[HN Gopher] The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)
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The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)
Author : graderjs
Score : 546 points
Date : 2022-03-09 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sive.rs)
(TXT) w3m dump (sive.rs)
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i think i remebered an arstechnica article (was it that? i dont
| remember) that explained in simple terms how jobs does keynote
| better. they explained stuff like "just write in as few words as
| possible your topic and speak. if you wrote a paragraph on
| screen, why would anyone hear you repeat that?" and other stuff
| like using a plain background instead of fancy things.
|
| i would love to revisit that but sadly i have been unable to find
| it
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's standard presentation skill, actually.
|
| Slides are not a text document, they are a visual aide.
| [deleted]
| cossatot wrote:
| I think this works effectively in many situations (particularly
| keynotes), but I frequently give presentations that are (1)
| meant to inform more than persuade or entertain, (2) are often
| given to an audience with a substantial fraction of non native
| English speakers, and (3) the slides are regularly distributed
| after the fact. This pretty much necessitates having texty
| slides that I have to read more or less verbatim, even if that
| makes the experience more dull.
| criddell wrote:
| There was an entire book on Jobs' presentations called
| _Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs_ by Carmine Gallo. Perhaps
| Ars wrote a review and summarized some of the top points?
|
| Guy Kawasaki has also written quite a bit about effective
| presentations and has a 10/20/30 rule. Ten slides, twenty
| minutes, 30 point font. The idea of putting as few words as
| possible on a slide sounds like a Kawasaki thing.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I remember a lesson from years ago about presentations, this
| was in a military context, that either you can do the talking
| or the slides can do the talking. Pick one, don't try to do
| both.
| xattt wrote:
| Watching yesterday's keynote, I couldn't help but notice the
| "homogenized diversity" that's become a mainstay of Apple's
| post-COVID product announcements. Even though there were
| folks from all cultures (which is great), their hand gestures
| and word emphasis were unusually uniform.
|
| I'd love to see a glimpse of the presentation skills class
| they probably have through Apple University.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I once read somewhere that we only have one language center
| in the brain, and thus can't read and listen simultaneously,
| so those text-laden slides basically do nothing but provide a
| distraction; you're alternating between listening and
| reading, there is no such thing as doing them both at once.
|
| There may be some room for providing illustrations, but
| bullet point presentations really do far more harm than good.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It depends on the purpose of the presentation.
|
| A marketing slide or a visual aide to a speech should be as
| light in prose as possible. But it is valid to use slides
| as primary information delivery mechanisms with the speech
| as a complement.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Very much so.
|
| I just designed a presentation for a Zoom talk I'm doing,
| and its intended use case is not only that I'll be going
| through it during the talk, but that printouts will be
| available, and the handout/resource will be available
| digitally perpetually.
|
| Since the presentation involves complex, easily confused
| topics (voting research), being very specific is
| necessary in this case.
|
| Marketing a product or making an argument require
| different types of presentations than teaching. Each can
| be done well or poorly.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| Have you considered putting the text in the slide notes,
| rather than in the slides themselves?
| Mezzie wrote:
| I actually sent it to them both ways (I just consider it
| basic good practice since I have a background in
| accessibility; presentation + some form of 'just text' is
| my default)!
|
| Which is fun, because there's notes and then True
| Notes(TM) with all my terrible jokes.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Right, but since you can't actually listen to the speech
| as you read the slides (or read the slides as you listen
| to the speech), then the slides really should be a
| complementary booklet or some other written text intended
| to be read at a different time.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Shhh, if you point that out, people will start
| questioning whether they need a slide presentation at
| all.
|
| I tend to view 'no aids' as the default; unless I can
| come up with a specific use for a slide deck, why make
| one?
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| Slides are perfectly fine and readable if you only talk
| about content on the slide. Just make simple bullet
| points that are reiterated in your speech and keep it on
| topic
| jccalhoun wrote:
| The thing about writing as few words as possible on the slide
| isn't unique to Jobs. I've been teaching that to my students
| for 20 years or more. I got it from a book( well, more like a
| booklet. it is really thin with tons of pictures) called Save
| Our Slides.
| toyg wrote:
| I remember sitting in a short session at a small UK
| university, about presenting, in 2002. The main message was
| to keep the audience's attention on you, not the screen. In
| many ways it was stating the obvious, but it's true that few
| people ever stop and reason about these things.
|
| To this day, the few tips I picked up in that silly little
| session still make me a much better presenter and slide-maker
| than 99% of my colleagues, hands down, and I'm really not
| bragging.
| martopix wrote:
| This is how you do presentations if you're someone that spent
| some time learning how to do presentations. It doesn't take
| Steve Jobs. The better lecturers know that.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://mcdreeamiemusings.com/blog/2019/4/13/gsux1h6bnt8lqjd...
| Is worth reading in a similar vein - Death by PowerPoint.
| city41 wrote:
| This is also covered in Jobs's biography (which is a great read
| btw).
| raverbashing wrote:
| This passive-agressive crap is unnerving. And the worse thing is
| that they only get away with it because the competition is worse.
|
| Also the "yes you have to use our software" BS. Sounds like
| someone thinks they're too important. Sure let me have someone
| using a desktop app all day just because you can't be bothered to
| "think differently"
| duxup wrote:
| >And the worse thing is that they only get away with it because
| the competition is worse.
|
| I'd say it is because some form of digital / streaming music is
| what a lot of people want ...
|
| Is having access to "all the music" that big of a deal for most
| people?
|
| I just want music accessible to me, most platforms all provide
| that now, and it's all WAY MORE accessible than back in the day
| when I had binders of CDs.
|
| If someone has 4,000,000 songs, or 8,000,000 I probably
| wouldn't know... I don't really care what the justification for
| either is.
| andrewzah wrote:
| More songs = more music that is potentially accessible to
| more people with different tastes. I don't use apple music or
| spotify because they lack quite a few albums that I've had to
| source myself.
| duxup wrote:
| I think at some point "more songs" === still not going to
| ever find it.
|
| And the offering in 2003 is still way more songs than I
| have in a binder ... WAY MORE.
| andrewzah wrote:
| I'm not talking about discoverability. I do that myself
| externally by reading discogs credits for an album and
| going from there.
|
| I would prefer a music streaming service to have nearly
| all of the albums or songs that I want to listen to.
| Having more songs means that is much more likely.
| blihp wrote:
| They were competing with the ubiquity of CDs back then. To
| get people to go for the whole digital download thing, they
| had to be more convenient. A big part of that was not having
| gaps in their offerings in terms of back catalog.
| danuker wrote:
| > And the worse thing is that they only get away with it
| because the competition is worse.
|
| youtube-dl is their competition, and using it is as easy as
| shooting fish in a barrel.
|
| DRM sucks. Don't sponsor it.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Apple hasn't sold music with DRM since 2009
| oblio wrote:
| What's stopping users from downloading the music on their
| desktop and then cancelling their subscription?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Music you _buy_ through iTunes doesn't have DRM. Not
| music through the subscription service.
| danuker wrote:
| Oh. Well, that's unexpected news to me!
