Because they made it easy - even trivial - to not go the DRM route
Everybody made it "easy [...] to not go the DRM route" long before Apple: I captured plenty of CDs on Windows and Linux.
What Apple contributed was an easy-to-use DRM--as long as you stay within their product range. Apple is primarily responsible for DRM having become widespread by doing what they always do: creating a fairly simple, easy to use version. But in this case, they have used their design skills for evil, and the result still has all the problems that DRM has.
Face it: Apple is responsible for what Microsoft never achieved: widespread acceptance and utilization of DRM. Now that Apple has made it possible, Microsoft is following them.
Vista, Microsoft's new OS, will degrade audio that is "unsigned", meaning, it didn't come from someone who has made some sort of agreement with Microsoft.
That's complete fabrication. In fact, Vista will only "degrade" audio quality when you're playing back some kinds of DRM'ed output to a high-fidelity digital output; yes, non-DRM'ed content may get caught up in that if it happens to be playing at the same time, so what? In any case, I expect this will not get triggered anyway, since you can also degrade only the protected audio before it reaches the device, in which case unprotected content isn't affected; this is only a stopgap measure to prevent poorly written apps from exposing protected content. DRM is evil, but Microsoft's implementation of it is no more evil than Apple's.
The reason this hasn't become an issue on the Mac yet has nothing to do with any kind of benevolence of Apple towards their users; rather, S/PDIF simply isn't a mass market item on Macs, and there is no content that requires this sort of policy on the Mac anyway. And I wouldn't be surprised if Apple just quietly does this already anyway--you probably wouldn't even notice if they did.
Actually, wifi was missing from the e62 offered by Cingular. That was the single greatest feature of the e61, and the reason I wouldn't buy an e62.
I think the E61/E62 decision in the US was Nokia's not Cingular's. In any case, the E61 works on Cingular's network, and they do offer several Windows Mobile WiFi phones.
You can use lots of programmable third party phones with Cingular: the Treos, the Nokia E61/E62, etc. The E61 even runs VoIP, and you program it in C/C++.
The source of the restriction must be Apple, not Cingular.
The wireless carriers are all scared shitless of a device like this - it could actually run a VoIP wifi app, several of which already exist for OS X, and thus leave them on the bad side of convergence. Also ringtones - again a carrier revenue stream.
If you run VoIP, you end up paying for the data traffic. And carrier ringtones are about convenience; most phone let you get ringtones in other ways anyway.
In any case, for me this is a deal-breaker. I was in love with this device yesterday. With no third party apps, I'm entirely uninterested until somebody hacks it.
Same here. However, we haven't heard the real reason yet, and it's not Cingular. Cingular has smart phones that you can install software on, so the problem must be Apple.
Shortly before the iPhone's release, Dean Hall, a seven year software engineer for Motorola, explained in an email the limited usability of an unlocked phone:
"When a phone is unlocked it loses its privileges on a provider's data network. An unlocked phone can make GSM calls and send basic SMS. No MMS, no Internet, no iTS. Apple would either have to reverse engineer a method to gain access to the data network (unlikely as most data networks require SSL-level security to access) or it would have to offer something different."
Now Jobs says:
But it's not like the walled garden has gone away. "You don't want your phone to be an open platform," meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. "You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."
Are we grasping at straws or what? Phones have been programmable for several years, with no viruses and no ill effect on networks.
A programmable phone is a must for me, since I need ssh, a password vault, and a notes application. Without that, it's no deal, no matter how nice the rest of the phone may be.
Oh, guys, and stop lying through your teeth. Whatever bizarre reasons you may have for not letting third party apps on the phone, these aren't valid.
How in the hell am I supposed to use it one handed? [...] Anything that requires interactive input requires one hand to hold the phone and the other to touch the screen or use the stylus.
No, it doesn't. You need a flip-down case, then you can hold the Treo by the flip-down cover and thumb-type. It may seem goofy, but it works like a charm. It's by far the best single-handed input device I have ever used.
Feature-wise, the iPhone is nothing new and fairly limited: an E-mail reader, a Google map viewer, a music player, a photo viewer, chat, calendaring, sync, and a few other small apps. Every major phone manufacturer has plenty of phones that do that. Furthermore, Apple's claims to being innovative are vastly overblown: there are plenty of phones with touch screen inputs, on screen keyboards, and all that.
