There's the Viewsonic 10", 2.5x the performance of the iPad, on sale at Amazon for $350. But the few major company announcments, like tablets from Samsung and Motorola, are priced specifically against the iPad. And in that specific case, both companies are selling the tablets from their cellular divisions... so they come with cellular modems, and with many more features than the iPad. So no, they're not more expensive, they're just not less expensive. Yet.
Android is really at the crux of being a good tablet OS, but it's really going to take the move to Honeycomb before the expectations of these devices match the reality of the iPad. And it will take some actual success, or better cheap Chinese tablets (you can find over a dozen on Amazon.com, along with the tablets grown out of the PMP business, from folks like Archos, Colby, and Creative Labs, also much lower priced than the iPad) before there's real competition on price, at least among the tier 1 vendors.
If you've been paying attention to the actual hardware going into a tablet, you'll realize these are going to cost less to make than netbooks, at least once they match the sales volume of the typical netbook.
Tablets are too expensive based on their hardware content, compared to commodity priced consumer electronics. They should sell for less than a netbook, since they cost less to make than the typical netbook.
Of course, this is ignoring initial development costs, sure. But also the idea that companies don't price products based on their cost, but whenever possible, on an inflated perception of value. That's why some people pay 2x-3x for an Apple Mac PC, versus an HP or Dell with identical internals. And since Apple's set the standard for ARM-based consumer tablets, all those that follow on, at least for a little while, are priced versus the iPad. This will change, as competition kicks in, just as it did for the PC over the years.
You might also notice that the average price paid for a laptop in the USA, just over $500, is also the base price the iPad.
Yes, tablets are expensive. This is already changing... for example, you can get a 10" Viewsonic tablet, based on the nVidia Tegra 250 SOC (2.5x the performance of the iPad) on Amazon for about $350. This also allows memory expension, includes USB and HDMI, etc. But the software's weak; you need a custom ROM to make it fairly usable, and few of these Android devices will deliver an iPad-class user experience until Honeycomb is released (which it may not be, for all current tablets).
Why are they expensive? Largely because they can be -- Apple set the standard, everyone's currently comparing new tablets to the iPad, and every company out there likes to make money. That's the only reason.
Under the hood, these ARM tablets are cheaper than netbooks. Most of them use the same or very similar LCD screens, something like resolution, about 1024 pixels across. The ARM SOCs, even the Tegra 2, are cheap compared to even the lower end Intel Atom solutions. Most tablets ship with much less DRAM, much less storage, and much less I/O than even a netbook. They have smaller batteries, too (example: Apple iPad at 25Whr, Toshiba NB505-N508BL at 48Whr). All of which add up to "cheaper than a netbook".
But products are sold on perceived value, not some objective markup. As long as consumers thing ARM based tablets are the cool new toy, the prices will not be in line with commodity PC industry hardware like the netbook. Eventually, they will be.
Except Apple... they're always going to overcharge for the iPad. As they do for every Macintosh PC. Their cheapest laptop starts at about twice the price paid for the average laptop sold in the USA. This is why Apple makes so much money -- they have a small segment of the market convinced that they're offering something above that of the commodity market, even when the hardware is no different. This is also why Apple will never own a new market for long, nor will they compete head to head with lower-end PCs, tablets, laptops, or smartphones. They are all about optimizing the profits, not the market share. Apple fans never quite seem to understand that, and get annoyed when Apple fails to rule the world, when their ownership of a market they created (or, more likely, revitalized) falls, etc. But I'm convinced Apple is far happier with a 10% share of a market that delivers them 40% of the profits in that market than they would be owning a 25% share that delivers 25% of that market's profits.
Unlikely. For one, they're using a specialized IPS LCD, while most every other device uses TN displays... poorer viewing angle, poorer color, better power consumption. There are more than a couple LCD manufacturers, some (like Sharp and LG) are making their own tablets. With all of the LCDs out there in use: television, PC monitors, etc. there's still been an excess capacity; a glut. Thus, the excellent prices on LCD televisions lately. Apple's demand is a drop in the bucket.
And they often limit themselves by other things. Supposedly, cutting the bezel glass for the iPhone 4 is one of the more serious limits to capacity, not even screen production or SOC/Flash/DRAM (which, of course, is made by Samsung... now a serious competitor in the market). Apple's less mighty than the rumor mills suggest. And they get more of that might from their huge piles of cash than their volumes.. everyone in the cellular business has crazy volumes.
Watchmen did $185,258,983 in gross revenue, and it cost about $130,000,000, a 42% profit. Everyone in Hollywood (and most people in New Jersey, for that matter) knows that R-Rated films don't generate summer blockbuster money. Which means, regardless of the subject, they can't cost as much and be expected to generate crazy profits.
