I'm amazed at the number of people here who are against a free market.
Free markets are ones where competition thrives within a regulatory framework that keeps the playing field fair.
But companies who don't like the push and shove of real competition come up with legal tricks to give them a tactical edge.
"Sorry, we have designed this printer so that it only uses OUR ink. Using 3rd party ink is in violation of your user agreement."
Why innovate?? Why bother, why employ research and development staff? All you really need is a team of lawyers? There's millions of pages of copyright law, and patent law and contract law. Somewhere in there, there must be a trick that we can use to our advantage.
And remember, if we pay substantial contributions to political parties, we will be assured of their support. (Wink).
Just looking at printers again, look at the insanity of the present situation, there are literally hundreds of ink cartridge formats, all doing the same function. (Holding a few drops of liquid). The printer manufacturers put more effort into preventing ink piracy than they do into making better printers. Hey, don't worry if the paper jams, there are 23 patents on the cartridge. Hey did you know it registers as empty when it's sill 23% full?
Now imagine a common cartridge format agreed by manufacturers. A standard. Consumers would win out, and manufacturers would compete in making the best printer instead of the best ink marketing tool.
BREAKING NEWS. Epson wins case to stamp-out 3rd party paper. Their new paper range starts at less than a dollar a sheet.
C.
I just had the "C." patented so no one else can do that without paying me ok?
Now imagine a common cartridge format agreed by manufacturers. A standard. Consumers would win out, and manufacturers would compete in making the best printer instead of the best ink marketing tool.
Some customers win. Others lose.
Taking a bit of liquid ink and spraying it on a piece of paper at a precise location is a solved problem. Similarly for the toner in laser printers. Most of the innovation in recent years is not in paper feed, but in the ink. The ink today far outperforms the ink of a decade ago, while paper feed is pretty much the same paper feed, and the electronics that were added (allowing direct camera-to-printer, for example) may be convenient for some, but are in no way breakthrough.
A mandatory standard for ink cartridges will give you cheap off-brand ink. OTOH it will mean a far more expensive printer. For people with a home printer that only sees casual use (up to 10 pages a week) the total costs would rise.
The standard ink would mean that innovation in ink will slow to a halt. Cheap ink will displace from the market the expensive ink and manufacturers will concentrate their efforts on the printers (which are already good enough) rather than the ink (where there's room for improvement)
The standard ink would mean that innovation in ink will slow to a halt. Cheap ink will displace from the market the expensive ink and manufacturers will concentrate their efforts on the printers (which are already good enough) rather than the ink (where there's room for improvement)
Compliance to common standards *improves* competition and innovation. It does not stifle it.
SATA hard drives continue to develop. They are not held back by SATA. And the common interface means there is fair and vigorous competition between the vendors for the same customers.
Proprietary manufacturer-tie-ins thwart that competition. They undermine the benefits of a free market.
Not all products are stand-alone.
Cameras/film/lenses.
Printers/ink/paper.
Cars/tyres/fuel/radios/gps.
Computers/software.
VHS Players/tape.
Razors/Blades
The market is best served when consumers are free to chose multi-vendor solutions.
Compliance to common standards *improves* competition and innovation. It does not stifle it.
Not necessarily. First you need to be able to tell what makes one competition "better" than another. A common standard tends to drive the competition towards the easiest metric - price. Home routers all comply with the same standards: Ethernet, 802.11, PPTP/L2TP on the WAN side, UPnP. They're all the same, so people buy according to price. They do differ on ease of configuration, but you really almost always only do it once, so that doesn't matter much.
Quote:
SATA hard drives continue to develop. They are not held back by SATA. And the common interface means there is fair and vigorous competition between the vendors for the same customers.
If every drive came with its own interface, we might have had better/faster drives rather than just cheaper ones. We would have to pay more, though.
Quote:
Proprietary manufacturer-tie-ins thwart that competition. They undermine the benefits of a free market.
Apple ties in the iPhone software to the iPhone hardware. Sure you can't get an Android iPhone, but I think this gives you a better phone, though somewhat more expensive.
Quote:
Not all products are stand-alone.
Cameras/film/lenses.
Printers/ink/paper.
Cars/tyres/fuel/radios/gps.
Computers/software.
VHS Players/tape.
Razors/Blades
The market is best served when consumers are free to chose multi-vendor solutions.
C.
I don't care about "the market". The consumer are best served with the best package. The best package is sometimes the "best of breed" from the several manufacturers, or it may be the integrated package made by one manufacturer.
Besides, would you say that the market is better served by modular cameras/lenses such as SLRs, where you can get a camera from, say, Nikon and match it with a lens from Nikon, Sigma, Tamron or several others? Or is the market better served with the P&S cameras that come with a built-in lens?
