Spring RTS Engine

Forboding Angel wrote:Apple has proved that time and time again.

In part because Apple alone, in the plethora of abusive businesses, has managed to convince their consumers that planned obsolescence is in fact a benefit to said consumers.

Everything tiled.. so if someone does something organic, or some good old human brutality happsn- you can wipe it off, and pretend nothing happens.

Neddie wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:Apple has proved that time and time again.

In part because Apple alone, in the plethora of abusive businesses, has managed to convince their consumers that planned obsolescence is in fact a benefit to said consumers.

Bollocks. Utter bollocks, and utterly ignorant bollocks at that. I thought better of you Neddie than to say such a stupid thing.

A lot of Apple products far outlast their competitors, not to mention that a lot of Apple products break in a way that is decidedly not desirable for Apple ( and that certain people are suffering from continuous broken Apple, Samsung, RIM, Nokia, and HTC phones, sometimes all at the same time, far before any planned obsolescence timeframe, you put your iPhone down on a beach and it got 'lost'? OMG I smashed the screen on my Nexus by dropping it clearly Samsung is at fault here not my clumsiness, ).

People don't buy new Apple products because their iPhones and iPads died mysteriously. A lot of people who buy Apple products have perfectly good lastgen hardware working in prime condition. So much so people sell them 2nd hand and get a substantial portion of their original investment back. And for those people who do have 'mysterious deaths', a trip to the Apple store usually means a brand new free replacement with no charge at cost to Apple.

Apple doesn't need to plan for obsolescence, never did, never will.

Neither does the competition. That cheap Acer laptop doesn't need a 3 year obsolescence planned in, chances are the end user will do a much better job of killing it in 6 months with even the most robust battery through ignorance and keeping it plugged in 24/7 than their engineers ever could.

I would have to side with neddie, with the onset of iphone 5 people now have to buy all new Proprietary cables/chargers/peripherals - at name brand price. Why could they not just use an open standard, something other things use, or at least something that won't become obsolete so easily, like their previous charger/connector will soon be? It's a good money maker but that doesn't mean I have to agree with the tactics.

I moved to a galaxy, no regrets. fuck apple.

Because Lightning has advantages over the old dock connector. Sure a nice Open standard that had the advantages of Lightning, but open for everyone else would've been better, after all micro-usb as a standard is somewhat of a joke when every micro-usb port out there is an arbitrary standard already built on top of micro-USB to get around its power draw limit or to add connectors to simplify audio for peripherals etc etc

But despite its lack of openness, at least its an improvement

( and you were all going to buy new connectors anyway because the old cables design was rubbish, my own cable is a contorted mess of tape sugru and exposed wires. I beseech you to look at my horrificly twisted charging cable and tell me Apple didn't need to change the design )

Hahahaha xD

Lightning is soooo much better than microSD. Lolz. I'm glad you are able to fool yourself into believing that.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/ ... rsible_use

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/comput ... ow-1106884

Yes, because it is impossible to make a plug reversible without DYNAMICALLY assigning the pins... I don't understand how apple fans can repeatedly let apple bend them over the table, fuck them raw, and then they go limping out into the street proclaiming how amazing apple is. It truly boggles the mind.

Ivory King wrote:...I heard there's an app that lets Steve Jobs ram his +1 chode of shit you don't need, up your unlubed, middle class anus.

And finally... Any company who puts an authentication chip in their charging cable, just so that they can charge 30 dollars for a $2 cable and be assured that they won't have any 3rd party competition, is despicable, slimy, crooked, and should be shot on sight.

But we already know quite well that Apple is afraid to compete with anyone.

http://betanews.com/2012/11/04/apple-sq ... ts-riches/

There is a reason that Android commands 75% of the market share compared to Apple's 15%.

That said, I would LOVE to see RIM make a comeback (seriously, who wouldn't?).

AF wrote: That cheap Acer laptop doesn't need a 3 year obsolescence planned in, chances are the end user will do a much better job of killing it in 6 months with even the most robust battery through ignorance and keeping it plugged in 24/7 than their engineers ever could.

