patrick.net

Kevin says

"Recording programs" is also a horribly outdated idea. Why should I have to record anything if it's all available on demand?

Not everything is available on demand.

Not everybody has high speed internet.

I only have antenna service, and with only that I can record more TV than I can watch, and I don't have any monthly fees either.

In some cable services (mine included) you cannot get on demand of a show that just aired. It usually takes a week or so. That can be ok for some of a season but not so much for a cliffhanger episode.

Also is that on demand can change. I've seen interesting content I'd love to share but it only lasts for about a month or so. Sometimes on demand has so many choices that there's no real outlet to search.

Don't worry. Apple will fix it and they'll sell a gazallion of them.

No Apple will make a device that charges you .99 cents every time you change the Chanel. The Part of the Operation that made people feel like they were getting a ROI for the service, died.

If Steve were alive today, he tell ya, the Jobs aren't coming back because he can pay cheap slave labor in China. And that would be the end of the whole Foxcomm fiasco. He would be hero for saying it, and books would be written around his business philosophy. But make no mistake, that arrogant integral part of Apple is dead.

I don't think Apple has more than two or three hands left in this Poker game. The bad side is, when Apple crashes and they will, they will take the rest of the industry down with it. The old "one tech company bad = all tech companies bad" knee jerk reaction.

The GOP says

If Steve were alive today, he tell ya, the Jobs aren't coming back because he can pay cheap slave labor in China. And that would be the end of the whole Foxcomm fiasco. He would be hero for saying it, and books would be written around his business philosophy. But make no mistake, that arrogant integral part of Apple is dead.

They are not exactly slave labor at Foxcomm.. they much happier having your job and making good money based on their standards and they would be pretty pissed off if they heard all their jobs in China were to disappear back to the US. Think what the alternative would be. Im not even sure we can dislodge those jobs back out of China. ..what do you tell them.. dont make anymore of these products anymore. We dont control what goes on in China.

clambo says

Don't worry. Apple will fix it and they'll sell a gazallion of them.

Funny, how we never had in Silicon Valley all this buzz hype in the 80s and 90s.. its a damn shame, one has to hype when we are well past the peak. I keep telling people.. "too bad, your 30 years too late"

thomas.wong1986 says

..what do you tell them.. dont make anymore of these products anymore.

Yeah that worked rather well here in the US circa 1984.

And that's exactly what they told us, in the height of our manufacturing capabilities. Now Big Biz is trying to say, we're ill equipt and aren't smart enough for assembly line work if the work were to come back. What are they basing that on, DMV and Burger King employees?

Well we have manufacturing in the country but it is more about engineering rather than the low level assembly line work that existed before. Some jobs technically are coming back with the energy prices being what they are. Usually the argument is that labor is the most controllable price. but it can be argued that it might be best to minimize the uncontrollable costs rather than maximize the controllable.

Apple made so many mistakes it isn't even funny. Don't get me wrong Apple makes products with a great design...but a great design doesn't always mean good things in the long run. The studabaker Avanti was pretty advanced for the time but it didn't last.

When Steve Jobs went back to Apple he pretty much killed the OS and decided to take his NeXT system and put it into the os...so it's basically linux based but it is closed to outside development unless you have permission (hence they control the app store..just like the itunes store)

Android might not be as pretty but there's more openness to the process. Linux gradually gained much more influence in the past 12 years largely because it was free. If you have a product that is free and some economic hard times and some just doing things for the heck out of it eventually apps build up and you don't have to pay.

The ipad is a great device but at the same time if you have a ipad do you really need a macbook or powermac? ipads have keyboards so this is starting to simply be a lower priced item with higher costs for the 3G service.

Both LG and Samsung were showing TVs with GoogleTV at this year's CES.

The GOP says

And that's exactly what they told us, in the height of our manufacturing capabilities. Now Big Biz is trying to say, we're ill equipt and aren't smart enough for assembly line work if the work were to come back.

Cant blame the US mfg for moving US jobs to Asia..

You can blame the Japanese for dumping their products on US markets below the "cost of productions" in order to capture most of the market share.

mdovell says

The ipad is a great device but at the same time if you have a ipad do you really need a macbook or powermac? ipads have keyboards so this is starting to simply be a lower priced item with higher costs for the 3G service

Its a great product for seniors who like to read and chat with friends and other leisure activities. It does what it says and does it well.

mdovell says

The ipad is a great device but at the same time if you have a ipad do you really need a macbook or powermac? ipads have keyboards so this is starting to simply be a lower priced item with higher costs for the 3G service

If you work in any technical profession, yes. The tools needed to write software, do design work, architecture, drafting, and a million other things just don't work on ipads today.

On these issues, it's not simply a matter of docking; the devices aren't powerful enough. There are orders of magnitude difference in processing power between a macbook pro and an ipad, and even the MBP is not usually enough for the necessary programs.

