gdp's Comments

asymco : Does the phone market forgive failure?

Thu, 2 Jun 2011 23:09:52 +0000

Actually I think N-Gage was the point at which they slipped. It was a device where neither the hardware nor software was up to the job of providing the very proposition upon which N-Gage was marketed. The hardware wasn't there, the development tools weren't there, the distribution platform wasn't there, none of it. Apple *always* waits until they can implement without compromise, and they've demonstrated that they're not afraid to leave things out until they can be done properly, the big example being cut and paste, but also the whole SDK thing. It makes me chuckle when I hear people claiming that Apple only shipped an SDK because of developer unrest, as though something like Xcode for iOS could have been created from scratch in such a short space of time. It was always part of the plan, they just didn't ship it until it was ready. For a diametrically opposite example of this mindset, just look at RIM.

asymco : Does the phone market forgive failure?

Thu, 2 Jun 2011 14:15:13 +0000

Even if MS hasn't aquired Nokia (yet) I'm still stunned by how quickly Nokia's demise appears to be approaching.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : HP on iPad: "We're going to become better than number one"

Mon, 23 May 2011 16:07:29 +0000

"A fate worse than a fate worse than death...? That's pretty bad" [/blackadder]

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Apple's new iPad 2 displays are hackable with a few gestures

Mon, 23 May 2011 07:47:15 +0000

You're not trying hard enough...

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Mac OS X Lion: redesigned login screen, Reading List, new wallpapers, more

Sat, 14 May 2011 11:42:27 +0000

-217! Holy crap!

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Mac OS X Lion: redesigned login screen, Reading List, new wallpapers, more

Sat, 14 May 2011 11:41:44 +0000

You can, but it has to be funny. Sorry, thems the rules.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Apple's 30 percent rule forces eBook publisher to shut down

Wed, 11 May 2011 15:41:42 +0000

Sorry, but just as so many people misunderstand the fact that Apple has the right to decide what to stock in its own shop, they also have the right to charge a rent to anyone who wants to sell other products inside the store that Apple has spent money setting up and promoting and attracting so many visitors to. This would be like a concession stand holder in a large mall expecting to sell their own goods without paying a rent to the owners of the mall, who have done the actual hard work of building the place, keeping it clean, making sure there's plenty of parking etc. in order to make sure there are _customers_ who come to the mall.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Who said Apple doesn't do market research? Introducing Apple Customer Pulse

Thu, 5 May 2011 13:23:32 +0000

Running a WHOIS search on the domain returns the following: Registrant: Apple Inc. Apple Inc. 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino CA 95014 US eddingsk@apple.com 1.4089744286 Fax: 1.4089741560 Domain Name: applecustomerpulse.com Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com Administrative Contact: Apple Inc. Apple Inc. 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino CA 95014 US eddingsk@apple.com 1.4089744286 Fax: 1.4089741560 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Apple Inc. Apple Inc. 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino CA 95014 US eddingsk@apple.com 1.4089744286 Fax: 1.4089741560 Created on..............: 2011-01-26. Expires on..............: 2012-01-25. Record last updated on..: 2011-01-27. Domain servers in listed order: ns05.sotech.com ns06.sotech.com MarkMonitor is the Global Leader in Enterprise Brand Protection. Domain Management MarkMonitor Brand Protection™ AntiFraud Solutions Corporate Consulting Services Visit MarkMonitor at www.markmonitor.com Contact us at 1 800 745 9229 In Europe, at 44 (0) 20 7840 1300 I'll stand to be corrected, but I don't think *all* of this info can be faked.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Who said Apple doesn't do market research? Introducing Apple Customer Pulse

Thu, 5 May 2011 11:46:59 +0000

Outstanding. The link to join goes to a broken placeholder URL http://survey.sotech.com/xxxxxx/start.asp?s=1 which results in a Microsoft IIS page not found.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : iMac notes: Dual external monitors, touchpad and SSD options

Tue, 3 May 2011 19:32:42 +0000

I'm guessing there's a reason you have a comment score of -57...

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : iMac notes: Dual external monitors, touchpad and SSD options

Tue, 3 May 2011 19:32:11 +0000

Thank god you're here to introduce some well-needed latent racism to the discussion.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Lion handles external monitors differently

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 14:21:29 +0000

Finally. Only been waiting for this feature for, ooooh, 10 years?

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : South Park spoofs iPhone location tracking

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:02:14 +0000

"PR fiasco"? Who says? Only the dumb-ass media who don't know what they're talking about, don't bother investigating the issue for the facts, and hold Apple to a completely different set of standards to those applied to just about any other tech company out there.

asymco : If Cash is King, Apple's is an Emperor [Updated]

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:27:42 +0000

I know it's not going to happen, but I just wish Apple would buy Adobe and then, frankly, gut them. They still have some good technologies, but as Jobs once said to Nike, they need to "get rid of the crappy stuff".

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : iPad: Michael Dell 'didn't completely see that coming'

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:12:11 +0000

I would hesitate to describe Michael Dell as having "vision". He had a good idea once (commoditising PC hardware), and executed on it extremely well, but as big as Dell is they are still no more or less than a commodity PC hardware company.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Perian adds WebM and VP8 support to Macs

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:59:34 +0000

I can't believe people are conflating the QuickTime *player* with the underlying QuickTime technology (which is what the original article was about). QuickTime was chosen as the basis for the MPEG4 container format. Smarter minds than you, me and everyone else in this thread probably knew what they were doing, methinks. VLC occupies, at best, the role of an additional blade on my video swiss army knife, for when certain combinations of obscure or broken encoding mean that the QT player doesn't handle them. That and the decoding engine for Handbrake. Given that VLC's interface is lifted directly from iTunes, I don't think it's something you can really crow about as an advantage over QuickTime player.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Perian adds WebM and VP8 support to Macs

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:29:38 +0000

I think they mean Matroska: http://matroska.org/ Spelling and accuracy has taken a bit of a dive around here lately.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Perian adds WebM and VP8 support to Macs

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:28:45 +0000

As opposed to... what? The very fine WMV container that doesn't even let you scrub back and forwards in a video file properly? Do enlighten us.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Windows App Store: That's just Microsoft being Microsoft

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:44:25 +0000

"All Apple did was take the idea and make it work without it sucking the sweat off a dead man's balls." There, fixed that for you.

9 to 5 Mac | Apple Intelligence : Adobe unveils Creative Suite 5.5 with subscription options

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:23:49 +0000

The more Adobe gouge customers (especially non-US customers) for what are effectively paid bug fixes and incremental features which should be free updates anyway, the more they will drive people to the solutions available on BitTorrent, may of which are trivial to use now. Adobe should take a good hard look at Maxon to see how a software company should really treat their paying customers. *Every* release of Cinema4D that I've used in the past 6-7 years has come with a free .5 update mid-cycle which adds major new features and performance updates, as well as the usual minor updates to fix bugs. I remember the free 11.5 release delivering a completely rewitten rendering engine which gave a near 100% speed increase over the paid 11.0 release. Adobe can't even fix redraw bugs in their shitty AIR tool palettes that have plagued apps like InDesign and Flash since CS2 at least.