Take a real summer blockbuster: "Iron Man 2" grossed $623.4M and cost about $200M.. a 311% profit, the kind that pretty much ensures there will be an "Iron Man 3". On the other hand, an equally big budget summer film, "Price of Persia: The Sands of Time" grossed $335M and also cost $200M, even as a Disney "tent-pole" film, and with Jerry Bruckheimer, only a modest success at 67.5% profit.
Noika isn't signing up as just a WP7 user. They're becoming a significant part of the future of WP7 in this.
And that's the interesting thing... is this more a desperation move by MS or by Nokia? Clearly, Nokia needed something other than SymbianOS. While MeeGo looks nice enough, they don't know how to market it any better than they marketed SymbianOS, and Intel's being Intel -- lots of help on the tech, but not much on selling it. Nokia's own CEO admitted they couldn't compete (well, he said "differentiate", but I ran it through my buzzword translator, and what we really said was "compete") against the rest of the world doing Android, or Apple's iOS.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's WP7 does less to compete directly with iOS and Android, and seems to perhaps be the smartphone OS for people who don't really want smartphones. Unfortunately for them, that's also how it's sold... 2 million in the first quarter, which isn't horrible (sure beats 1,000 or so Kins), but Apple sold 16 million iPhones that same quarter. They have a few companies, like Samsung, interested, but no one committing to it... until Nokia. For a price.
And I think that price is that they're setting up another seemingly open but really proprietary platform. That seems to be all the MS understands these days. They didn't this with Toshiba on HD-DVD. Sure, it was "open", anyone could sign up and make an HD-DVD player. No one actually did, unless you count Samsung adding partial HD-DVD support to an otherwise Blu-ray player. The reason was simple: Toshiba and MS controlled the platform, and the royalties from that platform. So Toshiba could see HD-DVD players at a loss, since they got it back on disc royalties. No one else would make such a devices as a second-class hardware developer in that market.
It might be a little easier in the smartphone business... after all, Android vs. WP7 only needs to be a difference in firmware on identical hardware. But where's the incentive for anyone else to back WP7 now, knowing Nokia will always have better terms, and more control over the platform's direction than anyone but MS. This may finally get Microsoft their wish. They have been copying Apple, sometimes well (Zune HD was nice hardware), sometimes poorly (pretty much everything else) in the MP3, PMP, Smartphone progression, even the model of the Zune store, the proprietary software, etc. With Nokia as a partner, they may actually do this better than in the past, but does the world already need another proprietary platform. Oh, wait, we already have a better one, with HP and WebOS. Does the world actually need two more?
The other thing... Nokia rightly acknowledged that this isn't just smartphones, but whole hardware/software gene pools. Every other platform covers smart phones and tablets. Android and iOS extend down into PMPs like the Archos and iPod devices. HP claims they'll put WebOS on the desktop, even. Sure, remains to be seen if that'll work out well, but here's the thing: Nokia definitely needs this to extend beyond the smartphone. Microsoft has so far said that Windows is for tablets. Either these merge somehow, or MS is doing to have rival divisions selling the same thing, possible more against each other than the outside competition. The alternative is that Nokia doesn't get the same scope of system every competitor has, and WP7 fails as a result.
The cell processor has one multi-threaded PowerPC chip (PPE) at 3.2GHz, very similar to the three cores in the X-Box 360, but a generation or two beyond the PPC in the Wii. And it's seven available SPEs (stream processors), which constitute much more processing power than the X-Box, but at higher cost in software complexity.
Some people just don't want to pay that extra $15/$30 per month. If there were no additional charges for smartphone use, data, etc. they would be expanding faster.
Of course, device cost is also a factor, but that's dropping fast, and less of an issue to the average consumer from carriers who subsidize the cost of the device.
Or how about enforcing actual patent law. Algorithms are not patentable. Only implementations. One of the big problems is that patent cases seem to accept overly broad claims, rather than very strictly reading the claims, as embodied in the actual implementation, on any potential violator.
Yes, that's exactly right. A patent is supposed to be for a specific implementation, not a general idea. The highly paid patent attorneys like to write patents in very complex language that seems to be very specific during the review process, but then naturally reads on everything once the patent is granted.
The process of building these new specs, however, tends to avoid that. As A.C. up there points out, the goal is a reproducible spec, and it's at least possible the work that got that patent was intended specifically to get into the new spec, so it's very specific to that project (AVC, AAC, whatever).
A slightly different spin derives from the very fact that this kind of spec creation maximizes the number of patents that go into the spec. These are not organically created specifications, it's every interested party trying to get their two cents in. So the patents are sometimes silly -- they are often doing regular things in obscure ways, just to get the patent. You need that patent to build a compatible encoder/decoder/whatever, but you don't need it to do the same kind of thing in an incompatible project.
The worst part of the MPEG-LA style open process is that it works to maximize the number of patents that show up in any new specification. Rather than delivering the best technology, it delivers maximally patent encumbered technology that's good enough to meet the requirements of the project. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, and in particular, the large companies who have an interest in earlier specs and don't want to be locked out of the next one.
