No, I am not German myself, my wife is. I like to think my sense of humor about the US (yes, I AM American) is at least as good as others. But being married to a German for 30 years has helped me put a different perspective on things. I grew up the son of parents that lived through WWII. Their honeymoon was only possible because their friends all got together and gave them gasoline rationing tickets so they could take a trip to Houston for a weekend. That level of sacrifice meant that I was raised with a very insular point of view about that war.
Then I got posted to Germany myself, began to get acquainted with German friends and learned that there was another side to that coin. That Germans sacrificed much more than we did, not just their physical infrastructure, but their very freedom.
It wasn't just the war generation, but those that followed. We have a picture of my wife at about three years old (born in 1951) standing in the street in front of her house. The house across the street was still a pile of rubble. Her childhood is full of memories of limited food and other things that I took for granted growing up at the same time over here.
That kind of association changes one's perspective, like I said. At one time, I would have laughed at your comment and not thought twice about it. Regretfully, most Americans still would.
This topic is interesting to this crowd because of the similarity (specious, I think) to the downloading issues you refer to. Also because it involves Apple, and everybody knows that stories about Apple, especially those that provoke spirited discussions like this one, generate hits. (Also, interesting, spirited discussions.)
If you have something reasonably interesting to say to advance the discussion, then by all means, please join in. I'd be delighted, and entertained, to have a rousing discussion with you about this.
But if all you can do is spout bullshit insults, then please, check your chair to keyboard interface - it is obviously screwed up!
Exactly, they got fired because they talked. As a retail employee, you are supposed to keep your mouth shut. If they had been exercising that particularly (to Apple) valuable skill, they'd still have a job.
Second - the NDA.
WHERE they got it doesn't matter. Leopard is a product that is restricted. Not just unreleased. Apple has what is known as a stovepipe organization. Some would term it as a firewalled org., too. What that means is that, depending on WHERE you work will determine what products you have access to. The NDAs the employees sign most likely have a clause that prevents them from getting access to information in other parts of the org., to prevent leaks. So where they got Leopard isn't at issue, simply the fact that they had it is enough. They work in the retail stores, so thay would have NO access to it at all.
Third - cutting off of the nose
Not an issue. Public reaction is not something they worry about here. The NDA these people violated spells out the consequences of the violation. If Apple doesn't fire these people, the next time Apple tried to do that, THOSE employees could go to court and use these cases as examples of how Apple had 'constructively changed' the terms of the NDA by this action. In the business world, the firings are normal and expected.
The employee admits to violating the company's NDA AND their ethics policy. Any NDA will spell out the consequences of that violation. They were found to possess copies of an unreleased product. HOW they got it doesn't matter. WHERE they got it doesn't matter. It is something that, according to company policy, they had no need or authorization to have. Therefore, that possession violates the NDA. Period, end of story. No need to dither about torrents or any other source.
Question from Management: "Do you have a copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard?"
Answer from Mall Store Employee: "Yes."
Reply from Management: "Ok, you violated your NDA, the consequence of which is Termination. You're fired."
This whole case goes to honesty and integrity. Either you have it or you don't. They didn't, and paid for it. Nuff said.
Yes, and keeping their mouths shut is what they should have done.
They weren't fired for stealing; they weren't fired for copyright infringement. They were fired because they were found to possess copies of an unreleased software package that they had no authorized access to have. Didn't matter where they got it, the point is, they had it. They were fired for violating their NDA agreements, which most likely spelled out the consequences of that violation. Period. End of story.
The kind of employee Apple wants is one that will not: 1. Violate an agreement. 2. Talk too much. Both issues go to the employee's honesty and integrity.
They got caught violating their NDAs. Part of that NDA involves not getting unauthorized access to company information they have no need to know or regular access to, I'd be willing to bet. Any NDA I'd write for employees in that kind of business certainly would. Doesn't matter where or how they got it - they had no right or need to have it, they had it - case closed. The NDA probably spells out the consequences for violations, which is most probably termination.
And any lawyer will tell you that if they make a practice of NOT terminating where the agreement says they should, that could jeopardize their position in any future employee suits over improper termination.
