Lol @ me? I'm a PC user, but not a fanboy either way. I have never used Apple because (in the past few years) I find their marketing obnoxious and I like to tinker with my PC. I do have an iPad and an iPhone.

I was gonna list my PC specs and their costs and then realized what a waste of time that is. Just for one example my case cost $400+, not $250. It's a big giant black hunk of brushed aluminum. It's bad-ass. Never have I looked at an Apple product and thought "bad-ass."


>> ^jmzero:

Or you could buy good PCs and see the price is pretty much the same.

Lol @budzos. Mac people have always said this, and it has always been funny. They used to have some magic wiggle room because so many parts were different (different processor, especially) - but that's mostly gone now. OK, so here you can get a quad core Mac Pro for $2499. Let's see what those parts it lists are worth:
Processor: $316 (here's the specific model)
Graphics Card: $109 (here's actually a slightly better model)
6GB of RAM: $100 (good RAM for that premium)
1TB hard disk: $100 (decent hard disk for that)
Motherboard: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Case: $250 (let's get a nice one)
Optical drive: $100
So far we're at $1225. Maybe they've got some Apple magic (whoo! Superdrive!) to make up a couple hundred more dollars - but it's going to take a lot to spend another $1275 (ie. more than double). If you prefer a Mac, go ahead and get one - but pretending they're the same price is silly.
To be clear, I don't hate Apple and some of their products are reasonably priced now. A Macbook Air, for example, has been a good deal for a while and is still much nicer than its competitors. But their hardware has historically been way more expensive, and lots of it still has a significant premium attached.

Cat confused the magazine for an iPad.

I discounted it for being half eaten.>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^critical_d:
Cost of an iPad 3 = $500
Carrot = $1.00
Realizing that you just humiliated (to a global audience) the one person who will be choosing your retirement home = Priceless

What kind of carrots are you buying for a dollar each?

>> ^critical_d:

Cost of an iPad 3 = $500
Carrot = $1.00
Realizing that you just humiliated (to a global audience) the one person who will be choosing your retirement home = Priceless

What kind of carrots are you buying for a dollar each?

Cost of an iPad 3 = $500

Carrot = $1.00

Realizing that you just humiliated (to a global audience) the one person who will be choosing your retirement home = Priceless

No - as described she also had her iPad - the organ sounds at 2:18 were clearly not her vocals.

After a week of using an iPad: Dont want no apples! Gimme IBanana!

The best bit of that was the item about "cheap dads" raving about the new Nexus tablet being $300 cheaper than an ipad.

Some points:

* No sir, you are completely WRONG about vertical videos, they are hard to watch, and are ridiculous. You not being bothered to hold your phone horizontally is the problem, not people who don't want to watch something where the majority of visual information is in the direction our eyes are not.

* His gripes against Apple are largely correct. I mean, they do prescribe how you must use things and what you must have on your device, but that's not entirely unfair. I mean, it's kind of fair for an OS to be able to expect that certain components just will be there. The camera app, the email app and so on.

* Not being able to remove them from your 'home screens' because Apple doesn't differentiate between a 'desktop' and a list of all installed apps is kind of the problem here. Android has google apps that you can't get rid of unless you root your device and then risk it not working properly. But you don't have to really ever see those apps because you just don't put them on your homescreens.

But in general he's quite correct (except the vertical video thing, he's wrong on that), and it's why I just soooo dislike using apple products in general. I think their hardware is largely nice (although the original iPad lacking a camera at all, then the iPad 2 rocking an amazingly crap one, much in line with the iPhones' original crappy cameras), but when using software to interact with iOS devices I end up going insane. I HATE iTunes, it's insanely restrictive and locked down and... urgh... I dislike not being able to make an iPhone or iPad have nicely clutter free 'desktops' with what I want on them, but am restricted to just rows of icons and folders.

And people flock to them... and ooh and ahh as Apple announce features that have been around for years in other devices and crow about them like they're brand new and amazing. (Facetime anyone? Really, it's been around for yeeeeeaaaars in Australia over the mobile networks, no WiFi needed. And you know what? Pretty much no one uses them. It's as easy as just making a call, except you do it as a video call, but no-one cares, no-one uses it.

And yet Apple launch facetime and everyone goes nuts.

Do you know anyone at all who uses it?

Skype, sure... because when you're at home or office or in a hotel room, that's when you want to be able to talk to someone and see them, and it being on an object on a table works really well... when you're on a phone? Not that many applications.

Ha! And a few other things about this film;

What's with the 3D computer graphics and in the "later" films there are no such things?

Would you really land your ship on the planet? And that easily? Wouldn't you have a landing ship for the occasion and have a bit of a job navigating as well? Instead they land right on the button and can drive back and forth from the alien ship as easily as going to the shops.

The first bit that made me facepalm was the panicking scientists who then magically get lost despite bringing the floating mapping balls. And they forgot their ipads with google maps on them.

