Apple to kill physical software sales?

this not really news or invented by apple as it has been said. They announced it back when the first macbook air was released

  On 2/8/2011 at 12:15 AM, phling said:

wait a sec. Oh yeah got it. You need an optical drive to create content, makes sense.

Not everyone's got, like, the same process, maaaan

i don't see why anyone would get upset about this. ever.

it makes more sense, makes life easier for us as consumers, cuts down on waste (if you're into that whole save-the-world mentality), and prevents things from selling out.

if anything, i think this HELPS smaller developers. i browsed through the available apps on the app store, and there's loads of stuff made by one-man shops, etc, that never would have been put in front of me otherwise. if anything, this COMPLETELY levels the playing field in terms of getting your product in front of consumers.

as far as apple discontinuing what people consider "pro" level machines and hardware, i don't think we'll see that happen soon. perhaps in the long run, once physical media has become a thing of the past on a more global level (which it's pretty damn close to as it is), it'll go the way of the floppy. such is the way of progress.

i have fios at home, ffs, and it takes 1/100th the time to upload content (even in the multi-GB range) to an FTP server compared to burning and snailmailing a DVD or blu-ray.

my wife has one of those sony viao net books and it's a pain in the ass when she asks me to rip a cd in our collection and send it to her computer... so i'm all for optical drives. as far as software goes... I don't care about them being dl only basis or whatever. i did get Microsoft Office that way, but i still have them send me the back up disc just in case.

the fun part in this is that putting the DVD inside is not necessary at all

ah yes because that thx logo and the production company logo are on the screen for soooooo long fuuuuuuuuuu

I wouldn't mind if this was another way to get applications, which may well be possible. Ofcourse, online distribution is the way to go and nothing new. But it would piss me off to no end if iTunes was the only way to get OSX software (like it is for the iPhone.) Oh yeah, and if you jailbreak your Macbook you lose your hardware warranty. I doubt they will lock down OSX down in the near future, but I can see them moving towards that goal.

Seriously, in what way would it hurt the stability of your iPhone if you could install any software from the web? If you want the safe cage Apple made for you, stay in it by all means, just get all your Apple approved stuff from iTunes. But completely taking away the hardware warranty of users that want to get software elsewhere should be illegal. The actual reason is ofcourse that Apple doesn't want to have people selling or giving away software without getting their 30% margin and developer program fee. Additionally, they actually decline applications that provide functionality already or soon to be present in Apple software. They just got a cute story to wrap it up. It's profit before user freedom, it's anti-competitive and I think it should be fought. Microsoft got all kind of shit just because they had Internet Explorer pre-installed on Windows, I think Apple should get a lot more shit for their anti-competitive strategies.

some people don't even have internet, let alone good internet

If they can work out deals with Adobe and some of the other graphic content companies that fits into this model I might be on board, but I don't think it is wise to do until broadband isn't assrape expensive.

  On 2/8/2011 at 7:53 PM, Salvatorin said:

some people don't even have internet, let alone good internet

those people will never be able to afford a macbook anyways

it's kind of funny though how Apple seems to be stuck with this laughable iTunes thing.

Like for instance, they've had these neat magneto-power-plugs for laptops for quite a while now, which makes everyone go totally wow-how-cool-is-that the first time they have the power cord snap out of their fingers and plug itself in, but then they can't come up with a better system than that retarded 30 pin connector for iThings, where after plugging in you have wait like a minute for a backup to finish as a default?

Yeah, but that little proprietary connector means Apple gets a lot of folks approaching them for some of this action:

Unrelated but tangential: anyone know what's going on with that Intel/Apple LightPeak tech?

  On 2/8/2011 at 8:00 PM, phling said:

it's kind of funny though how Apple seems to be stuck with this laughable iTunes thing.

