Gadgets: Ten things that changed if you spent the last five years in hypersleep
1. Sony finally got it, but still doesn't get it.
Sony finally ditched proprietary music files, but still hasn't updated its copy 'n' control development model. And get this: the latest Playstation is getting its rear end kicked by both Microsoft and Nintendo. Nintendo! Sir Howard's obviously tired of wrapping duct tape around the beast and the stock's in the toilet. But then again, whose isn't?
2. No-one admits it, but piracy is mainstream.
The music industry has realized that DRM, and suing its own customers, is self-destructive. But instead of adapting, the labels stand proudly at the bow of their sinking ship, saluting the sunset.
3. Apple has 20% consumer market share.
If you've got a decent laptop and you're not getting it on the company dime, it might well have a picture of an Apple on it.
4. iPhone is no longer a dusty Linksys trademark.
Speaking of Apple, it's now selling an iPod phone that's quite the talking point. Palm is on an inexplicable death march up a magical fantasy rainbow made of Linux. All the more depressing for it is Google, which did the exact same thing but managed to get it finished before the second coming of Christ.
5. Firefox sucks
You know that efficient fast Mozilla spinoff browser, "Phoenix," that everyone's talking about? It changed its name twice, stole 20 percent market share from IE, then became the bloated, floating corpse of its own promise.
6. Netbooks
Those cheap, nasty subnotebooks that HP and NEC occasionally try and flog to vertical markets are now the hottest thing on Earth. They call them "Netbooks" now. Just about everyone makes one except Apple and Sony. For while, they tried to rebadge Handheld PCs as "Ultramobile PCs," ruining their battery life by having them run full-scale operating systems, but no-one fell for it.
7. A new optical disk format war brewed, exploded and was won...
... But people can get high-definition movies streamed over cable TV, and things ain't looking too hot for the winner. Yes, we all threw away cathode ray tubes and rear-projection sets and bought plasma TVs. No, DLP did not really take off.
7b. So how did watching mini-DVDs on the handheld PlayStation work out?
Don't ask.
8. No, you can't have fast fiber-optic internet. Not yours.
The U.S. isn't in the top 5 on the broadband penetration charts anymore. It's barely in the top 20. Sen. John McCain may have email, but he wouldn't know it.
9. Bloggers, not AOL, took over the internet.
There are now about 40,000 gadget blogs, not just Gadgeteer, Gizmodo and Engadget. Hi, mom!
10. It's a WWANtopia out here!
Cellphones are now offered with reasonable agreements and a diverse set of contractual options. SMS messaging is no longer more expensive than using a satellite phone, and carriers no longer act like a cartel, rationing new cellular technologies to maximize quarterly profits over the long-term competitive well-being of their own industry. Haha, got you. Yeah, they're still a bunch of arseholes.
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Of course, one thing that hasn't changed in the gadget world over the last half-decade: We still don't have hypersleep.
Jesus, the rip on Firefox is the only thing I don't really understand. Other than that, a good recap. My only question is: why?
Yeah, Firefox DOES suck now. What are the rest of you cool kids using on your mac's?
If you've only been in hypersleep for a month:
Your stock portfolio is worth as much as your college couch.
The Republican VP candidate has been around snow too long.
DSLRs can videotape your debauchery too now.
Phish is going to make your brain explode again.
Clay Aiken has run out of surprises.
Your right about FF. After ditching Internet Exploder years ago, I have been a FF user for some time. But over the past year, it has become unusable. With just one tab open, it uses 90% of my system resources. It stops me from multitasking at all. Its bloated, and not the joy it once was. It can't deal with flash video to save its life. Now I swap tween Chrome, Safari, and yes, when I have to, exploder.
Mozilla, please get things fixed, I want you back in my life.
firefox sux
"Apple has 20% consumer market share" - Where did you get that figure? The link you point to shows Apple with a Q2 2008 market share of 10.6%, which, incidentally, is 10.6% of laptops, not all computers.
Secondly, your statement "If you've got a decent laptop and you're not getting it on the company dime, it's probably got a picture of an Apple on it." Again, where do you come up with that? Even if your initial statement were true (that Apple has 20%), your second statement is still false: 20% is far from a majority, therefore, "...your laptop is probably not an Apple."
It seems to me that you're stating personal opinion as fact, or perhaps by viewing statistics through Apple-colored glasses, your understanding of mathematical fact is skewed.