Taking action under an agreement where one party has willfully violated that agreement is not schoolmarmish behavior, it is proper and expected.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries.
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E-Passport In the Works
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Your comment is unwarranted, insulting and uneducated in its attitude about the modern Germany.
Germany is a modern industrial nation that has worked hard to overcome the disaster that was WWII. It was the first of the Axis nations to pay off its war debt, and has done all it could to counteract the influence of the National Socialist Party and all it did to the people of Europe.
The people of Germany suffered as much as the rest of Europe did (exclusive of the victims of the Holocaust) from the horrors of that war. While we think of the occupation of Europe by the Wehrmacht, we rarely think of the affects of the "occupation" of Germany by the SS. While allied nations such as the US and England repatriated German POWs quickly at the end of the war, the USSR not only took up to five YEARS to return some prisoners, but many never came home at all. My wife's father was on the Russian front, and he didn't come home till 1948. Many of the WWII generation of German soldiers died very early by American standards, due to the many hardships they endured. My father-in-law died several years before I met my wife in 1974 - he was in his fifties. By contrast, my mother-in-law is celebrating her 85th birthday in October. Many women in Germany of her generation lived decades longer than their husbands, with all the hardships that widowhood entails.
The German people have worked hard to rebuild their country after the war. They had to rebuild from almost nothing, and my wife's generation, and our children's, have had to work double so hard to overcome the stigma created by their fathers' and grandfathers' generation.
Next time, think before opening your mouth, or at least check to be sure that the chair to keyboard interface isn't out to lunch!
I know that a lot of folks have answered to this, but the answer is that the employer pays for it. In the long run, the customers pay for it.
My wife is German, and the six weeks off is NOT popular with German employers. Additionally, maternity leave is mandatory, and lasts, I think, 4 months. Paid leave.
However, the German economy is one of the strongest in Europe, and Germans travel extensively. It would be nice...
It was interesting, and heartening to see two people discussing things without flames.
I don't know as much about management theory as the two of you do, but I wanted to interject what I see as a misunderstanding - I believe that the employer here accused of overworking these workers is NOT Apple, but a Chinese factory under contract with Apple. Not that the ideas you two are discussing are much different thereby, but I thought I'd make the comment.
It is hard to tell what's happening. According to the news stories, Apple is NOT paying double the local wage, but is pretty much in line with local wages overall. That is the issue, that the company Apple is SUBCONTRACTING this work to is breaking both local law regarding the work week, AND their contract with Apple.
This is NOT Apple's factory - it is owned and managed by Chinese owners.
But that's not what the news stories were saying these guys were supposed to be up to. supposedly, they wanted to CRASH airliners. A lot of people, both here in this topic, and elsewhere, are questioning whether they really could have done what the British government was saying they wanted to do. Yeah, they could have gotten press, which isn't bad from their standpoint, but to try and crash a plane, and fail, is to be seen as weaker than they want to be seen as. After all, their objective is to kill as many of us as they can, right? More people die when the plane CRASHES...
Uh, huh, and it generally takes a really BIG hole in just the right place to make that jet fall outta the sky.
I could go on for quite a while about commercial passenger aircraft that have successfully landed after experiencing explosive decompression, either from structural failure or planted explosives. Remember the airliner on the Hawaii run that lost over 15 feet of its roof? It landed in Honolulu after several hours in flight, with no loss of life except for the folks sucked out at the beginning of the emergency. Several aircraft have had planted explosives blow holes big enough to suck one to two or three people and their seats out of the hole, only to safely land afterwards.
In order to actually destroy an aircraft in flight, one must either break the airframe at a critical point, destroy critical control connections or create an explosion sufficiently strong and placed to ignite the aircraft's fuel. Carrying a bag onto an aircraft with enough explosives in it to do that depends upon the bomber knowing exactly where to place the bag, and also have the opportunity to do so. One would need the knowledge of which seat one would need to reserve in order to be able to plant the explosives just so. Just placing the bag into the overhead bin isn't going to be enough.
In the past, as in the aircraft destroyed over Lockerby Scotland, the explosives were placed into the baggage compartment, closer to the more critical airframe points, and had a large enough quantity of explosives to matter. I doubt that enough liquid could be smuggled into the passenger compartment to make that kind of difference.