But, Apple seem to have done a much better job on the details. Many of the other smart phones are infuriating and painful to use: complicated menus, bad fonts, confusing setup, annoying dialog boxes. That's the real reason to get an iPhone, provided it works as advertised.
In different words, iPhone doesn't look like a great phone to me, but it looks like it sucks less.
Another question would be *when* apple entered into talks with cisco to use the name. was this before or after cisco had already released thier own mobile phone with the iPhone name? hrrm.
Long, long after. The Cisco iPhone product has been shipping since 1996.
I think Linksys introduced their iPhone to counteract an expected argument that the trademark was not in use.
Good God, in your book, Apple just can't do any wrong, can they?
In fact, it's Apple that has a long history of stomping all over other people's trademarks, starting with "Apple", and more recently "Rendezvous" and "Dashboard".
I mean, this case sounds like an example of the stubbornness of Steve, but what if it's an elaborate publicity stunt? Smart one, too.
Of course, it is. I'm not sure it's smart, though. Apple lives on the perception that they are an innovative underdog, not a copycat corporate behemoth, but if they keep stomping on other people's trademarks and wrongly keep claiming innovation ("200+ patents", "multi-touch"), sooner or later, they'll start being perceived as the latter.
Microsoft has managed to get 90%+ of the desktop market share through monopolistic practices and bullying every hardware vendor around. Now they're complaining that the hardware vendors have some autonomy. Geez, cry me a river.
Microsoft can stop craplets the same way Apple can: they can make and ship exclusively on their own hardware. That would greatly improve the quality of Microsoft products, and it would free up Dell and other companies to come up with their own OS solutions. I think that would be altogether better for everybody.
But, of course, Microsoft would stop making money hand over fist, so they won't do that. They prefer the current monopolistic environment, it's just not monopolistic enough for them.
But as Novell faces doom thanks to their "partner" when GPL3 comes
The only effect the GPL3 has on Novell is that it makes Microsoft's agreement not to sue meaningless for GPL3 software. Except for the hysterics from people like you, Novell is legally no worse off than they were before the agreement (well, actually, they are $200M+ richer).
Apple knew http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/corp_010907b.h tml they just chose to violate the trademark. Furthermore, Cisco is actually shipping products under that trademark. So, this is a deliberate move by Apple.
If they didn't get sued, they got the trademark.
If they did, they'd get free publicity and coverage.
Well, that's an interesting comment. You think Mac OS X should change your location setting based on what AirPort network it finds?
It should pick the right one. Heck, why would a user ever want the wrong location? It's easy to pick the right one and it works well because a bunch of third party utilities do just that.
But you just wait, two years from now, Apple will patent picking the right location automatically, then they will put it into 10.7, and then people like you will tout it as a great innovation.
It does for me.
I have four Macs, and my parents have two, and it doesn't work consistently on any of them, with Apple base stations or third party base stations.
I've never seen that. There are some third-party applications which don't wait for the connection to be established and give errors, but I've never seen an app from Apple (or, actually, any recent app) do that.
iChat fails, among other things, and in a bad way (it needs to be restarted to connect properly). This is on an iMac that's less than two months old.
but the simple fact is that AirPort does most of the work for you.
The simple fact is that Windows works roughly like Apple's AirPort (they probably copied Apple), and both fail in roughly the same way.
You don't have to think about WPA-PSK, SSID, TKIP and all those acronyms. You select the network, Mac OS X does the rest.
Well, maybe that explains why everything works for you: you only have figured out how to connect to open networks:-)
Sorry, but in my experience, the OS X developers don't walk on water: there are numerous interface blunders in OS X as well.
I find the "Patented!" claims on the slides to be quite a turn-off, not because I dislike patents in general, but because Apple didn't invent key technologies like multi-touch and accelerometer-based interfaces. I understand companies need patents, but I consider it bad form to brag about it. And I find it's in even more poor taste to take credit for other people's fundamental technologies.sed to come from; Apple has had 225 applications since 2001, and those aren't all iPhone related.