Are we better served by a film camera where you need to buy the film from a third party, or a digital camera, where the "film" in included in the camera?
If every drive came with its own interface, we might have had better/faster drives rather than just cheaper ones. We would have to pay more, though.
No.
we.
would.
not.
SATA drives compete on price, capacity, size and performance. Different manufacturers can target different USPs. That's the benefit of standards.
As an example, look at the PC component market. It is all about standards. Memory, drives, displays, videoboards are all standards-based. Multiple vendors aggressively compete to be the fastest/cheapest/most feature-rich. This has driven-down prices and driven-up quality and performance.
Apple acknowledged this when they switched to Intel. Commodity PC hardware was dramatically outpacing the single-vendor solution that Apple had tried with it's PowerPC technology.
Not necessarily. First you need to be able to tell what makes one competition "better" than another. A common standard tends to drive the competition towards the easiest metric - price. Home routers all comply with the same standards: Ethernet, 802.11, PPTP/L2TP on the WAN side, UPnP. They're all the same, so people buy according to price. They do differ on ease of configuration, but you really almost always only do it once, so that doesn't matter much.
If every drive came with its own interface, we might have had better/faster drives rather than just cheaper ones. We would have to pay more, though.
Apple ties in the iPhone software to the iPhone hardware. Sure you can't get an Android iPhone, but I think this gives you a better phone, though somewhat more expensive.
I don't care about "the market". The consumer are best served with the best package. The best package is sometimes the "best of breed" from the several manufacturers, or it may be the integrated package made by one manufacturer.
Besides, would you say that the market is better served by modular cameras/lenses such as SLRs, where you can get a camera from, say, Nikon and match it with a lens from Nikon, Sigma, Tamron or several others? Or is the market better served with the P&S cameras that come with a built-in lens?
Are we better served by a film camera where you need to buy the film from a third party, or a digital camera, where the "film" in included in the camera?
"Better served", in the case of camera types is entirely an misleading approach to photography. Film and digital each have their place, and the choice is entirely up to the consumer. There is NO doubt that P&S models do not offer the same control that SLR models offer, not to mention that there can also be a quality difference in the image produced by each.
Inks are another point that most do not understand. If you're just printing text, and or graphics for business presentations, then the ink used is not of major importance. But, if you're printing photos, then there's a helluva difference from one ink to another, and of course one printer to another. Some people bitch about Epson ink prices, those are the people that either don't know, or don't care about the quality of the finished image. Those who do care, including pros, use Epson ink for it's vastly superior image quality and print longevity. Not only that, but to folks who care about photos, the paper also matters, and it's of the utmost importance to have an ICC profile for each particular paper/ink combination than one uses. If you use a paper /ink combo that you don't have a profile for then you need to have a custom profile made, or live with the crap shoot results that come from not using the correct profile. Custom profiles can run from $30 and up to a much higher price, for each particular profile.
The "suckers" print directly from a camera, and print each and every image that was captured. These people bypass one of the main advantages of digital, the ability NOT to print every image. It goes without saying, that even for pros, every image is not worth the ink it takes to print it. That is a mentality leftover from shooing film, where if you shoot roll film, the entire roll must be processed. Digital offers the ability to pick and choose which images are printed.
People that don't care, or know better, look for low priced inks and think that they're getting a bargain. There is no free lunch, you get what you pay for. If people want to run OS X, let them buy a Mac, and quit whining!
Free markets are ones where competition thrives within a regulatory framework that keeps the playing field fair.
Free markets have to be free from both directions. Consumers need to be provided with fair competition. But business also needs the freedom to operate under what business model they choose. As long as it does not stifle other companies from being able to compete.
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But companies who don't like the push and shove of real competition come up with legal tricks to give them a tactical edge.
"Sorry, we have designed this printer so that it only uses OUR ink. Using 3rd party ink is in violation of your user agreement."
You are attempting to limit the definition of competition to fit your point. Competition does not mean companies are required to share their IP. If one company comes up with a better idea than another company, that is competition. Forcing a company with a good idea to share that idea with its competitors is not necessarily fair competition.
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Why innovate?? Why bother, why employ research and development staff? All you really need is a team of lawyers? There's millions of pages of copyright law, and patent law and contract law. Somewhere in there, there must be a trick that we can use to our advantage.
I don't understand this point at all. The point that you can patent your innovations that come from research and development is what spurs companies to spend money on research and development.
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Just looking at printers again, look at the insanity of the present situation, there are literally hundreds of ink cartridge formats, all doing the same function. (Holding a few drops of liquid). The printer manufacturers put more effort into preventing ink piracy than they do into making better printers. Hey, don't worry if the paper jams, there are 23 patents on the cartridge. Hey did you know it registers as empty when it's sill 23% full?