I love it! I really didn't think I'd been the first to think of it, the comment just occurred to me and I posted it cause I thought it'd get a few giggles.
I love the different comments, though! And the site you linked to is hilarious!
March 14th, 2002, Apple announced the release of Remote Desktop for OS X. http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=58 Maybe not as early as 2001, but not as late as you make it out to be, either.
As other posts have noted, features like these are not the exclusive product of one mind, or one company. They are also not released overnight. Sometimes, a feature, or app, like this takes quite a while to make it through the lineup of suggested apps before it can even get to the beginning of being written. When that happens is a product of a company's "roadmap" of future products, as well as a strategic direction overall. Roadmaps also change over time in response to the market and where they see competitors going.
It is not always productive to play the "who got there first" game, regarding who may have "invented" a feature or product. The important thing to the industry is timing - XYZ company introduces product A - timing sucks, nobody sees a need for it - maybe it was badly implemented. Two years later, ABC company instroduces product B (a varient of A, but better impelmented, and better timed to meet the market's demand - and it takes off. The second company gets the credit. Why?
Better timing, better product, implementation, marketing and better at reading their customers' needs. Happens all the time.
Not everybody gets the credit they should. the principal of the fax was known, and a company started to sell a fax service between Paris and another big French city (I forget which one) in, I think, the 17th or 18th century. It failed, not because it didn't work but because nobody saw the need for the instantaneous transmission of data over long distances. Fast forward two or three centuries, and the market was ready when it was reintroduced in the mid to late 20th. But nobody remembers (almost) the name of the Scotish farmer that discoverd the principal that makes it work even today!
The proper (American) spelling for those lightweight, cotton, millitary style (cacky) trousers is "khaki". It is also the proper spelling for that beige color...
If you've never seen a Thinkpad with a hardware problem, then you've been out of it for a few years. See my post above for a brief story about ours... and that story isn't all of it. I've heard a LOT of techs where I work complain about the Thinkpads being piles of crap...
You won't be able to, since Apple doesn't post theirs... so you're going to use the same thing other people do - antecdotal stories you read about on the web. As has been mentioned above, Apple brags more about quality, so when there are problems, people tend to notice and talk about it more.
So, in fact, no, Apple DOESN'T "get away with lower quality", cause when their stuff craps out, people jump on the web and complain - LOUDLY. Especially Mac fans - we are notoriously picky, and tend to really bitch when things crap out, at least some of us do. So, no we are NOT loath to admit problems. We get on the web and natter on endlessly, in forums like Macintouch until the rest of you are tired of listening to us! In forums like/. we have to defend Apple against the rest of the world that loves to catch Apple with a problem, and like to blow it out of all proportion to how it really matters...
As a long time Mac owner (since 1988) I have had my share of problems. The first machine I had (SE30) lost a secondary board (not the mobo, I forget what it was called), and I had to buy it online at a cost of over $400 and install it myself, cause it was over five years out of warranty at the time. Since then, I have had 4 Macs, none of which have experienced any major issues at all. The couple of minor issues I did have, Apple dealt with immediately, under warranty.
So, there, you have one more antecdotal story, for which its worth, which statistically, isn't beans. But is is a good story, isn't it?
Re:Of course Dell and HP will have the same proble
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Apple's Growing Pains
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I have to second that.
The Agency I work for bought 100 Dells in 2000 - all GX-240s. Before the first year was over, we had the following failures:
7 failed HDD 2 failed mobo 2 failed power supplies 2 failed cd readers 2 failed floppies over 5 failed mice
In all, over a 20% failure rate in the first 12 months. Of course, Dell replaced everything with overnight replacements, but putting up with it all was a pain, especially the failed hard drives. We lost a lot of data, since this was a transition period where we still had a lot of people using the HD for storage of data instead of the newer server storage online. Things settled down a bit after the first year, but we still saw failures in those machines.
