gentooguy

anantksundaram said:

Yeah, the big HomePod was SUCH a hit, we need a small one. 

Make it work with a typical TV or shut it down. 

Huh? No one uses the Google Home or Amazon Echo devices as soundbars, not even the Home Max/Echo Studio devices that cost about as much as a HomePod. So there was no expectation for Apple to come out with a device that is actually cheaper than all good soundbars (or good stereo systems) just so people can hook them up to their Roku smart TVs and save a bit of money. Apple wanted the HomePod to be a HomeKit ecosystem device, full stop.

the monk said:

seanismorris said:

I had no idea they were in the video streaming market.

Me neither which is why they’re probably closing down. They wanted to be like an Amazon. For Pete’s sake, stick to what you know.

You may wish to take your own advice. Wal-Mart launched Vudu almost 20 years ago to sell MP3 downloads and DVDs, and later to sell digital copies of DVDs and Blu-Rays. They were only streaming the movies that you had already purchased on the site, or previous to then had purchased from Wal-Mart and redeemed through Vudu. Fandango was one of their partners back then, part of the UltraViolet digital locker consortium, along with Flixster. Amazon was going to join Ultraviolet also, but decided to use their own tech. Still, just like Wal-Mart, back in the day, "Prime Video" was also simply a way to download and watch digital copies of DVDs that you bought or rented through Amazon Prime, and you even needed your own "Prime Player" to do it (because they were DRMed to keep you from playing it on VLC, iTunes, Windows Media Player or anything else) and didn't launch their legit streaming service until years later. Curious thing though with music ... where Amazon automatically loaded the songs that you bought through them into iTunes, Wal-Mart tried to compete with Apple with Microsoft and their Zune Player thing where your songs would be added to the Windows Media Player library automatically. (You had to port them into iTunes manually.) But that is an aside. Yes, Wal-Mart considered their own streaming service, but mainly because streaming services hammered DVD and Blu-Ray sales. Another thing that hurt them was the "MoviesAnywhere" service (which was created by Disney to compete with Ultraviolet. This was back before Marvel and Star Wars when Universal, Paramount and even Sony were bigger movie industry players than Disney). UltraViolet collapsed soon after. True, Wal-Mart joined it, but most people simply imported their old digital content from Wal-Mart to other platforms like Amazon and iTunes and used those to watch their old "purchased from Wal-Mart" movies and to buy new ones. Wal-Mart wasn't benefiting from that arrangement at all and now they are getting out. Fandango has a better shot because it is better integrated with the movie industry but even with Vudu's customers it is still an uphill battle for them.

dysamoria said:

gilly33 said:

Typical coming out of Washington. I have no confidence in these damn politicians no matter what party they represent. This crisis has further exposed how f**ked up the system is and both parties have been playing with the public’s interest long before this. This is still the greatest country in the world in my opinion but what a joke we are right now. But it’s easier to pretend they care about our privacy. Both parties need to be held accountable for this debacle and whole thing needs an overall. How and when that will ever happen is another story. Just my two cents. 

“Greatest country in the world” is nationalism. Be a patriot, not a nationalist.

First of all quit imposing your ideology on people. Second, there is nothing wrong with being a nationalist. Being a nationalist means liking your own country better than other countries and having a vested interest in it, a sensible position because your own political, economic and social fate is inextricably tied to your own country. So any patriotism without that sense of nationalism is just empty words. Third, the problem isn't when you prefer your country to others. The problem is that when you try to impose your preference for your country on others. I recall reading somewhere that when Nazi Germany took over Austria, they required the Austrian kids to be taught their own inherent inferiority to the Germans ... and they required the Austrian kids to learn German for that purpose! Sorry, but the idea that "everything that falls short of my own cosmopolitanism is fascism" that you see bandied about these days is wrong. In fact if you go back so much as a few years, even very liberal or progressive Democrats like Tom Daschle, Jimmy Carter and (oh yeah) Barack Obama and Joe Biden never claimed that and frequently proclaimed their opinion that America was the greatest country in the world. 

gatorguy said:

loopless said:

Our company is a heavy buyer of Dell workstations and laptops. Without exception that are unmitigated pieces of junk that barely last 2 years. The number of failures we have with Dells is tragic and they are just poorly designed built to a price throw away crap. Compared to the amazing longevity of Apple hardware there is no comparison. Just helped a friend replace his perfectly functional 2008 MacBook Pro. My 2014 27” iMac is a joy to use.

Your experience is just the opposite of ours. I don't remember any Dell computer in our company failing "after just two years", and in fact we're just now in the process of replacing one in accounting that's been in service for 14 years. Others in the company are as much as 9 years old and show no signs of failure. Heck we just upgraded two of those almost decade old machines to Win10 without issue, and I think there's one or two more older Win7 computers to do. 

