Principles are just *so* highly over rated. Giving in and just buying the device is the easier path and I should just take that.
There is a difference between Principles and Petulance for Petulance's Sake.
So many Slashdotters don't seem to know the difference.
BTW, who do you think has contributed more to more Open Source projects: Google, or Apple?
Sure, Google has a lot of THEIR "Open Source" apps; but I'm talking about improving and giving back to already-in-progress OSS Projects, as well as developing their own OSS apps, too. I'm pretty sure you will find that Apple is the better OSS "netizen", overall. If you look down the list of Google's OSS projects, the vast majority are only there to support their ecosystem in some way. In other words, they are Open Source Projects to support what is ultimately a Closed Platform. Whereas Apple's OSS contributions (and there have been MANY) tend to have much more "generalized" application (particularly in the Linux community) than do the Projects that Google participates in / creates.
But I guess none of that matters to "Mr. Principles".
Ya know, do you pine for the fjords because you can't root your Microwave oven?
Do you piss and moan because your Blu-Ray player only runs the software the manufacturer wants it to?
Are you upset because your TV won't let you run Eclipse?
Bet not. Why? Because they are APPLIANCES, not General-Purpose Computing Devices.
You will note that there is absolutely no move for OS X products (as opposed to iOS) to have a "closed" ecosystem (I don't want to hear nonsensical rants about the Mac App Store). In fact, Apple gives away the entire IDE and development toolchain (and a pretty damned nice one it is, too!), plus allows you to create apps to your heart's content for OS X for Free (as in beer AND freedom).
Face facts, man. Tablets really aren't little laptops. But since iOS grew up being in an environment (running in a phone) where, as Android has amply shown, the temptation to download "cute" apps (that are in reality, just big ol' Trojans) seems to be almost universal, Apple's "Walled Garden" (where the "walls" are about 35 light-years away in most cases) seems to have been a VERY wise choice.
Case in point: Both Google and Microsoft also have "Curated Collections"; so those companies also understand the value in having a "safe place" to download applications. But Apple was smart enough to realize that, unless there was basically no other way to purchase apps, then the whole idea of "Curated" was meaningless, because, by and large, people neither understand nor care about these issues. This is proven again by the rampant malware on the Android platform. (such that you have to run a damned firewall and AV software on your PHONE!).
And oh, by the way, you can run whatever you want on your iOS device. All you have to do is write/port it yourself.
Or are you too lazy or stupid to do that?
And don't tell me about how awful it is to spend $99 to become a registered iOS developer. If you are as busy as you claim, you have PLENTY of $100 bills. And used MacBooks can be had for around $300. Now you're in business for yourself, and if you have a sufficiently-good idea, maybe even make some coin writing a commercial iOS app.
Or you could just stand there on your principles; but guess who loses in that deal? HINT: It ain't Apple...
What are you talking about? The summary is clear that the EULA is about the.ibook format. It says "Apple is claiming rights to the.ibook format itself and not the content therein." The output of iBooks Author is an.ibook file.
But it is not another AUTHORING TOOL that produces.ibook format. THAT's what they are trying to prevent. They are NOT claiming IP rights to the CONTENT, just the FILE FORMAT.
However, Wintels have the added bonus that I don't have to look at my face all day long unlike the MacBook Pro, which would double very well as a mirror. Stupid shiny screen!
My work Samsung Laptop's screen makes a dandy mirror. Apple has no stranglehold on glossy screens. Your generalization is completely flawed.
It's amazing how many people on here seem to have completely passed over that it's ePub with no DRM.
Wow! I didn't know that epub allowed such rich content!
And good catch on the DRM! This is in keeping with Apple's stance of NOT using DRM unless there is simply no other way to get "the industry" to go along with allowing certain content (like with movies on the iTunes Store).
And it costs you $100-$150 to even sell a book. you have to buy a ISBN number. So every book title you sell is $100 cash out of your pocket.
Do ebooks sold in the Apple Store have to have ISBN numbers?