Now, I work for a different org within that same Agency, and now we use Thinkpads (IBM outbid Dell!). In the last year, in a group with fewer than 30 Thinkpads, we have seen over 5 Thinkpads, either T-23s or T-30s, experience sudden catastrophic hard drive failure. One lost the mobo and had to be sent back twice before it came back fixed. Took over a month!
I think that a lot of what we're seeing is that Apple gets a lot of press because of the Apple slogan It Just Works. Writing about Apple failures sure gets the attention, doesn't it?
I mean, jeeze! If you're gonna claim that kind of thing, people are certainly going to notice when they don't...
Of course he'd like to see Vista delayed even further! People are almost beyond impatient by now. Let Microsoft miss the November time frame for Enterprise users, and you'll be looking at increasing numbers of such users seriously looking to diversify their userbase to lessen the impact of future such delays. And don't ask what such a delay will do to Microsoft's rep in the user world...
Only if they have Probable Cause. (US only! I have no idea if Britain has anything comparable...)
They must have probable cause that a crime has been committed and you are suspected of being the culprit. Without such probable cause, they can't hold you.
Of course, if the cop manages to get yer dander up so that you pop off to him/her, then they'll hold you on suspicion of something approriate, if not made up. You may be able to walk away once a judge gets involved, but don't bet on that cop getting in trouble. The prosecutor's office may get raked over the coals for letting you get held, but the cop is well insulated from that process, and he/she knows it.
The best way to handle a situation is to be aware of what's going on around you. If a cop stops you and appears to be agitated, it's best not to arouse his/her anger by refusing to cooperate. Your attitude should be as cooperative and submissive as possible. Of course, if you're in running outfit (something I KNOW/.'ers could never be accused of getting caught in) you may very reasonably be without ID. But the goal is to avoid pi**in' the cop off. I know, the point is that if they don't have a right to demand, they don't have a right to detain. But rights get broken all the time, and the cops, while they're supposed to protect us, often get the notion that protecting rights just gets in the way of their job.
So it's your decision to make.
1. Stand up for your rights and get detained, however illegally. 2. Just shut up and show the ID. 3. Don't havbe the ID? Hope that the cop is in a good mood.
That list is, of course, somewhat idealized, and really doesn't cover the bases, but I didn't want to turn this into a treatise on something only a lawyer could love...
Come on! Give it a rest - what part of World Wide DEVELOPER'S Conference don't you understand?
The iPod is a CONSUMER product, and Apple never releases (well, mostly never) consumer pruducts at the WWDC. Wait a few weeks or a month or so and it'll happen.
The iPod, being a big part of Apple's bottom line, deserves its own venue, doncha think?
Didn't you read some of the posts above mentioning the fact that this is the World Wide DEVLOPER'S Conference?
What's cool to a developer (new tools, under the hood improvements, etc,) isn't necessarily cool to users. Users get excited about things that make their experience faster, easier, and, yes - cool. Different kinda stuff...
This conference is for the guys that develop the cool stuff that make our computers useful.
Yes, Jobs & Co. is saving the cool stuff for Christmas - he noted, I understand, that a lot of cool stuff in 10.5 is being held under wraps to keep them away from the Redmond copiers.
I don't think we've hit any kind of plateau - things are just in development cycles that aren't being released yet. 10.5 is coming out spring 2007 - Vista is coming out maybe then, maybe not.
Besides, Vista is the version of the Windows OS that was supposed to come out with the Mac OS's earlier versions - kinda late, idn't it? But it's coming, even so, and in a form that, while it may be behind Leopard, it's still an advance for that OS, and a major one at that.
The Mac OS is going to be just such a major advance for the Apple world.
In both, there will be features that are new and innovative for the platform they're used on. That's progress, and it'll be exciting for the folks that care about the particular platforms involved. (and I understand that there are some features in Vista that Apple hasn't chosen to mimic - of course, Jobs isn't going to mention that...)
So, if we're on a plateau, it's just until the development cycle rolls around to release dates...
Slashdot Mirror
Apology accepted.
No, I am not German myself, my wife is. I like to think my sense of humor about the US (yes, I AM American) is at least as good as others. But being married to a German for 30 years has helped me put a different perspective on things. I grew up the son of parents that lived through WWII. Their honeymoon was only possible because their friends all got together and gave them gasoline rationing tickets so they could take a trip to Houston for a weekend. That level of sacrifice meant that I was raised with a very insular point of view about that war.