The nice thing about buying cheap; even if it breaks fast you know they aren't ripping you off for much. Actually I always figured the cost of making a product last a decent time was a rather small percentage of the whole cost.

that cheap samsung laptop now lasted for 3 years.. no sign of breakdown.. maybee learn to accept that hardware for work is necesarrily bound to rot like fruits do

I didn't state that lightning is better than micro-USB, please improve your reading comprehension/illiteracy

I made 3 points:

• The small digital Lightning connector was an improvement over the unwieldy large old analogue dock connector. There's less for the lightning cable to catch on, its smaller in the device itself, and the ports on the devices are much nicer on people holding them.
• I stated that an open standard would have been better, but that lightning is still an improvement over the dock connector
• I stated that Micro-USB, the one size fits all standard everybody touts, is not that great, and needs further standardisation. None of the latest phones use actual micro-USB, they flout the standards with additional pins, extra power draw, additional side protocols, etc.
  
  This is a general problem, not an Apple problem, and has repercussions for all phones.

While I welcome the lightning connector, an improved micro-USB port based on a new standardised setup on an iPhone would have been better, at least then I could know that micro-USB charger ABC will always guarantee half decent consistent charging and I can look for compatible products without needing to figure out competing technologies for working with Android vs iOS vs old Android vs Windows Phone vs etc etc

Even the simplicity of other devices, like my battery pack, I use the cable that recharges it, and plug it into the pack itself and hey presto I can charge an android phone with no additional cables required.

Anyways Apple has always had a simple business model. Put a high end product out, at a high end price, with a big profit margin, and a closed ecosystem. If people want to have everything open and customised there'll always be someone else they can buy from. They don't need to be evil to make money, and its not in their best interests to make shit hardware ( because antennagate clearly happened to everyone else ).

It's the same with other companies. Sony tries to reinvent the laptop everytime they bring out new Vaios, Samsung focuses on feature counts and putting a model in every possible market. Nokia makes sturdy phones for every possible market. Most PC manufacturers are making cheap machines competing on price compromising what else they can to get there.


Which is why Surface is weird. It's got the heavyweight Windows on an incredibly well built tablet. I've picked one up and held one, and they are nice machines hardware, and MS has always been good at that. The software? Nice speed bump but still:

http://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10 ... new-again/

ITunes is still a big pile of trash. Not that anyone else seems to mind.

So Windows 8... The bolted on nature of the tiles makes everything more confusing since you basically have two GUIs running in parallel. This is like that Active Desktop trash MS tried to push a long time ago (back when we were on pay-per-minute dialup). Kinda odd to ditch the start menu entirely. Yes, it's rarely used but it works as a kind of basement for software access, the stuff that gets used the most gets pinned to the task bar, the stuff that's still used somewhat commonly is on the desktop and stuff you need once in a blue moon goes into the start menu where you can dig for it when the need arises.

On a positive note the task manager is vastly improved, now shows per-task disk and network activity.

AF / Forb just a bit of perspective: marketing and advertising have become intentionally and falsely entwined with the impression of certain lifestyles and freedoms; by caring too much about the latest technology and becoming savvy consumers you are limiting your own personal freedom via brand loyalty and prejudice towards certain products. A 10-year-old Nokia brick would do you just fine. (Edit actually no it would be horrible lol)

I've always felt comfortable with others buying the latest electronics and software and making the mistakes for me. Windows 8 makes little impact; to me it represents a step towards the manufactured experience of best-buy-pre-assembled-user-friendly-service warantee-tablet-computing that I will resist as much as I can. Windows 8 will be a non-issue for me until a program or game that appeals to me that requires it becomes available; at that point I'll visit the pirate bay and make another partition. I'm guessing that will take at least a year, by which point, I'm sure some clever-clogs will have released a customization to remove the safety rails and bedpan-spray-guards to give me the dangerous level of control over my OS that I crave.

re: no start menu... how the hell am I supposed to find minesweeper? It does have minesweeper, right?

edit: check it out, I have feeling back in my left pinkie after about a year :) I can capitalize ALL THE THINGS

AF has been completely indoctrinated by the Apple marketing hype.

His statements are full of inconsistencies. He says one thing, then another of his post contradicts his previous claims.

Far as the hardware goes, Apple is neither high quality nor high end, but mediocre device that is ridiculously price jacked to make it look like high end and high quality.

Steve Jobs is a vegetarian.