|
| They still DRM Apple Music (which you could argue is
| selling music, but as a service), and files which had DRM
| when you bought them, and movies, it seems.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You can pay $25 a year for ITunes Match - once - and get
| all of your music that you ever bought DRM free.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146
|
| Movies have DRM. Blame that on the studios But Apple,
| Amazon, Google, Vudu and a couple of the other digital
| movie services participate in Movies Anywhere with most
| of the studios. You buy a movie from one place and it is
| automatically considered purchased from the other stores.
|
| Movies have always had copy protection - even back in the
| analog days with Macrovision.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Been using iTunes Match for many many years but honestly
| you can tell it's not getting attention anymore. Very
| glitchy these days with playback you can't scrub
| sometimes or just skipping tracks for no reason,
| struggling to sync tracks up to it sometimes.
|
| Also you can't turn off the Apple Music ads anymore, or
| at least the setting claiming to turn them off just
| resets itself after a few hours.
| shard wrote:
| I don't think Macrovision was universal though, based on
| my personal experience as a kid.
| bitwize wrote:
| Back in the day, it wasn't.
|
| As of 1998 and the DMCA, it is a federal crime in the USA
| to sell a VCR without Macrovision.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Movies Anywhere should be called Movies Anywhere So Long
| As It's in the U.S. It doesn't exist anywhere else.
| What's more annoying is Movies Anywhere seems to have led
| to the demise of Ultraviolet which actually existed
| outside the U.S so digital codes are even worse than they
| used to be where I live or not existent.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Music was supposed to be copy-protected, too: the RIAA
| fought tooth and nail to kill Digital Audio Tape, and
| then settled for the AHRA which mandated all "consumer"
| digital recorders have DRM in them. The problem was that
| this was legally ineffective[0] once PCs got CD drives
| and enough storage and processing power to deal with the
| firehose that was CD-DA. Insisting on DRM for legal music
| downloads was their way of putting the genie back in the
| bottle, but that also gave Apple a monopsony over all
| digital music, much like the App Store does for iOS
| software today. Going DRM-free let the labels sideload
| MP3s onto people's iPods and cut Apple out of the
| equation. But they would have never agreed to do it if
| Apple was willing to license FairPlay on FRAND terms like
| Microsoft did with PlaysForSure.
|
| More generally, consumer copying technology was never
| really "supposed" to exist. It's often been said that
| "copyright was supposed to regulate publishers, not
| consumers", which I agree with. But the flipside of this
| was "consumers weren't supposed to become casual
| publishers", which is what the AHRA, DMCA 1201, and DRM
| as a whole was/is trying to achieve. But that's largely
| failed, and we live in the world where everyone is a
| publisher all the time, which is why everyone has to be
| _regulated_ like a publisher all the time.
|
| [0] See RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia
| scarface74 wrote:
| Let's not skip over the fact that Jobs himself publicly
| encouraged the music industry to license their music DRM
| free.
|
| This was originally posted on the front page of Apple
| back in 2007.
|
| https://macdailynews.com/2007/02/06/apple_ceo_steve_jobs_
| pos...
| kmeisthax wrote:
| It's kind of funny, because at the same time Jobs is
| explaining why DRM sucks and basically can't be
| standardized, they were also developing the iPhone which
| would go on to repeat the whole "only we sell things
| wrapped in this DRM" thing... except without the
| sideloading option.
|
| The article you linked adds it's own commentary which has
| aged like milk. Jobs wasn't so much opposed to DRM in
| general, as much as he just didn't like it on music. This
| probably has more to do with the fact that Apple was not
| a music label[0], and thus he was predisposed to look at
| music solely as a consumer[1]. When it comes to things
| Apple _does_ publish[2], such as software, they are
| extremely protective of it.
|
| [0] And legally, _cannot_ , because of numerous trademark
| lawsuits with Apple Records, the record label of The
| Beatles
|
| [1] "They don't want to rent their music"
| https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/8744963/steve-jobs-
| jesus-p...
|
| [2] "Publishing" in this case means funding the creation,
| marketing, and physical manufacturing of some creative
| work. This is primarily what a music label does, and is
| part of the reason why they take so much from artists.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The market changes as far as your second foot note. No
| one has ever made a successful business with subscription
| music. By "successful" I mean "decently profitable".
|
| Spotify makes around $3 million a quarter in profit.
|
| https://www.barrons.com/articles/spotify-has-finally-
| found-a...
| duxup wrote:
| >Whoa! Wow. Steve Jobs just dissed me hard!
|
| I didn't read that as a "dis".
|
| Put in a bad spot for sure.
| lelandfe wrote:
| It's at least a diss to his catalog of music
| acd10j wrote:
| Hearing this story makes my heart boil in rage. Is only way to
| achieve true success is by being ass Like Jobs ? If you have read
| anything about him by accounts of people who know him, You will
| know that he prepared that speech to spite on Sivers. Once his
| ego was satisfied after Sivers had to refund the money he then
| gave a go ahead for deal. There is no benefit of doubt about it.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > I flew home that night, posted my meeting notes on my website
|
| Learned lesson, don't be publicly sharing a companies plans.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It sounds like an early example social network oversharing
| thing, like how some people needed to record and post
| everything trivial they or their kids did onto facebook, or
| people to post their breakfast onto instagram, or nowadays
| everyone's brainfart / shower thought / hot take onto twitter.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That would make all industry press vanish overnight!
| yakorevivan wrote:
| willbudd wrote:
| Can you imagine having to manually insert 100000 CDs and all
| their metadata into some GUI, even though you have everything on
| file elsewhere already? And not just any GUI application, but the
| complete garbage that is iTunes.
|
| Because some dev/clown has the hubris to proclaim "there is no
| other way"? I'd not care if you're Steve Jobs himself. That's
| some just laugh and leave the room level of Kafkaesque
| ridiculousness.
|
| Glad I work in the era of public-facing APIs. Even if Apple still
| seems to be clinging on to their consume-only mentality.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| If only there were a way to script Apple applications, perhaps
| some kind of architecture, for scripting, that was open, and
| Apple's own apps actually supported it...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript#Open_Scripting_Arc...
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Can you script a CD-ROM to jump off its shelf and into the
| CD-ROM reader?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Can you script Steve Jobs to let them simply submit the
| high quality rips and metadata they already had?
| mcast wrote:
| You could probably emulate a CD driver using the WAV files
| from your server.
| yurishimo wrote:
| This is a neat idea! I wish I had some software to test
| this entire workflow and build some automation, just for
| fun. :)
| kawsper wrote:
| I don't know how it is today, but I've noticed both spelling
| mistakes and ripping errors on bought content from iTunes
| (Music).
