everything else, if it can't do the things I need.
And that's why it's Windows instead of OSX who holds over 90% of the world's desktop market. The few that can be satisfied with what Apple provides may love their little gadgets to death, but everybody else doesn't even see them as viable options in the first place.
No, you just have to get yourself approved as a developer by Apple, for "only" $99 a year.
Wonderful world we live in, where we have to pay to write our own software for our own hardware, isn't it?
No, your argument is that the system made it so income redistributed itself naturally: ie, that the breach between the 'rich' and the 'poor' became narrower without government intervention. For that, proving that the 'rich' spend isn't sufficient, you have to prove that the 'poor' gets richer faster than the one who's already 'rich' (or, alternatively, that the 'rich' becomes poorer faster than the 'poor').
Also, income redistributes itself naturally. Rich people spend money to get goods and services. These goods and services are almost always provided by people who are not rich. Rich people also invest money so they can stay rich. This means that jobs are opened up and filled by people who are usually not as rich as the owner of the company.
In theory. In practice however, we get to the current situation.
Same goes for the organs of dead people, yet there's plenty of ethical issues with simply harvesting them without consent.
For instance if you really believed that embryos had the same worth as a fetus or a child and a hospital was burning and you could only rescue all the babies in the maternity ward(we'll say 24 of them) or all of the potential babies in the cryogenic freezer then you logically would rescue the freezer as you would save far more lives. I for one would choose the actual babies and save the maternity ward.
You would. Others wouldn't, and would see you as evil for making that choice.
"Ethics" != "my own morality". Learn and understand that.
No it isn't, please inform yourself before speaking any further.
Except it's not "religious ethics", it's simply ethics of people who have chosen to define the start of a human's life sooner than others.
Ridiculous and erroneous. There's nothing stopping you from adding muenster cheese to your Subway-bought sandwich, nor eating it while drinking beer.
There are, however, technical measures put in place by Apple to prevent you from installing whatever system or application you choose on the iPad, so the analogy breaks down.
How many people will happily grab tons of random free apps off the app-store? Would they have the same attitude if they didn't have apple saying "we've at least done a cursory check of this to make sure these free random apps won't *BLEEP* you up the rear"
As anybody who's ever done tech support for an ignorant user can attest: Yes, they would.
Every other Tablet PC I've ever seen is, in fact, a general purpose computer rather than a mere appliance.
So yep, step backward.
No they don't. Sincerely, somebody with more experience in the field than merely looking at porn.
Flash is proprietary I'd like to see it fade into oblivion.
Yeah, pity that you wishing it won't make it so. And until it does fade into oblivion, lack of flash *is* a strong limitation for the device.
Uh, complaints are negative observations.
But not all negative observations are complains.
I like how you didn't refute his point about Slashdot's need to bash things as if it's some personal insult that the things exist in the first place.
He did, indirectly. I'll do it directly then: we don't, so stop taking any criticism of an Apple product as if its some sort of personal insult against you.
Remember the initial reaction around here to the iPod and iPod mini?
Yeah. Not at all different from the initial reaction around here to Windows XP, Vista, 7, the Xbox and Xbox360, the PS3 and PSP, Android, the Palm Pre, Amazon's Kindle... fuck, every single product relevant enough to have a Slashdot story posted about it ever.
Useful for the elite.
No, actually, useful for the intelligent as means to control the stupid. Joe Average's idea of morality is as twisted as they come, so religion serves to make him a bit less dangerous for the rest of us.
Think of it like jails: if you commit a 'crime' you'll be 'punished', except the punishment here is merely in make-believe land so there are no human rights to concern oneself with if you threaten them with eternal burning in a lake of fire or some crap like that.
Not that I'm in favor of religion, in this day of mass-consumption media there *are* better forms of keeping the dumb masses in their place, but religion ain't that bad a solution either.
How does a soldier feel with a bullet lodged in between his eyes? not well, I imagine. Yet the war goes on, doesn't it?
Browser toolbars are a lot like Office suites: they're stupid little pieces of software that no sane person in their right mind would ever want near their computer, but the masses want 'em for some bloody reason so if you want their money you must make one.
Go take a look at any iPhone-related story, and count the comments of "I love my iPhone and its the best phone on the planet". Now go take a look at any Android-related story, and count the occurrences of the same comment. Now replace "iPhone" with "Android phone" and count the mentions of such phrases in both groups of stories.
Mythical my ass.
It's like a superhero stepping in to save the day... and then demanding monetary compensation.
From the villain.
It's likely that if the money had to come out of the defendant's pocket they'd do some accounting magic to reduce it to a reasonable fee, if anything at all. But from the RIAA? milk 'em for all they're worth and then some.
Hell, I'd say Superman ought to do the same thing with Lex Luthor, don't ya think?
So the anti-Apple crowd purchases Apple products just to shove them into other people's faces to complain about shoving Apple products on other people's faces? riiiiiight.
And if you haven't met some moron shoving their shiny new iPhone in your face while going on and on about how "cool" and "easy to use" it is, I truly envy you. Though the virtual equivalent was posted in, oh, every single iPhone-related story posted here on Slashdot since its launch so even if you missed the actual, physical shoving-in-your-face you can get the virtual equivalent easily and painlessly.
UNIX isn't a trademark, UNIX isn't a certification, UNIX is a design philosophy and one that OSX trashes utterly with its entire GUI. For better or worse depends on your personal opinion, of course, but OSX is clearly a Mac before a UNIX machine.
True, but when you start associating the company's customer base "free thinking individuals" you were already absorbed by the hive mind, you just haven't realized it yet.