The internet is getting faster all the time. At its best, AVC has about twice the coding efficiency of MPEG-2... so you need 3Mpb/s VBR to look about as good as your DVD at 6Mb/s VBR. But bitrates don't need to scale as resolutions increase. For example, broadcast MPEG-2 in HD is at 19.4Mb/s or less, CBR, for 6x the resolution of that DVD. Most online AVC video is in the 2-4Mb/s range, which means MPEG-2 could look similar at twice that, whatever the resolution. People are even paying real money for things like NetFlix steaming "HD", which is only 720p at 2.8-3.6Mb/s VC-1 (WMV9), slightly less efficient than AVC.
So no, MPEG-2 isn't useful for Blu-ray quality streaming online. But almost no one's very close to that, even with AVC, VC-1, and VP8 options. It's easy to believe that, in a few years, MPEG-2 will be usable for this same kind of limited quality online video. If it needs to... I don't think it gets much support if there's a better free alternative. But in the worst-case patent wars, maybe. Or maybe it's VP3 or MPEG-4 ASP rather than AVC or VP8. That would depend on the specifics of any ensuing legal battle.
It's also worth pointing out, as someone mentioned, that it's quite possible Google could just buy any patent they can't invalidate... depends on who's got it and how greedy they are.
#1 is unlikely. If a patent holder wants to keep VP8 free, they admit their patent, then grant the VP8 project a free perpetual license. That might be a good thing, simply because it might superceed other, similar claims. And as well, if they don't come forward, they could in the future be held by a court to have abandoned their patent in this case.
We just had a great "testable moment" with this whole "New Zodiac" thing (http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/13/horoscope-hang-up-earth-rotation-changes-zodiac-signs/).
Ultimately, the Zodiac (any of them) works the same way a carnival fortune teller works on you... most people filter the negative and overemphasize the positive. Maybe this is a vestige of back when life was, for the most part, pretty grim -- when you spend all your day hunting, fishing, warring, whatever, those little positives deserve a special place.
Anyway, it's amusing to see those who actually, sorta-kinda at least, believe in this stuff, having to choose between that old sign -- having nothing to do with "the stars", that thing they've hung their hat on, perhaps for decades, and the (often) new sign, which is actually based on the stars. Mythology touted as science rarely has such a schism.
Of course, the Galaxy S has an improved version of the same SOC used in the iPhone 4 (Samsung makes the A4, and they also designed the Hummingbird version of the A8 ARM used in that phone... in conjunction with Intrinsity, Inc, now owned by Apple, but not when that core was designed) and a better screen (lower resolution, but better looking and lower power). That's a top tier phone, and Samsung definitely prices their stuff to seem comparable to Apple's... they do the same with the Galaxy Tab.
You could definitely find very good Android phones at less than half that price.
Also, the Android tablets from the top tier companies are currently riding the iPad's coattails... they're priced relative to the iPad. These guys would like to recoup their development costs before the price wars really set in.
But bottom line, an ARM tablet costs less to make than a Netbook. They will drop in price, once there's sufficient competition. The iPad won't, unless sales are really hurt by the competition. Most of the markets Apple has changed, like MP3 players, smartphones and tablets, have been rapidly growing enough that they're still growing their sales, even if the markets are growing faster still. No need to change, given that.
The average laptop, not including the netbook category, sold for just over $500 in the USA in 2010. That's not competing with the 64GB iPad, that's competing with the entry-level model.
People bought iPads because it's a fun toy... same reason they bought iPhones and iPods. But it's quite overpriced... not terribly obvious when there's not much direct competition. But the same was once true of Macs, iPods, and iPhones. None of these devices retained the lion's share of their market, simply because they are too expensive.
And yeah, that's exactly what Apple wants. They're not even trying to maximize unit sales, they're very successfully maximizing profits. Apple is crazy with cash. Matching the prices of the competition would actually hurt the brand. Apple's cheapest laptop starts at $1000... nearly twice the national average. If they dropped the price, of course they'd sell more, but in the long run, they would damage the Apple brand. Same reason BMW isn't trying to sell a car to compete with the Ford Focus (well, at least under the "BMW" name... Bayerische Motoren Werke AG also owns Mini).
Overall, MS-DOS is more of a flash in the pan than anything else. Once developers realize there is no future with the platform, they will focus on Apple ][ or platforms that matter.
I do agree... Sony sells the best dedicated console, and even with this move, the most open. It is not in my best interest as a user for them to make stealing software any easier, so I really have no problem, if that's the extent of their use for this interface. And given "secret" update pushes already documented in Windows, I think there's an excellent chance that Sony was, until just now, the only one NOT doing this kind of thing already.