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > the complete garbage that is iTunes.
|
| I've become an Apple fan as I've spent most of my IT time in
| their ecosystem over last 5 years. I've come to appreciate
| their UI pattern (which was confusing at first due to my
| conditioning of Linux), the consistency, nifty little features.
|
| However to this day I just couldn't get used to their iTunes
| (and now Apple Music) UX. I'm always fumbling around, searching
| for a song is a same sequence of confusing clicks and swipes. I
| thought it was me but now I'm convinced that it's just a
| garbage of a software.
| ZYinMD wrote:
| Speaking of their UI pattern, I just don't understand why
| MacOS doesn't indicate when one software has 2 or more open
| windows. For example, if you open 2 Word documents, the Word
| app will only show one, and there's no intuitive way to tell
| if there's a second window, and no intuitive way to switch to
| the second window. My wife has had a Mac for 10 years and
| still only semi understands how these windows work.
|
| Edit: comments below are trying to tell me how to switch
| windows, of course I know how. My point is MacOS doesn't tell
| you there are multiple windows. On PC, the Dock will show
| "stacked" icons.
| oblio wrote:
| Apple is gently telling you you're holding your phone,
| sorry, Word, wrong, and you shouldn't do that.
|
| I'm not kidding, for some of this stuff that's their actual
| line of reasoning.
|
| They probably want you to use some other window management
| feature, regardless if you want to use it or not.
| frenchwhisker wrote:
| Use "App Expose" to show multiple windows (you can
| configure this to a swipe down gesture).
|
| Use Command+` (backtick) to switch between windows.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Yeah this is fucking horrible. I have tons of shit open
|
| I shouldn't have to see all of it to find the one thing I
| want. I should be able to pick from the app.
|
| There's an app out there called ubar which replaces the
| dock and it's functionality is amazing. But it's memory
| hog and freezes all the time.
|
| I'm forced to use a Mac for work
|
| Probably the most powerful machine I've ever owned. I
| have a giant ass 40+ in curved monitor.
|
| I still prefer my 10+ year old Dell laptop with an aging
| Linux distro on it.
|
| Hell.. I prefer Windows.
|
| Using a Mac is so painful. The moronic fn key placement.
|
| Using a terminal reverts back to using the Ctrl key but
| everything else uses [?]
|
| There's no real concept of window management.
|
| The version of Bash is 10+ years old.
|
| I've always hated the "menu bar" but now that I have a
| monitor bigger than Lizzo's ass I really hate it. Having
| to drag my cursor 45miles up to get to Edit is idiotic.
|
| The number of apps I have to install to get it to
| function like a real desktop makes my system tray look
| like it did on Windows XP SP2.
|
| Nevermind whenever my non-apple Bluetooth headset
| connects it auto-opens Apple Music even though I've never
| once used it and I never will. There's zero way to
| disable this functionality. Zero.
|
| MacOS is an abortion
| dangus wrote:
| Go to the Trackpad settings, go to "More Gestures," turn on
| "App Expose." Three finger swipe down will reveal all
| windows in an application.
|
| You can also cycle between windows in an application with
| Command + ` (tilde or backtick key)
|
| Also, In the Keyboard settings, there's a shortcut under
| Mission Control for "Application Windows," set to Control +
| Down by default.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| This is my other complaint.
|
| Having to have their stupid track pad to have
| functionality sucks.
|
| I want a mouse and keyboard. A keyboard that doesn't fist
| fuck a Fn key where the Ctrl key is supposed to be.
|
| A keyboard with a delete button.
|
| A keyboard with a number pad.
|
| You know. .. Like grown ups use.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Like this?
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMMR3LL/A/magic-
| keyboard-...
|
| No Fn key, delete button, number pad.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| 200 for a 40 dollar keyboard to restore functionality
| they took away bc they're brave and different
| raytube wrote:
| On my droid about 2.5gb of garbage of a software.
|
| And yet it almost works on Google assistant, with hardly any
| installation.
|
| I too get lost from playlist and search/song wandering, but
| Apple isn't unique in this regard.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I've been an Apple fan since 2008. Their media apps are just
| bad and have they have been for years.
| duxup wrote:
| >even though you already have everything on file elsewhere
| already?
|
| Sounds like an opportunity to automate much of that...
| willbudd wrote:
| Yeah, no doubt. Everything can be automated. And I'm sure
| some dirty hack was cobbled together to work around the
| situation rather than turning some poor human into a zombie
| with both RSI and PTSD. I'd hope.
|
| But let's not turn the tables that way. My point is that
| "opportunity" should have been addressed _before_ Steve Jobs
| decided to fly in all those industry bigwigs to do his sales
| pitch. I mean, who was selling who here exactly? Different
| times I guess...
| duxup wrote:
| I really don't have a problem with putting the onus on the
| owner to make sure their information is correct, let them
| prioritize and so on.
|
| It's not ideal, but in 2003 the idea that everything has an
| API was still very pie in the sky for A LOT of things.
| willbudd wrote:
| That's fair, but there didn't even need to be an API.
| Just some feature to import WAV files and/or track
| listings would have gone a long way.
| ZYinMD wrote:
| Well his brain is not your brain, and no matter how ridiculous
| you think he is, he has the final outcome of Apple to prove
| he's right. Put a different person in his position and the
| company would have bankrupted.
| [deleted]
| letmeoknmmm wrote:
| mahoho wrote:
| If I understand the article correctly, are (some/most) files for
| sale on the iTunes store taken from CD rips rather than made
| directly from the masters?
|
| That sounds impressively sketchy; anyone who has used AccurateRip
| can probably testify that CD ripping errors and manufacturing
| errors are surprisingly common.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> anyone who has used AccurateRip can probably testify that CD
| ripping errors and manufacturing errors are surprisingly
| common.
|
| CDs have significant error correction codes so if it sounds
| right it IS right. Having said that, I have one song I always
| skip because it ripped badly and I've never got around to re-
| ripping it and replacing the bad one. But it's obvious that
| it's a bad rip to the point that I skip the song so I don't
| have to hear the glitch.
|
| In other words, if they checked each song before uploading it
| would be fine.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >so if it sounds right it IS right
|
| No, player will interpolate samples with detected but
| uncorretable errors. Uncorrectable error rate of CD-DA was
| deemed too high for CD-ROM, thus it uses additional layer of
| ECC data on top of it.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| > Having said that, I have one song I always skip because it
| ripped badly and I've never got around to re-ripping it and
| replacing the bad one.
|
| Heh. I have one that has about five seconds of silence, at
| the end of an album, then about ten seconds of horrifically
| loud noise. It still catches me off guard every time, but
| it's not in heavy rotation so I still haven't gotten around
| to trimming it.
| Majromax wrote:
| > CDs have significant error correction codes so if it sounds
| right it IS right.
|
| For data CD formats, yes. For audio CD formats, readers are
| allowed to interpolate over uncorrectable errors
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C2_error), which would not
| necessarily result in an abrupt skip or pop.
| toyg wrote:
| I wonder if this is why there is a Dinosaur Jr song with a
| massive bad-rip hole about two-thirds in, on all the
| streaming platforms.
| ramses0 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cdparanoia
|
| https://xiph.org/paranoia/faq.html#progbar
|
| """A plus indicates not only frame jitter, but an unreported,
| uncorrected loss of streaming in the middle of an atomic read
| operation. That is, the drive lost its place while reading
| data, and restarted in some random incorrect location without
| alerting the kernel. This case is also corrected by
| Paranoia."""
| duxup wrote:
| It's not clear to me if that is still actually the case.
|
| Seems likely some are but as their system presumably grew more
| automated I'm guessing that's not so much the case anymore?
| Possibly?
| stephen_g wrote:
| I imagine it hasn't been the case for any new or remastered
| music added in at least the last 10 years. They upgraded to
| 256 kbps in 2009 so CD-originated music surely would have
| ended by then.