Many of Apple's patents also seem they are trying to patent already widely known techniques and should fail based on prior art. For example, 20060250377 attempts to patent the use of user interface elements on a touch screen in order to control a media player. Well, Palm and PPC media players have done that for years. 20060265503 attempts to patent portable subscription files (ie OPML) and expiration of subscriptions when the user doesn't listen anymore (a big annoyance in iTunes, but one that has been around for so long that Apple's own software is prior art). Apparently, Apple is up to its old, evil intellectual property tricks again.
(I'm also not sure where Apple is getting the "200+ patents" figure from, given that they have only 225 pending patent applications since 2001, and most of those are not at all related to the iPhone.)
By now, there are half a dozen products that stream video from the PC, from the Web, etc. to your TV. I don't see why people get so excited about either the Sling or iTV--they are nothing new.
Usually, it just works: You select your network, if it's not secured Mac OS X will ask you whether you trust it, and then it's in your list of preferred networks and will be selected automatically.
But it doesn't automatically select the right location to go with the network. Preferred networks should be by location, and the correct location should be picked for each network.
And, furthermore, it doesn't always connect automatically even if the network is visible and even if it is on the preferred list.
Another problem is that OS X starts up network-dependent services without waiting for wireless to connect. The result? When I boot up my iMac, I get half a dozen dialog boxes telling me about how I can't do something because I don't have a network, even though the wireless network is (of course) always present.
I know how to make it harder to use, though. Just look at Windows.
I find OS X, Linux, and Windows suck equally badly when it comes to wireless networks using the default tools. There are some add-ons that fix most of the problems on each platform, however, which shows that things can be done better.
You're right. But it wasn't the airline asking for ID. (They *don't* ask for ID.) It's the government's TSA goons who do.
Yes, but... they are basically a publicly paid security force in support of a private business (a government handout), they are not acting as police, and it's on private property as part of a private transaction. Yes, you might still construct an argument that they shouldn't be able to ask for idea, but it seems like a stretch, and the court apparently came to that conclusion, too.
They should be able to refuse passage to spics, kikes, and niggers too, seeing as how they're not a public accommodation and can thus enforce any requirement they want. Oh, wait.
Those are categories that are specifically protected by law. There is no law that specifically gives you a right to fly without identification. And since it's a voluntary activity, "unreasonable search and seizures" doesn't seem to apply (arguable, but that's what the court seems to think).
When people talk about the unity of the Abrahamic religions, they are clearly talking about the same entities, not the same categories of entities: they aren't saying that there are two separate gods that happen to have the same name and properties, or two separate figures that both happen to have been called Jesus and both happened to die on the cross, they are saying that there is one entity of each, shared between the two religions.
Re:The Arab community wants cultural balance in ga
on
On Being a Gamer in Iraq
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So as long as this current trend continues, expect to see future games depicting Arabs overthrowing our government, a game depicting WW2 where the Nazis win and the Holocaust never occured, and so on and so forth.
These possibilities have been explored in both fiction and movies; why shouldn't they be explored in games as well? Besides, it's not like current US fiction or games are historically accurate.
The GP post asserted that they were the same, not that they were identical.
And I suppose Clinton didn't really have sex, right?
One little interesting factlet is that Jesus is considered a very important prophet in Islam. Insulting Jesus can get you into big trouble in the Muslim world.
It's a well-known fact, but Christians seem to have a slightly different view, since insulting Mohammed doesn't get you into trouble in the Christian world. For Islam to incorporate aspects of Christianity and Judaism was a political decision for a religious latecomer, and it's not being reciprocated.
All this "it's all the same god" is a smokescreen for political agendas and it is certainly not the way towards religious unity or tolerance. And even if the Abrahamic religions could agree that their god is the "same", that would just mean that they are ganging up on the other religions of the world, whose spiritual entities decidedly are not the same as the psychopathic, tribal, and divisive entity described in the Old and New Testaments.
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Because they made it easy - even trivial - to not go the DRM route
Everybody made it "easy [...] to not go the DRM route" long before Apple: I captured plenty of CDs on Windows and Linux.