And I don't see any of the people who are whining about "lock-in" and "profiteering" bitching about things like the UPC and ISBN Cartels, who have taken the maintenance of a simple database and turned it into an industry-wide lock-in which, much like the proverbial "Mark of the Beast" none shall trade without paying the UPC/ISBN "toll".
Yet, Apple is vilified for taking the cost of a textbook down to a fraction of its usual cost, while simultaneously creating a format that has far more flexibility than epub, while simultaneously releasing a way-best-of-breed authoring tool for free (yes, it helps the overall bit, but they could have charged SOMETHING for it).
Why don't you spend your vitriol on changing the planet such that it doesn't cost $750 to get a UPC code (yes, I know about "code-sharing", but that won't get you into WalMart or Kroger and probably some other retailers), or even $100 for an ISBN code (Really! $100?!? For a fucking DATABASE RECORD???).
No, instead you'd rather rail on Apple for making textbooks not only MUCH better than any of us grew up with; but also $15, max, instead of "whatever-they-think-they-can-get" of the dead-tree mongers.
Very little of that is relevant if it reduces the student's final book costs by 70%. I'll happily give Apple their book lock-in all day long if it saves me a few grand on textbooks. Wouldn't you?
Hell no. It would require my students to have apple hardware and software. That places a needless financial and technological limit on my students. I do however see a market vulnerability here. Apple wants to replace the textbook cartel lock-in with their own lock-in. A reasonably priced service/app for authors that allows the flexibility they deny could do very well. Especially since (at the college level at least) students are happy to make waves and protest exploitation. An enterprising organization could seize the upper hand and compete on cost, flexibility, and ethics.
So how come no "enterprising organization" ever seems to get it right, every single time every single one of them tries to imitate Apple? And how come that's all every single time every single one of them ever tries to do?
There never IS an "upper hand"; all there ever seems to be are laughable knock-offs of what Apple has done better.
I'm seriously not trolling here; I'm just asking "Where are all these "enterprising organizations" that are going to step in an show the world a better way than what Apple has (obviously) already spent some serious time and money developing?
But don't the colleges already have you locked in? "Buy this and this and this for the courses you've signed up for this semester".
Now it's "Buy this and this and this, but you'll also need an ipad and those 'books' are tied to it and can't be used on any other platform." It's not like Apple has invented the ebook here, they're just trying to popularize the platform-specific ebook. Don't want an ipad? Too bad. They could have done it with an open format, or published their format, but of course that wouldn't allow them the lock-in they get with a closed format to which only their software can read and write...oh and for that software you need to buy their hardware.
What fantasy world do you live in?
The F/OSS "community" (whatever THAT is!) has had just as long to come up with this type of game-changing book authoring/putblishing/distribution system as Apple has. But they (obviously) haven't.
In reality, all the Apple-Haters seem to be really good at is bitching. And boy, are they good at that!
I'll happily give Apple their book lock-in all day long if it saves me a few grand on textbooks. Wouldn't you?
No, I'm not so foolish as to dive head first into brand lock-in. I like having my books exist independent of one company's platform. Platform dependent books, who would have thought such nonsense would ever actually happen?
This is a problem that needs to be solved, but doing it by being stuck forever on one company's platform because they're severely anti-competitive is just stupid.
Since it is the colleges that set which particular textbook you have to purchase for any given course, how are you any more "free" now?
Your professor could probably publish the damn thing himself with today's software tools, thereby kicking the textbook industry in the nuts.
Does anyone know the details of the Publishing part of the iBooks Store? Is it the same 70/30 split as on the App Store? If so, that's CONSIDERABLY better than most dead-tree textbook authors get, I would imagine.
Is there an approval process, or could I theoretically publish an (updated) ebook version of the Anarchist's Cookbook up there, or what?
Trust is baked into Android's permissions system. If you don't trust an app to use the permissions it requests wisely, don't install it.
And just HOW many normal, ordinary people (you know, the ones that outnumber us geeks 10,000:1) know that the LOLCats wallpaper they just downloaded shouldn't need access to their Contacts "So you can tell your friends about it!", hmmmm?
Wait.. there are American companies with dormitories???
