linuxaudio.org

On Sun, 2006-03-12 at 23:49 +0000, cdr wrote:

quoted text
> > Apple does make good hardware

>

> they make hardware? last i checked they just knew how to charge twice as much as HP or Dell for Chinese hardware assembled by Quanta. kudos to them..maybe everyone else will understand the power of industrial design and branding one day..

>

> in the meantime im happy with the services my DIY "who? you?" hardware provides..

>

> 

Goodbye, "Made in USA", hello, "Designed by Apple in California,

Assembled in China" (reading straight off an iPod box) ;-)
For anyone who didn't bother to read the last article the gist of it is

that to play back videos from your iPod to an external device you can

either buy the expensive shiny white Apple cable, or you can use any

Radio Shack AV cable and (drumroll) switch the yellow and red plugs

around.
It really makes me despair of the future of open standards - even if you

have a perfectly good one the marketing dept will INSIST that you be

incompatible for no reason.  This belief that proprietary == good is

really ingrained in some places.  For example I saw an episode of "24"

the other day (guilty pleasure ;-) and they had to hack into some

corporate network to stop some terrorists, and were stymied by the

network being "proprietary" which meant it was unhackable and they had

to give up and just blast their way in, or some crap.
Of course any IT person could tell you in a second that black hat

hackers LOVE proprietary systems.  Then again the shows main sponsors

seem to be Dell computers and Cisco IP phones... coincidence?
Lee