On the other hand, I used to be a big fan of Sony media players, televisions, and camcorders. Today, not-so-much, and that's primarily because others have just made better kit. Sony has long refused to support anything but 1080/60i on their consumer and even some pro-level camcorders... I'm getting 1080/24p, 720/60p, 1080/30p, and 1080/60p on at least one of the two Panasonic camcorders I bought to replace my Sonys. My Sony TV was replaced first by a Mitsubishi, then a Samsung, for the media room... long ago. My last Sony TV lost its place to an LG-LCD last Christmas. And that Sony MD recorder was replaced by Tascam and Samson (Zoom) digital field recorders, and my smartphone, when it comes to play back.
And in fact, one reason they're better products... many of these all use the same SD/microSD memory cards. Even my PS3 supports these. My digital field recorders let me transfer audio directly to my PC... the "WebMD" recorder could have supported this, or MP3 native, but Sony was worried about protecting me from my own live recordings.
In short, nothing magical about the company, any more than any other company. I choose products based on features offered and company reputation, but I had no need to reject Sony based on policies... their products were enough.
As for Blu-ray, that's a big over HD-DVD. While it might not have been obvious to those not in the video world, at least Blu-ray was spun out from Sony to a standards group. While certainly under the auspices of the DVD Forum, HD-DVD was effectively a Toshiba/Microsoft proprietary format. The reason no one but Toshiba made HD-DVD players (other than a couple Samsung BD players hacked to play a subset of the HD-DVD format as well) was simple: Toshiba treated HD-DVD like their own gaming console. They could sell the players at or below cost, because they were collecting the royalties on each disc, just as Sony, MS, and Nintendo do on their respective consoles. No other hardware company could make money on HD-DVD... this same experiment was tried in the 90s with the 3DO gaming platform, with identical results.
I have Hugesnet. Yeah, it's expensive, relatively slow (1.5Mb/s down), and with my SOHO plan, I get 500MB before the cap kicks in. Although the meter is off between 2AM and 7AM... at least that's something.
There is wired cable with 2 miles or less in all directions. But there's no requirement to support more rural folks.... I'm sure, if not for the former regulated phone company rules, I wouldn't have wired phone lines, either.
Even cellular is not much of an option. My house is near center of a 26 acre wood, so higher frequency carriers (T-Mobile, Sprint) don't reach. AT&T and particularly Verizon do, but they have no support for stationary ISP service, and so far, Verizon doesn't seem to be planning this, even given their coverage plans and 700MHz band suggest that LTE would be a huge win over satellite, sometime in the next two years.
You'll probably keep waiting for DSL. I can see my local telco node from my mailbox. I've spoken with one of the techs (when my phone service fails, and it will again, the first guy they send can never fix it, so I get the second tier guy, who actually understands this stuff). He told me that node will absolutely support DSL boards... he even knew the board set and software revision needed. And he promised that Verizon would NEVER support DSL "out here". They look in DSL as a dead end, and FiOS as their future, because that's what allows them to compete with Comcast and other cable providers. You can still get DSL where it's already active, but don't expect new hookups.
Good 3D is good fun... sadly, it's been kind of a rarity. If the interocular distance between the two lenses is wrong (obviously, when shooting actual film/video), the 3D will look wrong. Let's not even go into the abysmal failures of the various fake 3D algorithms.
Cameron did it right, including creating his Cameraon-Pace 3D camera, which has variable interocular distance, and all kinds of other coolness. So it's encouraging that the Wachowskis are talking to him. And hopefully, they've learned a great deal about how NOT to make film ("Speed Racer", "The Matrix Reloaded", "Speed Racer", "The Matrix Revolutions", "Speed Racer", etc.)
Yup.. Intrinsity worked with Samsung on their modified A8 core -- that's the one used in the Apple A4 SOC, and all of the Samsung Galaxy devices. Intrinsity's special sauce is speeding things up; they use somewhat unconventional techniques (dynamic latches, NMOS gates, 1-hot state machines, etc... a methodology they call "Fast14") to speed up the critical sections in existing designs. Anyone out there with a Cortex A8 at 1GHz or more did some modifications over and above the ARM original design. Qualcomm did too, of course, maybe that's how they got mentioned, but they're not involved, at least not to date.
The A4 is a modified Samsung design, using the same "Hummingbird" core as in the S5PC110 and S5PV210. This was before Apple acquired Intrinsity. Given that most accounts say that Intrinsity "codeveloped" the Hummingbird with Samsung, it's pretty likely that Apple has the rights, at least at this point if not before. It's also very likely that, since they're now in direct competition with Samsung AND they own both PA Semi and Intrinsity, they'll be looking for other fab capability for the next gen stuff.
Actually, the Newton had very little effect on the popularity of ARM devices. There were many alternatives back in those days: PPC, MIPS, etc. It was the adoption of the ARM as basically the "6502" of the cell phone industry that made it popular. The early ARMs were lower performance that most of the others, but still 32-bit, still a licensable core -- just what very small devices like dumb cell phones needed.