Now imagine a common cartridge format agreed by manufacturers. A standard. Consumers would win out, and manufacturers would compete in making the best printer instead of the best ink marketing tool.
There are many printer companies to choose from. No one overwhelmingly dominates that market. With all of them attempting to lock you into their system, makes it even more important that they improve their product. Because of this printers and inks have improved. I'm not sure making a standard printer cartridge would necessarily improved the situation much from how it has turned out.
The market is best served when consumers are free to chose multi-vendor solutions.
I don't understand these examples you have given. Their are various different types of all of these things you have listed. Their is little to no standardization between any of them.
SATA drives compete on price, capacity, size and performance. Different manufacturers can target different USPs. That's the benefit of standards.
As an example, look at the PC component market. It is all about standards. Memory, drives, displays, videoboards are all standards-based. Multiple vendors aggressively compete to be the fastest/cheapest/most feature-rich. This has driven-down prices and driven-up quality and performance.
Their was a time when computer manufacturers attempted to use differing interfaces. The industry decided collectively that standard interfaces worked towards the greater benefit. No one forced them to do it.
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Apple acknowledged this when they switched to Intel. Commodity PC hardware was dramatically outpacing the single-vendor solution that Apple had tried with it's PowerPC technology.
PPC was not single vendor when Apple first switched to it. IBM and Motorola developed PPC for Apple. The thought at the time that PPC would widely replace the aging x86 architecture. That did not happen. But the original idea was not for Apple to be the only PPC user.
Their was a time when computer manufacturers attempted to use differing interfaces. The industry decided collectively that standard interfaces worked towards the greater benefit. No one forced them to do it.
True. But it is still a powerful example of how standards drive the market forwards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell
PPC was not single vendor when Apple first switched to it. IBM and Motorola developed PPC for Apple. The thought at the time that PPC would widely replace the aging x86 architecture. That did not happen. But the original idea was not for Apple to be the only PPC user.
True again. But PPC *became* that. And once you are down to one vendor, progress is only as good as that vendor, innovation slows. Competition ceases.
The legal frameworks of most countries recognize that innovation is stifled by monopolies. But the legal tricks employed by some companies to protect themselves can prevent competition and can be equally damaging to the market.
I don't understand these examples you have given. Their are various different types of all of these things you have listed. Their is little to no standardization between any of them.
Sorry, it was badly expressed. I was alluding to a horror world full of Canon film. Ford Fuel. And Epson Paper. It sounds ludicrous, but remember Sony Memory sticks?
Sorry, it was badly expressed. I was alluding to a horror world full of Canon film. Ford Fuel. And Epson Paper. It sounds ludicrous, but remember Sony Memory sticks?
C.
Canon doesn't make film, and Ford doesn't make fuel, that is silly, but there is Epson branded paper. You're pushing this too far. If you buy a Boos brand cutting board you can use any knife on it, but if you want a knife blade for say an Oxo mandoline you have to buy the Oxo brand blade.
Say you bought a Nikon DSLR, there are third party lenses to fit the Nikon models, but not all of those third party lenses give the same fully functional control that Nikon branded lenses give. Nikon does NOT share their raw processing algorithms with third party (Adobe Photoshop, etc.) editors. Neither does Canon, or any others that I'm aware of, because that is proprietary info. If you want those Nikon algorithms, you must buy a Nikon editor, such as Nikon Capture NX/NX 2, and they won't open Canon raw images. Photoshop approximates, but does not match Nikon's algorithms, or anyone else's. You cannot force Nikon to give Adobe those algorithms, period.
True. But it is still a powerful example of how standards drive the market forwards.
The market should be free to decide this for itself, not through laws and government regulations.
Its unlikely that the printer/cartridge situation will remain the same forever. AT some point someone will come up with a better idea than anything we are thinking of now. Government intervention does not leave room for those new ideas.
The operating system itself will inevitably hold less influence than it does now. As broadband speeds improve and web services become more sophisticated the role of OS will change.
I believe Apple is likely to turn OS X into something more like the iPhone OS. Where the entire OS can be a gateway onto the internet, not limited through the browser. Icons for AppleInsider, New York Times, and Wikipedia will sit in the dock next to native apps. These web apps will be user interface shells that download web data.
Access to web services would require a less sophisticated OS. This opens opportunities for others to create an OS that serves this need. Someone could make a $200 netbook that uses a simple OS to access web services.
If the law forces Apple to freely license OS X, which comes to dominate a section of the market second to Windows. There is no telling how that could potentially effect the market and stifle other new ideas. The law needs to leave it alone and let it naturally develop.