What Apple contributed was an easy-to-use DRM--as long as you stay within their product range. Apple is primarily responsible for DRM having become widespread by doing what they always do: creating a fairly simple, easy to use version. But in this case, they have used their design skills for evil, and the result still has all the problems that DRM has.
Face it: Apple is responsible for what Microsoft never achieved: widespread acceptance and utilization of DRM. Now that Apple has made it possible, Microsoft is following them.
Vista, Microsoft's new OS, will degrade audio that is "unsigned", meaning, it didn't come from someone who has made some sort of agreement with Microsoft.
That's complete fabrication. In fact, Vista will only "degrade" audio quality when you're playing back some kinds of DRM'ed output to a high-fidelity digital output; yes, non-DRM'ed content may get caught up in that if it happens to be playing at the same time, so what? In any case, I expect this will not get triggered anyway, since you can also degrade only the protected audio before it reaches the device, in which case unprotected content isn't affected; this is only a stopgap measure to prevent poorly written apps from exposing protected content. DRM is evil, but Microsoft's implementation of it is no more evil than Apple's.
The reason this hasn't become an issue on the Mac yet has nothing to do with any kind of benevolence of Apple towards their users; rather, S/PDIF simply isn't a mass market item on Macs, and there is no content that requires this sort of policy on the Mac anyway. And I wouldn't be surprised if Apple just quietly does this already anyway--you probably wouldn't even notice if they did.
Actually, wifi was missing from the e62 offered by Cingular. That was the single greatest feature of the e61, and the reason I wouldn't buy an e62.
I think the E61/E62 decision in the US was Nokia's not Cingular's. In any case, the E61 works on Cingular's network, and they do offer several Windows Mobile WiFi phones.
You can use lots of programmable third party phones with Cingular: the Treos, the Nokia E61/E62, etc. The E61 even runs VoIP, and you program it in C/C++.
The source of the restriction must be Apple, not Cingular.
The wireless carriers are all scared shitless of a device like this - it could actually run a VoIP wifi app, several of which already exist for OS X, and thus leave them on the bad side of convergence. Also ringtones - again a carrier revenue stream.
If you run VoIP, you end up paying for the data traffic. And carrier ringtones are about convenience; most phone let you get ringtones in other ways anyway.
In any case, for me this is a deal-breaker. I was in love with this device yesterday. With no third party apps, I'm entirely uninterested until somebody hacks it.
Same here. However, we haven't heard the real reason yet, and it's not Cingular. Cingular has smart phones that you can install software on, so the problem must be Apple.
Now Jobs says:
But it's not like the walled garden has gone away. "You don't want your phone to be an open platform," meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. "You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."
Are we grasping at straws or what? Phones have been programmable for several years, with no viruses and no ill effect on networks.
A programmable phone is a must for me, since I need ssh, a password vault, and a notes application. Without that, it's no deal, no matter how nice the rest of the phone may be.
Oh, guys, and stop lying through your teeth. Whatever bizarre reasons you may have for not letting third party apps on the phone, these aren't valid.
this is what Apple's multitouch is based on since they bought the company in 2005
Yes... so much for Apple's false claims of having invented multi-touch.
How in the hell am I supposed to use it one handed? [...] Anything that requires interactive input requires one hand to hold the phone and the other to touch the screen or use the stylus.
No, it doesn't. You need a flip-down case, then you can hold the Treo by the flip-down cover and thumb-type. It may seem goofy, but it works like a charm. It's by far the best single-handed input device I have ever used.
Feature-wise, the iPhone is nothing new and fairly limited: an E-mail reader, a Google map viewer, a music player, a photo viewer, chat, calendaring, sync, and a few other small apps. Every major phone manufacturer has plenty of phones that do that. Furthermore, Apple's claims to being innovative are vastly overblown: there are plenty of phones with touch screen inputs, on screen keyboards, and all that.
But, Apple seem to have done a much better job on the details. Many of the other smart phones are infuriating and painful to use: complicated menus, bad fonts, confusing setup, annoying dialog boxes. That's the real reason to get an iPhone, provided it works as advertised.
In different words, iPhone doesn't look like a great phone to me, but it looks like it sucks less.
Infogear may have applied for it in 1996, but did they ever really use it?
Yes. Since 1996, in fact.