| ratww wrote:
| Definitely not, there's a specific website for uploading
| stuff, it's not done trough iTunes. If you're a musician or a
| small label you're gonna use something like CDBaby or
| DistroKid though, which uses an API or something equivalent.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Article was written in 2010 about events that took place in
| 2003 or so. Seems like a strange approach even then but I don't
| know much about music distribution back then, or now for that
| matter.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Yes. I was initially in charge of getting all the music from
| all the major and indie labels into our system when I worked at
| what was the biggest competitor to iTunes in Europe. It was
| 100% from CD. I remember at the end we had a storage unit with
| hundreds of thousands of CDs. We had teams of young girls and
| guys working day in, day out ripping CDs.
|
| We did our absolute best to get the high quality rips we could.
| We sat on the forums and figured out what the best CD-ROM
| drives were, even if it meant buying really expensive SCSI
| versions.
|
| But none of the labels had anything in digital format in prior
| to 2003. I think the majors only started their conversions of
| their catalogs in about 2004 or 2005.
|
| Just some other background I'll throw out there - the company I
| worked at opened all the doors at most of the record labels.
| Most weren't ready to sell their stuff online (WTF) and needed
| a lot of persuasion. After we got them to sign, Apple would
| follow us in days or weeks later and have a nice easy job. That
| was how we found out Apple was trying to build a music store of
| their own.
|
| And Apple had a good time with the labels. At that time, and
| perhaps even now, most record labels used Macs for practically
| everything they did, even admin stuff. So when we went in with
| a mostly-PC demo, they looked at us sideways. Apple could slide
| in with shiny stuff and impress them more :)
|
| @sivers: Did we have all your catalog? This was OD2 (On Demand
| Distribution) in the UK. I have a feeling we did?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It was probably the fastest way at the time to build up their
| initial catalog quickly; for masters or the best quality
| recordings, they would need some way to get the music from the
| masters into the software, and I don't believe Apple had any
| good audio in ports.
|
| I do recall at some point they had a headphone jack that also
| supported optical, but don't quote me on that.
|
| Anyway, it would have been better if they had an app that
| accepted .wav files or something like that.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > I do recall at some point they had a headphone jack that
| also supported optical, but don't quote me on that.
|
| They used to on the Macbook Pro laptops (I have one). Not
| sure if it's still a thing with the new Pro.
| relaxing wrote:
| They ditched the TOSLINK port for the 2016 models.
| toyg wrote:
| They could have easily hired a specialized company to receive
| masters and send them digitized versions. They weren't as
| ludicrously opulent as they are today, but they were still a
| pretty wealthy and profitable company.
|
| But why pay, when you can get your own vendors to do it for
| free after a little song and dance by the Jobster? That's
| much more Apple.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Not even free. Vendors needed to purchase Apple hardware,
| did they not?
| rrdharan wrote:
| The iPod helped save Apple. IIRC it, even more than the
| iMac, helped return them to profitability.
| a2tech wrote:
| Note that this is from the early days of iTunes--things could
| be radically different behind the scenes now.
|
| I suspect if it isn't listed as 'Apple Lossless' or one of the
| other fancy labels, its probably originally from a CD rip
| somewhere. I know from listening to niche-y music, that music
| catalogs can often be wrong and will be published to multiple
| music sites. For example Junior Brown's album 'Junior Brown:
| Greatest Hits' has a track on it that is half glitches AND its
| the exact same on multiple services and has persisted for years
| even though I reported it several times on each service.
| There's also a sea shanty album where half the tracks are
| static. I reported it to iTunes and Amazon and received
| boilerplate responses. I then sent an email to the actual band
| (hard to believe, but its a bunch of old guys) and they
| contacted their record company...but even they couldn't get it
| straightened out.
| neon_electro wrote:
| Even when it lists Apple Lossless, there can still be errors
| in the files.
|
| I found an album from 2001 on Apple Music recently and
| discovered one of the tracks cuts out at just after one
| minute, even though Discogs reports the track should be 4
| minutes 30 seconds (Slide - Closure (Lounge-Tech Mix), on the
| Nu Progressive Era compilation:
| https://www.discogs.com/master/90383-Red-Jerry-Nu-
| Progressiv...). The album is listed as "Apple Lossless".
|
| I went and bought the original CD version JUST to have that
| one track in full.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Back in the early 2000s, I worked for a company that was
| supplying audio media to Apple, Spotify, etc. and yeah, the
| record companies would ship them boxes of CDs for ripping,
| cover scanning, track listing inputting, etc. For some of the
| companies, it was the only way they had - they didn't have the
| metadata or cover art in easy digital form, masters available,
| etc., especially for older stuff.
| sitkack wrote:
| LoudEye?
|
| They had a cool office and a massive SGI machine.
| sivers wrote:
| At the time, the CD was often the practical master. Many
| recordings had come from analog tape, sent to a mastering
| house, who burned the final master to a CD.
|
| Anyway, I skipped this detail in the original article, but
| Apple let go of the requirement to use their special "put the
| CD in the drive" tool. We were able to deliver using master
| WAV/FLAC files, converted to their AAC requirements, and
| uploaded.
| vehementi wrote:
| Yeah I was going to say, surely you did not end up ripping
| 200,000 CDs in a couple of weeks
| dreadlordbone wrote:
| It was 5,000 clients who paid $40 each totaling $200,000.
| Not 200,000 CDs.
| lostlogin wrote:
| If they hadn't, surely there was a scriptable method that
| didn't involve re-ripping?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Or I guess you might have been able to do a scriptable
| method that _does_ involve re-ripping.
|
| That is, stick a CD-RW in the drive, and write a program
| that would:
|
| (1) Erase the CD-RW, then burn one album's worth of WAV
| files to it. (Ideally, do it accurately like with a cue
| sheet file.)
|
| (2) Drive the Apple software's GUI (using AppleScript?) to
| enter the track metadata, re-rip, and upload.
|
| (3) Repeat until done.
|
| If something ejects the CD-RW, that might mess up the
| automation. Some drives will pull the CD back in if the
| tray or disc bumps into something while ejecting, so maybe
| a strategically-placed heavy object is enough.
| criddell wrote:
| In Apple Music today they indicate if the track is lossless and
| if it's taken from a master. I believe that lossless studio
| master rips are 24-bit / 192 kHz (CD is 16-bit / 44 kHz).
| totetsu wrote:
| This is why would always dump the CD to an ISO file then mount
| that and rip directly from the virtual CD.
| mpol wrote:
| That is factually incorrect. An ISO9660 is a filesystem on a
| data CD. An Audio CD is just a stream of bits. That is why
| you need to rip an audio CD, the CD player needs to transform
| that stream of bits into blocks of 4096 bytes. It has to
| remember where the previous block ended and the next block
| starts. For many years, you had to buy a luxury brand like
| Plextor to be sure that ripping process would happen without
| much stuttering and gaps.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Audio CDs do have framing information (in the subchannel).
| However, the subchannel has no error correction (only basic
| error detection), so the CD player has to interpolate
| across subchannel errors (which are normal and common) to
| figure out where it is, and doing that properly can get
| complicated.
|
| Also, the audio frame size is 2352 bytes. Those correspond
| to 2048 data bytes for data CDs (plus extra error
| correction).
| dstroot wrote:
| > "Whatever. Fucking Apple."
|
| Should have ended right there and dropped the mic.
|
| Refunding the $40 was the right move and in keeping with CD
| Baby's ethos of the artist comes first.