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True again. But PPC *became* that. And once you are down to one vendor, progress is only as good as that vendor, innovation slows. Competition ceases.
It can also be argued that PPC actually provided more competition as a viable alternative to x86 which essentially means Intel. When Apple switched from PPC to Intel. That effectively was the last fight of a viable processor architecture to compete with against x86 and the last fight of a major computer manufacturer against Intel.
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The legal frameworks of most countries recognize that innovation is stifled by monopolies. But the legal tricks employed by some companies to protect themselves can prevent competition and can be equally damaging to the market.
That depends on the nature of the monopoly. If a company owns a monopoly because the market selected it as having the best solution. That company will be forced to innovate to protect its position, because others will certainly attempt to compete.
But I'm not sure the purpose of arguing this point, as nothing Apple is doing with OS X damages the computer market.
The market should be free to decide this for itself, not through laws and government regulations.
I utterly agree. I am arguing for *less* reliance on laws and regulations. Copyright and patent law are weaponized by large companies to crush the competition.
Here's a great example of how Patent and copyright law are being abused as a means to attack competitors.
Basic SVGA / VESA is needed for fall back so install disk does not need to update for each new video card that ati / nvidia makes so you can just get the driver from them / down load a mac os update that has them.
Also some of the work is just removing PCI ID locks.
Sorry, as I said, I wasn't quite sure exactly what point you were trying to make. Apparently I guessed incorrectly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe_the_dragon
If Psystar where to win then apple should be forced to remove the locks that lock to apple hardware only.
I disagree. In my opinion, the only thing that would happen even in the remote possibility that Psystar were to win, would be confirmation that Psystar was authorized to perform whatever re-engineering steps were necessary to make the Mac OS install on non-Apple hardware then sell the combined product.
The onus would be, and by all rights should be, on Psystar, not Apple, to do any work required to modify the OS in whatever ways would be necessary to make the "marriage" between Apple software and non-Apple hardware work, and then to provide the technical support for the final modified product. (As best as they can figure out, at least.)
Apple would not be obliged to change their software design at all. (However, they probably would in fact change their software design. But in the opposite direction... If Psystar was going to be authorized to sell these machines, then Apple would make them work for it. They'd modify the OS in such a way to make it even more difficult to install on non-Apple hadrware, thus maximizing the amount of re-engineering effort that Psystar would need to invest in to make their products work.)
I look at it as similar to the DMCA temporary exemption which makes it legal to remove SIM locks from cell phones without the manufacturer's or carrier's consent: Sure, it's not prohibited and you won't be guilty of a crime when you do it. But still, the manufacturers are permitted to create the locks in the first place and come up with new and better ways to secure the locks when their previous methods are broken. And they are not obliged to provide any assistance in the lock removal process.
To extend the car analogy, the fact that it would be legal to put a BMW engine inside a Honda car in no way would put any obligation on BMW to plan for compatibility with non-BMW cars as it designs its engines.
The legal frameworks of most countries recognize that innovation is stifled by monopolies. But the legal tricks employed by some companies to protect themselves can prevent competition and can be equally damaging to the market.
True, but "voluntary" industry standards can stifle innovation just as well as a monopoly or government standards. Note the demise of Firewire.
Apple does not sell a full priced copy of OSX. It sells an upgrade, which is evident by it's licensing terms. Apple intends for people buying OSX to already have an earlier version of the OSX installed. If that weren't the case, the price would be tiered as it is with Microsoft.
Moreover, I don't see how it would be hard to show a jury illegal copying has occurred, the license pretty clearly states it is illegal to install the purchased copy on any machine other then a Mac. A jury is much more likely to understand that notion then the convoluted argument that Apple isn't allowed to choose who it sells it's OS to.
Moreover, a jury can ultimately decide whatever it wants. On Appeal, a highly educated panel of judges very familiar with copyright will decide the manner. That is in the very unlikely case that it goes that far.
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Originally Posted by Carniphage
Back to Psystar, it really is not 100% clear.
Apple SELL stand-alone copies of OSX.
For each computer, Psystar purchase one full-price copy of OSX and install it on the customer's behalf. And then give you the box as the proof. It would be hard to convince a jury that any illegal copying has occurred.
That probably is true. Yet, people act as if the legal system ultimately ruled against Napster. Napster had some interesting defenses to raise if it were given the opportunity. The arguments probably may have failed, but it wasn't certain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidW
Yes, but Napster already saw the writing on the wall. A court ruled that Napster knew that their users were violating copyright laws and did nothing to stop it. Thus may be liable for billions of dollars in fine. Eventually Bertelsmann, an initial investor in Napster, acquired Napster and paid out over $400 million to settle the suit with the other Music labels. Because the other labels claimed that Bertelsmann was the one financing Napster when they were helping their users steal music.