Not anymore.
...or is that "Not yet"?
What do you think is the REAL reason why Immigration Laws in the U.S. have been decimated and/or largely ignored for the past 20 years or so?
First there was NAFTA; and some corporations closed their U.S. factories and moved them to Mexico. That was supposed to break the Unions (and save our TRUE overlords some money). Then, someone got the idea that it would be much cheaper to bring the cheap labor (Mexicans) here, rather than to rebuild factories down there. Again, an attempt to break the Unions. This is the phase we're still in. However, the Unions STILL aren't going-away; so now there's this "Right To Work" "movement", which AGAIN is aimed at de-fanging the Unions...
We'll see...
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I can't say for sure. Unions were a very necessary thing during the robber-baron years (early 20th century); but like all "good things", they eventually lost sight of their (laudable) goal of making sure that workers had decent working conditions (e,g,, we can thank them every "weekend" that we have off) and a "decent wage"; but they have long-since swung the pendulum the other way, where U.S. Labor is simply not cost-effective, and worse yet, has the (somewhat deserved) reputation for being lazy and sloppy.
Then explain Toyota and Honda: Toyota has 6 factories in the US [wikipedia.org] and Honda has 3. [wikipedia.org] How are they able to build millions of some of the top-selling vehicles in the US and still remain profitable all while using American labor?
They did that for two reasons:
1. There were significant trade restrictions that did NOT apply if they could claim the car was "American" (contained at least x% of US-Produced parts), and once that threshold was made, it was actually cheaper to have them assembled here, than to ship all those parts overseas, then ship the completed car BACK to the U.S.
2. Shipping costs in general.
And how many years of school does it take to learn "glue solder board to base"? Machines create the circuit boards, humans just put it together, guessing that requires at least an Associates, right?
Yeah, I can imagine Bubba the Auto-Worker assembling cellphones with his vienna-sausage fingers. How many returns and how many scrapped units do you think that approach would create? Not to mention the throughput of 2 cellphones per hour (in between Union-Demanded breaks, of course)
How about the 'right to work law' in Indiana (which is designed to eliminated 'closed shops'--where every eligible employee is required to be a union member if there is a union)
Living in a right-to-work state... well, let's say there's a reason those laws are colloquially known as "right to fire".
I'm not saying that the all-employment-is-at-will approach is wrong, necessarily, but it certainly has side effects that your blurb above skips over.
Indiana is already an "At Will" (which means at the EMPLOYER's will) State.
Having been laid-off simply because my new boss didn't like me (and was the neighbor and church-mate of the President of the company), I sincerely believe that we need some true EMPLOYEE Rights legislation (say, like what France has), instead of yet another Orwellian-Named "Right To Work" (which as you pointed out, simply means "Right To Fire") piece of anti-worker bullshit.
If all that index does is count web pages that mention a language then isn't it more likely to be a measure of how many problems people are having with a language? Languages which "just work" would get fewer hits than those which don't.
Better questions, since when is Microsoft disappointing Windows Phone users news?
If the reviews on Amazon are any indication, most people are pretty happy with their Windows Phones. The top 3 highest reviewed phones are all Windows Phones.
UV has been used to sterilize a wide variety of things since that ability was discovered in 1906 (IIRC).
Some bugs are more tolerant than others; but it doesn't seem to have caused a sufficient evolutionary pressure to cause "UV-resistant" germs, molds or viruses.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple there is only one manufacturer. So purchasing hardware from them, however tempting, only enables their abhorrent behavior.
You do realize, of course, that you aren't really teaching them a lesson, don't you?
And it is hardly "abhorrent" if people CHOOSE it.
Now if the government passed a law that said you could only purchase Apple devices, then you might have a point.
But not one second before.
You called me out. Well Played.
Principles are just *so* highly over rated. Giving in and just buying the device is the easier path and I should just take that.
There is a difference between Principles and Petulance for Petulance's Sake.
So many Slashdotters don't seem to know the difference.
BTW, who do you think has contributed more to more Open Source projects: Google, or Apple?