And finally, if you want to talk about the bigger picture, I think this statement, from the site you linked to, says a lot: "Apple's worldwide market share is estimated at somewhere between 3 and 4 percent."
#6 said it better and more politely than I would have.
The entire piece has the tone of someone who has had their cornflakes urinated on.
While Firefox might not be as insanely streamlined as it once was, (I've been using it since 0.8) it still has the single feature that no one else has bothered with. Extensions. And if I cant make a browser do what i want, (chrome for example) then I don't use it, no matter how fast it is.
The 20 percent figure for consumer laptop share in the U.S. is an analyst's estimate and is now sourced!
It wasn't a mathematical analysis, folks, just a fleeting illustration Apple's not an also-ran anymore when it comes to consumers and personal computers.
I don't think the fact this is an opinion piece could be made any more obvious. You don't have to treat it as a rigorous statistical treatise, and you don't have to be "polite" about it if you don't like it, either.
I also don't get the Firefox complaint.
The only times I have performance problems with it is when I have many (more than 20 or so) tabs open that all want to do complex Javascript or Flash.
What problems with Flash video? I use Firefox 3 to browse Youtube all the time.
Consuming all your system resources? I've had it open since last night, including a few times when the total number of tabs must have gone over 100, and it's now sitting at 184MB of RAM usage.
All this, under Windows XP.
The only thing I wish Firefox took from another browser is Chrome's multithreaded architecture, as that would prevent FF from seizing up for a couple of seconds when I try to resize the window while having a few dozen tabs heavy with javascript open. Apart from Chrome, all the other browsers would choke on that, anyway.
Did that close the bold tag?
You forgot "Facehuggers broke into Hicks' cryo-tube and killed him, making any interesting follow-up story unlikely at best."
UR TAGZ. CLOZE THEM.
@Shutz:
Firefox video issue from Mozilla...Here
Its very widespread, and effects not just gootube, but any flash video. They claim to have fixes...but they seldom work.
I want to love FF, but will have to wait till it really works.
Apart from being a resource hog, there's absolutely no reason to slam Firefox. It's never been unstable for me, except when I'm dealing with unstable websites and operations. It's still the best browser out there. Has it already become the new thing that's popular to hate on? :(
To be honest, FireFox 3 has fixed most of my performance complaints. The once out of control memory leaks seem to have been plugged-- I've got 6 tabs open, one of which has an embedded streaming music player, and RAM usage is sitting at 150 MB-- and pages render much faster than they used to. It's true that it isn't the ultra-minimalist browser it was when it started; but when the average system these days had upwards of a gig of RAM and a multi-GHz CPU, does the market even need or want such a thing? Regardless of what you may think, Rob, I feel it's still easily the best browser on the market.
Interesting stuff. I wouldn't mind seeing more articles like this. (i.e. semi-reflective stuff)
The cited article, dated April 1, references Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who seems to have a track record of being overly-optimistic about all things Apple. Regardless, he knows more about Apple Corp. than I'll ever know, so I'll operate under the assumption that his estimate is accurate.
Mr. Munster chose to package his analysis in a way that would show Apple in the most favorable light: by choosing a subset of a subset of statistical facts, thereby enabling him to use the impressive figure of 20%. Mr. Munster chose to look only at the consumer computer segment (which is only 30% of total computer sales), and then selected only the United States as his focus (because Apple's global sales are paltry).
Using his numbers, if Apple does, in fact, have 20% of the US personal computer market, which is just 30% of the overall US market, then they have 6% of the total US market. 6% is a small figure, and smaller still is Apple's global market share of 2.9%, so I'm not surprised some people choose to focus only on the estimated 20% figure.
The fact that Apple has made slow & steady growth in the personal computer market in the US is impressive in its own right, and there's no need for honest analysts to massage the stats & make unsubstantiated claims, unless, of course, their motivation lies elsewhere.
Personally I've taken to using Opera a lot because Firefox is incredibly unstable and uses a lot of resources, especially if I leave it running for long periods. On my Windows XP installation I've given up trying to use it to watch flash videos altogether, as there is no sound or the video stops after a few seconds.
But videos and flash in Opera sucks, even though it doesn't crash so much.
I want my Firefox back..
yeah firefox doesn't suck. you're silly.