Re:The value of good user interface design...
on
100 Million iPods
·
· Score: 1
Highly paid and well motivated creative engineers will always trounce cheap, carelessly designed and manufactured, knock-offs. You might want to qualify that statement. The sad fact is that the "good guys" are beat by cheap knock-offs far to often (Microsoft, I'm looking at you).
Show me a subway system that makes money. They all require government subsidies.
You're quibbling over my choice of words. Maybe it doesn't make a profit. But the money to make it work comes from somewhere.
So the government subsidizes the subway. And how exactly does that mesh with the GP's theory that things would be better off without artificial government intervention? It doesn't get much more intervening than subsidizing an industry in order to keep it running.
My point is that government intervention, artificial constraints, are neccessary in order for a lot of good things to be economically viable. I believe protections of intellectual property fall into that category.
Exactly. Of course there are tons of factors influencing declining sales. But the majority of responders here seem to think that the effect of piracy is negligible, and I just don't see how you can make that argument with a straight face. Of course the widespread use of unauthorized P2P distribution is going to have *some* effect on sales -- especially in this case, where the market is made up of college students.
The original "watermarking" post didn't suggest that people would get sued for making copies of a file. It suggested that people would get sued for making their files available on a publicly-accessible network. Unless the copyright-holder has given permission to do so, that's pretty much always illegal.
Exactly. DRM is bad because it attempts to control illegal activity by heavily restricting legal use. If you're publicly distributing somebody else's copyrighted music without permission, you're breaking the law; if the technology exists to much more accurately distinguish legal from illegal use and restrict accordingly, they should use it in favor of DRM.
That's the way it's presented for the moment -- higher quality albums for the same price. But album prices are determined by the labels, and are limited by the cost of individual tracks. If they eventually ditch $.99 tracks, the maximum reasonable album price will go up, and we'll start to see albums going for a standard rate of $12.99. I'm all for DRM-free and higher-bit-rate music, but this also feels like a sneaky way to raise prices.
More labels to follow, apparently. From Steve Jobs:
We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year. I wouldn't think he would say this if it were nothing but wishful thinking...
The good: you can upgrade your DRM'd music to a non-DRM'd form for $.30 per track. Not perfect, but it does set a reasonable precedent for the future: if FairPlay dies eventually, Apple might actually provide an upgrade path without asking consumers to re-purchase their entire music collection at full price.
The bad: lower-quality tracks are still sold with DRM. What possible reason (nefarious or otherwise) could there be for this? If the motivation behind the DRM is to defeat illegal sharing, isn't its purpose nullified by making DRM-free tracks available? The argument that inconsistency causes confusion doesn't really fly anyomore, because the offerings already *are* inconsistent. Maybe they've determined that consumers who are willing to pay the "premium" price are less likely to participate in illegal sharing? (This feels kind of like they started to sell CDs pre-scratched -- the way pants are sold pre-worn -- and then decided to sell non-scratched CDs for $25.)
I mean is there a single person on this planet that likes Finder?
You can count me. The Finder is not perfect, and its warts are annoying. But I'll gladly take it over Windows Explorer. Single-click browsing of folders in Column View and, to a lesser extent, expanding multiple folders in List View, are essential features to me.
"The record industry used to sell you a take-it-or-leave-it bundle of songs at a price of their choosing."
How many people in 100 will pay $15 for some popular song (plus a handful of other junk tracks)? How many will pay $1? You're asserting that the second number is less than 15 times the first. I'm not so sure -- it's possible, but I don't have any reason to believe it.
This is "informative"? As a former BYU student, let me correct your misinformation.
The LDS church owns an NBC-affiliate TV channel which has chosen not to carry some of NBC's offerings. Even if the leadership of the church has specifically requested that SNL not be carried, how is this a problem? They're a private company. If you don't like what they do with NBC programming, take it up with NBC.
You're wrong about MTV being "banned" in Provo, and I don't even know what you're talking about. There is no University or city-mandated censorship of the channel, and I personally never noticed it not being available at all (if a cable provider *didn't* want to provide channel, they certainly ought to be free not to do so). I also don't understand why you are bothered by blocking of Web sites within the school's network -- it seems to me to be a pretty common practice within "work" environments like businesses and schools.
BYU is a private university. Students, when enrolling, agree to an honor code that restricts their behavior on and off campus. You seem to take offense at the fact the someone would make such a voluntary sacrifice.
