Random Thoughts

[Mara]

Was hit with a wild blue streak of nostalgia this weekend and bought an N64 console and a few games. Used but condition supposedly good. Once it's here and I can see it's not a piece of shit, I'm a 'gonna go hog-wild buying up all the old games I used to play.

I still play N64, especially Ocarina of Time and Mario Party 3, the greatest of all Mario Parties, which my siblings and I play with a single-minded bloodlust that belies our supposedly friendly relationships.

It's still an awesome system.

[MadMan]

For me I'm still all about Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. Mario Cart 64 is of course still the best in the series, or at least top tier.

[Wryan]

Yes, the N64 GoldenEye was so perfect and iconic that the marketing for its Wii release is a simple "GoldenEye is back. Get your friends." Which is genius.

I'm also all about MarioKart, Mario64, the Turok games, Donkey Kong, Killer Instinct, and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.

EDIT: And Starfox.

[Raiders]

Yes, the N64 GoldenEye was so perfect and iconic that the marketing for its Wii release is a simple "GoldenEye is back. Get your friends." Which is genius.

Yes and no. I mean, sure, I remember a group of us sitting in my friend's basement (the one with the eight controller port of course) and taking turns, up all night. But that was almost ten years ago. Am I so different from everyone else that my friends and I have moved on from this and now do more "adult" stuff? I would feel sad playing it now likely by myself or with maybe one other person.

[Ezee E]

Yes and no. I mean, sure, I remember a group of us sitting in my friend's basement (the one with the eight controller port of course) and taking turns, up all night. But that was almost ten years ago. Am I so different from everyone else that my friends and I have moved on from this and now do more "adult" stuff? I would feel sad playing it now likely by myself or with maybe one other person.

Yeah. I think it got enough people's attention to know that it actually exists, but people are like, "I don't think I'll actually get it though. I've moved on."

[Dead & Messed Up]

Dood, Rogue Squadron.

[Wryan]

Yes and no. I mean, sure, I remember a group of us sitting in my friend's basement (the one with the eight controller port of course) and taking turns, up all night. But that was almost ten years ago. Am I so different from everyone else that my friends and I have moved on from this and now do more "adult" stuff? I would feel sad playing it now likely by myself or with maybe one other person.

Oh I wouldn't feel sad at all. The time put into that game was wonderful to me, mostly because it was time spent with friends. I was also able to play it by myself at length. Diff'rent strokes, I suppose. But I'd wager there are a lot of people who would still play it, or at least a lot of newer people who will get into it on the Wii.

[Irish]

I still can't believe how so many are so happy to conform, and actually resist and deride choice.

Conform to what? Buying consumer electronics isn't a political choice, it's not a statement of belief, despite what people sometimes make of it.

It's even more baffling how major companies have failed to counter Apple in any meaningful way.

Other major companies operate on super-thin margins and have played a pricing game. You can't do that and really innovate a whole hell of a lot.

Apple also has one clear advantage: They control both software and hardware. Always have, always will. This makes it worlds easier to deliver a more seamless experience to the end user.

since Amazon will realize eventually that they must become compatible with ePub.

I doubt this will happen, at least in the short term. They're playing a very old game of file format vendor lock-in. If they do make a change, it will be in direct response to a competitor (most likely Apple).

[DavidSeven]

Apple also has one clear advantage: They control both software and hardware. Always have, always will. This makes it worlds easier to deliver a more seamless experience to the end user.

It also makes it easier for them to control content. To control the information you receive. To control who can and cannot enter the market. To control how you use the technology. I'm really starting to get turned off by the idea of "closed systems," which is what Apple has built itself on. Apple and China.

[[ETM]]

Conform to what? Buying consumer electronics isn't a political choice, it's not a statement of belief, despite what people sometimes make of it.

Well, browse some discussions for an hour, and you'll see what I mean. I'm following the development of several devices designed to compete with Apple products, and let me tell you - the sheer number of people who feel compelled to come into every single discussion and spread the Gospel of Jobs to the infidels is astounding. Basically, to so many of them, if you don't buy an iPad/Pod/Phone/Mac/Book/Air you're a complete idiot, and all other companies, especially the small startups, should just keel over and die, discontinue their ridiculous products and bow down. And I'm not at all exaggerating - we should all have the same gadgets, shop at the same content portals, and eagerly await and buy upgrades every year because Our Lord said so and what good is a computer that's over a year old anyway?

