Sigh. I've been planning on getting a new notebook and was leaning toward one of Apple's products... but this has shifted me away.
I know, I know: no one cares about nerd ideologies. But I'll do my part and lower their monthly revenues by 0.00001%.
I know, I know: no one cares about nerd ideologies. But I'll do my part and lower their monthly revenues by 0.00001%.
I used to think Apple's success was great for us consumers because it's more choice, and competition is why companies are innovating in the first place, right? But this latest injunction made me realize, if I give money to Apple, there will be less competition and not more. They're unfairly anti-competitive and will use any immoral hole in legislation to make sure consumers have no options. To make sure there is no competition. That is driving innovation backwards, not forward. Summing the pros and cons. Their own technological innovation is not worth their effort to stop the whole rest of the world from innovating. Their balance to the world is on the negative.
I'm not gonna give money to a company that is driving humanity backwards. My 0.00001% missing contribution will have the same value as my vote for the country's president. I'm voting with my wallet.
Completely unrelated: Why do vendors (including Apple) insist on plastering their ugly company logos on the back? Both the macbook and the zenbook would look much better without that white scar.
They want to you feel emotionally and better than others, and proud to show off the Apple logo. And they're the best in the world at doing this. That's why you saw all those posts angry at instagram when they launched for Android, claiming it wouldn't be as great now that the unwashed masses could touch it.
My roommate had a macbook freshman year. Whenever he used it at night (with the screen turned away from me), the stupid logo would light up the whole room. Really? Not only is it garish, but it's actively inconvenient.
I like what Thinkpad does here--they have a relatively unobtrusive logo in the corner with a red led for the dot over the i. It's cute and unobtrusive. My Vaio is also good in this regard--it has an elegant logo made up of metal on a matte blue background. Quite importantly, it does not light up. It might be a little pretentious, but it is elegant. It also has too many vowels, but that's not really related to the discussion :P.
Another exciting option is Lenovo's Carbon X1, which I wish they would release already: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/15/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon...
Currently typing from a ~13" "ultrabook", I think having an extra inch of space is probably the best compromise between this and a bigger laptop, especially if it's light. And that resolution, in my experience, is exactly what I need for programming comfortably.
Finally, and this is obviously subjective, but I've always liked the way touchpads look best. There's something about matte black which just appeals to me.
i think in many tech patent cases if someone were found in violation, as the nexus apparently is, the normal strategy would be for the violator to pay the holder of the patent some licensing fees. maybe it doesn't always work out this way...
but even if licensing were an option and google and/or samsung were willing to pay to license the technology, with apple's very publicly stated goal of destroying android, i don't think they'd ever go along with it.
so this is basically bad for non-apple consumers and good for apple. i mean, it's rational that they'd try to maintain their competitive advantage, and even though multi-source search has existed in android as far back as donut and longer than that as a programming/computational task, i guess apple planted their flag first with this [IMO, obvious] patent
regarding the X1 carbon, ... i'm very excited about it myself. i currently have a T420 and thinkpads have great support for linux, which is my primary operating system. i'm just hoping they give the X1 carbon a decent display. the one on the T420 is pretty lousy.
They have a 256 gb ssd / i7 model for $1800, and a 128gb / i5 for a cheap $1300 (both are on Amazon, look for model number np900x4c). We played with one in a Best Buy before purchasing online, it definitely felt pretty comparable to the mba's I've used.
Big business likes to replicate because it's safer than risk/innovation.
Take an example--I have a Vaio Z-series (and I've had it for a while now). It's lighter than an MBA (yay for carbon fiber), has two SSDs in Raid 0 and up to 1080p on a 13" screen. It also has a good touchpad and a dock with an external graphics card connected via a light peak port. That part is admittedly wonky without drivers (that is, it doesn't work great on Linux or Windows 8), but it is really cool nonetheless. It also looks just great, and nothing like a mac. If that isn't innovative, I don't know what is. You just don't see it competing with the $600-$800 Windows laptops at Best Buy.
There are some other similarly innovative laptops like Thinkpads that you can get. Apple is not the only company with interesting notebooks!
I moved to Apple with OS X back in the G4 era on the basis of OS X, and it is going to be a pain to leave, but with the trends in OS X development being what they are it had to happen at some point.