Comments
People want the excellent Epson printers and then want to use cheap 3rd party ink.
Epson goes after third-party ink cartridges and wins
I'm amazed at the number of people here who are against a free market.
Free markets are ones where competition thrives within a regulatory framework that keeps the playing field fair.
But companies who don't like the push and shove of real competition come up with legal tricks to give them a tactical edge.
"Sorry, we have designed this printer so that it only uses OUR ink. Using 3rd party ink is in violation of your user agreement."
Why innovate?? Why bother, why employ research and development staff? All you really need is a team of lawyers? There's millions of pages of copyright law, and patent law and contract law. Somewhere in there, there must be a trick that we can use to our advantage.
And remember, if we pay substantial contributions to political parties, we will be assured of their support. (Wink).
Just looking at printers again, look at the insanity of the present situation, there are literally hundreds of ink cartridge formats, all doing the same function. (Holding a few drops of liquid). The printer manufacturers put more effort into preventing ink piracy than they do into making better printers. Hey, don't worry if the paper jams, there are 23 patents on the cartridge. Hey did you know it registers as empty when it's sill 23% full?
Now imagine a common cartridge format agreed by manufacturers. A standard. Consumers would win out, and manufacturers would compete in making the best printer instead of the best ink marketing tool.
BREAKING NEWS. Epson wins case to stamp-out 3rd party paper. Their new paper range starts at less than a dollar a sheet.
C.
I just had the "C." patented so no one else can do that without paying me ok?
Now imagine a common cartridge format agreed by manufacturers. A standard. Consumers would win out, and manufacturers would compete in making the best printer instead of the best ink marketing tool.
Some customers win. Others lose.
Taking a bit of liquid ink and spraying it on a piece of paper at a precise location is a solved problem. Similarly for the toner in laser printers. Most of the innovation in recent years is not in paper feed, but in the ink. The ink today far outperforms the ink of a decade ago, while paper feed is pretty much the same paper feed, and the electronics that were added (allowing direct camera-to-printer, for example) may be convenient for some, but are in no way breakthrough.
A mandatory standard for ink cartridges will give you cheap off-brand ink. OTOH it will mean a far more expensive printer. For people with a home printer that only sees casual use (up to 10 pages a week) the total costs would rise.
The standard ink would mean that innovation in ink will slow to a halt. Cheap ink will displace from the market the expensive ink and manufacturers will concentrate their efforts on the printers (which are already good enough) rather than the ink (where there's room for improvement)
The standard ink would mean that innovation in ink will slow to a halt. Cheap ink will displace from the market the expensive ink and manufacturers will concentrate their efforts on the printers (which are already good enough) rather than the ink (where there's room for improvement)
Compliance to common standards *improves* competition and innovation. It does not stifle it.
SATA hard drives continue to develop. They are not held back by SATA. And the common interface means there is fair and vigorous competition between the vendors for the same customers.
Proprietary manufacturer-tie-ins thwart that competition. They undermine the benefits of a free market.
Not all products are stand-alone.
Cameras/film/lenses.
Printers/ink/paper.
Cars/tyres/fuel/radios/gps.
Computers/software.
VHS Players/tape.
Razors/Blades
The market is best served when consumers are free to chose multi-vendor solutions.
C.
Compliance to common standards *improves* competition and innovation. It does not stifle it.
Not necessarily. First you need to be able to tell what makes one competition "better" than another. A common standard tends to drive the competition towards the easiest metric - price. Home routers all comply with the same standards: Ethernet, 802.11, PPTP/L2TP on the WAN side, UPnP. They're all the same, so people buy according to price. They do differ on ease of configuration, but you really almost always only do it once, so that doesn't matter much.
SATA hard drives continue to develop. They are not held back by SATA. And the common interface means there is fair and vigorous competition between the vendors for the same customers.
If every drive came with its own interface, we might have had better/faster drives rather than just cheaper ones. We would have to pay more, though.
Proprietary manufacturer-tie-ins thwart that competition. They undermine the benefits of a free market.
Apple ties in the iPhone software to the iPhone hardware. Sure you can't get an Android iPhone, but I think this gives you a better phone, though somewhat more expensive.
Not all products are stand-alone.
Cameras/film/lenses.
Printers/ink/paper.
Cars/tyres/fuel/radios/gps.
Computers/software.
VHS Players/tape.
Razors/Blades
The market is best served when consumers are free to chose multi-vendor solutions.
C.
I don't care about "the market". The consumer are best served with the best package. The best package is sometimes the "best of breed" from the several manufacturers, or it may be the integrated package made by one manufacturer.