KaiserJ wrote:AF / Forb just a bit of perspective: ... by caring too much about the latest technology and becoming savvy consumers you are limiting your own personal freedom via brand loyalty and prejudice towards certain products.

This doesn't really apply to me. I originally had an HTC Evo4G and Now I have a Samsung Galaxy S3. Both are top tier phones are are essentially a little linux computer in my pocket.

That said, I am not married to samsun nor HTC, in fact, the LG Nexus 4 is looking mighty tasty, although I am staunchly opposed to no removeable battery and no micro sd slot. That said, a bad ass phone for $300 off contract is an incredible deal. (I'm also heavily considering a Note 2, because that thing is #BEASTMODE)

AF, on the other hand, is locked in to whatever pile of junk Apple tries to feed him this year.

For those people who are like "It's just a phone......". It's not just a phone. I use my phone to remote into my home machines and customer machines. I perform network maintenance with my phone on client networks and a million and one other uses. In fact, the least use I have for my phone is actually using it as a phone.

There are 2 work related things I can't do on my phone (and that may change if I get a Note 2 and attach a BT mouse and KB to it (yes I can do that with my s3, but even the large 4.8" screen of the s3 is a bit too small for doing anything other than minor code changes)), and that is code and graphic design.

WRT Win8 and WP8, it's too little too late. I really, really, dislike Win8 and while not as bad as iPhone, WP8 offers me nothing even close to what android offers me in a professional sense.

M$ got to the game late and are now trying to break into the market and while they could be successful (and I honestly hope that they are), I doubt that they will be. Carriers may shoulder a lot of that blame, to be fair.

I doubt that I am the exception here when it comes to using my phone for work purposes. At some point, we're going to have to stop referring to them as phones, as a matter of course.

I'm not locked in at all, I have plenty of non-Apple media players, I have custom built towers running windows, and plenty of non-Apple tech. Sure I have a macbook, but how else am I going to test for OS X without invoking hackintosh Virtual machines, heck my old Macbook ran windows. If I really wanted to I could jailbreak my iPhone and put plenty on there ( and have done in the past ), I don't buy music via itunes either.

Clearly this is the faith based "Apple is the spawn of the devil and wants to be evil" stance that is incapable of acknowledging that Apple people like Apple products, and not because they have hypnotists trailing them around and hallucinogenic drugs in the packaging. If Apple can 'brainwash' so many people into dominating the PC sector, why hasn't Trump done the same to win the US election? Surely the Iranians can fix their economy with these tricks, Apple did it in a back garage, why not the government?

Clearly the likes of HP/IBM/Lenovo/Sony/Acer/Asus are ripe for doing these kinds of things yet they don't, and they're not exactly reputable companies.

So yes, pretend I never criticised Apple and my "itunes on windows is horrid" post was actually a photo of me having sex with a print out of an itunes screenshot, I've made it clear many times I think the magic mouse was a disaster, the iMac isn't worth the expense, and the power buttons are here there and everywhere ( finally being fixed on newer models by replacing the eject button ), or that I shoved Windows 7 on every OS X machine I've ever had at some point...

AF, I was pointing out that once you are in it, Apple makes leaving the ecosystem very difficult, which is one of the reasons I despise Apple. You should be able to take your stuff with you to wherever you like, at any time. It's your stuff.

But I know that you are an Apple fan, and being an Apple fan you must forgo choice. If you want an iPhone you don't get a choice between varying price models of the same thing with different specs.

Of course you could buy an older phone, but for reasons known only to apple many of the new features have been disabled on older phones (although there is no technical reason that they would not work).

Same with tablets and laptops. There are of course varying tiers of laptops that you can get, but that isn't real choice.

If you want an iPhone you don't get a choice between varying price models of the same thing with different specs.

having fewer different models simplifies production and keeps the price lower.

This is like that Active Desktop trash MS tried to push a long time ago (back when we were on pay-per-minute dialup).

I think the idea was ahead of its time, today people put all kind of crap gagdets and sidebars on their desktop. But 1998 aint nobody got ram for that!

That's because our desktops are wider now. Partly. It's also because it's Apple, I would never pay anything for a MS gadget, but for Apple I can pay if it does a good job.

I'd never buy anything from that rotten company called Apple everm even if it fixed limp dicks and made blind baby jesus see the light.