I won't lose any sleep over the switch: I don't feel that I'm missing out on some life changing experience just for the sake of ideology. Now I'll likely end up with an ultrabook with a better screen but inferior battery life and build quality. A definite trade-off, but the amount it will affect my day to day life probably isn't significant.
I can't come up with something catchier than hate the game, not the player, but I think the game is always going to stay shitty if people support players who show no interest in changing the game.
That's why I'm constantly looking for new non-evil options, and my next phone is going to be B2G, if at all possible. Guess I won't be putting it on a Galaxy Nexus, though =)
Why would I hate Google for that? Motorola was cooperative and competitive with partners and despite all of their innovation they ended up -- like most of their traditional smartphone partners -- with most of their creations ending up in standards. Getting attacked by Apple and Microsoft they try to force a settlement with what they have. there is nothing in that that makes me dislike Motorola cum Google.
it was said more than once there—hate the game, not the player.
The xbox may be blocked because of critical, foundational patents, but I'm supposed to feel bad about the parties because they tried to be cooperative about them. The Galaxy Nexus is blocked because of laughable patents.
There is no question who the worse party is in this, and it's only a matter of time before something sticks and the iPhone/iPad is blocked from importation. We'll see how people like the game then.
And if Google/Motorola are so cooperative then why are the FTC/EU investigating them for anti-competitive behaviour ?
Microsoft sued Motorola after they couldn't extort them into making uncompetitive Windows Mobile devices. Motorola responded with standards-based patents and non-standards based patents, with the clear intention of trying to get a stalemate settlement. The "cooperative" part was that Motorola has thousands if not tens of thousands of patents that play a part in standards because they are a part of the whole moving things forward.
And if Google/Motorola are so cooperative then why are the FTC/EU investigating them for anti-competitive behaviour ?
Derpedeederp derp. The government investigates almost everything that any large multinational does. There are active investigations of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle....if it's a big company there's probably an investigation of it. Secondly that EXACTLY goes to my original point -- Motorola made the "mistake" of daring to be a good innovation citizen before some upstarts came along and started extorting and patent trolling for every hilariously trivial patent.
1. Motorola is obligated to not use standards based patents against implementers of the standard. Under ANY circumstance. It undermines the entire foundation of the industry and without standards we all lose.
2. No government is investigating Microsoft or Apple for patent abuse. And it is ridiculous to assume that the government just investigates any multinational company.
But now the goal post moved to patent abuse investigations, keep in mind that monopoly investigations and patent law can be engaged by diff state institutions, depending on the most effective engagement method, so you may have patent law dispute in the courts in any country and monopoly investigations conducted by an European entity. So while at any given moment, not having one corporation under investigation or defendent status does not push the innocent/guilty pendulum anywhere when acessing any given case. Or is it an indication of antagonistical reversable jurisprudence. The case at hand comes to mind.
Also, any multinational company is under the scrutiny of any government or substitutive supra governamental entity with attributed powers to do so and that is the way it will stay. There is nothing ridiculous about it. It is a needed lawful check for international law and the required balance for the implementation and usage of the Uniform Commercial Code.
Of course, somehow the patent troll they set up:
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/rockstar/all/
doesn't have the same obligations, but that still leaves Microsoft's and Apple's hands clean, right?
Actually, what really did Motorola in was years of getting ripped-off both in design and carrier sales wins by Samsung. Have a good look at the product line that Motorola sold from about 2000-2005. Then look at what Samsung was selling during the same period.
This is just what Samsung does. Good engineering, and let someone else do the design.
The xbox may be blocked because of critical, foundational patents, but I'm supposed to feel bad about the parties because they tried to be cooperative about them. The Galaxy Nexus is blocked because of laughable patents.
Apple's patents are "laughable" and Motorola's are "critical" and "foundational" because you're a software person, not a hardware person. You'll find that a lot of hardware patents, including Motorola's, suffer from the same obviousness when evaluated by EE's that Apple's do when evaluated by SE's.
No. This line of argument is so dumb it makes my head hurt. The "players" choose to participate in the "game". Apple could have quite easily decided not to pursue injunctions against Samsung, but they did.
I can quite easily hate "the player" for choosing to play such an idiotic and stupid "game".