Besides, would you say that the market is better served by modular cameras/lenses such as SLRs, where you can get a camera from, say, Nikon and match it with a lens from Nikon, Sigma, Tamron or several others? Or is the market better served with the P&S cameras that come with a built-in lens?
Are we better served by a film camera where you need to buy the film from a third party, or a digital camera, where the "film" in included in the camera?
If every drive came with its own interface, we might have had better/faster drives rather than just cheaper ones. We would have to pay more, though.
No.
we.
would.
not.
SATA drives compete on price, capacity, size and performance. Different manufacturers can target different USPs. That's the benefit of standards.
As an example, look at the PC component market. It is all about standards. Memory, drives, displays, videoboards are all standards-based. Multiple vendors aggressively compete to be the fastest/cheapest/most feature-rich. This has driven-down prices and driven-up quality and performance.
Apple acknowledged this when they switched to Intel. Commodity PC hardware was dramatically outpacing the single-vendor solution that Apple had tried with it's PowerPC technology.
C.
Not necessarily. First you need to be able to tell what makes one competition "better" than another. A common standard tends to drive the competition towards the easiest metric - price. Home routers all comply with the same standards: Ethernet, 802.11, PPTP/L2TP on the WAN side, UPnP. They're all the same, so people buy according to price. They do differ on ease of configuration, but you really almost always only do it once, so that doesn't matter much.
If every drive came with its own interface, we might have had better/faster drives rather than just cheaper ones. We would have to pay more, though.
Apple ties in the iPhone software to the iPhone hardware. Sure you can't get an Android iPhone, but I think this gives you a better phone, though somewhat more expensive.
I don't care about "the market". The consumer are best served with the best package. The best package is sometimes the "best of breed" from the several manufacturers, or it may be the integrated package made by one manufacturer.
Besides, would you say that the market is better served by modular cameras/lenses such as SLRs, where you can get a camera from, say, Nikon and match it with a lens from Nikon, Sigma, Tamron or several others? Or is the market better served with the P&S cameras that come with a built-in lens?
Are we better served by a film camera where you need to buy the film from a third party, or a digital camera, where the "film" in included in the camera?
"Better served", in the case of camera types is entirely an misleading approach to photography. Film and digital each have their place, and the choice is entirely up to the consumer. There is NO doubt that P&S models do not offer the same control that SLR models offer, not to mention that there can also be a quality difference in the image produced by each.
Inks are another point that most do not understand. If you're just printing text, and or graphics for business presentations, then the ink used is not of major importance. But, if you're printing photos, then there's a helluva difference from one ink to another, and of course one printer to another. Some people bitch about Epson ink prices, those are the people that either don't know, or don't care about the quality of the finished image. Those who do care, including pros, use Epson ink for it's vastly superior image quality and print longevity. Not only that, but to folks who care about photos, the paper also matters, and it's of the utmost importance to have an ICC profile for each particular paper/ink combination than one uses. If you use a paper /ink combo that you don't have a profile for then you need to have a custom profile made, or live with the crap shoot results that come from not using the correct profile. Custom profiles can run from $30 and up to a much higher price, for each particular profile.
The "suckers" print directly from a camera, and print each and every image that was captured. These people bypass one of the main advantages of digital, the ability NOT to print every image. It goes without saying, that even for pros, every image is not worth the ink it takes to print it. That is a mentality leftover from shooing film, where if you shoot roll film, the entire roll must be processed. Digital offers the ability to pick and choose which images are printed.
People that don't care, or know better, look for low priced inks and think that they're getting a bargain. There is no free lunch, you get what you pay for. If people want to run OS X, let them buy a Mac, and quit whining!
Free markets are ones where competition thrives within a regulatory framework that keeps the playing field fair.
Free markets have to be free from both directions. Consumers need to be provided with fair competition. But business also needs the freedom to operate under what business model they choose. As long as it does not stifle other companies from being able to compete.
But companies who don't like the push and shove of real competition come up with legal tricks to give them a tactical edge.
"Sorry, we have designed this printer so that it only uses OUR ink. Using 3rd party ink is in violation of your user agreement."
You are attempting to limit the definition of competition to fit your point. Competition does not mean companies are required to share their IP. If one company comes up with a better idea than another company, that is competition. Forcing a company with a good idea to share that idea with its competitors is not necessarily fair competition.
Why innovate?? Why bother, why employ research and development staff? All you really need is a team of lawyers? There's millions of pages of copyright law, and patent law and contract law. Somewhere in there, there must be a trick that we can use to our advantage.
I don't understand this point at all. The point that you can patent your innovations that come from research and development is what spurs companies to spend money on research and development.