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| Quite a story and the kicker is the most amazing part.
| graderjs wrote:
| I know!! That had me LOLing so hard. Why now? Hahaha. It's like
| Apple was playing some next level chess with this supplier.
| They'd angered them, and Apple didn't forget. My God :)
| neya wrote:
| > I flew home that night, posted my meeting notes on my website,
| emailed all of my clients to announce the news, and went to
| sleep.
|
| >When I woke, I had furious emails and voicemails from my contact
| at Apple.
|
| >"What the hell are you doing? That meeting was confidential!
| Take those notes off your site immediately! Our legal department
| is furious!"
|
| Wait, who the hell posts meeting notes on their website (and also
| emails all their clients without a written confirmation at the
| said meeting)? I would assume any meeting you'd have with a
| client/potential would be _assumed_ to be confidential. I felt
| this particular move was very unprofessional on the OP 's part.
| popctrl wrote:
| I guess it depends whether OP made their service as startup
| looking for a great exit, or a passion project based on their
| hobby that got extended to their friends.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Personal or business it doesn't matter. If you met your
| friend for coffee and they told you they are pregnant (for
| example) would you feel emboldened to post on Twitter
| congratulations without even asking her if she wants the
| world to know?
|
| I get that this was 2003 but if anything it would have seemed
| even more rude before social media made posting about your
| life online more acceptable.
| apetresc wrote:
| But to use your analogy, if my friend invited _a few
| hundred people_ she knew and told us she was pregnant, then
| yes, I would feel fine posting about it on Instagram.
| downandout wrote:
| The difference is that the pregnancy doesn't affect the
| lives of all the people on Twitter. This guy was
| communicating with his clients, who had to respond to the
| news by working to prepare their albums for upload to
| iTunes. He had a perfectly legitimate reason for posting
| this on his website.
| tinco wrote:
| A meeting with a hundred of your closest friends isn't a
| meeting, much less a private meeting, it's a public
| announcement. Maybe if all of those hundred are your employees
| you could consider it private, but assuming it wouldn't leak
| would be naive. Apple wanted a couple weeks head start on
| Rhapsody and Napster, and they fucked up and forgot to inform
| their guests that the announcement was under wraps. There's not
| more to it.
| sharklazer wrote:
| Right. More than that, you get NDAs signed before the
| meeting. I've never known this to not be standard practice.
| At least when the person you're talking to doesn't have a
| greater leverage in the meeting--but then you naturally
| restrict what you say under such a circumstance. This sounds
| like childish behavior on the part of Apple, but honestly
| when I've never been able to change the snooze time on the
| alarm app, that is what I expect. If I were CD Baby, I would
| have never gone back to that, as long term you've got greater
| leverage when all the competitors are getting access. In
| fact, I would have doubled down and paid developers to start
| working on iPod compatibility for the competitors.
| scrozart wrote:
| Confidentiality is never assumed. It's an explicit contract.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| It was a meeting about a new service/product relevant to the
| services he provides his clients. It doesn't seem that weird,
| especially if he saw his responsibility to then to be similar
| to that of a level or agent.
| sivers wrote:
| Because it concerned my clients -- the musicians.
|
| Apple says "we want to sell all of your clients' music now".
|
| I post something on the company blog, read mainly by my
| clients, saying Apple wants to sell your music now.
| ekanes wrote:
| If a deal is inked, you can post, but even then usually you'd
| check in about messaging. I think you were just super pumped
| :) but it's still a faux pas.
| sytelus wrote:
| In all honesty, your slashdot post contains massive amount of
| proprietary Apple information that was disclosed to you,
| valuable statistics, Apple's business plan and what not. This
| was at the time when Apple was vulnerable and much bigger
| competitors could have easily eaten their lunch. I can't
| believe they had no NDAs. I think the original article is bit
| one sided story.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| If there were no NDAs, every single bit of that
| "proprietary information" was public information.
| rexpop wrote:
| Are you seriously appealing to sentimental sympathies right
| now? Apple is and was an entirely for-profit entity whose
| vendors are likewise. And we're supposed to extend one
| another sympathy? There are limits to professional
| courtesy.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I wonder if it would have been possible at that point to create a
| virtual drive, and just present the wavs as the CD content to the
| ripping software.
| bag_boy wrote:
| He dissed him and used it as an opportunity to glorify the
| labels. At the time Jobs was trying to cozy up to them.
|
| Smart but a dick move nonetheless.
| trollied wrote:
| This needs a (2010) and a "was originally written for gizmodo"
| https://gizmodo.com/the-day-steve-jobs-dissed-me-in-a-keynot...
| vishnugupta wrote:
| (2010)
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I worked at AT&T in the late 1990s on an early music sales (not
| streaming) service called a2b Music. It sounds ridiculous now
| (why would AT&T think they could succeed in consumer-facing music
| sales!) but at the time they were a co-owner of the AAC patents
| and wanted to commercialize them. They also had lots of bandwidth
| and thought this made sense.
|
| Being "responsible" folks (and also having no choice in the
| matter) AT&T bent over backward to accommodate the labels. Half
| the product was proprietary DRM that made everything constantly
| unusable. Despite this, the labels still strangled us by limiting
| what we could sell. Apple _quite correctly_ ignored all of this
| and solved the problem by first launching the iPod, waiting until
| it had critical mass (much of which involved tons of unpaid MP3
| downloading) and then launching the iTunes Store in 2003 when
| they had an installed base full of piracy - and the major labels
| had no choice but to join on their terms. (Obviously I pity the
| small labels who got screwed in the dynamic.)
|
| I think about this a lot when people complain about
| cryptocurrency or Uber/Lyft evading regulations or destroying
| legacy businesses. Often this kind of behavior is bad, often the
| little guy gets crushed. But at the end of the day, legacy
| businesses really are poison and much of the awfulness could be
| avoided if they weren't trying to hold on to things so tightly.
| jancsika wrote:
| toolz wrote:
| I suspect you mean speed/bandwidth when you say scale, but
| that isn't the entirety of what scale means. try being in
| russia right now and buying products like netflix or similar
| sold in USD. With crypto you have free (as in freedom) money
| that enables consenting people to trade without the
| permission of oppressive governments.
|
| As for bandwidth and speed there are _plenty_ of crypto
| solutions that match or beat SWIFT, which as of last year was
| probably peaking somewhere around 150k (very generous
| assumption based on 40 million messages a day) FIN messages a
| second. It takes many FIN messages to complete a transaction
| of exchanging money and there are numerous blockchains which
| do in excess of 50k tx/sec
| [deleted]
| CityOfThrowaway wrote:
| You are quite viciously arguing a point the OP didn't make
| and doesn't even seem to hold. Chill.
| guelo wrote:
| That's a weird takeaway. My takeaway is that content is king.
| Content has tilted our whole legal system to its advantage, and
| the transition to digital has made it worse. It is anti-
| consumer, anti-competition, anti-innovation, anti-capitalist.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Sony bought CBS records entirely because of how the disastrous
| the whole DAT rollout was because of the record companies fears
| of consumers being able to make digital recordings at home.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Sony's MiniDisc recorder/player failed because of copy
| protection. Too bad, it was a really nice system for its day.