Exactly. What this guy failed to realize when he threw that out there: the Windows PC business is extremely competitive, a shark tank with like 8-10 companies with excellent R&D and marketing departments fighting over what for most of them are tiny margins. And enterprise/home consumers have none of the loyalty that they did maybe 20-25 years ago when companies had the "we only wear Brooks Bros, drive Mercedes and use IBM here." These days if another Windows manufacturer comes along with a better deal they'll switch without batting an eye. So if Dells actually were that bad or even close, his company would have switched to Lenovo or HP long ago. 

p-dog said:

And at a starting price of $399, the iPhone SE is yet again a threat to Android ASPs in their typical $250-$400 range. Many Android users are aspirational, only using their (non-flagship) Android phones because of their commodity prices. A super fast $400 iPhone can help them attain their dreams.

If that were true then Android users would have used iPhones back when most carriers - basically all but T-Mobile - would give you the phone for free in return for a two year contract. They definitely would have switched when the iPhone SE came out. Look, everything that iPhone advocates have claimed would cause legions of Android owners to abandon the platform have come and gone. The end of AT&T exclusivity. The adoption of 4G. The switch to 64 bit. The switch to biometrics. Apple Pay. Privacy/security/malware issues. Apple going bigger than 4' screens. The iPhone SE. None of that has changed. Android OEMs - save HTC and Sony - haven't exited the business because for them Android devices are as profitable as anything else they make. Asus, Acer, ZTE etc. weren't rolling in billions before Android so not making iPhone profits is no reason for them to stop. (Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus and others weren't selling consumer products - or literally didn't exist at all - before Android.) They won't until Android has a significant drop in marketshare. It hasn't. Despite DED's quarterly column for the past 12 years claiming that it would - which included various claims such as Google giving up on Android, OEMs abandoning Android for another OS, Microsoft crushing Android etc. - Android has maintained about 50% marketshare in the U.S. and 70% worldwide since breakthrough devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2 and Note, the LG G2 and the HTC One came about in 2011. People who want a cheap iPhone have always been able to get them. You can get an iPhone 7 cheaper than an iPhone SE 2 right now on major carriers and an iPhone 8 for the same price. So it is not aspirational. The Android advantages that DED dismissed above ... people like. Lots of them. That is why for the past several years study after study has shown Android users to be more loyal than their iPhone counterparts. They may switch from brand to brand. But they like what Android offers. People just like different things. No problem with that. You would expect Apple fans to understand this. Apple TV has a 13% market share. Macs have a 7 percent global market share. HomePods have a 3% market share. It has always been this way. The only products where Apple has ever enjoyed bigger than a 25% market share are the iPod, iPad (35%) and iPhone. So why is it that Apple fans insist on trying to justify the fact that 50% of the American population and 70% of the world population likes something else? People. Like. Android. Companies. Make. Money. Making. And. Selling. Android. Devices. It isn't going to change. If it does, the change will come from Google deciding to replace Android with Fuchsia. Google is expected to launch the first Fucshia device in 2021. Even if Fuchsia takes off it will just replace one Google platform that Apple fans irrationality hate with another.

GG1 said:

dysamoria said:

Can anyone tell me the last time a corporation’s CEO was actually held personally accountable for anything the corporation did? We had corporate executives literally crash our economy and no one went to jail (or did I miss something?).

Madoff (technically not a CEO, but still in charge)

Being held accountable for the illegal things that you personally did while working at a company is not equivalent to being held accountable for the actions of the corporation itself. Were that the case, every time a corporation declares bankruptcy the creditors would be able to take out liens against assets of everyone who works for the company the way the are able to do so over an individual's private debts.

knowitall said:

It would be nice to have FaceTime on Android. We could bin Zoom and WhatsApp in that case.

I disagree. I am a multi-platform open source guy. While I believe that major platforms should allow a high degree of interoperability with others - which iOS does - they should reserve the right to reserve platform exclusives for the benefit of themselves and their customers. And as someone who likes, uses and defends Google products allow me to state that Apple's dominance with FaceTime and iMesssage are Google's own fault. Google had EXCELLENT messaging products for years and just needed to develop and promote them. Instead, they trashed them and any strategy they might have had in order to promote this failed attempt to create a social network to compete with Facebook (which is being abandoned by the very young people that overwhelmingly prefer iPhones and iPads and love Facetime and iMessage). I repeat: Google was in this space with great apps before the iPhone even came out (remember Google Chat and Google Talk?) and then when they launched Android they launched Google Voice and Google Messenger with them. All of them worked outstanding, Chat/Talk/Voice linked with Gmail had desktop and web versions too. All Google needed to do was promote those and add new features to it in order to have a comprehensive multi-platform messaging product and strategy built around those and their already existing integration with Chrome and Gmail. But they trashed it all in a failed attempt to compete with Facebook and haven't had a coherent strategy or common set of apps since. I was actually using Google Voice to make and receive calls from on my iPod Touch over Wi-Fi back in the day, including using it to dial into Webex for work. Worked great. To this day Google hasn't advertised how great Google Voice is, yet they wasted billions trying to prop up Google+ and Google Hangouts. Maybe it is for the best. Had Chat/Talk(which offered video!)/Voice/Messenger reached its potential, Google might have gotten "too big" bringing the DOJ hammer down on it. Apple, for all its prowess, has most of its services locked into its own hardware ecosystem which makes them impervious to anti-trust claims to everyone but haters of Apple and haters of American capitalism (even if Apple is the brand of choice among the Bernie-and-Elizabeth social democrat crowd but that is another story for another day).