Other major companies operate on super-thin margins and have played a pricing game. You can't do that and really innovate a whole hell of a lot.

That's exactly my point - Archos, Cowon and NotionInk are puny compared to Apple, and are forced to play the pricing game on thin margins, using a free OS (Android), but why the others, the real major players I'm talking about? Why doesn't Samsung do better? Can RIM do no better than a full AIR and Flash UI for their tablet? Apple don't have any advantage over any of them that can't be surmounted with proper resources and effort, and they have them.

Apple also has one clear advantage: They control both software and hardware. Always have, always will. This makes it worlds easier to deliver a more seamless experience to the end user.

"Seamless experience" means "conformity". You can't have smooth and seamless without uniformity and a deliberate lack of freedom or choice. No, it's not what makes them leaders - it's the content they push through the portals cleverly disguised as consumer electronics. Every single device they make and sell is just means for selling content: music, video, books, software. They have monopolized the online retail business for the greatest part, locked it all down so they have full support from content providers. It's a juggernaut system that can't lead to anything good for the consumers in the long run.

[[ETM]]

It also makes it easier for them to control content. To control the information you receive. To control who can and cannot enter the market. To control how you use the technology. I'm really starting to get turned off by the idea of "closed systems," which is what Apple has built itself on. Apple and China.

They also don't even control hardware - almost every single component they use in the latest iterations of their devices is off-the-shelf or slightly modified. The fabled A4 processor from the iPad is a modified ARM Cortex A9 that's being put into a lot of things right now, and many devices have even more powerful chips. But I don't make money for Apple - it's those people who don't know this, who just watch Steve pick it up and do "magical" things on it in a seamless way, and pay extra for that hit-or-miss trademark design.

[Irish]

It also makes it easier for them to control content. To control the information you receive. To control who can and cannot enter the market. To control how you use the technology. I'm really starting to get turned off by the idea of "closed systems," which is what Apple has built itself on. Apple and China.

Closed systems in an of themselves aren't necessarily a problem, though. I mean, nobody beefs that the PS3, XBox, and Wii are all "closed."

I agree with the tone of your post, though. This is the part that bothers the hell out me: That Apple and Amazon are well on their way to becoming a digital form of Wal-Mart and Blockbuster.

Meaning, if it's not on their system, it doesn't exist. And content creators will be forced to play by their rules (NC-17 films on iTunes?) in order to sell their product.

[DavidSeven]

I use a Thinkpad; my phone is a Blackberry, and I buy music off Amazon. Bitches! Battery for my iPod hasn't been charged since I've had the Blackberry.

Also toyed around with the Droid, which seems like far superior technology to the iPhone. Haven't used either on an everyday basis though.

[DavidSeven]

Closed systems in an of themselves aren't necessarily a problem, though. I mean, nobody beefs that the PS3, XBox, and Wii are all "closed."

People should be beefing with the gaming companies. They control the kinds of games you can play and what you can do with their technology. I'm not a gamer myself, so I don't know what the perception is out there, but paying $60 for video games seems a bit ridiculous. Those consoles are also on cycled monopolies. Whoever wins the adaption race usually enters a period of monopoly, at which time some perfectly good system(s) dies out (e.g. Sega Dreamcast), until the technology is ready for its next stage. Every consumer who gambles on the "losing technology" is shit out of luck. People should be beefing hard.

[Raiders]

People should be beefing with the gaming companies. They control the kinds of games you can play and what you can do with their technology. I'm not a gamer myself, so I don't know what the perception is out there, but paying $60 for video games seems a bit ridiculous. Those consoles are also on cycled monopolies. Whoever wins the adaption race usually enters a period of monopoly until the technology is ready for its next stage, at which time some perfectly good technology dies out (e.g. Sega Dreamcast). Every consumer who gambles on the "losing technology" is shit out of luck. People should be beefing hard.

