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Okay I think it's about time I made a blog for all the people who are involved in this ever long debate with operating systems and brands and what good technology is and what bad technology is.
First off all let's get one things straight: Just because the product is made by a certain company and that company is good at what it does, doesn't mean that that one product is the best out of all of it's competitors.
That doesn't make sense? See this:
[youtube]FL7yD-0pqZg[/youtube]
The dude's right, if Apple took a brick, stuck its logo on the back, and called it an iPhone, a majority of the people would still think its made with Apple's "top-brand quality".
On the subject of Apple's quality, its actually not all that different from its competitors but you still end up buying it overpriced.
Now in terms of iPods and Apple's music industry, I think they're a bit overrated but only because consumers decide to make them ubiquitous. iPods are everywhere and frankly they do work well. Are they overpriced? Yes a little bit, but not by much. Not as much as other Apple products.
iTunes. Thank god you don't have to use it. Other software can do the same thing as iTunes and they actually don't hog system resources (astonishing, I know!). However, the iTunes Store is something completely different. Probably one of the most overpriced music stores ever. They charge more than their competitors and then what do they do? That attach DRM so you're forced to use iTunes. Wait, WTF? I thought we stopped using iTunes cuz it was so clunky. I guess we'll have to find an alternative.
Amazon Music is the answer. DRM-Free music at a reasonable price in the most widely known music format in the world, MP3. Amazon's Cloud service just make it even better to use everywhere. Well what about iCloud? What about it, it doesn't do anything special. We've had cloud computing for a long time and network analysis actually depicts that iCloud services don't even point to Apple, they point to Microsoft's Azure services and Amazon's Cloud services. Once again, Apple isn't innovating, they're just refining what's already been invented and then charging you for the control that they have on the consumer.
So Apple Tax is defined finally. The reason behind Apple's overpriced products is not in their hardware or software but in the control the company has over what the consumer can and can't do. To maintain this control, the company has to pay up and their level of vertical integration goes to the point that they need to charge consumers for their own exclusivity on their products. Now I'm not sure if that made a whole lot of sense but let's look at Macs.
Let's open them up and see what's inside this Mac Pro for $2500. Let's see it's processor is an Intel X4 Xenon Nehlam clocked at 2.8GHz. Graphics is an ATI Radeon 5770 1GB. Everything else is generic hardware such has hard drive, memory, and optical drive. . So why the hell does it freakin' cost $2500 for this machine that made up of PC-hardware? Is it the software? Last time I checked, OS X was $30.
So Macs are PC's made with specific hardware for OS X. So why am I paying double the amount for this machine if its internals, when priced on the PC market, don't add up to even half the price of Apple's machine? Oh I guess I forgot about the aluminum case. I guess it costs a lot of money for the aluminum case. My bad.
That brings us to the in-between case of OSx86 or in other words, Hackintoshes. A Hackintosh by definition is a computer with non-Apple hardware running OS X. Well Apple hardware=PC hardware so I'm not sure this different than the normal Mac. I guess its that aluminum case once again, darn that aluminum.
So normal computer hardware can be engineered to run OS X but Apple still insists on pricing it so high? WHY? I just can't fathom why.
However I have to say, any OS based on UNIX kick's Windows' ass at the moment. If Microsoft used a different file system (not NTFS), fixed the permissions system (not UAC), and somehow got rid of the registry, then I'd say Windows NT would be a good core component to use.
Apple rant is over.
Let's move on to Canon. Bless them, they're actually good at the professional cameras they make and I mean REALLY good. Have you seen their latest line of SLR's? They're pretty nice.
However, I was provoked to talk about them because of their compact point-and-shoot cameras. They're a little expensive and don't exactly live up to what I want in terms of some features but I view them just as Apple's iPods: a little expensive but they do the job well.
I was talking to someone about me trading in my Samsung PL200 for Panasonic's DMC-FH25K because the PL200 can't take pictures of a moving object indoors for its life. They immeditaely told me, as if it was law, that only Canon's cameras have the technology to take good pictures in low light. I didn't say anything outloud but my thought process went kinda like this: BULLSHIT.
Canon's cameras are great, don't get me wrong, but for a point-and-shoot there are better alternatives. Their HS System or High-Sensitivity System is what the person was talking about and its not a unique system. Other cameras have similar engines. Such as my Panasonic of choice is running Panasonic's 5th generation Venus Engine which is basically their competition to Canon's HS System. So if the two cameras are equally matched in terms image processing, why would I go with the one with less features? Just because it was made by Canon?
Okay this blog is effectively over. If you had the stamina to read through all that, leave your comments.
TL;DR: Just because a product is made by a certain company doesn't make it good. Many examples from Apple and Canon. Apple's computers are overpriced and I can't fathom why. iTunes & its store suck. Canon's point-and-shoot cameras a bit overpriced and lack features in comparison to competitors.