There's a fundamental difference between a person voluntarily agreeing to behavior restrictions and a government mandating these restrictions. BYU is "like China" in the same way that making donations to the Red Cross is "like communism."
In other news, Slashdot continues to post "stories" about the U.S. government "violating" its citizens first-amendment rights by "forcing" them to support the government's take on current events; users point out the obvious similarities to "totalitarian" regimes.
So lets just say for the sake of argument that you're right. Slashdot has been infiltrated by government "goons" who spread lying propaganda via comment posts.
What difference does that make? A goon might say "I think President Bush is doing a great job," or "I've been to Iraq recently, and the news is grossly exaggerated." So what? Comments on Slashdot are (ideally) modded up based on the strength of their ideas. If a goon expresses a good idea, that idea is worth reading. Why does it matter where it came from? And if his idea is no good, it will be ignored.
The current government is not without its supporters -- even at his worst, over 30% of the country gives Bush a positive approval rating. I'll bet that a paid government propaganda-maker is more likely to sincerely believe what he's writing than a free Slashdot poster, who might find trolling to be good sport.
Then again, maybe I am a goon. In that case, just ignore this.
All of your examples involve additional cost factors.... None of these issues have a thing to do with honesty.
For many people, there is a "cost" associated with dishonesty. That moral cost makes dealing honestly the "cheaper" option. ("For what shall it profit a man, if he shall again the whole world, and lose his own soul?") In general, I think many consumer-based businesses would fail without the assumption of goodwill in customers. How many movie theaters, for example, have sufficient security in place to guarantee profit in the presense of consumers who only consider financial cost and risk of punishment in determining whether they buy a movie ticket?
Personally, I'm a very broke student, I really can't afford to buy music. Either I get it free, or I do without.
Then do without! I'm tired of hearing rationalizations like this. If you don't have money to buy music, then you should accept the fact that you just aren't going to own all your favorite music right now. You will survive. If you have a deeply-rooted need for music, perhaps you should listen to the radio, or have someone bang some pots together for you.
It would be nice if the creators of music chose to share their music with you for free. Maybe you should write them a letter and explain your sad state of affairs. But in the meantime, if you respect them enough to want to listen to their music, you should respect them enough to let them distribute their music as they wish.
The author's main point, I gather, isn't that the product offerings were underwhelming. His point is that Steve usually has an uncanny ability to spin Apple's products, whatever they are, into something more. (And he's not complaining. It's *fun* to pretend for a few moments that Spotlight really will Change My Life.) With Phil Schiller, et al, doing much of the presenting, the usual "spell" was broken.
I agree. Phil is not Steve. When Steve talks, you think you're partaking of something visionary. When Phil talks, you realize that you're being fed a line the marketing people put on the teleprompter. The problem Apple faces is that Steve won't be around forever.
Slashdot Mirror
You're quibbling over my choice of words. Maybe it doesn't make a profit. But the money to make it work comes from somewhere.
So the government subsidizes the subway. And how exactly does that mesh with the GP's theory that things would be better off without artificial government intervention? It doesn't get much more intervening than subsidizing an industry in order to keep it running.
My point is that government intervention, artificial constraints, are neccessary in order for a lot of good things to be economically viable. I believe protections of intellectual property fall into that category.
So how does the subway system make money without having controls over who gets on the subway? Your water analogy is interesting, but not universal.
Exactly. Of course there are tons of factors influencing declining sales. But the majority of responders here seem to think that the effect of piracy is negligible, and I just don't see how you can make that argument with a straight face. Of course the widespread use of unauthorized P2P distribution is going to have *some* effect on sales -- especially in this case, where the market is made up of college students.
The original "watermarking" post didn't suggest that people would get sued for making copies of a file. It suggested that people would get sued for making their files available on a publicly-accessible network. Unless the copyright-holder has given permission to do so, that's pretty much always illegal.
Exactly. DRM is bad because it attempts to control illegal activity by heavily restricting legal use. If you're publicly distributing somebody else's copyrighted music without permission, you're breaking the law; if the technology exists to much more accurately distinguish legal from illegal use and restrict accordingly, they should use it in favor of DRM.
That's the way it's presented for the moment -- higher quality albums for the same price. But album prices are determined by the labels, and are limited by the cost of individual tracks. If they eventually ditch $.99 tracks, the maximum reasonable album price will go up, and we'll start to see albums going for a standard rate of $12.99. I'm all for DRM-free and higher-bit-rate music, but this also feels like a sneaky way to raise prices.