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There's the Viewsonic 10", 2.5x the performance of the iPad, on sale at Amazon for $350. But the few major company announcments, like tablets from Samsung and Motorola, are priced specifically against the iPad. And in that specific case, both companies are selling the tablets from their cellular divisions... so they come with cellular modems, and with many more features than the iPad. So no, they're not more expensive, they're just not less expensive. Yet.
Android is really at the crux of being a good tablet OS, but it's really going to take the move to Honeycomb before the expectations of these devices match the reality of the iPad. And it will take some actual success, or better cheap Chinese tablets (you can find over a dozen on Amazon.com, along with the tablets grown out of the PMP business, from folks like Archos, Colby, and Creative Labs, also much lower priced than the iPad) before there's real competition on price, at least among the tier 1 vendors.
If you've been paying attention to the actual hardware going into a tablet, you'll realize these are going to cost less to make than netbooks, at least once they match the sales volume of the typical netbook.
Tablets are too expensive based on their hardware content, compared to commodity priced consumer electronics. They should sell for less than a netbook, since they cost less to make than the typical netbook.
Of course, this is ignoring initial development costs, sure. But also the idea that companies don't price products based on their cost, but whenever possible, on an inflated perception of value. That's why some people pay 2x-3x for an Apple Mac PC, versus an HP or Dell with identical internals. And since Apple's set the standard for ARM-based consumer tablets, all those that follow on, at least for a little while, are priced versus the iPad. This will change, as competition kicks in, just as it did for the PC over the years.
You might also notice that the average price paid for a laptop in the USA, just over $500, is also the base price the iPad.
Yes, tablets are expensive. This is already changing... for example, you can get a 10" Viewsonic tablet, based on the nVidia Tegra 250 SOC (2.5x the performance of the iPad) on Amazon for about $350. This also allows memory expension, includes USB and HDMI, etc. But the software's weak; you need a custom ROM to make it fairly usable, and few of these Android devices will deliver an iPad-class user experience until Honeycomb is released (which it may not be, for all current tablets).
Why are they expensive? Largely because they can be -- Apple set the standard, everyone's currently comparing new tablets to the iPad, and every company out there likes to make money. That's the only reason.
Under the hood, these ARM tablets are cheaper than netbooks. Most of them use the same or very similar LCD screens, something like resolution, about 1024 pixels across. The ARM SOCs, even the Tegra 2, are cheap compared to even the lower end Intel Atom solutions. Most tablets ship with much less DRAM, much less storage, and much less I/O than even a netbook. They have smaller batteries, too (example: Apple iPad at 25Whr, Toshiba NB505-N508BL at 48Whr). All of which add up to "cheaper than a netbook".
But products are sold on perceived value, not some objective markup. As long as consumers thing ARM based tablets are the cool new toy, the prices will not be in line with commodity PC industry hardware like the netbook. Eventually, they will be.
Except Apple... they're always going to overcharge for the iPad. As they do for every Macintosh PC. Their cheapest laptop starts at about twice the price paid for the average laptop sold in the USA. This is why Apple makes so much money -- they have a small segment of the market convinced that they're offering something above that of the commodity market, even when the hardware is no different. This is also why Apple will never own a new market for long, nor will they compete head to head with lower-end PCs, tablets, laptops, or smartphones. They are all about optimizing the profits, not the market share. Apple fans never quite seem to understand that, and get annoyed when Apple fails to rule the world, when their ownership of a market they created (or, more likely, revitalized) falls, etc. But I'm convinced Apple is far happier with a 10% share of a market that delivers them 40% of the profits in that market than they would be owning a 25% share that delivers 25% of that market's profits.
Unlikely. For one, they're using a specialized IPS LCD, while most every other device uses TN displays ... poorer viewing angle, poorer color, better power consumption. There are more than a couple LCD manufacturers, some (like Sharp and LG) are making their own tablets. With all of the LCDs out there in use: television, PC monitors, etc. there's still been an excess capacity; a glut. Thus, the excellent prices on LCD televisions lately. Apple's demand is a drop in the bucket.
And they often limit themselves by other things. Supposedly, cutting the bezel glass for the iPhone 4 is one of the more serious limits to capacity, not even screen production or SOC/Flash/DRAM (which, of course, is made by Samsung... now a serious competitor in the market). Apple's less mighty than the rumor mills suggest. And they get more of that might from their huge piles of cash than their volumes.. everyone in the cellular business has crazy volumes.
Watchmen did $185,258,983 in gross revenue, and it cost about $130,000,000, a 42% profit. Everyone in Hollywood (and most people in New Jersey, for that matter) knows that R-Rated films don't generate summer blockbuster money. Which means, regardless of the subject, they can't cost as much and be expected to generate crazy profits.
Take a real summer blockbuster: "Iron Man 2" grossed $623.4M and cost about $200M.. a 311% profit, the kind that pretty much ensures there will be an "Iron Man 3". On the other hand, an equally big budget summer film, "Price of Persia: The Sands of Time" grossed $335M and also cost $200M, even as a Disney "tent-pole" film, and with Jerry Bruckheimer, only a modest success at 67.5% profit.