Then I got posted to Germany myself, began to get acquainted with German friends and learned that there was another side to that coin. That Germans sacrificed much more than we did, not just their physical infrastructure, but their very freedom.
It wasn't just the war generation, but those that followed. We have a picture of my wife at about three years old (born in 1951) standing in the street in front of her house. The house across the street was still a pile of rubble. Her childhood is full of memories of limited food and other things that I took for granted growing up at the same time over here.
That kind of association changes one's perspective, like I said. At one time, I would have laughed at your comment and not thought twice about it. Regretfully, most Americans still would.
RTFA!
They didn't download a COMPETITIVE OS. They downloaded a copy of an unreleased product made by their own company!
Next time, have some idea of what you're commenting on before you open your mouth. (or engage your [defective] chair to keyboard interface!)
What is with the hostility here?
This topic is interesting to this crowd because of the similarity (specious, I think) to the downloading issues you refer to. Also because it involves Apple, and everybody knows that stories about Apple, especially those that provoke spirited discussions like this one, generate hits. (Also, interesting, spirited discussions.)
If you have something reasonably interesting to say to advance the discussion, then by all means, please join in. I'd be delighted, and entertained, to have a rousing discussion with you about this.
But if all you can do is spout bullshit insults, then please, check your chair to keyboard interface - it is obviously screwed up!
First - ethics,
Exactly, they got fired because they talked. As a retail employee, you are supposed to keep your mouth shut. If they had been exercising that particularly (to Apple) valuable skill, they'd still have a job.
Second - the NDA.
WHERE they got it doesn't matter. Leopard is a product that is restricted. Not just unreleased. Apple has what is known as a stovepipe organization. Some would term it as a firewalled org., too. What that means is that, depending on WHERE you work will determine what products you have access to. The NDAs the employees sign most likely have a clause that prevents them from getting access to information in other parts of the org., to prevent leaks. So where they got Leopard isn't at issue, simply the fact that they had it is enough. They work in the retail stores, so thay would have NO access to it at all.
Third - cutting off of the nose
Not an issue. Public reaction is not something they worry about here. The NDA these people violated spells out the consequences of the violation. If Apple doesn't fire these people, the next time Apple tried to do that, THOSE employees could go to court and use these cases as examples of how Apple had 'constructively changed' the terms of the NDA by this action. In the business world, the firings are normal and expected.
Look, RTFA.
The employee admits to violating the company's NDA AND their ethics policy. Any NDA will spell out the consequences of that violation. They were found to possess copies of an unreleased product. HOW they got it doesn't matter. WHERE they got it doesn't matter. It is something that, according to company policy, they had no need or authorization to have. Therefore, that possession violates the NDA. Period, end of story. No need to dither about torrents or any other source.
Question from Management: "Do you have a copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard?"
Answer from Mall Store Employee: "Yes."
Reply from Management: "Ok, you violated your NDA, the consequence of which is Termination. You're fired."
This whole case goes to honesty and integrity. Either you have it or you don't. They didn't, and paid for it. Nuff said.
Yes, and keeping their mouths shut is what they should have done.
They weren't fired for stealing; they weren't fired for copyright infringement. They were fired because they were found to possess copies of an unreleased software package that they had no authorized access to have. Didn't matter where they got it, the point is, they had it. They were fired for violating their NDA agreements, which most likely spelled out the consequences of that violation. Period. End of story.
The kind of employee Apple wants is one that will not: 1. Violate an agreement. 2. Talk too much. Both issues go to the employee's honesty and integrity.
Oh, please, elistism? That's just insulting.
They got caught violating their NDAs. Part of that NDA involves not getting unauthorized access to company information they have no need to know or regular access to, I'd be willing to bet. Any NDA I'd write for employees in that kind of business certainly would. Doesn't matter where or how they got it - they had no right or need to have it, they had it - case closed. The NDA probably spells out the consequences for violations, which is most probably termination.