But that's business and frankly is how it should be. $60 a game wouldn't last if people didn't pay it.

Plus, I don't see what in your post people should be "beefing" over. Game systems offer a product which comes with clear strengths and weaknesses and the games are modified to fit with that console. It is up to the individual to select the one they want. You can't realistically have open source consoles.

[Irish]

They also don't even control hardware - almost every single component they use in the latest iterations of their devices is off-the-shelf or slightly modified. The fabled A4 processor from the iPad is a modified ARM Cortex A9 that's being put into a lot of things right now, and many devices have even more powerful chips.

You misunderstand. When I say "control the hardware" I mean that Apple engineers designed the iPad from the ground up. (How the physical product is manufactured, and by whom, is largely irrelevant.) Then they designed and built the OS to go with it.

Nobody else is in that position. Nobody else does both. Nobody else has decades of experience doing both. From a purely engineering/development standpoint, that gives Apple an enormous advantage.

Samsung is a consumer electronics giant. Their business is wider, and different that Apple's. To the degree needed, it lacks focus. I mean, you can't make televisions and phones and washing machines and whatever else they produce and expect something like the iPad to pop out of your labs.

[DavidSeven]

Well, you could have open source consoles, but the consoles themselves would just have to cost a lot more. I guess it's a trade off. It just doesn't seem fair that early adapters of losing technology (like someone who bought a Dreamcast or one of Atari's later releases) should get less value out of their console because they gambled on the loser. Especially when victory in this sphere is often a mere result of timing and marketing, rather than quality. The dynamics seem to be changing though, with Nintendo being smart enough to offer a differentiated product, so maybe this will be irrelevant in the near future.

[[ETM]]

Also toyed around with the Droid, which seems like far superior technology to the iPhone. Haven't used either on an everyday basis though.

I've used a friend's Droid as my only phone for about ten days, and it was brilliant. All the things that bothered me have since been rectified in Droid 2, but it's such a capable device for being pretty much the first real Android phone.

[Irish]

People should be beefing with the gaming companies. They control the kinds of games you can play and what you can do with their technology. I'm not a gamer myself, so I don't know what the perception is out there, but paying $60 for video games seems a bit ridiculous. Those consoles are also on cycled monopolies. Whoever wins the adaption race usually enters a period of monopoly, at which time some perfectly good system(s) dies out (e.g. Sega Dreamcast), until the technology is ready for its next stage. Every consumer who gambles on the "losing technology" is shit out of luck. People should be beefing hard.

That's a different kind of beef, one around market forces and pricing.

The expectations of consumer electronics are different than those of desktop PCs (where people are sadly used to fucking around with registry files and drivers).

People expect that when you turn a consumer device on, it will just work. Period. End of story. You vary from that at all and you're fucked, because you can't assume that the customer will be able to download or have access to the latest drivers and patches to short-term fix the thing.

[Irish]

You can't have smooth and seamless without uniformity and a deliberate lack of freedom or choice.

People want these devices to be as reliable as their TVs. You turn it on, it works, you can start doing what you want to do. (Barring ridiculous situations where you have 4 remotes for 3 different devices in your living room and visitors have to be "taught" how to watch television.)

"Open source" on the consumer level is a joke (and ChromeOS isn't technically open source, either, because the only people allowed to commit to it work for Google).

It's a juggernaut system that can't lead to anything good for the consumers in the long run.

This I can agree with.

[[ETM]]

You misunderstand. When I say "control the hardware" I mean that Apple engineers designed the iPad from the ground up. (How the physical product is manufactured, and by whom, is largely irrelevant.) Then they designed and built the OS to go with it.

Many companies design hardware from the ground up. It's not irrelevant how it's manufactured - for example, most of the most important physical components of Apple products, like the screens and flash memory, are made by Samsung. Think about Super AMOLED screens for new phones - it's Samsung technology that beats almost anything out there and the consumers want it. The thing is - Samsung couldn't make enough for everyone, so they kept everything for their own handsets. That's how you control hardware.

