I'm in the late 20s/early 30s bracket, the gen who grew up having to fiddle with DOS just to get games to run. All the techs @ work (I'm not counting desktop and helpdesk lol, poor sods) had this ingrained in their upbringing. The kids coming in who had click and install gaming have noticeably poorer troubleshooting skills, and in particular shy away from command line and text files.
Still there will always be 'natural' geeks and techies, and most people won't care.
LOL I have a little fedora box at work for dev purposes (I'm a network engineer so its convenient to be able to fire up nmap or whatever cool unix utility, stick an apache server onto the net for quick testing, etc.)
Every fortnight the poor desktop guys bring over a user's hard drive to zip some virused file (to send off to mcaffee) that is so nasty that you can't even manipulate it in windows (goes all funny with attributes etc) but of course to linux its just a file.
Now if only I can convince them to let me use a macbook pro or at least let me drop and SSD in...... not a chance (fortune 500 corporate IT, flexible as an iron rod) and the machine I look at 9x5 hours a week is by far the slowest and running the oldest OS (compared to my home workstation and personal laptop).:(
I once had a graphics designer go completely ape at me when a buddy of mine asked how to put up a website, and I carefully explained to him how I could get a 'website' up and certainly work out the infrastructure side of things, but it would be a basic piece of HTML with no style or design etc. but yes I could show him how to get something up on the web. The graphics designer at the table immediately flipped his lid and started haranguing me on how thats not a website, its people like you ruining the industry, blah blah blah.
He also didn't understand the concept that without routing and switching guys like me (nevermind the server admins, which I also know a fair chunk of, enough to do most SMB/soho scale requirements) his beautiful designs would be seen by a total of 0 people, but nevermind. This is also the kind of moron who said loudly in 2001 that digital cameras would never catch on with 'real' photographers.
Needless to say he makes a lot less than us digital plumbers.
yes but un-optimised straight up desktop ports aren't the best fit for a 3.5" touch screen. also by manually porting apps you're losing the repo system (dependencies, updates etc.)
N900 is a sweet phone but a niche phone as you have pointed out yourself. Its missing many features present in the top end droid/iphone software. Simple things like double tap to fully justify a column of text in a webpage, and with Froyo the one big standout - the browser - is left in the dust.
For example my friend has a n900, he is a linux dev so for him its awesome.
I run a fedora server @ home and have tinkered with linux for years, but no coding beyond basic scripting, and for me the 'openness' of the n900 doesn't mean much as I can't code for it and make it do all the crazy things you see people hack it into. Sure I can copy/paste other people's efforts but would that compensate for not having all the stuff I'm now used to in Android 2.2 (even 2.1)? not a chance.
As for the repos, its nowhere close to even the android app shop let alone the apple one. For most people, once the basic phone bit is acceptable (and it pretty much is, left handed fruit aside lol) its all about the apps. I don't know if you have much experience with the iphone or high end droid phones but my friend made the same point, 'there are apps in repos'. I let him play around with my N1 for a bit and he was flabbergasted with the amount of apps/functionality available, and that's just android, let alone the insanely big iphone apps market.
So the n900 is a great tech demo, great hackers tool for linux devs, but it ain't exactly worth a ---- in the fight for the smartphone market. Now they're going meego, you wanna bet how many issues there will be with version 1? Meanwhile droid will move up to version 3 and iphone keeps getting more polish, power (lockdown and anti apple backlash too lol). Every minute a polished software/hardware combo is not on the market they are losing.
As for asia/europe, sure there are lots of nokias around and it is still one of the best options for non-smartphones, but for the high end, nobody wants a nokia, they ALL want an iphone or android. There is NO buzz around nokia at all.
"Anyone who's seen an iPhone and an Android phone [NOT YET ON FROYO] side-by-side will tell you that the Android interface, while okay, pales beside the iPhone. The latter is just far cleaner and smoother. The touch interface is more responsive. The browser works better. "
fixed it for you
Froyo is like getting a CPU boost and then a metric ton of steroids for the browser. Would not swap my Froyo-ed N1 for a 3GS. (4G is newer generation hardware, I'm trying for apples to apples).