And then they took their helmets off. Jay-sus.

When the other crew leave rashly bagging samples - they could surely pop back later - they hop onto the bikes because the truck has gone. Where did the truck go?

I could keep going. I don't mind silly things like this in the right movie but this tried to take itself reasonably seriously. But if you can't be bothered to get basic details correct and create plausible, believable characters then you end up with a dud.

I'm not hopeful for that Blade Runner sequel.

History will sort it out for you. 100 years from now everyone will remember the iPad is just a rehashed Microsoft Surface, and the iPhone is just a Samsung Galaxy with a small screen.

>> ^shuac:

Very true. And while all technology products are derivative of earlier products to some degree, I think Microsoft does more bandwagon-jumping than most. Let's look at the evidence.
Java, made by Sun. "Reimagined" by Microsoft.
Console gaming, made by Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, et al. Microsoft gives us Xbox.
Online Music, pioneered by Napster, made legitimate by Apple. Microsoft gives us MSN Music.
MP3 player, pioneered by Rio, made super popular by Apple. Microsoft gives us Zune.
Internet search, pioneered by Archie in 1990, made insanely profitable by Google. Microsoft gives us MSN. And Live Search. And Bing.
Far as tablet computing goes, Microsoft actually has a much bigger history than Apple. I remember MS peddling tablets back in 2001 with XP. Trouble is, XP was never designed as a touch interface. Even as recent as 2008, Microsoft tried this strategy with the Origami.
The innovation Apple made is to take its smartphone OS (whose design is based on touch) and pull it up to the tablet rather than take a full-blown desktop OS and push it down. This is the idea Microsoft is copying with Surface and Windows 8.
Other than Kinect, which is an innovative product since it is more than merely a response to the Wii, I'm not sure Microsoft invented anything. Even its flagship Office suite is based on earlier software (WordStar, WordPerfect, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3). In fact, when Microsoft first licensed MS-DOS to IBM for a huge profit back in 1981, it was essentially QDOS, which they purchased outright from some guy for $50,000. Deal of the century.
You may say, "Well Apple didn't invent the MP3 player. Why aren't they guilty of copying too?"
They are. But Microsoft's history is rife with this sort of "me-too" thing in a way no other company's is. Let me distil my point into one sentence: How many companies are copying Microsoft's products?
To sum up: Microsoft is slim on innovation, fat on looking over the shoulders of the smart kids in class...>> ^Sarzy:
>> ^mtadd:
Microsoft never fails to innovate their name on someone else's product.

Yes, because the iPad was, of course, the first tablet ever.



Cool story bro.

No, seriously though, you do raise some interesting arguments. The only point I was trying to make is that it seems a bit reductionist to dismiss the Surface as merely an iPad clone, when it seems like Microsoft is legitimately trying to do some interesting things with it and Windows 8, rather than just jumping on the iPad bandwagon.

Very true. And while all technology products are derivative of earlier products to some degree, I think Microsoft does more bandwagon-jumping than most. Let's look at the evidence.

* Java, made by Sun. "Reimagined" by Microsoft.
* Console gaming, made by Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, et al. Microsoft gives us Xbox.
* Online Music, pioneered by Napster, made legitimate by Apple. Microsoft gives us MSN Music.
* MP3 player, pioneered by Rio, made super popular by Apple. Microsoft gives us Zune.
* Internet search, pioneered by Archie in 1990, made insanely profitable by Google. Microsoft gives us MSN. And Live Search. And Bing.

Far as tablet computing goes, Microsoft actually has a much bigger history than Apple. I remember MS peddling tablets back in 2001 with XP. Trouble is, XP was never designed as a touch interface. Even as recent as 2008, Microsoft tried this strategy with the Origami.

The innovation Apple made is to take its smartphone OS (whose design is based on touch) and pull it up to the tablet rather than take a full-blown desktop OS and push it down. This is the idea Microsoft is copying with Surface and Windows 8.

Other than Kinect, which is an innovative product since it is more than merely a response to the Wii, I'm not sure Microsoft invented anything. Even its flagship Office suite is based on earlier software (WordStar, WordPerfect, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3). In fact, when Microsoft first licensed MS-DOS to IBM for a huge profit back in 1981, it was essentially QDOS, which they purchased outright from some guy for $50,000. Deal of the century.

You may say, "Well Apple didn't invent the MP3 player. Why aren't they guilty of copying too?"

They are. But Microsoft's history is rife with this sort of "me-too" thing in a way no other company's is. Let me distil my point into one sentence: How many companies are copying Microsoft's products?

To sum up: Microsoft is slim on innovation, fat on looking over the shoulders of the smart kids in class...>> ^Sarzy:

>> ^mtadd:
Microsoft never fails to innovate their name on someone else's product.

Yes, because the iPad was, of course, the first tablet ever.