Just looking at printers again, look at the insanity of the present situation, there are literally hundreds of ink cartridge formats, all doing the same function. (Holding a few drops of liquid). The printer manufacturers put more effort into preventing ink piracy than they do into making better printers. Hey, don't worry if the paper jams, there are 23 patents on the cartridge. Hey did you know it registers as empty when it's sill 23% full?
Now imagine a common cartridge format agreed by manufacturers. A standard. Consumers would win out, and manufacturers would compete in making the best printer instead of the best ink marketing tool.
There are many printer companies to choose from. No one overwhelmingly dominates that market. With all of them attempting to lock you into their system, makes it even more important that they improve their product. Because of this printers and inks have improved. I'm not sure making a standard printer cartridge would necessarily improved the situation much from how it has turned out.
Cameras/film/lenses.
Printers/ink/paper.
Cars/tyres/fuel/radios/gps.
Computers/software.
VHS Players/tape.
Razors/Blades
The market is best served when consumers are free to chose multi-vendor solutions.
I don't understand these examples you have given. Their are various different types of all of these things you have listed. Their is little to no standardization between any of them.
SATA drives compete on price, capacity, size and performance. Different manufacturers can target different USPs. That's the benefit of standards.
As an example, look at the PC component market. It is all about standards. Memory, drives, displays, videoboards are all standards-based. Multiple vendors aggressively compete to be the fastest/cheapest/most feature-rich. This has driven-down prices and driven-up quality and performance.
Their was a time when computer manufacturers attempted to use differing interfaces. The industry decided collectively that standard interfaces worked towards the greater benefit. No one forced them to do it.
Apple acknowledged this when they switched to Intel. Commodity PC hardware was dramatically outpacing the single-vendor solution that Apple had tried with it's PowerPC technology.
PPC was not single vendor when Apple first switched to it. IBM and Motorola developed PPC for Apple. The thought at the time that PPC would widely replace the aging x86 architecture. That did not happen. But the original idea was not for Apple to be the only PPC user.
Their was a time when computer manufacturers attempted to use differing interfaces. The industry decided collectively that standard interfaces worked towards the greater benefit. No one forced them to do it.
True. But it is still a powerful example of how standards drive the market forwards.
PPC was not single vendor when Apple first switched to it. IBM and Motorola developed PPC for Apple. The thought at the time that PPC would widely replace the aging x86 architecture. That did not happen. But the original idea was not for Apple to be the only PPC user.
True again. But PPC *became* that. And once you are down to one vendor, progress is only as good as that vendor, innovation slows. Competition ceases.
The legal frameworks of most countries recognize that innovation is stifled by monopolies. But the legal tricks employed by some companies to protect themselves can prevent competition and can be equally damaging to the market.
C.
I don't understand these examples you have given. Their are various different types of all of these things you have listed. Their is little to no standardization between any of them.
Sorry, it was badly expressed. I was alluding to a horror world full of Canon film. Ford Fuel. And Epson Paper. It sounds ludicrous, but remember Sony Memory sticks?
C.
Sorry, it was badly expressed. I was alluding to a horror world full of Canon film. Ford Fuel. And Epson Paper. It sounds ludicrous, but remember Sony Memory sticks?
C.
Canon doesn't make film, and Ford doesn't make fuel, that is silly, but there is Epson branded paper. You're pushing this too far. If you buy a Boos brand cutting board you can use any knife on it, but if you want a knife blade for say an Oxo mandoline you have to buy the Oxo brand blade.
Say you bought a Nikon DSLR, there are third party lenses to fit the Nikon models, but not all of those third party lenses give the same fully functional control that Nikon branded lenses give. Nikon does NOT share their raw processing algorithms with third party (Adobe Photoshop, etc.) editors. Neither does Canon, or any others that I'm aware of, because that is proprietary info. If you want those Nikon algorithms, you must buy a Nikon editor, such as Nikon Capture NX/NX 2, and they won't open Canon raw images. Photoshop approximates, but does not match Nikon's algorithms, or anyone else's. You cannot force Nikon to give Adobe those algorithms, period.
This argument is pointless.
True. But it is still a powerful example of how standards drive the market forwards.
The market should be free to decide this for itself, not through laws and government regulations.
Its unlikely that the printer/cartridge situation will remain the same forever. AT some point someone will come up with a better idea than anything we are thinking of now. Government intervention does not leave room for those new ideas.
The operating system itself will inevitably hold less influence than it does now. As broadband speeds improve and web services become more sophisticated the role of OS will change.
I believe Apple is likely to turn OS X into something more like the iPhone OS. Where the entire OS can be a gateway onto the internet, not limited through the browser. Icons for AppleInsider, New York Times, and Wikipedia will sit in the dock next to native apps. These web apps will be user interface shells that download web data.