I'm from the networking side of the fence but even I know that kinda kit is strictly Small-Medium-Business kit
Proper enterprise grade SQL you're talking SAS drives, multiple RAID setups (different for different parts of the data - e.g. logs are mostly writes, so RAID5 is out).
Of course, 'real men' use SANs and fibre channel but I'm guessing thats OTT for many
Absolutely know what you mean, I did the same thing myself between ~2000 and 2003 (had a tech sabbatical) and was similarly lost. In particular during that time graphics cards had turned into things that you had to worry about power supply for, which left me bemused after two whitebox PSUs blew up in a row trying to feed a radeon (who the heck are ATI anyway lol last I checked voodoo was the king of the hill).
dude you need to know your PC hardware in order to build a decent system for 500 bucks. Even being able to pick the 'right' config from say a dell or lenovo page requires magnitudes more knowledge/effort to gain that knowledge than picking an Xbox or PS3 off the shelf. That is the single biggest hurdle.
Yes totally agree. The console generation has really helped PC gaming by making the Nv 7XXX / ATI 2XXX generation the 'standard' which devs will aim at (as that is the rough level of HW in an X360 / PS3). Now a 150AUD video card will run most new games at medium, 30FPS, assuming non-insane resolution. My system is far from cutting edge (overclocked Core2Quad, ATI 4850 in crossfire) but it still eats pretty much every new title up in high detail.
The final barrier is knowledge and effort, unfortunately the PC gaming hardware market will never get rid of the nerd stench and the requirement that you simply need to know what you're looking at to make an informed decision.
Case in point: my co-worker's son, who spends more time on his PC than I ever will because I am employed (lol), bought a new card the other day 'because it has 1Gb' and was surprised when it wouldn't run the latest FPSes decently. Turns out it was something like a Nvidia 9500 AGP. All he saw was 1Gb. This is a failure of marketing and PC hardware companies. Needless to say he wasn't happy when I told him that his 6 year old AGP mobo wouldn't handle a current gen card.
No, I'm not implying that "Companies don't (or shouldn't) go into business for marketshare", I'm saying that Apple's marketshare implies that the market for quality vs price is small and that Apple has occupied much of the available space. When I invest I avoid race to the bottom, high quantity low margin industries (mass retail etc.).
I suppose I am implying that the market 'is always right' in a sense in that if there were greater profits in pursuing quality over price then there would be more players in this space. I guess its all conjecture unless you or I were handed a few hundred million to 'do it right';)
I guess I'm reading a bit more into the OP's reply than was stated, true
I do think though that you're overstating the size of the market for quality (as opposed to low price), for all their advantages and marketing Apple's market share is still dwarfed by windows PCs. Existing PC makers' attempts at 'boutique' lines have not exactly been selling like hotcakes (adamo, elitebooks, alienware etc.) - it is arguable that their quality still falls far below Apples, but then again how much of that is the software?
for the record I'm a platform agnostic geek (right tool for the right job) who runs all 3 OSes (win for workstation/gaming, macbook, linux server).
You're still missing the OP's point. He's saying that the market has signalled overall that price is more important than reliability. If enough people valued reliability over value then purchasing decisions would indicate over time that this was the case, leading the companies to adjust their products and pricing points i.e. economics 101
To be honest if you want reliability and price is not a concern you don't usually think Dell. For sure there is a market for these people, and it is serviced by other means/vendors.
I call bullshit to your bullshit. All the best managers I've seen have some experience as a grunt and / or worked their way up.
By grunt I don't necessarily mean desktop monkey or helpdesk, just they at some point in time knew how to actually make something happen as opposed to just paperwork or management. Then again we're just trading anecdotes eh?
Agreed many IT people make lousy managers. I'm not disputing that. But what happens if IT management don't actually understand the environment they manage nor the fundamentals of the technology? Is the guy making the decisions going to rely entirely on whatever the architects or salesmen say (in which case why is he even there? put the architect or the salesman in charge lol) or just choose the cheapest option (in which case why not just put the accountant in charge?). I've seen both extremes play out in corporation land. Neither leads to a good efficient environment.