Sure, Google has a lot of THEIR "Open Source" apps; but I'm talking about improving and giving back to already-in-progress OSS Projects, as well as developing their own OSS apps, too. I'm pretty sure you will find that Apple is the better OSS "netizen", overall. If you look down the list of Google's OSS projects, the vast majority are only there to support their ecosystem in some way. In other words, they are Open Source Projects to support what is ultimately a Closed Platform. Whereas Apple's OSS contributions (and there have been MANY) tend to have much more "generalized" application (particularly in the Linux community) than do the Projects that Google participates in / creates.
But I guess none of that matters to "Mr. Principles".
Give me a break!
Ya know, do you pine for the fjords because you can't root your Microwave oven?
Do you piss and moan because your Blu-Ray player only runs the software the manufacturer wants it to?
Are you upset because your TV won't let you run Eclipse?
Bet not. Why? Because they are APPLIANCES, not General-Purpose Computing Devices.
You will note that there is absolutely no move for OS X products (as opposed to iOS) to have a "closed" ecosystem (I don't want to hear nonsensical rants about the Mac App Store). In fact, Apple gives away the entire IDE and development toolchain (and a pretty damned nice one it is, too!), plus allows you to create apps to your heart's content for OS X for Free (as in beer AND freedom).
Face facts, man. Tablets really aren't little laptops. But since iOS grew up being in an environment (running in a phone) where, as Android has amply shown, the temptation to download "cute" apps (that are in reality, just big ol' Trojans) seems to be almost universal, Apple's "Walled Garden" (where the "walls" are about 35 light-years away in most cases) seems to have been a VERY wise choice.
Case in point: Both Google and Microsoft also have "Curated Collections"; so those companies also understand the value in having a "safe place" to download applications. But Apple was smart enough to realize that, unless there was basically no other way to purchase apps, then the whole idea of "Curated" was meaningless, because, by and large, people neither understand nor care about these issues. This is proven again by the rampant malware on the Android platform. (such that you have to run a damned firewall and AV software on your PHONE!).
And oh, by the way, you can run whatever you want on your iOS device. All you have to do is write/port it yourself.
Or are you too lazy or stupid to do that?
And don't tell me about how awful it is to spend $99 to become a registered iOS developer. If you are as busy as you claim, you have PLENTY of $100 bills. And used MacBooks can be had for around $300. Now you're in business for yourself, and if you have a sufficiently-good idea, maybe even make some coin writing a commercial iOS app.
Or you could just stand there on your principles; but guess who loses in that deal? HINT: It ain't Apple...
I test out betas of people's android software on my phone all the time.
That's true. Android is from Google, and Google's software is always beta.
In fact, the typical lifecycle of Google software is to go from Beta to Canceled...
Or you could go find a used trinitron that will run this same resolution and was made about ELEVEN YEARS AGO.
Name a model
Pshhh. Remember Apple's ImageWriter LQ? 216dpi baby...
I remember those! And the ImageWriter II's COLOR mode. Too bad the paper came out too beat-to-death to enjoy all that resolution and color!
Still have a couple of new color ribbons for my ImageWriter II sealed away somewhere...
What are you talking about? The summary is clear that the EULA is about the .ibook format. It says "Apple is claiming rights to the .ibook format itself and not the content therein." The output of iBooks Author is an .ibook file.
But it is not another AUTHORING TOOL that produces .ibook format. THAT's what they are trying to prevent. They are NOT claiming IP rights to the CONTENT, just the FILE FORMAT.
Learn to read.
However, Wintels have the added bonus that I don't have to look at my face all day long unlike the MacBook Pro, which would double very well as a mirror. Stupid shiny screen!
My work Samsung Laptop's screen makes a dandy mirror. Apple has no stranglehold on glossy screens. Your generalization is completely flawed.
It does not take great genius to detect an obvious shill.
Have you seen Apple's sales figures?
They hardly need shills.
It's amazing how many people on here seem to have completely passed over that it's ePub with no DRM.
Wow! I didn't know that epub allowed such rich content!