Access to web services would require a less sophisticated OS. This opens opportunities for others to create an OS that serves this need. Someone could make a $200 netbook that uses a simple OS to access web services.
If the law forces Apple to freely license OS X, which comes to dominate a section of the market second to Windows. There is no telling how that could potentially effect the market and stifle other new ideas. The law needs to leave it alone and let it naturally develop.
True again. But PPC *became* that. And once you are down to one vendor, progress is only as good as that vendor, innovation slows. Competition ceases.
It can also be argued that PPC actually provided more competition as a viable alternative to x86 which essentially means Intel. When Apple switched from PPC to Intel. That effectively was the last fight of a viable processor architecture to compete with against x86 and the last fight of a major computer manufacturer against Intel.
The legal frameworks of most countries recognize that innovation is stifled by monopolies. But the legal tricks employed by some companies to protect themselves can prevent competition and can be equally damaging to the market.
That depends on the nature of the monopoly. If a company owns a monopoly because the market selected it as having the best solution. That company will be forced to innovate to protect its position, because others will certainly attempt to compete.
But I'm not sure the purpose of arguing this point, as nothing Apple is doing with OS X damages the computer market.
The market should be free to decide this for itself, not through laws and government regulations.
I utterly agree. I am arguing for *less* reliance on laws and regulations. Copyright and patent law are weaponized by large companies to crush the competition.
Here's a great example of how Patent and copyright law are being abused as a means to attack competitors.
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm
C.
Basic SVGA / VESA is needed for fall back so install disk does not need to update for each new video card that ati / nvidia makes so you can just get the driver from them / down load a mac os update that has them.
Also some of the work is just removing PCI ID locks.
Sorry, as I said, I wasn't quite sure exactly what point you were trying to make. Apparently I guessed incorrectly.
If Psystar where to win then apple should be forced to remove the locks that lock to apple hardware only.
I disagree. In my opinion, the only thing that would happen even in the remote possibility that Psystar were to win, would be confirmation that Psystar was authorized to perform whatever re-engineering steps were necessary to make the Mac OS install on non-Apple hardware then sell the combined product.
The onus would be, and by all rights should be, on Psystar, not Apple, to do any work required to modify the OS in whatever ways would be necessary to make the "marriage" between Apple software and non-Apple hardware work, and then to provide the technical support for the final modified product. (As best as they can figure out, at least.)
Apple would not be obliged to change their software design at all. (However, they probably would in fact change their software design. But in the opposite direction... If Psystar was going to be authorized to sell these machines, then Apple would make them work for it. They'd modify the OS in such a way to make it even more difficult to install on non-Apple hadrware, thus maximizing the amount of re-engineering effort that Psystar would need to invest in to make their products work.)
I look at it as similar to the DMCA temporary exemption which makes it legal to remove SIM locks from cell phones without the manufacturer's or carrier's consent: Sure, it's not prohibited and you won't be guilty of a crime when you do it. But still, the manufacturers are permitted to create the locks in the first place and come up with new and better ways to secure the locks when their previous methods are broken. And they are not obliged to provide any assistance in the lock removal process.
To extend the car analogy, the fact that it would be legal to put a BMW engine inside a Honda car in no way would put any obligation on BMW to plan for compatibility with non-BMW cars as it designs its engines.
The legal frameworks of most countries recognize that innovation is stifled by monopolies. But the legal tricks employed by some companies to protect themselves can prevent competition and can be equally damaging to the market.
True, but "voluntary" industry standards can stifle innovation just as well as a monopoly or government standards. Note the demise of Firewire.
Moreover, I don't see how it would be hard to show a jury illegal copying has occurred, the license pretty clearly states it is illegal to install the purchased copy on any machine other then a Mac. A jury is much more likely to understand that notion then the convoluted argument that Apple isn't allowed to choose who it sells it's OS to.
Moreover, a jury can ultimately decide whatever it wants. On Appeal, a highly educated panel of judges very familiar with copyright will decide the manner. That is in the very unlikely case that it goes that far.
Back to Psystar, it really is not 100% clear.
Apple SELL stand-alone copies of OSX.
For each computer, Psystar purchase one full-price copy of OSX and install it on the customer's behalf. And then give you the box as the proof. It would be hard to convince a jury that any illegal copying has occurred.
C.
Yes, but Napster already saw the writing on the wall. A court ruled that Napster knew that their users were violating copyright laws and did nothing to stop it. Thus may be liable for billions of dollars in fine. Eventually Bertelsmann, an initial investor in Napster, acquired Napster and paid out over $400 million to settle the suit with the other Music labels. Because the other labels claimed that Bertelsmann was the one financing Napster when they were helping their users steal music.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&type=business
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/02/....03/index.html
http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/entry/4...suit-for-130m/