Of course these days the trend is to pick the cheapest option wherever possible, so in that case why not just hire a primary school kid for pocket money, surely they can look at a row of spreadsheet columns and pick the cheapest.
IT skills are by no means the most important skill in a manager but understanding the job and the environment can only be beneficial. It enables better evaluation of different options, strategies and policies, better man management, to name two.
when you say expensive are you referring to the TV? How much of a premium are they demanding anyway... seems like a hard sell in this economy, with HD LCDs so darned cheap as well
This is because IT is managed by managers, not engineers. If all managers had coalface IT backgrounds at least (even to the point of just helpdesk) the problem would not be there. As usual strategic and policy decisions are being made by people who don't understand the nuts and bolts. Would you design a car by having a committee of non engineers approving every major decision. No. But that is how IT infrastructure seems to be built...
Actually you can get a used ultraportable from the CoreDuo generation for same price. A bit bigger, a lot more powerful and a real keyboard to boot.
IBM X60 series used or Dell D4XX series = same price as cheap netbook
upgrade to 2Gb + 320Gb HDD = same as expensive netbook but full size kb, screen can go higher than 1024x600 (even 1024x768 is a vast improvement considering how most websites are formatted), decent processor in return for less portability.
I went down this road and am much happier with my X60s than my earlier period with a dell mini 9. You have to optimize the heck out of whatever OS/build you do on netbook (in fact, funnily I found hackintosh build to be 'snappiest') on an atom. However with my X60s (CULV CoreDuo) stock XP, ubuntu, Win7 all fly along nicely. And its still way more portable than say my work 15.4' machine.
I entirely agree. The problems of scalability that facebook has overcome is not trivial. From an infrastructure (my day job is routers and switches to be specific) POV its mind blowingly difficult esp they're starting from point X but need to architect to scale many magnitudes beyond. Just what the likes of google, FB, amazon do etc. is a field in itself in terms of scalability. Totally alien from your typical enterprise setup dealing with a few k users (couple of load balancers leading to a cluster), replicated DR if you're lucky.
I got mine on ebay (australia) couldn't be happier. Sure you pay extra 5-10% but sounds like you really wanted an N1 free of contract. Just make sure your seller is reputable, mine had over 1k feedback on 100% so I was more than happy to buy from them.
You get flexibility + ability to throw in a different SIM when travelling etc. (mind you there is nothing to stop you from unlocking an android phone in particular).
the main thing for many of us is that we hate carrier contracts. In Oz high end phones are invariably tied to 24 month contracts and in the ooh shiny phase, unless you go with a high end plan, you also end up with a 10-20 dollar a month extra purchase fee.
For me unlocked fully owned phone is perfect as I have a work SIM and a personal SIM and am dithering about whether to cancel the personal one (had the number for 10 years, so obviously loathe to change), at same time work SIM is free (free data!) BUT BUT BUT I am getting so sick of my work that I want to quit, hence doing this leaves all my options open. It also means I don't have to carry around the POS blackberry that work gives me (no exchange on the go is not important, I have a laptop and 3G card as well, and can stand to not check my email till I get to a desk).
a console that will function out of the box as a serious media center. Here is Oz every man and his dog knows about 'divx movies'. You come out with a box that plays games AND every divx movie you throw at it for 300 bucks, market it AS SUCH and you have a WINNER. I guess that rules out Sony and to an extent MS but what about Nintendo? Can big content sue them for making a box that plays AVIs, x264 muxed into mkvs etc. (coz if so then a zillion chinese gadget makers laugh into the void)
PS3 doesn't count as it only plays very specific format/codec container combinations.
Slashdot Mirror
The previous ruling hinged on region locking, as there is no region locking on games I think this is a different ball game
IANAL etc.
Oh absolutely positively correct
I'm in the late 20s/early 30s bracket, the gen who grew up having to fiddle with DOS just to get games to run.
All the techs @ work (I'm not counting desktop and helpdesk lol, poor sods) had this ingrained in their upbringing.