Nobody else is in that position. Nobody else does both. Nobody else has decades of experience doing both. From a purely engineering/development standpoint, that gives Apple an enormous advantage.

This is blatantly untrue. The only thing Apple has over any other large company is history and, more importantly, hype. MAJOR hype. It's what makes people prone to buy everything from them, keep buying new versions as they come out, and justify their huge markups because "it's worth it".

Samsung is a consumer electronics giant. Their business is wider, and different that Apple's. To the degree needed, it lacks focus. I mean, you can't make televisions and phones and washing machines and whatever else they produce and expect something like the iPad to pop out of your labs.

Agreed on focus. This also applies to Sony and the rest. But there's no reason for them not to do what Apple does. Especially since they're so huge and successful in general.

[Raiders]

Samsung's Galaxy Tab running the Android 2.2 seems to me every bit as sleek and capable as the iPad.

[[ETM]]

People want these devices to be as reliable as their TVs. You turn it on, it works, you can start doing what you want to do.

But it doesn't work like that. Nothing does. What Apple does is keep removing anything that might cause a single problem in the future and convince everyone they never needed it in the first place. Or at least try and convince - remember their fiascos? The one-button hockey puck mouse? The first MacBook Air? Right now, they're blocking the use of the USB adapter ("Cammera Connection Kit") for anything other than what they intended it for, in a software update. People have been using USB keyboards and cameras and whatnot with it. So Apple first created a "shortage", and now they're effectively killing it.

See, this is where my personal needs differ from Apple's business model: I'd have gladly paid for an iPad if it had just a few simple features - full USB support, mass storage mode, RAW format playback and screen calibration. That IPS touchscreen with that kind of storage is perfect for photography. I don't need any of that other stuff - just leave the media playback and the browser, and I'm okay. Charge anything you want for it, but I'll never buy e-books, apps, music or video. And that's why Apple hates me.

This is also my gripe with the competition - they're all trying to copy what Apple does, as always, instead of catering to the rest of us.

[Irish]

Think about Super AMOLED screens for new phones - it's Samsung technology that beats almost anything out there and the consumers want it. The thing is - Samsung couldn't make enough for everyone, so they kept everything for their own handsets. That's how you control hardware.

Yeah, yeah, I'm not arguing that. I mean, we're talking about two different things. I'm talking about controlling the hardware and software design at the same time.

Apple is the only company among major players that has always done that.

This is blatantly untrue.

o.O How so? You're talking major players, nobody else has designed and bundled an OS and the hardware. At least not for a long, long time.

If you're talking some weirdo garage tablet startup out of the Valley, that's a different story.

The only thing Apple has over any other large company is history and, more importantly, hype. MAJOR hype. It's what makes people prone to buy everything from them, keep buying new versions as they come out, and justify their huge markups because "it's worth it".

Okaaaaaay. Now you sound like one of those rabid fanboy types you were talking about last page.

Hype is almost a separate issue. Apple's pretty masterful with manipulating the press (especially in the last few years) and building up expectation for their product releases.

But I think that comes from the fact that, for a large part, one guy is driving this entire industry. If Jobs dies, the PC and consumer electronics industry enters a kind of ugly dark age. Which, I think, is all kinds of sad and lame and pathetic.

Pricing ... well, shit somebody has to pay for that R&D and industrial design, ya know. :P

Agreed on focus. This also applies to Sony and the rest. But there's no reason for them not to do what Apple does. Especially since they're so huge and successful in general.

Success in one area doesn't naturally equate to success in another. (Look at Microsoft. The only space they've really successfully entered is the console gaming market. And they almost royally fucked that up with bad engineering).

Designing a fully featured OS is a major undertaking, especially if you don't have the in-house talent to do that. Nobody wants to repeat the mistakes of IBM with OS/2 in the early 90s or BeOS ten years later.

And up until the last five years or so, doing that also meant going head to head with Microsoft. That's definitely an area no one wanted to go.

[[ETM]]

Samsung's Galaxy Tab running the Android 2.2 seems to me every bit as sleek and capable as the iPad.

It is, but it doesn't offer more, and is insanely expensive.