| junon wrote:
| I worked at Uber corporate for a year and this is how I kind of
| see things too. The medallion system is ridiculous when you dig
| into it, the taxi lobbies are toxic and anti-capitalist and
| wrong really no matter how you look at it (aside from the union
| aspect I suppose, but they definitely use it as a weapon, not
| as a tool). I'm happy to see Uber and Lyft and whatnot upend
| them. Not so happy it had to be done through shady practices.
| verve_rat wrote:
| That may be the case. But my country doesn't have a medallion
| system or (effective) taxi lobbyists. It does have a licence
| system where a taxi company that covers an area needs to
| supply coverage 24/7 so people can get home when they are
| drunk, or otherwise unsafe, at 3 am on a Tuesday.
|
| Uber ignored all that and just took the profitable peek
| times. Plus they ignored employment law and paid drivers less
| than minimum wage.
|
| They "disrupted" our taxi industry by illegally taking the
| easy profit and ignoring the costs of being a business.
|
| I hate that it seems like every government in the world
| treats companies that blatantly break the law with kid gloves
| instead of coming down on them like a ton of bricks.
| bennysomething wrote:
| But why should any company be forced to provide services to
| drunk people? The government intervention here is the
| unfair bit.
| BlueDingo wrote:
| Why should they have any licensing at all? Is that unfair
| too?
|
| My guess is that governments have interest in making sure
| services are safe and reliable. Hence licenses. And rules
| for those licenses.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Why should their licensing be different than for pilots?
|
| With a private pilots license you can't fly for money,
| but you can take your friends and family with you.
|
| With a commercial pilots license you can fly for money.
|
| Neither of these are capped, a commercial pilots license
| just requires slightly more education and experience. Why
| should licensing for taxis be any different?
| verve_rat wrote:
| FYI in my country, at the top of this thread, that is how
| it works. Drivers need a "P" licence and the taxi
| companies need to register and follow some rules. But
| apart from that there are no limits or artificial
| restrictions.
|
| But uber ignored all that anyway.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Clearly your law enforcement just sucks if these people
| aren't getting in trouble for driving without a license,
| no?
|
| Just like you'd get in trouble for driving a car with a
| motorcycle license.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Flying isn't capped, but airport runway slots certainly
| are. As I see it, taxis are not different in this case.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| For commercial airliners carrying hundreds of passengers,
| yeah.
|
| For small private planes? Slots are hardly ever the
| limiting factor.
|
| Taxis are more like private jets than Airbuses carrying
| hundreds of pax.
|
| While taxis aren't as good for society as buses, they
| still reduce the total amount of car infrastructure
| required. The slot comparison doesn't seem apt.
| kemenaran wrote:
| I guess to encourage drunk people not to drive, which
| makes the roads safer for everyone.
| Spivak wrote:
| Why should hospitals be forced to provide care to sick
| people? I mean this 100% seriously, what would you do if
| hospitals just straight up refused patients that were
| expensive or annoying to treat focusing entirely on
| "profitable medicine?"
|
| "Oooo sorry Jim, there's no money to be made in cancer
| patients.
|
| The government has an interest in people having access
| taxi services 24/7 because it prevents DUIs and
| licensure/regulations is the means to ensure that.
|
| "Well the government should provide that transportation
| then." -- They are via this regulation.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Why should hospitals be forced to provide care to sick
| people? I mean this 100% seriously, what would you do if
| hospitals just straight up refused patients that were
| expensive or annoying to treat focusing entirely on
| "profitable medicine?"
|
| They should not, unless hospitals have the power to tax.
| Or the hospital is getting reimbursed by the government.
|
| >"Well the government should provide that transportation
| then." -- They are via this regulation.
|
| Politicians like to do it via mandates for businesses
| because they can avoid being responsible for problems and
| have a convenient third party to blame. It also avoids
| them having to increase taxes.
| kube-system wrote:
| That is exactly why most hospitals are required to take
| sick patients. The Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor
| Act requires hospitals that accept Medicare (most of
| them) to provide (minimal) treatment to any patient that
| shows up.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That works, since the hospital is getting paid for it by
| society (although via health insurance companies via the
| now neutered individual mandate to purchase health
| insurance).
|
| The important thing is the price for a hospital being
| able to provide highly qualified team of workers and
| equipment 24/7 to treat patients should not be
| obfuscated. It is valuable information for how many more
| hospitals/doctors/research/ whatever is needed and which
| kind of work society should incentivize people to do.
| monksy wrote:
| Why shouldn't they provide services? It's just easier for
| them to drunk drive and kill others.
| RichEO wrote:
| Would you mind sharing which country you're in?
|
| I'm doing some academic work on Uber's effect on existing
| laws, and your example would be very helpful.
| verve_rat wrote:
| New Zealand.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The government likes giving people benefits via mandates
| for businesses in order to obfuscate costs. Transparent and
| accurate pricing for a driver at 2AM results in a better
| allocation of resources. If the government wants to give
| people access to drivers at 2AM, then the government should
| either give people enough cash to pay the price of a driver
| willing to be available at 2AM, or run the service
| themselves.
| mrtksn wrote:
| These things have all kinds of social implications.
|
| In the capital of Turkey, Ankara, the islamist mayor cut
| all the public transport after 00:00, making late evening
| events(concerts or simply socializing in bars and clubs)
| inaccessible to younger people from poorer backgrounds
| because the taxis were expensive and abusive(the taxi
| lobby was protected by the same government).
|
| This caused divides between the youth and hindered the
| arts and entertainment scene for many many years.
|
| Some stuff is essential services. Like the airlines, they
| must be available and accessible even when it's not
| profitable. It often needs to be subsidized, the subsidy
| can come from the central government or the users of the
| service can share the cost of the unprofitable
| operations.
|
| When you fail in that, the whole society and economy
| crumbles.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And those services (societal infrastructure) should be
| operated (or paid for) by the government.
| kube-system wrote:
| To what degree to you believe that should be the case?
| There are multiple political interpretations of that
| sentiment throughout history with widely varying
| implementations and downstream consequences.
|
| Is it just public transportation? Are airlines and trains
| public transportation? Is it other critical
| infrastructure? Utilities? Energy? Healthcare?
| Communication? Other societal necessities like
| food/housing/shelter?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Whatever the population feels like should not be subject
| to market pricing.
|
| Also, whatever is prohibitively expensive to duplicate,
| such as water/sewage/gas pipes, electrical/fiber wires,
| etc. Or public transport like underground train systems.
| kube-system wrote:
| "not subject to market pricing" is quite a spectrum of
| practices, and depending on how you define it, it could
| be almost nothing, or almost everything in the US.
|
| Taxes, tariffs, subsidies, affect market pricing quite a
| bit and are extremely common. Some consumer protection
| laws place very loose pricing rules on businesses that
| are literally price controls, but in practice allow
| pricing to fluctuate with market rates. Some other
| industries have segments which are price controlled, and
| other segments that are not, i.e. healthcare, insurance.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I mean that the market price should not be obfuscated. I
| have no qualms about society choosing to subsidize
| certain things, but the costs should be explicitly
| recognized.
|
| For example, give people access to higher education.
| Okay, have the government operate the higher education
| institutions. Or give the students cash to pay for the
| higher education institutions.