Noika isn't signing up as just a WP7 user. They're becoming a significant part of the future of WP7 in this.
And that's the interesting thing... is this more a desperation move by MS or by Nokia? Clearly, Nokia needed something other than SymbianOS. While MeeGo looks nice enough, they don't know how to market it any better than they marketed SymbianOS, and Intel's being Intel -- lots of help on the tech, but not much on selling it.
Nokia's own CEO admitted they couldn't compete (well, he said "differentiate", but I ran it through my buzzword translator, and what we really said was "compete") against the rest of the world doing Android, or Apple's iOS.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's WP7 does less to compete directly with iOS and Android, and seems to perhaps be the smartphone OS for people who don't really want smartphones. Unfortunately for them, that's also how it's sold ... 2 million in the first quarter, which isn't horrible (sure beats 1,000 or so Kins), but Apple sold 16 million iPhones that same quarter. They have a few companies, like Samsung, interested, but no one committing to it... until Nokia. For a price.
And I think that price is that they're setting up another seemingly open but really proprietary platform. That seems to be all the MS understands these days. They didn't this with Toshiba on HD-DVD. Sure, it was "open", anyone could sign up and make an HD-DVD player. No one actually did, unless you count Samsung adding partial HD-DVD support to an otherwise Blu-ray player. The reason was simple: Toshiba and MS controlled the platform, and the royalties from that platform. So Toshiba could see HD-DVD players at a loss, since they got it back on disc royalties. No one else would make such a devices as a second-class hardware developer in that market.
It might be a little easier in the smartphone business... after all, Android vs. WP7 only needs to be a difference in firmware on identical hardware. But where's the incentive for anyone else to back WP7 now, knowing Nokia will always have better terms, and more control over the platform's direction than anyone but MS. This may finally get Microsoft their wish. They have been copying Apple, sometimes well (Zune HD was nice hardware), sometimes poorly (pretty much everything else) in the MP3, PMP, Smartphone progression, even the model of the Zune store, the proprietary software, etc. With Nokia as a partner, they may actually do this better than in the past, but does the world already need another proprietary platform. Oh, wait, we already have a better one, with HP and WebOS. Does the world actually need two more?
The other thing... Nokia rightly acknowledged that this isn't just smartphones, but whole hardware/software gene pools. Every other platform covers smart phones and tablets. Android and iOS extend down into PMPs like the Archos and iPod devices. HP claims they'll put WebOS on the desktop, even. Sure, remains to be seen if that'll work out well, but here's the thing: Nokia definitely needs this to extend beyond the smartphone. Microsoft has so far said that Windows is for tablets. Either these merge somehow, or MS is doing to have rival divisions selling the same thing, possible more against each other than the outside competition. The alternative is that Nokia doesn't get the same scope of system every competitor has, and WP7 fails as a result.
The cell processor has one multi-threaded PowerPC chip (PPE) at 3.2GHz, very similar to the three cores in the X-Box 360, but a generation or two beyond the PPC in the Wii. And it's seven available SPEs (stream processors), which constitute much more processing power than the X-Box, but at higher cost in software complexity.
Some people just don't want to pay that extra $15/$30 per month. If there were no additional charges for smartphone use, data, etc. they would be expanding faster.
Of course, device cost is also a factor, but that's dropping fast, and less of an issue to the average consumer from carriers who subsidize the cost of the device.
Or how about enforcing actual patent law. Algorithms are not patentable. Only implementations. One of the big problems is that patent cases seem to accept overly broad claims, rather than very strictly reading the claims, as embodied in the actual implementation, on any potential violator.
Yes, that's exactly right. A patent is supposed to be for a specific implementation, not a general idea. The highly paid patent attorneys like to write patents in very complex language that seems to be very specific during the review process, but then naturally reads on everything once the patent is granted.
The process of building these new specs, however, tends to avoid that. As A.C. up there points out, the goal is a reproducible spec, and it's at least possible the work that got that patent was intended specifically to get into the new spec, so it's very specific to that project (AVC, AAC, whatever).
A slightly different spin derives from the very fact that this kind of spec creation maximizes the number of patents that go into the spec. These are not organically created specifications, it's every interested party trying to get their two cents in. So the patents are sometimes silly -- they are often doing regular things in obscure ways, just to get the patent. You need that patent to build a compatible encoder/decoder/whatever, but you don't need it to do the same kind of thing in an incompatible project.
The worst part of the MPEG-LA style open process is that it works to maximize the number of patents that show up in any new specification. Rather than delivering the best technology, it delivers maximally patent encumbered technology that's good enough to meet the requirements of the project. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, and in particular, the large companies who have an interest in earlier specs and don't want to be locked out of the next one.
