It would be a credit card people apply for and can opt-in to using on these offers on Facebook (and throughout Facebook's off-site ad network, if they choose to do that.)
As with most of the neuroscience research, there exists a counter evidence to this -
Boecker, H., Sprenger, T., Spilker, M.E., Henriksen, G., Koppenhoefer, M., Wagner, K.J., Valet, M., Berthele, A., Tolle, T.R. (2008). The Runner's High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain. Cerebral Cortex DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhn013[http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/11/2523.full]
I think the point isn't that is impossible to be able to do a clean install of an OS and apps (Time Machine included) you have already paid (premium!) for but the fact that it is non-trivial and very much involved - all the things for which the Apple system stood against. Most of the newer Apple products are a black box which cannot be fixed unless even the technically competent users take extra efforts(^).
And this is coming from Rob Pike[1].
edit: (^)Or you take it to the Apple Genius people, who just have the correct tools.
> I think the point isn't that is impossible to be able to do a clean install of an OS and apps (Time Machine included) you have already paid (premium!) for but the fact that it is non-trivial and very much involved - all the things for which the Apple system stood against.
I'm not sure I agree?
Apple's always optimized for the average person's average case. "Those of us that need to maintain machines" aren't the average person engaged in the average case activity; they're engaged in a corner case activity and should have the knowledge to swing the non-trivial (but still trivial) ISO extraction method.
This is a small inconvenience for a small section of their customer base with a big upside: updating one OS version to the next over the internet is dead-stupid easy for the non-technical majority.
It beats the hell out of what for years has passed as Microsoft's version of selling you an OS upgrade over the internet; paying for a download of an .iso, figuring out what to do with an .iso, burning it, and using it is easier for the "those of us that need to maintain machines", but way out of reach for the non-technical majority. It's optimizing for exactly the wrong case.
I fail to see what is "non-average" about wanting to restore a machine from a Time Machine backup after a hard drive failure. Time machine is the only backup solution an average user will ever use, and is supposed to be a backup solution, not a placebo. As indicated in the article, it doesn't actually work for the the most (or second most) common case.
Rob Pike is most decidedly average in this case, he is most interested in working on his projects, not understanding the trivialities of maintaining the Apple Macintosh. Just like most people who have work to do that doesn't really revolve around shuffling boot disks around.
The "experts" (that, those who read macrumors regularly), will, of course, have not trusted time machine and will have a carbon copy cloner backup they can clone onto the new drive. They're ok. Meanwhile, the "average" folk who trust that an Apple provided backup solution... I dunno, backs things up... will be screwed.
Is windows worse? Maybe, but you know what -- as shitty as their incremental backup to a series of .zip files is -- at least it takes a complete image of the boot drive by default as part of the backup.
many things are wrong with this story.. FYI: the Lion installation app, as well as ML installer, is just a wrapper application with preflight functions for the installer. This app wrapper contains the disk image of the Lion installer that functions just like any other disk image of OS X. To find the disk image for lion in the "Install Lion.app" app wrapper, you right click on the app and click show contents, find a resources folder and bam, there it is. The disk image can be burned to DVD or restored to a flash drive using disk utility. No excuses now, they didn't fail anyone. He scratch his SL install disc, not apples fault.
Your last paragraph is just totally wrong. Ever since MS has been selling Windows online, they've also been providing a tool which will put the ISO onto bootable DVD or USB (your choice).
They point to this tool pretty clearly as part of the purchase process.
So with MS you can do it anyway you like: Installation as an app, or an ISO which you may trivially burn to a DVD or flash to a USB drive using a tool that they also provide.
FWIW, Apple also ships a tool inside the Lion and Mountain Lion installations that does the same thing, writes a bootable disk from the recovery partition onto a USB flash drive. It's found at "/Applications/Utilities/Recovery Disk Assistant.app"
Why can't you have both? In Ubuntu, you can update your OS version from the update manager, but you can also download the *.iso and do a clean install. After they tack on payment and drm to the system, what about this can Apple not emulate?