The kids coming in who had click and install gaming have noticeably poorer troubleshooting skills, and in particular shy away from command line and text files.
Still there will always be 'natural' geeks and techies, and most people won't care.
LOL I have a little fedora box at work for dev purposes (I'm a network engineer so its convenient to be able to fire up nmap or whatever cool unix utility, stick an apache server onto the net for quick testing, etc.)
Every fortnight the poor desktop guys bring over a user's hard drive to zip some virused file (to send off to mcaffee) that is so nasty that you can't even manipulate it in windows (goes all funny with attributes etc) but of course to linux its just a file.
Now if only I can convince them to let me use a macbook pro or at least let me drop and SSD in...... not a chance (fortune 500 corporate IT, flexible as an iron rod) and the machine I look at 9x5 hours a week is by far the slowest and running the oldest OS (compared to my home workstation and personal laptop). :(
don't forget sense of entitlement.
I once had a graphics designer go completely ape at me when a buddy of mine asked how to put up a website, and I carefully explained to him how I could get a 'website' up and certainly work out the infrastructure side of things, but it would be a basic piece of HTML with no style or design etc. but yes I could show him how to get something up on the web. The graphics designer at the table immediately flipped his lid and started haranguing me on how thats not a website, its people like you ruining the industry, blah blah blah.
He also didn't understand the concept that without routing and switching guys like me (nevermind the server admins, which I also know a fair chunk of, enough to do most SMB/soho scale requirements) his beautiful designs would be seen by a total of 0 people, but nevermind. This is also the kind of moron who said loudly in 2001 that digital cameras would never catch on with 'real' photographers.
Needless to say he makes a lot less than us digital plumbers.
yes but un-optimised straight up desktop ports aren't the best fit for a 3.5" touch screen.
also by manually porting apps you're losing the repo system (dependencies, updates etc.)
Yeah but that misses the point entirely.
N900 is a sweet phone but a niche phone as you have pointed out yourself. Its missing many features present in the top end droid/iphone software. Simple things like double tap to fully justify a column of text in a webpage, and with Froyo the one big standout - the browser - is left in the dust.
For example my friend has a n900, he is a linux dev so for him its awesome.
I run a fedora server @ home and have tinkered with linux for years, but no coding beyond basic scripting, and for me the 'openness' of the n900 doesn't mean much as I can't code for it and make it do all the crazy things you see people hack it into. Sure I can copy/paste other people's efforts but would that compensate for not having all the stuff I'm now used to in Android 2.2 (even 2.1)? not a chance.
As for the repos, its nowhere close to even the android app shop let alone the apple one. For most people, once the basic phone bit is acceptable (and it pretty much is, left handed fruit aside lol) its all about the apps. I don't know if you have much experience with the iphone or high end droid phones but my friend made the same point, 'there are apps in repos'. I let him play around with my N1 for a bit and he was flabbergasted with the amount of apps/functionality available, and that's just android, let alone the insanely big iphone apps market.
So the n900 is a great tech demo, great hackers tool for linux devs, but it ain't exactly worth a ---- in the fight for the smartphone market. Now they're going meego, you wanna bet how many issues there will be with version 1? Meanwhile droid will move up to version 3 and iphone keeps getting more polish, power (lockdown and anti apple backlash too lol). Every minute a polished software/hardware combo is not on the market they are losing.
As for asia/europe, sure there are lots of nokias around and it is still one of the best options for non-smartphones, but for the high end, nobody wants a nokia, they ALL want an iphone or android. There is NO buzz around nokia at all.
"Anyone who's seen an iPhone and an Android phone [NOT YET ON FROYO] side-by-side will tell you that the Android interface, while okay, pales beside the iPhone. The latter is just far cleaner and smoother. The touch interface is more responsive. The browser works better. "
fixed it for you
Froyo is like getting a CPU boost and then a metric ton of steroids for the browser. Would not swap my Froyo-ed N1 for a 3GS. (4G is newer generation hardware, I'm trying for apples to apples).
I'm from the networking side of the fence but even I know that kinda kit is strictly Small-Medium-Business kit
Proper enterprise grade SQL you're talking SAS drives, multiple RAID setups (different for different parts of the data - e.g. logs are mostly writes, so RAID5 is out).