|
| But do not obfuscate costs by guaranteeing all student
| loans with zero underwriting. (The more politically
| popular method since it keeps taxes low now and lets
| politicians say they helped people). Of course, this
| price obfuscation rears its ugly head in 20 to 30 years
| once tuition is now $50k+ per year.
| kube-system wrote:
| 3/4 of post-secondary students in the US _do_ go to
| schools operated by the government, that doesn 't
| preclude those institutions from charging tuition.
|
| Do you mean 'obfuscated' or 'inflated'?
|
| I'm not sure how prices are obfuscated in US higher
| education... prices are published and you sign several
| pieces of paper with the price on it before you walk into
| class for the first time. Guaranteed loans don't
| obfuscate prices (in fact, DoE loans have more paperwork
| than private loans), they enable schools to inflate
| prices because it gives more buying power to their
| students. This isn't something that would be fixed by
| handing out cash instead, in fact, grants/scholarships
| are another factor that have enabled schools to inflate
| costs. If you shift the demand curve up and to the right,
| the equilibrium price goes up -- it doesn't really matter
| what shifted it.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| It sounds like a line of reasoning that programmers fall
| into. "This code is so stupid! Shouldn't it be like
| blah!?" And then a more senior person tells you a story
| and yeah, you couldn't have found a better solution given
| the circumstances.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Not really. The solution is just not politically
| palatable because it requires increased wealth transfers
| from the haves to the have nots.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's one way to do it, as I said. The other way is to
| share the burden of the service by all of its users.
|
| In the case of Taxi service, I find to be more
| appropriate users of the local service sharing the cost
| of the low hours. Central government paying for local
| services tends to be very inefficient.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The question is does society benefit from taxis being
| available all night long? If that is the correct
| question, and the answer is yes, then society should be
| paying for it.
|
| By restricting the distribution of costs over only people
| who use taxis, then people who use taxis are unfairly
| shouldering a burden that society benefits from as a
| whole.
| mrtksn wrote:
| verve_rat wrote:
| The government is not some magic money source. Saying the
| government should pay for something is saying the
| everyone should share the cost.
|
| By mandating that taxis are available we are saying that
| the cost of off peek taxis should be paid by people that
| use taxis. If I never go to a town big enough to have a
| taxi service, or if I drive my own car everywhere, then I
| never share the cost for subsidising off peek taxis.
|
| Which is more fair, everyone pays or only taxi uses pay?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I contend that is unfair to levy a societal benefit
| solely on customers of taxis during the hours at which
| taxis would be available anyway without government
| mandates.
|
| I would even go so far as to say if the government is
| mandating something, then the costs should be distributed
| amongst that government's tax base (can be progressively
| distributed, but across the whole tax base nonetheless).
| kube-system wrote:
| There are many cases in which we might want the
| government to mandate something _and_ direct the cost
| towards a particular group. For example, when a societal
| cost is _caused_ by the choices of a particular group.
| Distributing this cost equally or progressively may be a
| less fair way to do it. And in some cases, distributing
| this cost to society as a whole may remove an important
| financial disincentive for bad behavior.
|
| e.g.:
|
| * making polluters responsible for cleanup costs
|
| * making investors responsible for the costs of
| overseeing the markets they profit from
|
| * making bad drivers responsible for paying for the
| consequences of their actions
|
| I'd say it's more fair to say that we could distribute
| costs to society when it's a public service that
| generally benefits everyone, or the disadvantaged. But I
| don't think we would want to distribute societal costs
| incurred by the rich or reckless.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Your first and third examples are punishments for
| violating the law (or harming society), not societal
| benefits. Hence not applicable to what we are talking
| about here, in my opinion.
|
| The second example I see no problem distributing amongst
| society, if functioning markets are providing a benefit
| to society.
|
| There are corruption risks with making government
| functions dependent upon the thing they are policing.
| uncomputation wrote:
| Another way to think about it is the taxi companies enjoy
| slightly/moderately less profits than they could
| maximally get in exchange for a safer and better society
| (eg 24/7 taxi coverage). The same can be said for drivers
| licenses, car insurance, employee benefits, etc.
|
| Instead of the government acting as either entirely
| public or entirely private, why shouldn't it act instead
| as a mediator between the public and the private? This
| seems to be the most logical decision for me compared to
| either full socialism or full libertarianism.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > enjoy slightly/moderately less profits than they could
| maximally get in exchange for a safer and better society
|
| This is an enormous assumption (frequently wrong), and
| precisely why the costs of a government mandate should
| not be implicitly laid on a select population.
|
| It actually results in attempts to cheat and incentivize
| corruption. For example, NYC had or has a problem with
| cabs not taking people to poorer neighborhoods. The
| government can mandate it all day long, but they did not
| stop cab drivers from discriminating. The correct
| solution in this case, would be to pay the cab drivers
| the market price for going to the poorer neighborhoods.
|
| The payment obviously would have to come from the
| government, either given directly to the poorer person or
| can be given directly to the cab driver. But either way
| the incentivizes would be properly aligned, increasing
| supply of cab drivers willing to drive to the poorer
| neighborhoods.
|
| Where this falls apart is that it requires increase in
| government spending, meaning increase in taxes for rich
| people. And obviously, they are going to oppose this
| wealth transfer. It is much easier and cheaper to simply
| require cab drivers to go to poorer neighborhoods under
| threat of fines or whatnot, and sit back and let the
| status quo continue.
| uncomputation wrote:
| Interesting. I suppose if the mandates cannot or will not
| be enforced then it presents a problem, although I don't
| know how well the incentive system works with say, clean
| air/water acts, which seem to be both mandated and
| incentivized.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, there are additional measures needed when
| goods/service is not fungible and/or easily measurable.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >Instead of the government acting as either entirely
| public or entirely private, why shouldn't it act instead
| as a mediator between the public and the private? This
| seems to be the most logical decision for me compared to
| either full socialism or full libertarianism.
|
| It depends on the context of mediation. In one sense,
| government-as-mediator is completely compatible with a
| libertarian nightwatchman state so long as such mediation
| is impartial and does not infringe on public and private
| rights of either party.
|
| But I don't think such a distinction helps here, as the
| functional differences between taxis and Uber amount to
| little more than legal fiction.
| lobochrome wrote:
| I love to be able to fly into SFO and just walk to the cab
| curb and be off.
|
| No crazy Uber pickup location and trying to find "your"
| driver.
|
| I also don't have problems getting cabs at the hotels that I
| am staying at.
|
| If I have to go down 101 and am in a remote spot I often have
| to use Uberlyft since nobody is willing/capable to get a cab.
|
| Early on Uber cars were nice - now they are rundown just as
| much as cabs.
|
| Pricing is horrible by Uberlyft. It's just a disgusting
| feeling to have discriminative pricing algorithms.
|
| Most cabbies I talk to own their Medaillon and are proud and
| knowledgeable about their job.
| stuaxo wrote:
| A lot of them are worse than cabs in London.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| I remember coming to San Francisco on business trips 11-12
| years ago. Cabs were impossible to find - one of the
| selling points of our office building was that it had a cab
| stand, so it was a bit easier. We'd walk blocks to find
| hotels so we could get a cab. We'd call and they'd show up
| 30+ minutes later, if we were lucky. It was really really
| frustrating. It made experiencing the city without a car
| really challenging.
