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Permalink Reply by Charles H Small on April 25, 2011 at 2:49pm

Steve Jobs ripped off the now-defunct PARC (Palo Alto Research Center run by Xerox) for: the mouse, the PostScript laser printer, networking (the Ethernet), windowing operating systems, and object-oriented programming (SmallTalk). When he got canned from Apple, he started NeXT, a PC company that, to no one's surprise, bombed. It turned out that he was not "genius" enough to be in the right place at the right time this go-around. To get an OS up and running quickly on his NeXT computers, he cobbled one together out of public-domain UNIX (Bell Labs had put UNIX in the public domain many years previously) plus some Open Source modules. Then they took him back at Apple and he brought the NeXT software with him. Remember all the weeping, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments when OS X came out? Oh boo hoo! It did not work the same as the older Mac OSs because it was, again, a klooge of UNIX plus Open Source modules (GNU or Free Software Foundation software as in Linux, Android, Audacity, Gimp, etc, etc). Ditto for iOS (the OSs in iPhones, iPods, and iPads). They are all officially certified UNIX. The only explanation I have, looking at the price vs. performance, on a cold, hard, engineering basism for why anyone would buy any Apple product is mass hysteria. For example, the performance of the headphone amplifier in my $39 SanDisk sansa clipit+ has been measured on an Audio Analyzer by CNET and found to be as good or better than that of an iPod Classic (not the other iPods -- they sound much worse!), a Sony Walkman, or a Zune. The 128 GB capacity of an iPod Classic? Taking as a ballpark figure that ACCS (acutally MP4s) and MP3s are on average 5 Mbytes and that they take about 3.5 minutes to play, it would take over 130 days of continuous playing to hear all the MP3s on an iPod Classic. And the batter runs down in 10 hours or so. De we sense a disconnect here? And a lithium battery is good for only about 500 charge cycles. Does any iPod have a user-accesible battery compartment? Gee, why not?

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Permalink Reply by Dex on April 25, 2011 at 9:18pm

I understand where you are coming from, and I do agree about Apple ripping people off when it comes to iTunes, but people don't buy Apple products purely due to mass hysteria.
I bought an iPhone because I tested ALL of the alternatives and found the functionality to be too complicated, clunky, the product to be too inconvenient to carry, the ease of use just non-existent, and don't even get me started on how much Android phones (and their advocates) annoy me.
Whether the technology is cobbled together, and whether it is as safe as other technology, is irrelevant to me. My iPhone is the best product I could find for what I needed it for. I don't really care about performance of my amplifier as I'm half deaf in one ear and will never hear ANY music to 100% of it's quality anyway. Also, I've charged my phone well over 1000 times, I have no issues with the battery. Any issues I ever get with it are always rectified with an update, and if I have a solution to a problem on my iPhone, I can send it to Apple and they actually take the issue and my solution into consideration when creating updates. I have NEVER had that option with a non-Apple created product.

 

Also, Linkin Park don't have a lot of staff. I know that because many of them visit this site, and I've met most of the rest at concerts when I was working for MFR (wait for it). They hire NING to support and create their websites because they don't have dedicated staff to do it themselves.

MFR, Music For Relief, is a website and organisation, created and funded originally by Linkin Park, where you are able to pay to download music directly, and all the proceeds go to the charity. There are many other bands involved in MFR, and they have created a massive impact on Haiti, and now Japan. Linkin Park spent a lot of time and effort getting MFR up and running and if that site is not a group of musicians coming together to create a not-for-profit, artist-cooperative website, I'd like to know what the hell is. So what you are suggesting they create already exists. You should have done your homework.

Whether Steve Jobs is an honourable business person or not has nothing to do with how LP choose to distribute their music anyway. They use iTunes as well as MFR because much of their fanbase uses iTunes, they are acquiescing to popular demand, which is what any band or artist in their position would do, in order to make their fan base larger. They are in the business of creating and distributing art, not creating online product revolutions.

Apple bashing is a common practice on the internet, if you don't like the products, don't buy them, but please don't presume you are the only person with any knowledge of their impact. We're not all just stupid sheep who buy products because TV says to, many people, like myself, just prefer the functionality, appearance, weight and ease-of-use of the products.
Making a rich guy richer is not a concern for most of us. If you want a different, better product, make one. Griping about the ones that exist is just a non-point.