My workstation is a 6 core machine with 24GB of RAM, and it's still frequently bogged down by the apps that I need to do my job.

Eventually network links will be good enough that you can do a lot of this with a thin client, but we're at least a decade away from that.

GoogleTV sucked, just like AppleTV. Buy a $99 Roku as well as connect up your old laptop to the TV and screw the big guys. They spend too much time in executive meetings throwing around presentations showing how they will make Billions from the TV market. Skype owns the home video market (TV aided), Netflicks, Amazon, Hulu owns the shows, cell phones own the mobile. These are not going to change just because Apple or Google jumps into the scene. Cisco tried its hand in charging for home video and that failed miserably as well. Give it up people.

Kevin says

My workstation is a 6 core machine with 24GB of RAM, and it's still frequently bogged down by the apps that I need to do my job.
Eventually network links will be good enough that you can do a lot of this with a thin client, but we're at least a decade away from that.

What you need is something called a Mainframe.. its a beautiful thing, that gets the job done. MPU, parallel processing, speed, internet enabled. Smoking hot and reliable.

thomas.wong1986 says

Kevin says

My workstation is a 6 core machine with 24GB of RAM, and it's still frequently bogged down by the apps that I need to do my job.

Eventually network links will be good enough that you can do a lot of this with a thin client, but we're at least a decade away from that.

What you need is something called a Mainframe.. its a beautiful thing, that gets the job done. MPU, parallel processing, speed, internet enabled. Smoking hot and reliable.

Oh sweet, I can run fireworks and eclipse on a mainframe now. Thanks for pointing out the totally obvious thing that I missed in my fifteen years in this industry.

thomas.wong1986 says

Some PC features could be built into any TV... such as USB input reader and built in/swapable harddrive to record programs. My dvd player/recorder Philips DVDR3576Hhas a 160gb HD to record programs.. Seems a simple feature like this would be highly desirable.

Yeah my old hd set had a usb built in...it was ok. But the new one pretty much reads almost all the videos I can throw at it. I won't go on a limb and say it replaces a blue ray but it is pretty good. Add some wifi and pretty soon the cable and satellite companies get scared.

I think netflix grew too fast and too soon. Amazon is charging a pretty low about for it's streaming service ($79 or $39 for a student). And you also get free 2 day air on shipping so it piggybacks on other aspects. Google is just too big to ignore. If the network want a piece of the action they have to deal with them eventually.

Getting back to the original topic: GoogleTV. I was an early adopter, buying the Logitech box after it was marked down to 99 dollars. I've been happy overall.

Killer apps: GoogleTV search. Example: I wanted to tune in a hockey game and couldn't remember the channel. Searched hockey. Up game icons. I quickly clicked the specific game I wanted and it tuned my set to that game. Google is searching across many providers, so this is incredible I think. Of course a company that doesn't want to cooperate won't show up.

You can also create your own GoogleTV apps. Many developers have done so. There are many interesting "off-Broadway" channels available.

Kinks: Netflix. Seems to be a question of Netflix engineers not creating a proper app versus Google simply fixing it for them and making their customers happy. Every so often I have to remove the app and reinstall it. It's been months since the last time, but I'm not sure the problem is over with. This is something a non-expert would give up on. And no Netflix is a big loss. On the other hand, Netflix is starting to only stream older and lousier movies, so most of the time I exit Netflix without finding anything to watch there.

-Eric

I ditched Netflix last year when they got full of them selves.
It was not a difficult decision though. I found my self spending hours searching for content to watch that I either hadn't already saw or was something I would actually watch.

More often than not, I would start searching around 8pm then notice it was 11pm and time for bed already, with out ever finding anything to watch.

CaptainShuddup says

More often than not, I would start searching around 8pm then notice it was 11pm and time for bed already, with out ever finding anything to watch.

Yes, welcome to "disruptive technology" as Google or Netflix would call it. Dont forget your paying $$$ every month for Netflix, cable, and internet to have over 500 choices.

You had better luck with standard 3-4 major broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC and Local) as we had before. At least programs were reviewed heavily and judged on content appeal and how well it did.. And they did some great TV programs vs today.

"disruptive technology" today really sucks bad and is of poor quality!

thomas.wong1986 says

And they did some great TV programs vs today.

A lot of those older programs are available streaming on Netflix.

leoj707 says

A lot of those older programs are available streaming on Netflix.

its not the older programs im talking about, but the quality methods and viewer testing of new programs which broadcasters, in the past, would use to gauge if their ideas would compete against the other 2 major competitors during prime time... thus capture more viewers/ratings/ad dollars.

Today, the broadcasters (all 200-500 channels) dont care about quality, because there is too much choices and competition. So they throw all sort of junk on the tube. So as CaptainShuddup said.. you waste time trying to find some good programming.