delllapssuck's comments

One word: choice.

Starbucks has forced other coffee shops (assuming there were any- in many cities they wasn't anything comparable to Starbucks in recent times) out of the picture. Are Starbucks customers faced with an abundance of choice of which coffee shop to visit? Or is Starbucks front and center, the "default choice"?

Maybe things have changed but in the past there were no unsubsidised cellphones available to US customers. Are US consumers wanting a cellphone now having to decide whether to buy a subsidised (locked) or unsubsidised cellphone? Maybe things are changing.

In many other countries the phones are not locked.

Choice.

When someone in the US goes to buy a touchscreen tablet, how much choice of other alternatives will they have?

I laughed at this. You are so right.

I am a recovering DAW user, i.e. knob twiddler.

Manipulating spacial environments (acoustics, not knobs) is, to me, the true "art" and the most interesting skill. It predates all this gear. And it seems to be something that some people have "mastered" without necessarily being experts in, say, the the science of acoustics at the same time. (Picture all the pseudo-scientific literature the "audiofile" industry churns out as part of their marketing. I confess in my younger days I totally fell for it. Sadly I know many older folks who still do.)

Ever read TapeOp?

"It's no different than Amazon's one-click."

Right. But Amazon was wise. They could have seized major portions of the software patent landscape early on, they thought about going down the path Apple is on and they decided against it. In contrast to Cook's statements here, Bezos basically said software patents are not our future and other companies should follow our lead.

If you truly understod the patent system you'd realise it's a lot less "cut and dry" than you perceive it to be. Patent law with all its wonderful intricacies that many spend careers learning can get you to an issued patent. But an issued patent can't guarantee you anything, except the right to sue alleged infringers. It gives you no "right to a monopoly" only a right to sue. It gives you no right to manufacture or sell anything. Someone else might sue you you, regardless of your patent. That's not the patent office's problem.

Your issued patent is only as good as it holds up in litigation. And patent litigation is more or less a crap shoot. With high stakes.

The only way to determine the "validity" of a patent claim is to litigate it. And Federal Circuit decisions are not exactly "consistent" so as to be "predictable", to say the least. The end result is patent litigation is extraordinarily expensive and is to be to be feared, even when the patent claims being asserted are garbage.

The issue is not with the patent system in general. The issue is with how Apple is using the system.

There is nothing inherently wrong with patents or intellectal property.

The problem is with companies like Apple who think it is all some kind of game.

Again, the problem is not IP. IP is just rules.

The problem is Apple, specifically the people who run the company. The problem is the actions they take.

When nerds on the web discuss IP, unfortunately it ends up being employed as the proverbial "straw man". Nerds ignore the actions of Apple and instead debate IP. But IP is not a person, real or imaginary. IP makes no decisions. IP is just a concept. The decisions and the evil being done here are by _people_. Patent law (or any law) does not mandate that anyone has to behave like an a-hole. That is a decision Apple makes, not the drafters of patent laws.

But Apple thinks that just because they can afford to dump millions into legal fees, month after month, year after year, it gives them the justification to make life miserable for everyone else (forcing them to spend the same amounts or be forced out of the game).

Apple behaves like an a-hole. And everyone has to mimic them.

IP is not going to disappear. It's only going to grow. The reforms will have to change how it can be used.

Yes, I know that. Samsung is one company among many. For example, in the first iPods (which kicked off this insane run Apple is having), they relied on Toshiba for the drives.

I also know that thinking Apple would be able to stay afloat if they did not use manufacturers in Asia, such as Samsung, is "utter delusion". Is that what you're suggesting?

You're right about one thing: evaluation of audio qualities is incredibly subjective. In a word, it comes down to "preferences".

If I really want to "hear things I've never heard before" in recordings I've heard countless times in countless environments, I choose loudspeakers and headphones with a flat frequency response. I've come to prefer a set of near-field studio monitors over "audiophile" brands, without hesitation. This shifts the subjectiity to the sound engineers who produced the recording, instead of the "hifi" manufacturer targeting "audiophiles".

If these recordings need to be "fixed" to adjust to my preferred perception of the audio - and needless to say, there's a lot that needs to be fixed these days - then that needs to be done at the recording and mastering stages ("the input"), by recording and mastering engineers, not at the reproduction stage ("the output"), by those who design and manufacture "audiophile" stereo components. This is the conclusion I reached many years ago.

Of course, it is subjective conclusion. Audio qualities will alwys be a matter of preference.

Sincerely,

A Former Audiophile

Beautiful.

For Apple, it's all about controlling the minds of consumers. And controlling their access to information about the devices.

For Samsung, it's less about that and more about plain old lack of interoperability: proprietary plugs, crappy Windows proprietary "install" software that was written hastily, and other little annoyances, stuff that will only work with Samsung. Like every other Asian manufacturer for as long as I can remember. (But at least companies like Samsung make SSD's and other components that can be used in any device. They keep companies like Apple afloat. Can Apple make its own components? Not as cost-effectively as Samsung.)

The result is always the same: the consumer overpays for these cheap electronics and gets next to zero customer service. It's "take it or leave it".

Showing a random Starbucks customer OSX in a virtual machine? Priceless.

If they only knew what their iPhones, iPads, "iOS" and "OSX" were really made of. They might never care. But they do care about overpaying.

11.) Governments who sell IPR won because more and more everyone thinks the path to success in IT must go through IP registration (of junk software patents in bulk) and (kangaroo court) IP litigation; moreover they can periodically raise fees without much pushback. Their main customers have loads of cash.