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Permalink Reply by Charles H Small on April 26, 2011 at 1:34am

First of all, "function" = what something does. "Functional" = the adjective form of "function." "Functionality" = the noun form of "functional." So, having gone around Robin Hood's Barn, does "function" simply equal "functionality." No, becuase of a total-BS design movement in archetecture called "Functionalism" ("Form folllow function." -- Louis Sullivan), "functional" has two meanings and therefor "functionality" is ambiguous! You may think you are clear when you use "functionality,"  buit you are not. So your scientific evaluation of the "functionality" of smartphones consisted of, what, going to BestBuy and poking at them for a minute or two? De gustibus non disputatum est. And once you get used to a gadget's operation, there is not a dime's worth of differnence between hotly compteing products (Windows vs OS X, for example). Secondly, simply because functions and features could be crammed into a smartphone because of integrated circuits, those functions may be useful or they may be there to "uniquify" (a word I made up) the product. Take the on-screen keyboard. All my friends who have them say such keyboards are fine but I never get an email from them longer than four or five words. E-mail? I don;t want to be pestered every time someone sends me an email so I like getting them at my leisure on my PC. But some might like getting them right away. Personal preference. Texting? Why not just call them up and talk to them or leave a voice mail? (A text message is only 180 bytes so the cell providers are making a fortune selling what they mistakenly call "bandwidth" 180 bytes at a time), GPS is expensive but could be a life saver. Coo feature. Surf the web on a dinky, low-res screen? Handy in a pinch but not for protracted periods. The Opthamologists' society is reporting a massive upsruge in eyestrain caused by people peering at such screens for protracted periods. The MP3 player? Most of the smartphone owners I know have a separate PMP. I have no idea why. But the PDA functions? The Calendar? The Alarm clock? The Stopwatch? The photo gallery? The Porta-Potty? Apps (besides stupid ones like Pinball)? For example, doing your taxes on your smartphone and other serious computing? I would like to see a survey on just how many functions and serious apps people actually use. Andm finally, please, what is your basis in fact for contending that Steve Jobs is an "honorable man"? He is a well-known psychopath who treats people aorund him like dirt when the whim siezes him.

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Permalink Reply by Amanda on April 27, 2011 at 3:22am

J'detest 'iAnything!'  I agree about any negative comments or press regarding any iProduct.

Personally I avoid any over advertised, over hyped and over priced products.

We recently had the media inform us that iPhones have tracking devices in them and that all the information is stored and can be easily accessed from the phone with a Laptop or PC.

Cue all adulterers all over the UK saying 'S***!'  Hahaha :p

Sorry back to the topic... 

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Permalink Reply by Charles H Small on April 27, 2011 at 4:55am

If you read all the fine print in the Microsoft EULAs (end user license agreement), you will find that even if you don't let web sites put "cookies" on your computer, Microsoft does some "ad trackng" too. As for food, don't buy anything with a cartoon character on the box. And yes, the 4 GB $40 SanDisk (a real company) sansa clipit+ sounds as good or better than the US$200+ ONOs and it accepts a 16 GB microSDHC card so it will hold thousands of songs and it executes the MP3 Gain algorithm so you don;t have to futz with the volume control while exercising or whatever (however the 89 dB SPL or so default for MP3 Gain is too high and will damage your ears. Make is 82 dB SPL) and it comes up as a "removable drive" when you plug it into a USB so you can simply copy and paste folders full of MP3s into it and don't have to "sync" for mess with any infuriating "library" and so, in addition to searching by the "artists," "album," "genre," etc "tags" (which are pretty much barfed), you can search for the folders you pasted in and it has a crummy graphic equalizer if you have problems with hearin in BOTH ears. If you are hard of hearing in one ear, they you need either a Cowon or iRiver PMP (I forget which) because one or the other is the only PMP with a balance control. And, oh yes, spend about $40 for some Sony or Panasonic ear buds. You will be glad you did.
 

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Permalink Reply by Charles H Small on April 30, 2011 at 6:54am

Kathy, My points exactly and, it looks like you know more about this than I do, "advancement and recoupment"! Yes, several semi-big artists like Lyle Lovett and Courtney Love are on the public record, saying that they have never received a penny in royalties despite selling a couple million CDs per release due to the record companies' charging everything (including payola) against their royalties. But at least the record companies have some legitimate expenses they can charge: recording-studio time, recording engineer's time, producer, studio musicians, stamping out physical CDs and trucking them to stores, paying off radio-station chains, etc. etc. Apple and its ilk have virtually NO expenses at all. It costs virtually nothing to host, ship, and handle payments for content, digitally. With the World Wide Web, the record companies and ruthless bloodsuckers like Steve Job are no longer the gatekeepers simply because there are no gates any more. ASCAP and BMI, who currently collect royalties for artists and composers in the US, are non-profit co-ops started by artists themselves in the past, I believe. So there is ample precedent for artists' forming co-ops to protect themselves from the rat-b******s who infest the music and club fields. So I just don't understand why those artists and composers, who are not (a) alcoholics  and/or (b) drug-addled hedonists, don't get together and hire some flunkies to put up their own aggregator site for all artists, around the world, to post their content. The only BAT (Business Administration Technology) problem with this plan that I can envision is that stringent steps will have to be taken to keep one "artist" from uploading another artist's copyrighted material as his or her own creation. But I think something like the "acoustic fingerprints" that some MP3 "tag" databases use should solve that problem with a little clever programming by someone who actually knows something (most programmers do not know anything about anything, including, surprisingly, math!).

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