Just doesn't feel right for some reason.
Indeed, it doesn't: Apple keeps doing this sort of thing over and over again, and they just don't give a damn.
Another question would be *when* apple entered into talks with cisco to use the name. was this before or after cisco had already released thier own mobile phone with the iPhone name? hrrm.
Long, long after. The Cisco iPhone product has been shipping since 1996.
I think Linksys introduced their iPhone to counteract an expected argument that the trademark was not in use.
Good God, in your book, Apple just can't do any wrong, can they?
In fact, it's Apple that has a long history of stomping all over other people's trademarks, starting with "Apple", and more recently "Rendezvous" and "Dashboard".
I mean, this case sounds like an example of the stubbornness of Steve, but what if it's an elaborate publicity stunt? Smart one, too.
Of course, it is. I'm not sure it's smart, though. Apple lives on the perception that they are an innovative underdog, not a copycat corporate behemoth, but if they keep stomping on other people's trademarks and wrongly keep claiming innovation ("200+ patents", "multi-touch"), sooner or later, they'll start being perceived as the latter.
Microsoft has managed to get 90%+ of the desktop market share through monopolistic practices and bullying every hardware vendor around. Now they're complaining that the hardware vendors have some autonomy. Geez, cry me a river.
Microsoft can stop craplets the same way Apple can: they can make and ship exclusively on their own hardware. That would greatly improve the quality of Microsoft products, and it would free up Dell and other companies to come up with their own OS solutions. I think that would be altogether better for everybody.
But, of course, Microsoft would stop making money hand over fist, so they won't do that. They prefer the current monopolistic environment, it's just not monopolistic enough for them.
With Microsoft CRM, your customer relations can be as good as Microsoft's.
(Note: the monopoly CRM module, including customer abuse and forced upgrades, costs extra.)
But as Novell faces doom thanks to their "partner" when GPL3 comes
The only effect the GPL3 has on Novell is that it makes Microsoft's agreement not to sue meaningless for GPL3 software. Except for the hysterics from people like you, Novell is legally no worse off than they were before the agreement (well, actually, they are $200M+ richer).
Apple knew http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/corp_010907b.h tml they just chose to violate the trademark. Furthermore, Cisco is actually shipping products under that trademark. So, this is a deliberate move by Apple.
If they didn't get sued, they got the trademark.
If they did, they'd get free publicity and coverage.
Well, that's an interesting comment. You think Mac OS X should change your location setting based on what AirPort network it finds?
:-)
It should pick the right one. Heck, why would a user ever want the wrong location? It's easy to pick the right one and it works well because a bunch of third party utilities do just that.
But you just wait, two years from now, Apple will patent picking the right location automatically, then they will put it into 10.7, and then people like you will tout it as a great innovation.
It does for me.
I have four Macs, and my parents have two, and it doesn't work consistently on any of them, with Apple base stations or third party base stations.
I've never seen that. There are some third-party applications which don't wait for the connection to be established and give errors, but I've never seen an app from Apple (or, actually, any recent app) do that.
iChat fails, among other things, and in a bad way (it needs to be restarted to connect properly). This is on an iMac that's less than two months old.
but the simple fact is that AirPort does most of the work for you.
The simple fact is that Windows works roughly like Apple's AirPort (they probably copied Apple), and both fail in roughly the same way.
You don't have to think about WPA-PSK, SSID, TKIP and all those acronyms. You select the network, Mac OS X does the rest.
Well, maybe that explains why everything works for you: you only have figured out how to connect to open networks
Sorry, but in my experience, the OS X developers don't walk on water: there are numerous interface blunders in OS X as well.
there is an obvious demand for such a thing, but i guess they are either clunky, or nobody knows they exist
The shelves are full of it at Fry's.
the Sling is not due to show up till mid 2007
Sling has been around for more than a year; they are on their third generation now and do HDTV.
all that being said, i'm a Mac person
Well, iTV looks like a good product, and it's pretty much the only option for Mac users. But that doesn't make it innovative.