The internet is getting faster all the time. At its best, AVC has about twice the coding efficiency of MPEG-2... so you need 3Mpb/s VBR to look about as good as your DVD at 6Mb/s VBR. But bitrates don't need to scale as resolutions increase. For example, broadcast MPEG-2 in HD is at 19.4Mb/s or less, CBR, for 6x the resolution of that DVD. Most online AVC video is in the 2-4Mb/s range, which means MPEG-2 could look similar at twice that, whatever the resolution. People are even paying real money for things like NetFlix steaming "HD", which is only 720p at 2.8-3.6Mb/s VC-1 (WMV9), slightly less efficient than AVC.
So no, MPEG-2 isn't useful for Blu-ray quality streaming online. But almost no one's very close to that, even with AVC, VC-1, and VP8 options. It's easy to believe that, in a few years, MPEG-2 will be usable for this same kind of limited quality online video. If it needs to... I don't think it gets much support if there's a better free alternative. But in the worst-case patent wars, maybe. Or maybe it's VP3 or MPEG-4 ASP rather than AVC or VP8. That would depend on the specifics of any ensuing legal battle.
It's also worth pointing out, as someone mentioned, that it's quite possible Google could just buy any patent they can't invalidate... depends on who's got it and how greedy they are.
#1 is unlikely. If a patent holder wants to keep VP8 free, they admit their patent, then grant the VP8 project a free perpetual license. That might be a good thing, simply because it might superceed other, similar claims. And as well, if they don't come forward, they could in the future be held by a court to have abandoned their patent in this case.
We just had a great "testable moment" with this whole "New Zodiac" thing (http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/13/horoscope-hang-up-earth-rotation-changes-zodiac-signs/).
Ultimately, the Zodiac (any of them) works the same way a carnival fortune teller works on you... most people filter the negative and overemphasize the positive. Maybe this is a vestige of back when life was, for the most part, pretty grim -- when you spend all your day hunting, fishing, warring, whatever, those little positives deserve a special place.
Anyway, it's amusing to see those who actually, sorta-kinda at least, believe in this stuff, having to choose between that old sign -- having nothing to do with "the stars", that thing they've hung their hat on, perhaps for decades, and the (often) new sign, which is actually based on the stars. Mythology touted as science rarely has such a schism.
Of course, the Galaxy S has an improved version of the same SOC used in the iPhone 4 (Samsung makes the A4, and they also designed the Hummingbird version of the A8 ARM used in that phone... in conjunction with Intrinsity, Inc, now owned by Apple, but not when that core was designed) and a better screen (lower resolution, but better looking and lower power). That's a top tier phone, and Samsung definitely prices their stuff to seem comparable to Apple's... they do the same with the Galaxy Tab.
You could definitely find very good Android phones at less than half that price.
Also, the Android tablets from the top tier companies are currently riding the iPad's coattails... they're priced relative to the iPad. These guys would like to recoup their development costs before the price wars really set in.
But bottom line, an ARM tablet costs less to make than a Netbook. They will drop in price, once there's sufficient competition. The iPad won't, unless sales are really hurt by the competition. Most of the markets Apple has changed, like MP3 players, smartphones and tablets, have been rapidly growing enough that they're still growing their sales, even if the markets are growing faster still. No need to change, given that.
The average laptop, not including the netbook category, sold for just over $500 in the USA in 2010. That's not competing with the 64GB iPad, that's competing with the entry-level model.
People bought iPads because it's a fun toy... same reason they bought iPhones and iPods. But it's quite overpriced... not terribly obvious when there's not much direct competition. But the same was once true of Macs, iPods, and iPhones. None of these devices retained the lion's share of their market, simply because they are too expensive.
And yeah, that's exactly what Apple wants. They're not even trying to maximize unit sales, they're very successfully maximizing profits. Apple is crazy with cash. Matching the prices of the competition would actually hurt the brand. Apple's cheapest laptop starts at $1000... nearly twice the national average. If they dropped the price, of course they'd sell more, but in the long run, they would damage the Apple brand. Same reason BMW isn't trying to sell a car to compete with the Ford Focus (well, at least under the "BMW" name... Bayerische Motoren Werke AG also owns Mini).
What he said back in 1981:
Overall, MS-DOS is more of a flash in the pan than anything else. Once developers realize there is no future with the platform, they will focus on Apple ][ or platforms that matter.
I do agree... Sony sells the best dedicated console, and even with this move, the most open. It is not in my best interest as a user for them to make stealing software any easier, so I really have no problem, if that's the extent of their use for this interface. And given "secret" update pushes already documented in Windows, I think there's an excellent chance that Sony was, until just now, the only one NOT doing this kind of thing already.