Like for instance, they've had these neat magneto-power-plugs for laptops for quite a while now, which makes everyone go totally wow-how-cool-is-that the first time they have the power cord snap out of their fingers and plug itself in, but then they can't come up with a better system than that retarded 30 pin connector for iThings, where after plugging in you have wait like a minute for a backup to finish as a default?

true. I wonder why wi-fi sync is not even optional as it is possible. the latest developments seem to go into this direction as the cloud file sharing on i-devices becomes more and more open (mp3 and movie rapidshare downloads to iphones are now possible without jailbreak)

yep they sure have the tech (Bonjour zeroconf) to easily build a proprietary sync protocol, and how long could it fucking take to hire a team of supersmart hackers and remake iTunes?

Apple hasn't even bothered to make iTunes a 64 bit/Cocoa app yet. It's really hard to read into their priorities. Is a rewrite of iTunes that prohibitive? Is a major, ground-up revision to the model coming soon? Some of the tin-hatters are claiming Apple wants to integrate iTunes into Safari (which is a 64 bit/Cocoa app), but fuck me, I don't think Apple would go that far towards pissing folks off, especially the antitrust watchdogs, if they want to grow their marketshare further.

  On 2/8/2011 at 8:33 PM, baph said:

Apple hasn't even bothered to make iTunes a 64 bit/Cocoa app yet. It's really hard to read into their priorities. Is a rewrite of iTunes that prohibitive? Is a major, ground-up revision to the model coming soon? Some of the tin-hatters are claiming Apple wants to integrate iTunes into Safari (which is a 64 bit/Cocoa app), but fuck me, I don't think Apple would go that far towards pissing folks off, especially the antitrust watchdogs, if they want to grow their marketshare further.

maybe they wait the 3 1/2 month left until the new iphone to introduce sync via near-field communication instead of wifi and a new itunes. It would be very apple like to do that.

  On 2/8/2011 at 8:00 PM, phling said:

they've had these neat magneto-power-plugs for laptops for quite a while now, which makes everyone go totally wow-how-cool-is-that the first time they have the power cord snap out of their fingers and plug itself in

and they're well known to be prone to breaking very very quickly.

  On 2/8/2011 at 8:33 PM, baph said:

Apple hasn't even bothered to make iTunes a 64 bit/Cocoa app yet. It's really hard to read into their priorities. Is a rewrite of iTunes that prohibitive? Is a major, ground-up revision to the model coming soon? Some of the tin-hatters are claiming Apple wants to integrate iTunes into Safari (which is a 64 bit/Cocoa app), but fuck me, I don't think Apple would go that far towards pissing folks off, especially the antitrust watchdogs, if they want to grow their marketshare further.

why do you need a 64bit version of iTunes?

there is simply no need.

iTunes does not need to address more than 4GB of RAM. ergo, no need for 64bit iTunes.

edit: i hate Apple as much as the next guy. even moreso. but come on, that 64bit rant is completely pointless.

It wasn't a rant and I don't hate Apple. It's more about fully transitioning from Carbon to the Cocoa API within OS X. It's not a "problem" by any means, but it's interesting [see, e.g., commentary] and it was precisely the sort of transition everyone was expecting from Leopard to Snow Leopard.

  On 2/8/2011 at 7:55 PM, david said:

  On 2/8/2011 at 7:53 PM, Salvatorin said:

some people don't even have internet, let alone good internet

 

those people will never be able to afford a macbook anyways

apple's optical drives have been awful for years. they finally figured out a way to fix them. remove them.

big deal. won't effect me too much aside from burning an occasional cd for someone. but how will you totally reinstall an os without a cd drive? give it to you on a USB drive or something?

  On 2/9/2011 at 3:59 AM, jules said:

apple's optical drives have been awful for years. they finally figured out a way to fix them. remove them.

 

big deal. won't effect me too much aside from burning an occasional cd for someone. but how will you totally reinstall an os without a cd drive? give it to you on a USB drive or something?

yeah, they currently give you a USB flash drive with the OS restore stuff on it.

and i've recently been messing around with installing operating systems on my netbook from USB flash drive. Windows 7 is really quick to install this way, literally installed in about 10-15 mins.