And good catch on the DRM! This is in keeping with Apple's stance of NOT using DRM unless there is simply no other way to get "the industry" to go along with allowing certain content (like with movies on the iTunes Store).
And it costs you $100-$150 to even sell a book. you have to buy a ISBN number. So every book title you sell is $100 cash out of your pocket.
Do ebooks sold in the Apple Store have to have ISBN numbers?
And I don't see any of the people who are whining about "lock-in" and "profiteering" bitching about things like the UPC and ISBN Cartels, who have taken the maintenance of a simple database and turned it into an industry-wide lock-in which, much like the proverbial "Mark of the Beast" none shall trade without paying the UPC/ISBN "toll".
Yet, Apple is vilified for taking the cost of a textbook down to a fraction of its usual cost, while simultaneously creating a format that has far more flexibility than epub, while simultaneously releasing a way-best-of-breed authoring tool for free (yes, it helps the overall bit, but they could have charged SOMETHING for it).
Why don't you spend your vitriol on changing the planet such that it doesn't cost $750 to get a UPC code (yes, I know about "code-sharing", but that won't get you into WalMart or Kroger and probably some other retailers), or even $100 for an ISBN code (Really! $100?!? For a fucking DATABASE RECORD???).
No, instead you'd rather rail on Apple for making textbooks not only MUCH better than any of us grew up with; but also $15, max, instead of "whatever-they-think-they-can-get" of the dead-tree mongers.
Hell no. It would require my students to have apple hardware and software. That places a needless financial and technological limit on my students. I do however see a market vulnerability here. Apple wants to replace the textbook cartel lock-in with their own lock-in. A reasonably priced service/app for authors that allows the flexibility they deny could do very well. Especially since (at the college level at least) students are happy to make waves and protest exploitation. An enterprising organization could seize the upper hand and compete on cost, flexibility, and ethics.
So how come no "enterprising organization" ever seems to get it right, every single time every single one of them tries to imitate Apple? And how come that's all every single time every single one of them ever tries to do?
There never IS an "upper hand"; all there ever seems to be are laughable knock-offs of what Apple has done better.
I'm seriously not trolling here; I'm just asking "Where are all these "enterprising organizations" that are going to step in an show the world a better way than what Apple has (obviously) already spent some serious time and money developing?
But don't the colleges already have you locked in? "Buy this and this and this for the courses you've signed up for this semester".
Now it's "Buy this and this and this, but you'll also need an ipad and those 'books' are tied to it and can't be used on any other platform." It's not like Apple has invented the ebook here, they're just trying to popularize the platform-specific ebook. Don't want an ipad? Too bad. They could have done it with an open format, or published their format, but of course that wouldn't allow them the lock-in they get with a closed format to which only their software can read and write...oh and for that software you need to buy their hardware.
What fantasy world do you live in?
The F/OSS "community" (whatever THAT is!) has had just as long to come up with this type of game-changing book authoring/putblishing/distribution system as Apple has. But they (obviously) haven't.
In reality, all the Apple-Haters seem to be really good at is bitching. And boy, are they good at that!
No, I'm not so foolish as to dive head first into brand lock-in. I like having my books exist independent of one company's platform. Platform dependent books, who would have thought such nonsense would ever actually happen?
This is a problem that needs to be solved, but doing it by being stuck forever on one company's platform because they're severely anti-competitive is just stupid.
Since it is the colleges that set which particular textbook you have to purchase for any given course, how are you any more "free" now?
Your professor could probably publish the damn thing himself with today's software tools, thereby kicking the textbook industry in the nuts.
Does anyone know the details of the Publishing part of the iBooks Store? Is it the same 70/30 split as on the App Store? If so, that's CONSIDERABLY better than most dead-tree textbook authors get, I would imagine.
Is there an approval process, or could I theoretically publish an (updated) ebook version of the Anarchist's Cookbook up there, or what?
Trust is baked into Android's permissions system. If you don't trust an app to use the permissions it requests wisely, don't install it.