Of course, 'real men' use SANs and fibre channel but I'm guessing thats OTT for many
Absolutely know what you mean, I did the same thing myself between ~2000 and 2003 (had a tech sabbatical) and was similarly lost. In particular during that time graphics cards had turned into things that you had to worry about power supply for, which left me bemused after two whitebox PSUs blew up in a row trying to feed a radeon (who the heck are ATI anyway lol last I checked voodoo was the king of the hill).
dude you need to know your PC hardware in order to build a decent system for 500 bucks.
Even being able to pick the 'right' config from say a dell or lenovo page requires magnitudes more knowledge/effort to gain that knowledge than picking an Xbox or PS3 off the shelf.
That is the single biggest hurdle.
Yes totally agree. The console generation has really helped PC gaming by making the Nv 7XXX / ATI 2XXX generation the 'standard' which devs will aim at (as that is the rough level of HW in an X360 / PS3). Now a 150AUD video card will run most new games at medium, 30FPS, assuming non-insane resolution. My system is far from cutting edge (overclocked Core2Quad, ATI 4850 in crossfire) but it still eats pretty much every new title up in high detail.
The final barrier is knowledge and effort, unfortunately the PC gaming hardware market will never get rid of the nerd stench and the requirement that you simply need to know what you're looking at to make an informed decision.
Case in point: my co-worker's son, who spends more time on his PC than I ever will because I am employed (lol), bought a new card the other day 'because it has 1Gb' and was surprised when it wouldn't run the latest FPSes decently. Turns out it was something like a Nvidia 9500 AGP. All he saw was 1Gb. This is a failure of marketing and PC hardware companies. Needless to say he wasn't happy when I told him that his 6 year old AGP mobo wouldn't handle a current gen card.
No, I'm not implying that "Companies don't (or shouldn't) go into business for marketshare", I'm saying that Apple's marketshare implies that the market for quality vs price is small and that Apple has occupied much of the available space. When I invest I avoid race to the bottom, high quantity low margin industries (mass retail etc.).
I suppose I am implying that the market 'is always right' in a sense in that if there were greater profits in pursuing quality over price then there would be more players in this space. I guess its all conjecture unless you or I were handed a few hundred million to 'do it right' ;)
I guess I'm reading a bit more into the OP's reply than was stated, true
I do think though that you're overstating the size of the market for quality (as opposed to low price), for all their advantages and marketing Apple's market share is still dwarfed by windows PCs. Existing PC makers' attempts at 'boutique' lines have not exactly been selling like hotcakes (adamo, elitebooks, alienware etc.) - it is arguable that their quality still falls far below Apples, but then again how much of that is the software?
for the record I'm a platform agnostic geek (right tool for the right job) who runs all 3 OSes (win for workstation/gaming, macbook, linux server).
Just lie about it. Say you did everything their braindead script demands.
works for me
You're still missing the OP's point. He's saying that the market has signalled overall that price is more important than reliability. If enough people valued reliability over value then purchasing decisions would indicate over time that this was the case, leading the companies to adjust their products and pricing points i.e. economics 101
To be honest if you want reliability and price is not a concern you don't usually think Dell.
For sure there is a market for these people, and it is serviced by other means/vendors.
I call bullshit to your bullshit.
All the best managers I've seen have some experience as a grunt and / or worked their way up.
By grunt I don't necessarily mean desktop monkey or helpdesk, just they at some point in time knew how to actually make something happen as opposed to just paperwork or management.
Then again we're just trading anecdotes eh?
Agreed many IT people make lousy managers. I'm not disputing that. But what happens if IT management don't actually understand the environment they manage nor the fundamentals of the technology? Is the guy making the decisions going to rely entirely on whatever the architects or salesmen say (in which case why is he even there? put the architect or the salesman in charge lol) or just choose the cheapest option (in which case why not just put the accountant in charge?). I've seen both extremes play out in corporation land. Neither leads to a good efficient environment.