What about this does Apple not emulate? I download and pay for the upgrade, I right click, show contents, resources, and voilá there is a perfectly good disk image sitting right there for me to burn to disk or write out to a USB stick.
That is so incredibly un-user friendly and undiscoverable, it is absurd. How would my mother know to do that? Why didn't customer support have Rob do that?
Your mother would simply bring her machine to a genius bar at one of the Apple stores where they have all the required tools and media to re-install her computer. She wouldn't have had a tech come out to her house to replace it.
My mother does not live near an Apple store; the closest one is in the next state. Nice thought though. How exactly are consumers supposed to know which official support channels are the good ones, and which are the bad ones?
”I think the point isn't that is impossible to be able to do a clean install of an OS and apps (Time Machine included) you have already paid (premium!) for”
Huh? Mac users don't pay for OS X licenses, they only pay for upgrades. Time Machine is included in the OS, free of charge. OS X applications, and especially Apple's apps, are often cheaper than similar software on other platforms.
Faster, slimmer, lighter and longer lasting - yes, these are really good updates in a small piece of equipment that iPhone 5 is, there's no denying that.
But what really irks me is the way Apple marketing team is hyping it up - "This is the best <insert iDevice> we have ever made!", "This is revolutionary!", "This will change everything you were doing before!"...
A slathering of these so often during the entire event and then on with their advertisements makes me cringe and shake my head with disappointment. This iPhone and the iPod[x] are pretty much an iteration and minor upgrade, not what the actual 'revolutionary' things were - iTouch, iPhone, iPad, retina display, etc.
I don't expect 'revolutionary' every year or any time, I just expect some sincerity announcing.
Yeah you're right, they should get up on stage in front of the worlds media and say "It's an OK iPhone. You know, not great great, but pretty good... pffffft, we really could do better but hey ho, here's the new iPhone".
Are you an idiot?
And it is the best iPhone they've ever made. And the iPhone is arguably the best phone out there, so they sort of have a fair bit of credibility when they say that stuff.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Since they only release once a year, this one doesn't only have to hold its own against the competition right now, but also against whatever the others put out in 10 months.
Yeah, some people will always wait for the next iPhone. But for others, who have a more "neutral" point of view, this iPhone might look very bad in 10 months.
True, but if you look at it like Apple vs Android, the Android camp has many releases a year. So if you're a consumer and you're buying a smartphone in 10 months, your choice is between the "outdated" iPhone or one of the latest Android phones.
1) Construction (machining, materials, fitting them inside the case, industrial design). Unparalleled.
2) Screen. Top notch (high dpi, improved saturation).
3) Camera. One of the best in the business. Tons of apps for it, even photo books and indie movies videos done with it.
4) Apps ecosystem. Unparalleled in number and quality.
5) OS. Mature, not laggy, full featured, designed with far more coherence than Android and far more functionality in mind than just modernist design compared to Metro.
6) OS Upgrades. You do not even get any with most Android phones. And don't happen to the new Windows mobile os version.
7) Peripherals ecosystem: from health tracking devices, to tripods, to MIDI, unparalleled.
8) No carrier branded bullshit (apps, look etc): priceless.
I don't follow this stuff closely, but isn't that what they said when they announced the 3gs and the 4s ? There isn't anything really new in the phone they announced today, so it's more like a 4ss than a 5.
Unless they're going the linux kernel route and changing their version numbering ;)
I agree to the daily or maybe have an option for a weekly thing, but I am not sure how this will match up with the model/book you have planned out so far.
About design and usability:
Most of the people accessing the web from India don't focus on design as much as they do on content and or the purpose. This is changing though as more and more consumers and developers are paying attention to UX and other such aspects.
About mobile based access:
I don't have the specific numbers at this point, but most of the mobile access is through 'dumbphones'. So not having a mobile site is not exactly an issue.