And just HOW many normal, ordinary people (you know, the ones that outnumber us geeks 10,000:1) know that the LOLCats wallpaper they just downloaded shouldn't need access to their Contacts "So you can tell your friends about it!", hmmmm?
You are talking about unofficial chinese app stores? Is that your point of comparison?
How many trojans ever got anywhere that far in the official market?
Not sure; but it's thousands of percent more than the ones that got anywhere in the Apple App Store.
Wait.. there are American companies with dormitories???
Not anymore.
...or is that "Not yet"?
What do you think is the REAL reason why Immigration Laws in the U.S. have been decimated and/or largely ignored for the past 20 years or so?
First there was NAFTA; and some corporations closed their U.S. factories and moved them to Mexico. That was supposed to break the Unions (and save our TRUE overlords some money). Then, someone got the idea that it would be much cheaper to bring the cheap labor (Mexicans) here, rather than to rebuild factories down there. Again, an attempt to break the Unions. This is the phase we're still in. However, the Unions STILL aren't going-away; so now there's this "Right To Work" "movement", which AGAIN is aimed at de-fanging the Unions...
We'll see...
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I can't say for sure. Unions were a very necessary thing during the robber-baron years (early 20th century); but like all "good things", they eventually lost sight of their (laudable) goal of making sure that workers had decent working conditions (e,g,, we can thank them every "weekend" that we have off) and a "decent wage"; but they have long-since swung the pendulum the other way, where U.S. Labor is simply not cost-effective, and worse yet, has the (somewhat deserved) reputation for being lazy and sloppy.
Then explain Toyota and Honda: Toyota has 6 factories in the US [wikipedia.org] and Honda has 3. [wikipedia.org] How are they able to build millions of some of the top-selling vehicles in the US and still remain profitable all while using American labor?
They did that for two reasons:
1. There were significant trade restrictions that did NOT apply if they could claim the car was "American" (contained at least x% of US-Produced parts), and once that threshold was made, it was actually cheaper to have them assembled here, than to ship all those parts overseas, then ship the completed car BACK to the U.S.
2. Shipping costs in general.
And how many years of school does it take to learn "glue solder board to base"? Machines create the circuit boards, humans just put it together, guessing that requires at least an Associates, right?
Yeah, I can imagine Bubba the Auto-Worker assembling cellphones with his vienna-sausage fingers. How many returns and how many scrapped units do you think that approach would create? Not to mention the throughput of 2 cellphones per hour (in between Union-Demanded breaks, of course)
Living in a right-to-work state... well, let's say there's a reason those laws are colloquially known as "right to fire".
I'm not saying that the all-employment-is-at-will approach is wrong, necessarily, but it certainly has side effects that your blurb above skips over.
Indiana is already an "At Will" (which means at the EMPLOYER's will) State.
Having been laid-off simply because my new boss didn't like me (and was the neighbor and church-mate of the President of the company), I sincerely believe that we need some true EMPLOYEE Rights legislation (say, like what France has), instead of yet another Orwellian-Named "Right To Work" (which as you pointed out, simply means "Right To Fire") piece of anti-worker bullshit.
If all that index does is count web pages that mention a language then isn't it more likely to be a measure of how many problems people are having with a language? Languages which "just work" would get fewer hits than those which don't.
Citation?
If the sales on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Cell-Phones-Accessories-Service-Plans/zgbs/wireless/2407747011 are any indication the top three selling are all Android phones.
And perhaps the reason for that is because Amazon appears not to sell subsidized iPhones.
Just sayin'...
Better questions, since when is Microsoft disappointing Windows Phone users news?
If the reviews on Amazon are any indication, most people are pretty happy with their Windows Phones. The top 3 highest reviewed phones are all Windows Phones.
Hmmm. Think those may be astroturfing?
Well, this idea is hardly new. Check out this Patent. Application made in 1999, approved in 2001.
the UV tolerant bugs evolving on this thing.
UV has been used to sterilize a wide variety of things since that ability was discovered in 1906 (IIRC).
Some bugs are more tolerant than others; but it doesn't seem to have caused a sufficient evolutionary pressure to cause "UV-resistant" germs, molds or viruses.