And any lawyer will tell you that if they make a practice of NOT terminating where the agreement says they should, that could jeopardize their position in any future employee suits over improper termination.
Taking action under an agreement where one party has willfully violated that agreement is not schoolmarmish behavior, it is proper and expected.
Your comment is unwarranted, insulting and uneducated in its attitude about the modern Germany.
Germany is a modern industrial nation that has worked hard to overcome the disaster that was WWII. It was the first of the Axis nations to pay off its war debt, and has done all it could to counteract the influence of the National Socialist Party and all it did to the people of Europe.
The people of Germany suffered as much as the rest of Europe did (exclusive of the victims of the Holocaust) from the horrors of that war. While we think of the occupation of Europe by the Wehrmacht, we rarely think of the affects of the "occupation" of Germany by the SS. While allied nations such as the US and England repatriated German POWs quickly at the end of the war, the USSR not only took up to five YEARS to return some prisoners, but many never came home at all. My wife's father was on the Russian front, and he didn't come home till 1948. Many of the WWII generation of German soldiers died very early by American standards, due to the many hardships they endured. My father-in-law died several years before I met my wife in 1974 - he was in his fifties. By contrast, my mother-in-law is celebrating her 85th birthday in October. Many women in Germany of her generation lived decades longer than their husbands, with all the hardships that widowhood entails.
The German people have worked hard to rebuild their country after the war. They had to rebuild from almost nothing, and my wife's generation, and our children's, have had to work double so hard to overcome the stigma created by their fathers' and grandfathers' generation.
Next time, think before opening your mouth, or at least check to be sure that the chair to keyboard interface isn't out to lunch!
I know that a lot of folks have answered to this, but the answer is that the employer pays for it. In the long run, the customers pay for it.
My wife is German, and the six weeks off is NOT popular with German employers. Additionally, maternity leave is mandatory, and lasts, I think, 4 months. Paid leave.
However, the German economy is one of the strongest in Europe, and Germans travel extensively. It would be nice...
Actually, you're wrong - I read it.
It was interesting, and heartening to see two people discussing things without flames.
I don't know as much about management theory as the two of you do, but I wanted to interject what I see as a misunderstanding - I believe that the employer here accused of overworking these workers is NOT Apple, but a Chinese factory under contract with Apple. Not that the ideas you two are discussing are much different thereby, but I thought I'd make the comment.
It is hard to tell what's happening. According to the news stories, Apple is NOT paying double the local wage, but is pretty much in line with local wages overall. That is the issue, that the company Apple is SUBCONTRACTING this work to is breaking both local law regarding the work week, AND their contract with Apple.
This is NOT Apple's factory - it is owned and managed by Chinese owners.
Maybe so,
But that's not what the news stories were saying these guys were supposed to be up to. supposedly, they wanted to CRASH airliners. A lot of people, both here in this topic, and elsewhere, are questioning whether they really could have done what the British government was saying they wanted to do. Yeah, they could have gotten press, which isn't bad from their standpoint, but to try and crash a plane, and fail, is to be seen as weaker than they want to be seen as. After all, their objective is to kill as many of us as they can, right? More people die when the plane CRASHES...
Uh, huh, and it generally takes a really BIG hole in just the right place to make that jet fall outta the sky.
I could go on for quite a while about commercial passenger aircraft that have successfully landed after experiencing explosive decompression, either from structural failure or planted explosives. Remember the airliner on the Hawaii run that lost over 15 feet of its roof? It landed in Honolulu after several hours in flight, with no loss of life except for the folks sucked out at the beginning of the emergency. Several aircraft have had planted explosives blow holes big enough to suck one to two or three people and their seats out of the hole, only to safely land afterwards.
In order to actually destroy an aircraft in flight, one must either break the airframe at a critical point, destroy critical control connections or create an explosion sufficiently strong and placed to ignite the aircraft's fuel. Carrying a bag onto an aircraft with enough explosives in it to do that depends upon the bomber knowing exactly where to place the bag, and also have the opportunity to do so. One would need the knowledge of which seat one would need to reserve in order to be able to plant the explosives just so. Just placing the bag into the overhead bin isn't going to be enough.