That's funny. For me it had the opposite effect. Obviously he has a conscience, for anyone with an intellect who is not the least bit offended by Zynga-ism is, arguably, lacking in that capacity, i.e., in need of a real conscience.

Well, you must admit the average age of persons using Facebook in the span of a few years went from university age to something like mid-30's or 40's. It's just not "cool" anymore.

This is a consumer. Do the opinions of consumers matter?

All that matters to Apple is sales. Do they care what consumers say about them on the web? Silence the nonbelievers!

Consumers do not need to understand patent law to make purchase decisions. But most consumers know what lawsuits are, especially ones that make a mockery of the justice system.

It's possible many consumers really don't care if they're buying Apple or Samsung. If they did care, if they only wanted Apple products, then Apple wouldn't need to sue other manufacturers, would they?

In the 1990's it was copyright. Now its patent. What next?

All Apple does is whine. Even when they are winning.

Their internal memo/public statement goes so far as to say "it's not about patents and money". Yes, I do believe you Mr. Cook. It's about a bunch of morally inept emotionally underdeveloped overgrown children.

Apple is above "copying". Went they want to cut corners (pun intended) and get to market quickly, they _steal_.

Welcome to the IT industry.

Exactly.

Specs/price is one thing. Dell was a clear winner in that department. But when something like a hinge breaks, or a fan starts wailing, or some other structural part of the system fails, the "specs/price" ratio suddenly does not mean much. Because it's non-trivial to salvage the parts that still work, the ones for which you got a good deal.

With Dell or Lenovo, one might say we're not paying for the hinges and such. But that stuff has to work too or what's the point? You can't take those parts you were paying for out and move them around easily.

Someday maybe we'll be able to build our own laptops or "ultrabooks" like one can build a mini-ITX.

This is what I hope comes by way of 3D printing.

"Do you want to be a sharecropper?"

Beautifully put.

Look at this way. Apple is not the first and last company to make a device that will function as a "phone". Or as an MP3 player.

How are they going to stop people from 3D printing their own cool casings? And from using free open source code that is the same or better as what Apple uses? With lawyers? It's not going to work.

For now Apple is riding high. But it won't last forever. Apple needs developers, as in the ones who do not work for Apple and can speak freely. Just like Microsoft needed developers in the 90's. They hired as many as they could and flooded the developer ecosystem with a gazillion closed API's and an easy peasy IDE. Strange as it may seem, these companies need you in order to stay competitive.

I can "sandbox" code using the shell far easier than I can control what a "modern browser" can do.

Because I know the shell and my OS better than I know a "modern browser".

"People are working on it..."

C'mon, man. This sounds pathetic. You can learn to use the shell safely. How do you think sysadmins do their jobs?

Or you can pretend the shell is too difficult and something to be feared. The simple fact is _you_ control the shell. You don't expose it to the world (unless you're playing games with CGI or doing like the OP said: feeding it random bytes from the internet). You can read the code for a basic shell (e.g. rc, sh, dash). You can modify and compile it yourself. You can write your own. CS students routinely write their own shells as part of the curriculum. A "shell" is something relatively simple.

You really think you're ridiculously complex "modern browser" is "safe"? Safer than your shell?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8cQ0yU89sk

When your use the shell, you trust the people who provide your OS's kernel, the compiler, libraries and userland and those 3d party applications, if any, you choose to run. That's already a lot of people and a lot of code. When you use a "modern browser" who do you trust? I can't even begin to quantify it.

As a very well respected cryptographer once wrote, security may be less a matter of reducing privilege than of reducing the amount of trusted code. The only reason you even have a concet of "privilege" is because it's a relic of shared computing. Everyone has their own computer now. There's no such thing as "root" in Plan 9.

Compare the LOC in a basic shell with the LOC in your web browser.

So distribute it some other way. If it's a great app and lots of people have a use for it, they will find a way to get it. You have the greatest distribution channel known to man at your disposal which NO ONE, not even the mighty Apple, truly controls: the internet.

Apple is just one company... which happens to spend an inordinate amount of money on marketing and an incredible amount of effort trying to control people through the lure of nice form factor and a graphical interface.

But there's more to computing than form factor and GUI. Lots more.

And today it's Javascript. Same problem. Running someone else's code without reading it first.

Why?

Because people want to see a "doodle" or some other silly graphic.

Truthfully, it's gotten worse: "Please enable Javascript." "You need to enable Javascript to use this website." (9 times out of 10, that's a lie.)

In the 1980's, it was telling people to run some ANSI codes through printf to see a blinking Christmas Tree.

Who cares?! You bought the device. It's yours not Apple's.

Yep. I never use the laptop's keyboard. Always use a USB keyboard and have never had any problems (e.g. drivers).

Doing real typing on a tiny little laptop keyboard is for masochists. No shortage of them though. How many people are struggling with a touchscreen at this very moment? Suckers.

I have not used a mouse in over a decade. And I'm not about to start tapping and pinching a tiny little screen because Apple spends a few hundred million on marketing. The sacrafice (speed, ease of use, productivity, etc) is not worth it.

Amen. This is why I'll never buy another inexpensive Dell laptop.

Stupid things like hinges or fans will fail and the way these laptops are contructed, it's more trouble than it's worth to try to repair them, even when you know te rest of the components are doing fine.

Disposable Computers.

Fail.

In the end, I'd rather have an older ThinkPad, say a T61, than a new Dell.

There's one great thing about older computers: there are fewer problems with non-Windows drivers. Lots of non-Windows OS's will run great on, say, a T61.