I find the "Patented!" claims on the slides to be quite a turn-off, not because I dislike patents in general, but because Apple didn't invent key technologies like multi-touch and accelerometer-based interfaces. I understand companies need patents, but I consider it bad form to brag about it. And I find it's in even more poor taste to take credit for other people's fundamental technologies.sed to come from; Apple has had 225 applications since 2001, and those aren't all iPhone related.
Many of Apple's patents also seem they are trying to patent already widely known techniques and should fail based on prior art. For example, 20060250377 attempts to patent the use of user interface elements on a touch screen in order to control a media player. Well, Palm and PPC media players have done that for years. 20060265503 attempts to patent portable subscription files (ie OPML) and expiration of subscriptions when the user doesn't listen anymore (a big annoyance in iTunes, but one that has been around for so long that Apple's own software is prior art). Apparently, Apple is up to its old, evil intellectual property tricks again.
(I'm also not sure where Apple is getting the "200+ patents" figure from, given that they have only 225 pending patent applications since 2001, and most of those are not at all related to the iPhone.)
By now, there are half a dozen products that stream video from the PC, from the Web, etc. to your TV. I don't see why people get so excited about either the Sling or iTV--they are nothing new.
Usually, it just works: You select your network, if it's not secured Mac OS X will ask you whether you trust it, and then it's in your list of preferred networks and will be selected automatically.
But it doesn't automatically select the right location to go with the network. Preferred networks should be by location, and the correct location should be picked for each network.
And, furthermore, it doesn't always connect automatically even if the network is visible and even if it is on the preferred list.
Another problem is that OS X starts up network-dependent services without waiting for wireless to connect. The result? When I boot up my iMac, I get half a dozen dialog boxes telling me about how I can't do something because I don't have a network, even though the wireless network is (of course) always present.
I know how to make it harder to use, though. Just look at Windows.
I find OS X, Linux, and Windows suck equally badly when it comes to wireless networks using the default tools. There are some add-ons that fix most of the problems on each platform, however, which shows that things can be done better.
You're right. But it wasn't the airline asking for ID. (They *don't* ask for ID.) It's the government's TSA goons who do.
Yes, but... they are basically a publicly paid security force in support of a private business (a government handout), they are not acting as police, and it's on private property as part of a private transaction. Yes, you might still construct an argument that they shouldn't be able to ask for idea, but it seems like a stretch, and the court apparently came to that conclusion, too.
They should be able to refuse passage to spics, kikes, and niggers too, seeing as how they're not a public accommodation and can thus enforce any requirement they want. Oh, wait.
Those are categories that are specifically protected by law. There is no law that specifically gives you a right to fly without identification. And since it's a voluntary activity, "unreasonable search and seizures" doesn't seem to apply (arguable, but that's what the court seems to think).
But.. 'same' is not identical to 'identical'. Or is it?
"Same" can mean either same entity or (in some restricted contexts, not here) same category.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=same
When people talk about the unity of the Abrahamic religions, they are clearly talking about the same entities, not the same categories of entities: they aren't saying that there are two separate gods that happen to have the same name and properties, or two separate figures that both happen to have been called Jesus and both happened to die on the cross, they are saying that there is one entity of each, shared between the two religions.
So as long as this current trend continues, expect to see future games depicting Arabs overthrowing our government, a game depicting WW2 where the Nazis win and the Holocaust never occured, and so on and so forth.
These possibilities have been explored in both fiction and movies; why shouldn't they be explored in games as well? Besides, it's not like current US fiction or games are historically accurate.
The GP post asserted that they were the same, not that they were identical.
And I suppose Clinton didn't really have sex, right?
One little interesting factlet is that Jesus is considered a very important prophet in Islam. Insulting Jesus can get you into big trouble in the Muslim world.
It's a well-known fact, but Christians seem to have a slightly different view, since insulting Mohammed doesn't get you into trouble in the Christian world. For Islam to incorporate aspects of Christianity and Judaism was a political decision for a religious latecomer, and it's not being reciprocated.
All this "it's all the same god" is a smokescreen for political agendas and it is certainly not the way towards religious unity or tolerance. And even if the Abrahamic religions could agree that their god is the "same", that would just mean that they are ganging up on the other religions of the world, whose spiritual entities decidedly are not the same as the psychopathic, tribal, and divisive entity described in the Old and New Testaments.