In the past, as in the aircraft destroyed over Lockerby Scotland, the explosives were placed into the baggage compartment, closer to the more critical airframe points, and had a large enough quantity of explosives to matter. I doubt that enough liquid could be smuggled into the passenger compartment to make that kind of difference.
Oooooo - crashing into a cold climate would be a bummer, too! I think a cold slide wouldn't be any better than a hot one...
I love it! I really didn't think I'd been the first to think of it, the comment just occurred to me and I posted it cause I thought it'd get a few giggles.
I love the different comments, though! And the site you linked to is hilarious!
Only nudists will be allowed to fly!
March 14th, 2002, Apple announced the release of Remote Desktop for OS X. http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=58 Maybe not as early as 2001, but not as late as you make it out to be, either.
As other posts have noted, features like these are not the exclusive product of one mind, or one company. They are also not released overnight. Sometimes, a feature, or app, like this takes quite a while to make it through the lineup of suggested apps before it can even get to the beginning of being written. When that happens is a product of a company's "roadmap" of future products, as well as a strategic direction overall. Roadmaps also change over time in response to the market and where they see competitors going.
It is not always productive to play the "who got there first" game, regarding who may have "invented" a feature or product. The important thing to the industry is timing - XYZ company introduces product A - timing sucks, nobody sees a need for it - maybe it was badly implemented. Two years later, ABC company instroduces product B (a varient of A, but better impelmented, and better timed to meet the market's demand - and it takes off. The second company gets the credit. Why?
Better timing, better product, implementation, marketing and better at reading their customers' needs. Happens all the time.
Not everybody gets the credit they should. the principal of the fax was known, and a company started to sell a fax service between Paris and another big French city (I forget which one) in, I think, the 17th or 18th century. It failed, not because it didn't work but because nobody saw the need for the instantaneous transmission of data over long distances. Fast forward two or three centuries, and the market was ready when it was reintroduced in the mid to late 20th. But nobody remembers (almost) the name of the Scotish farmer that discoverd the principal that makes it work even today!
Life just ain't fair...
The proper (American) spelling for those lightweight, cotton, millitary style (cacky) trousers is "khaki". It is also the proper spelling for that beige color...
If you've never seen a Thinkpad with a hardware problem, then you've been out of it for a few years. See my post above for a brief story about ours... and that story isn't all of it. I've heard a LOT of techs where I work complain about the Thinkpads being piles of crap...
Care to post some statistices?
/. we have to defend Apple against the rest of the world that loves to catch Apple with a problem, and like to blow it out of all proportion to how it really matters...
You won't be able to, since Apple doesn't post theirs... so you're going to use the same thing other people do - antecdotal stories you read about on the web. As has been mentioned above, Apple brags more about quality, so when there are problems, people tend to notice and talk about it more.
So, in fact, no, Apple DOESN'T "get away with lower quality", cause when their stuff craps out, people jump on the web and complain - LOUDLY. Especially Mac fans - we are notoriously picky, and tend to really bitch when things crap out, at least some of us do. So, no we are NOT loath to admit problems. We get on the web and natter on endlessly, in forums like Macintouch until the rest of you are tired of listening to us! In forums like
As a long time Mac owner (since 1988) I have had my share of problems. The first machine I had (SE30) lost a secondary board (not the mobo, I forget what it was called), and I had to buy it online at a cost of over $400 and install it myself, cause it was over five years out of warranty at the time. Since then, I have had 4 Macs, none of which have experienced any major issues at all. The couple of minor issues I did have, Apple dealt with immediately, under warranty.
So, there, you have one more antecdotal story, for which its worth, which statistically, isn't beans. But is is a good story, isn't it?
I have to second that.
The Agency I work for bought 100 Dells in 2000 - all GX-240s. Before the first year was over, we had the following failures:
7 failed HDD
2 failed mobo
2 failed power supplies
2 failed cd readers
2 failed floppies
over 5 failed mice
In all, over a 20% failure rate in the first 12 months. Of course, Dell replaced everything with overnight replacements, but putting up with it all was a pain, especially the failed hard drives. We lost a lot of data, since this was a transition period where we still had a lot of people using the HD for storage of data instead of the newer server storage online. Things settled down a bit after the first year, but we still saw failures in those machines.