First off all let's get one things straight: Just because the product is made by a certain company and that company is good at what it does, doesn't mean that that one product is the best out of all of it's competitors.
That doesn't make sense? See this:
[youtube]FL7yD-0pqZg[/youtube]
The dude's right, if Apple took a brick, stuck its logo on the back, and called it an iPhone, a majority of the people would still think its made with Apple's "top-brand quality".
On the subject of Apple's quality, its actually not all that different from its competitors but you still end up buying it overpriced.
Now in terms of iPods and Apple's music industry, I think they're a bit overrated but only because consumers decide to make them ubiquitous. iPods are everywhere and frankly they do work well. Are they overpriced? Yes a little bit, but not by much. Not as much as other Apple products.
iTunes. Thank god you don't have to use it. Other software can do the same thing as iTunes and they actually don't hog system resources (astonishing, I know!). However, the iTunes Store is something completely different. Probably one of the most overpriced music stores ever. They charge more than their competitors and then what do they do? That attach DRM so you're forced to use iTunes. Wait, WTF? I thought we stopped using iTunes cuz it was so clunky. I guess we'll have to find an alternative.
Amazon Music is the answer. DRM-Free music at a reasonable price in the most widely known music format in the world, MP3. Amazon's Cloud service just make it even better to use everywhere. Well what about iCloud? What about it, it doesn't do anything special. We've had cloud computing for a long time and network analysis actually depicts that iCloud services don't even point to Apple, they point to Microsoft's Azure services and Amazon's Cloud services. Once again, Apple isn't innovating, they're just refining what's already been invented and then charging you for the control that they have on the consumer.
So Apple Tax is defined finally. The reason behind Apple's overpriced products is not in their hardware or software but in the control the company has over what the consumer can and can't do. To maintain this control, the company has to pay up and their level of vertical integration goes to the point that they need to charge consumers for their own exclusivity on their products. Now I'm not sure if that made a whole lot of sense but let's look at Macs.
Let's open them up and see what's inside this Mac Pro for $2500. Let's see it's processor is an Intel X4 Xenon Nehlam clocked at 2.8GHz. Graphics is an ATI Radeon 5770 1GB. Everything else is generic hardware such has hard drive, memory, and optical drive. . So why the hell does it freakin' cost $2500 for this machine that made up of PC-hardware? Is it the software? Last time I checked, OS X was $30.
So Macs are PC's made with specific hardware for OS X. So why am I paying double the amount for this machine if its internals, when priced on the PC market, don't add up to even half the price of Apple's machine? Oh I guess I forgot about the aluminum case. I guess it costs a lot of money for the aluminum case. My bad.
That brings us to the in-between case of OSx86 or in other words, Hackintoshes. A Hackintosh by definition is a computer with non-Apple hardware running OS X. Well Apple hardware=PC hardware so I'm not sure this different than the normal Mac. I guess its that aluminum case once again, darn that aluminum.
So normal computer hardware can be engineered to run OS X but Apple still insists on pricing it so high? WHY? I just can't fathom why.
However I have to say, any OS based on UNIX kick's Windows' ass at the moment. If Microsoft used a different file system (not NTFS), fixed the permissions system (not UAC), and somehow got rid of the registry, then I'd say Windows NT would be a good core component to use.
Apple rant is over.
Let's move on to Canon. Bless them, they're actually good at the professional cameras they make and I mean REALLY good. Have you seen their latest line of SLR's? They're pretty nice.
However, I was provoked to talk about them because of their compact point-and-shoot cameras. They're a little expensive and don't exactly live up to what I want in terms of some features but I view them just as Apple's iPods: a little expensive but they do the job well.
I was talking to someone about me trading in my Samsung PL200 for Panasonic's DMC-FH25K because the PL200 can't take pictures of a moving object indoors for its life. They immeditaely told me, as if it was law, that only Canon's cameras have the technology to take good pictures in low light. I didn't say anything outloud but my thought process went kinda like this: BULLSHIT.
Canon's cameras are great, don't get me wrong, but for a point-and-shoot there are better alternatives. Their HS System or High-Sensitivity System is what the person was talking about and its not a unique system. Other cameras have similar engines. Such as my Panasonic of choice is running Panasonic's 5th generation Venus Engine which is basically their competition to Canon's HS System. So if the two cameras are equally matched in terms image processing, why would I go with the one with less features? Just because it was made by Canon?
Okay this blog is effectively over. If you had the stamina to read through all that, leave your comments.
TL;DR: Just because a product is made by a certain company doesn't make it good. Many examples from Apple and Canon. Apple's computers are overpriced and I can't fathom why. iTunes & its store suck. Canon's point-and-shoot cameras a bit overpriced and lack features in comparison to competitors.