On the other hand, I used to be a big fan of Sony media players, televisions, and camcorders. Today, not-so-much, and that's primarily because others have just made better kit. Sony has long refused to support anything but 1080/60i on their consumer and even some pro-level camcorders... I'm getting 1080/24p, 720/60p, 1080/30p, and 1080/60p on at least one of the two Panasonic camcorders I bought to replace my Sonys. My Sony TV was replaced first by a Mitsubishi, then a Samsung, for the media room... long ago. My last Sony TV lost its place to an LG-LCD last Christmas. And that Sony MD recorder was replaced by Tascam and Samson (Zoom) digital field recorders, and my smartphone, when it comes to play back.
And in fact, one reason they're better products... many of these all use the same SD/microSD memory cards. Even my PS3 supports these. My digital field recorders let me transfer audio directly to my PC... the "WebMD" recorder could have supported this, or MP3 native, but Sony was worried about protecting me from my own live recordings.
In short, nothing magical about the company, any more than any other company. I choose products based on features offered and company reputation, but I had no need to reject Sony based on policies... their products were enough.
As for Blu-ray, that's a big over HD-DVD. While it might not have been obvious to those not in the video world, at least Blu-ray was spun out from Sony to a standards group. While certainly under the auspices of the DVD Forum, HD-DVD was effectively a Toshiba/Microsoft proprietary format. The reason no one but Toshiba made HD-DVD players (other than a couple Samsung BD players hacked to play a subset of the HD-DVD format as well) was simple: Toshiba treated HD-DVD like their own gaming console. They could sell the players at or below cost, because they were collecting the royalties on each disc, just as Sony, MS, and Nintendo do on their respective consoles. No other hardware company could make money on HD-DVD... this same experiment was tried in the 90s with the 3DO gaming platform, with identical results.
> Vacume tubes
Dictionaries and/or spell-checkers?
I have Hugesnet. Yeah, it's expensive, relatively slow (1.5Mb/s down), and with my SOHO plan, I get 500MB before the cap kicks in. Although the meter is off between 2AM and 7AM... at least that's something.
There is wired cable with 2 miles or less in all directions. But there's no requirement to support more rural folks.... I'm sure, if not for the former regulated phone company rules, I wouldn't have wired phone lines, either.
Even cellular is not much of an option. My house is near center of a 26 acre wood, so higher frequency carriers (T-Mobile, Sprint) don't reach. AT&T and particularly Verizon do, but they have no support for stationary ISP service, and so far, Verizon doesn't seem to be planning this, even given their coverage plans and 700MHz band suggest that LTE would be a huge win over satellite, sometime in the next two years.
You'll probably keep waiting for DSL. I can see my local telco node from my mailbox. I've spoken with one of the techs (when my phone service fails, and it will again, the first guy they send can never fix it, so I get the second tier guy, who actually understands this stuff). He told me that node will absolutely support DSL boards... he even knew the board set and software revision needed. And he promised that Verizon would NEVER support DSL "out here". They look in DSL as a dead end, and FiOS as their future, because that's what allows them to compete with Comcast and other cable providers. You can still get DSL where it's already active, but don't expect new hookups.
Sssshhhh... stop revealing the plot of #4!
Good 3D is good fun... sadly, it's been kind of a rarity. If the interocular distance between the two lenses is wrong (obviously, when shooting actual film/video), the 3D will look wrong. Let's not even go into the abysmal failures of the various fake 3D algorithms.
Cameron did it right, including creating his Cameraon-Pace 3D camera, which has variable interocular distance, and all kinds of other coolness. So it's encouraging that the Wachowskis are talking to him. And hopefully, they've learned a great deal about how NOT to make film ("Speed Racer", "The Matrix Reloaded", "Speed Racer", "The Matrix Revolutions", "Speed Racer", etc.)
Yup.. Intrinsity worked with Samsung on their modified A8 core -- that's the one used in the Apple A4 SOC, and all of the Samsung Galaxy devices. Intrinsity's special sauce is speeding things up; they use somewhat unconventional techniques (dynamic latches, NMOS gates, 1-hot state machines, etc... a methodology they call "Fast14") to speed up the critical sections in existing designs. Anyone out there with a Cortex A8 at 1GHz or more did some modifications over and above the ARM original design. Qualcomm did too, of course, maybe that's how they got mentioned, but they're not involved, at least not to date.
The A4 is a modified Samsung design, using the same "Hummingbird" core as in the S5PC110 and S5PV210. This was before Apple acquired Intrinsity. Given that most accounts say that Intrinsity "codeveloped" the Hummingbird with Samsung, it's pretty likely that Apple has the rights, at least at this point if not before. It's also very likely that, since they're now in direct competition with Samsung AND they own both PA Semi and Intrinsity, they'll be looking for other fab capability for the next gen stuff.
Actually, the Newton had very little effect on the popularity of ARM devices. There were many alternatives back in those days: PPC, MIPS, etc. It was the adoption of the ARM as basically the "6502" of the cell phone industry that made it popular. The early ARMs were lower performance that most of the others, but still 32-bit, still a licensable core -- just what very small devices like dumb cell phones needed.