The good: you can upgrade your DRM'd music to a non-DRM'd form for $.30 per track. Not perfect, but it does set a reasonable precedent for the future: if FairPlay dies eventually, Apple might actually provide an upgrade path without asking consumers to re-purchase their entire music collection at full price.
The bad: lower-quality tracks are still sold with DRM. What possible reason (nefarious or otherwise) could there be for this? If the motivation behind the DRM is to defeat illegal sharing, isn't its purpose nullified by making DRM-free tracks available? The argument that inconsistency causes confusion doesn't really fly anyomore, because the offerings already *are* inconsistent. Maybe they've determined that consumers who are willing to pay the "premium" price are less likely to participate in illegal sharing? (This feels kind of like they started to sell CDs pre-scratched -- the way pants are sold pre-worn -- and then decided to sell non-scratched CDs for $25.)
You can count me. The Finder is not perfect, and its warts are annoying. But I'll gladly take it over Windows Explorer. Single-click browsing of folders in Column View and, to a lesser extent, expanding multiple folders in List View, are essential features to me.
"The record industry used to sell you a take-it-or-leave-it bundle of songs at a price of their choosing."
How many people in 100 will pay $15 for some popular song (plus a handful of other junk tracks)? How many will pay $1? You're asserting that the second number is less than 15 times the first. I'm not so sure -- it's possible, but I don't have any reason to believe it.
This is "informative"? As a former BYU student, let me correct your misinformation.
The LDS church owns an NBC-affiliate TV channel which has chosen not to carry some of NBC's offerings. Even if the leadership of the church has specifically requested that SNL not be carried, how is this a problem? They're a private company. If you don't like what they do with NBC programming, take it up with NBC.
You're wrong about MTV being "banned" in Provo, and I don't even know what you're talking about. There is no University or city-mandated censorship of the channel, and I personally never noticed it not being available at all (if a cable provider *didn't* want to provide channel, they certainly ought to be free not to do so). I also don't understand why you are bothered by blocking of Web sites within the school's network -- it seems to me to be a pretty common practice within "work" environments like businesses and schools.
BYU is a private university. Students, when enrolling, agree to an honor code that restricts their behavior on and off campus. You seem to take offense at the fact the someone would make such a voluntary sacrifice.
There's a fundamental difference between a person voluntarily agreeing to behavior restrictions and a government mandating these restrictions. BYU is "like China" in the same way that making donations to the Red Cross is "like communism."
In other news, Slashdot continues to post "stories" about the U.S. government "violating" its citizens first-amendment rights by "forcing" them to support the government's take on current events; users point out the obvious similarities to "totalitarian" regimes.
Gotta love the quotation marks.
So lets just say for the sake of argument that you're right. Slashdot has been infiltrated by government "goons" who spread lying propaganda via comment posts.
What difference does that make? A goon might say "I think President Bush is doing a great job," or "I've been to Iraq recently, and the news is grossly exaggerated." So what? Comments on Slashdot are (ideally) modded up based on the strength of their ideas. If a goon expresses a good idea, that idea is worth reading. Why does it matter where it came from? And if his idea is no good, it will be ignored.
The current government is not without its supporters -- even at his worst, over 30% of the country gives Bush a positive approval rating. I'll bet that a paid government propaganda-maker is more likely to sincerely believe what he's writing than a free Slashdot poster, who might find trolling to be good sport.
Then again, maybe I am a goon. In that case, just ignore this.
Then do without! I'm tired of hearing rationalizations like this. If you don't have money to buy music, then you should accept the fact that you just aren't going to own all your favorite music right now. You will survive. If you have a deeply-rooted need for music, perhaps you should listen to the radio, or have someone bang some pots together for you.
It would be nice if the creators of music chose to share their music with you for free. Maybe you should write them a letter and explain your sad state of affairs. But in the meantime, if you respect them enough to want to listen to their music, you should respect them enough to let them distribute their music as they wish.
The author's main point, I gather, isn't that the product offerings were underwhelming. His point is that Steve usually has an uncanny ability to spin Apple's products, whatever they are, into something more. (And he's not complaining. It's *fun* to pretend for a few moments that Spotlight really will Change My Life.) With Phil Schiller, et al, doing much of the presenting, the usual "spell" was broken.
I agree. Phil is not Steve. When Steve talks, you think you're partaking of something visionary. When Phil talks, you realize that you're being fed a line the marketing people put on the teleprompter. The problem Apple faces is that Steve won't be around forever.