Now, I work for a different org within that same Agency, and now we use Thinkpads (IBM outbid Dell!). In the last year, in a group with fewer than 30 Thinkpads, we have seen over 5 Thinkpads, either T-23s or T-30s, experience sudden catastrophic hard drive failure. One lost the mobo and had to be sent back twice before it came back fixed. Took over a month!
I think that a lot of what we're seeing is that Apple gets a lot of press because of the Apple slogan It Just Works. Writing about Apple failures sure gets the attention, doesn't it?
I mean, jeeze! If you're gonna claim that kind of thing, people are certainly going to notice when they don't...
He does like his little surprises, doesn't he?
Of course he'd like to see Vista delayed even further! People are almost beyond impatient by now. Let Microsoft miss the November time frame for Enterprise users, and you'll be looking at increasing numbers of such users seriously looking to diversify their userbase to lessen the impact of future such delays. And don't ask what such a delay will do to Microsoft's rep in the user world...
Only if they have Probable Cause. (US only! I have no idea if Britain has anything comparable...)
/.'ers could never be accused of getting caught in) you may very reasonably be without ID. But the goal is to avoid pi**in' the cop off. I know, the point is that if they don't have a right to demand, they don't have a right to detain. But rights get broken all the time, and the cops, while they're supposed to protect us, often get the notion that protecting rights just gets in the way of their job.
They must have probable cause that a crime has been committed and you are suspected of being the culprit. Without such probable cause, they can't hold you.
Of course, if the cop manages to get yer dander up so that you pop off to him/her, then they'll hold you on suspicion of something approriate, if not made up. You may be able to walk away once a judge gets involved, but don't bet on that cop getting in trouble. The prosecutor's office may get raked over the coals for letting you get held, but the cop is well insulated from that process, and he/she knows it.
The best way to handle a situation is to be aware of what's going on around you. If a cop stops you and appears to be agitated, it's best not to arouse his/her anger by refusing to cooperate. Your attitude should be as cooperative and submissive as possible. Of course, if you're in running outfit (something I KNOW
So it's your decision to make.
1. Stand up for your rights and get detained, however illegally.
2. Just shut up and show the ID.
3. Don't havbe the ID? Hope that the cop is in a good mood.
That list is, of course, somewhat idealized, and really doesn't cover the bases, but I didn't want to turn this into a treatise on something only a lawyer could love...
Come on! Give it a rest - what part of World Wide DEVELOPER'S Conference don't you understand?
The iPod is a CONSUMER product, and Apple never releases (well, mostly never) consumer pruducts at the WWDC. Wait a few weeks or a month or so and it'll happen.
The iPod, being a big part of Apple's bottom line, deserves its own venue, doncha think?
Didn't you read some of the posts above mentioning the fact that this is the World Wide DEVLOPER'S Conference?
What's cool to a developer (new tools, under the hood improvements, etc,) isn't necessarily cool to users. Users get excited about things that make their experience faster, easier, and, yes - cool. Different kinda stuff...
This conference is for the guys that develop the cool stuff that make our computers useful.
Yes, Jobs & Co. is saving the cool stuff for Christmas - he noted, I understand, that a lot of cool stuff in 10.5 is being held under wraps to keep them away from the Redmond copiers.
I don't think we've hit any kind of plateau - things are just in development cycles that aren't being released yet. 10.5 is coming out spring 2007 - Vista is coming out maybe then, maybe not.
Besides, Vista is the version of the Windows OS that was supposed to come out with the Mac OS's earlier versions - kinda late, idn't it? But it's coming, even so, and in a form that, while it may be behind Leopard, it's still an advance for that OS, and a major one at that.
The Mac OS is going to be just such a major advance for the Apple world.
In both, there will be features that are new and innovative for the platform they're used on. That's progress, and it'll be exciting for the folks that care about the particular platforms involved. (and I understand that there are some features in Vista that Apple hasn't chosen to mimic - of course, Jobs isn't going to mention that...)
So, if we're on a plateau, it's just until the development cycle rolls around to release dates...