Of course these days the trend is to pick the cheapest option wherever possible, so in that case why not just hire a primary school kid for pocket money, surely they can look at a row of spreadsheet columns and pick the cheapest.
IT skills are by no means the most important skill in a manager but understanding the job and the environment can only be beneficial. It enables better evaluation of different options, strategies and policies, better man management, to name two.
when you say expensive are you referring to the TV?
How much of a premium are they demanding anyway... seems like a hard sell in this economy, with HD LCDs so darned cheap as well
This is because IT is managed by managers, not engineers.
If all managers had coalface IT backgrounds at least (even to the point of just helpdesk) the problem would not be there.
As usual strategic and policy decisions are being made by people who don't understand the nuts and bolts.
Would you design a car by having a committee of non engineers approving every major decision. No. But that is how IT infrastructure seems to be built...
Actually you can get a used ultraportable from the CoreDuo generation for same price.
A bit bigger, a lot more powerful and a real keyboard to boot.
IBM X60 series used or Dell D4XX series = same price as cheap netbook
upgrade to 2Gb + 320Gb HDD = same as expensive netbook but full size kb, screen can go higher than 1024x600 (even 1024x768 is a vast improvement considering how most websites are formatted), decent processor in return for less portability.
I went down this road and am much happier with my X60s than my earlier period with a dell mini 9. You have to optimize the heck out of whatever OS/build you do on netbook (in fact, funnily I found hackintosh build to be 'snappiest') on an atom. However with my X60s (CULV CoreDuo) stock XP, ubuntu, Win7 all fly along nicely. And its still way more portable than say my work 15.4' machine.
I entirely agree.
The problems of scalability that facebook has overcome is not trivial.
From an infrastructure (my day job is routers and switches to be specific) POV its mind blowingly difficult esp they're starting from point X but need to architect to scale many magnitudes beyond.
Just what the likes of google, FB, amazon do etc. is a field in itself in terms of scalability. Totally alien from your typical enterprise setup dealing with a few k users (couple of load balancers leading to a cluster), replicated DR if you're lucky.
Dude you really need a 5970 minimum for decent triple monitor and even then you're talking mid range frame rates with some games ;)
WIth attendant PSU, maybe new case due to size.... etc. new desk? monitor stands? etc.
My mate has a 3x24 inch setup with a 5970 and it is... expensive. AND his FPS is pathetic compared to say 5850 @ 1920x1080.
But fudge, it is frickin awesome
I got mine on ebay (australia) couldn't be happier.
Sure you pay extra 5-10% but sounds like you really wanted an N1 free of contract.
Just make sure your seller is reputable, mine had over 1k feedback on 100% so I was more than happy to buy from them.
You get flexibility + ability to throw in a different SIM when travelling etc. (mind you there is nothing to stop you from unlocking an android phone in particular).
the main thing for many of us is that we hate carrier contracts.
In Oz high end phones are invariably tied to 24 month contracts and in the ooh shiny phase, unless you go with a high end plan, you also end up with a 10-20 dollar a month extra purchase fee.
For me unlocked fully owned phone is perfect as I have a work SIM and a personal SIM and am dithering about whether to cancel the personal one (had the number for 10 years, so obviously loathe to change), at same time work SIM is free (free data!) BUT BUT BUT I am getting so sick of my work that I want to quit, hence doing this leaves all my options open.
It also means I don't have to carry around the POS blackberry that work gives me (no exchange on the go is not important, I have a laptop and 3G card as well, and can stand to not check my email till I get to a desk).
Wow passive aggressive gaming nerd (ain't seen that before... esp on slashdot...). Love the rape analogy as well, full marks for straw man.
a console that will function out of the box as a serious media center.
Here is Oz every man and his dog knows about 'divx movies'.
You come out with a box that plays games AND every divx movie you throw at it for 300 bucks, market it AS SUCH and you have a WINNER. I guess that rules out Sony and to an extent MS but what about Nintendo?
Can big content sue them for making a box that plays AVIs, x264 muxed into mkvs etc. (coz if so then a zillion chinese gadget makers laugh into the void)
PS3 doesn't count as it only plays very specific format/codec container combinations.