|
| Uber was an incredible breath of fresh air. It just worked.
| It's more expensive now, but it still just works. And it's
| probably still cheaper than taxis were.
|
| I wouldn't want to go back.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Best and worst taxi rides I've had were out of SFO about
| 15 years ago.
|
| Best was in the evening. Went to the cab queue and the
| guy that pulled up for me had the windows down and was
| blasting techno from that university station that was
| around back then. He practically catapulted my gear in
| the back and off we went. Traffic was light enough he
| could weave through it doing about 30 over the limit,
| windows down and techno blaring the whole way. Got to my
| hotel quite fast.
|
| The worst was mid day, and was a guy that was starting to
| nod off to sleep at red lights. I nearly got out of the
| cab but was already late to a big deal meeting, so just
| stuck it out despite how sketch it was.
| epistasis wrote:
| Airports and pricy hotels are literally the only places in
| SF that cab service is dependable.
|
| Prior to Uber, cab dispatch outside of airports and the
| hotel were nearly impossible. Getting somebody to come pick
| you up was a disaster of unreliability, particularly at
| times when transit had stopped, and cabs were the only
| option.
|
| Uber/Lyft have huge problems, but the medallion system is
| even worse, IMHO. Ideally we'd have functioning transit and
| enough housing served by that transit that the housing
| becomes affordable. But without that, I'm glad that
| Uber/Lyft are there as an alternative to the horribleness
| of cabs.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Yup, pricey hotels to be clear. I stayed at a motel and
| the cabbies kept cancelling on me until I gave up and
| booked a Uber black. This was before UberX launched. The
| experience was so much better I took the car to the
| airport instead of the Bart station I had planned. Back
| in the day getting a cab in SF was next to impossible.
|
| To add, I've also had to walk 3 miles in frigid SF fog
| and sleep in the office because I couldn't find
| transportation back home.
|
| Like their housing, this artificial scarcity ruined SF
| for me. On the flip side most Uber/Lyft drivers drive
| like maniacs now. So I guess there's a line to be drawn
| somewhere in between the two craziness.
| davey48016 wrote:
| The first time I used Uber was about 6 or 7 years ago. I
| was living in the DC Suburbs and I had a plane to catch.
| The night before my flight I called and booked a cab for
| 6 am. At 6 am there was no cab so I called the dispatcher
| and asked when they'd be there, they said the cab was on
| its way and would be there in ten minutes. At 6:15 I
| called again and they admitted there had never been a cab
| on the way, there were none available, and they cancelled
| on me.
|
| I downloaded Uber, signed up for an account, and had a
| ride by 6:25.
| pstuart wrote:
| I scheduled a pickup with Uber for my family to get to
| the airport for a holiday trip. It never showed, there
| was no feedback on the app and no way to know/resolve the
| issue. I only use Lyft now.
| leephillips wrote:
| I had almost the exact experience, including the timing,
| with one alteration: exchange Uber with taxi.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And hence the root problem is exposed: people are
| generally not able or willing to pay enough to
| incentivize someone to reliably drive them at odd hours.
| The problem is people expecting something they cannot
| afford.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So if only some company had an algorithm to incentivize
| drivers based on supply and demand...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And then the company gets excoriated by media for price
| gouging.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Similar story in SF, except the cab did show up--and was
| promptly hailed by a party of drunk bachelorettes down
| the block (it was 6am). Not to mention the amount of
| times I was refused service because they didn't want to
| go west Dolores Ave. Cab service was _despised_ when Uber
| first came out, and digital ride hailing was a huge
| breath of fresh air.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I used to travel to the Bay Area for work all the time, and
| the taxis were a nightmare EVERY TIME. Before I got in a
| cab at SJC I'd look the driver in the eyes and ask if his
| credit card reader "is working". He'd say "Yes, no problem!
| Hop in!"
|
| Then we get to the hotel 15 minutes away, he wants $40
| cash. Turns out his credit card reader is broken. I argue
| with him for a while, and he decides he can write my
| fucking card number down on a piece of paper. Asks me what
| the tip will be. It's zero, asshole.
|
| Nowadays I have to walk farther to the rideshare pickup
| area, but the ride is cheap, the service is good, and I
| don't have to have an argument at the end of it. I tip in
| cash so that Uber/Lyft can't steal it.
|
| I wish there were a version of this where the driver would
| get 90% of the fare, nobody gets discriminatory pricing,
| and nobody has to deal with gamified BS, but oh well. I
| will NEVER ride in another taxi or take any action to help
| taxi drivers. They had their chance and they blew it.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| > I will NEVER ride in another taxi or take any action to
| help taxi drivers. They had their chance and they blew
| it.
|
| Do as you like but keep in mind there are some decent
| taxi companies. Up here there's a driver owned co-op cab
| that is reliable and reasonable. No nice app but if you
| schedule a trip to the airport they show up on time.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yep the card trick seem to be universal. It happened to
| me so often here in Montreal that at the end I would just
| say "I only have 20$ cash does that get me there?
| Otherwise I have my credit card" so that if they were to
| have a "broken" machine they'd know how much I would be
| able to pay in cash from the get go. Sometimes the
| machine magically worked when the meter got way beyond
| whatever I had in cash. I get the hustle of not paying
| taxes or credit card fees but damn if it didn't make for
| a weird and pushy experience
| buildbot wrote:
| I have never been in this circumstance, but at that point
| paying at all seems like a bad idea. They can choose to
| kidnap you I guess...
| thebean11 wrote:
| > I love to be able to fly into SFO and just walk to the
| cab curb and be off.
|
| The only reason Uber can't offer this service and has crazy
| pickup locations is because of regulations imposed on Uber
| deltarholamda wrote:
| I was in Milwaukee once, and needed to get to the airport.
| I don't use Uber or Lyft, but I asked the hotel what they
| recommended. They said Lyft. So I signed up, and put out a
| request for a ride.
|
| Nobody responded. The app helpfully showed me all the Lyft
| drivers nearby that were ignoring me, which was really
| awesome.
|
| At some point, it became clear that I was not going to get
| to the airport in time unless I left really soon. So I
| called Yellow Cab (or whatever the taxi service is called
| in Milwaukee). Five minutes later, the guy showed up and I
| was on my way.
|
| I get that, as a brand new user, the drivers may have been
| cautious or wary of a gumper with no ratings, but WTF. I'm
| at a hotel going to the airport. I deleted the app from my
| phone, and would now rather take a pogo stick than Uber or
| Lyft.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I'm not a fan of Uber's more toxic leadership personalities
| and behavior, but I do think it's fair to give them credit:
| they completely changed what it's like to get around places
| like Mexico City as a tourist. The licensed cabs are a crap
| shoot, and particularly late at night you'll get price
| gouged. Unlicensed cabs can be quite sketch. The existing
| private car services were all insanely flakey. Now it's low
| stress and reliable.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > the taxi lobbies are toxic and _anti-capitalist_ and wrong
| really no matter how you look at it
|
| Wait is a monopoly protected by regulatory capture anti-
| capitalist or just capitalist.
| freedomben wrote:
| Not GP, but IMHO it's neither. This is the wrong category.
| But if we're going to try and cram "capitalism in there,
| "crony capitalism" (abusing government structures to change
| the rules of the game in favor of one party) is probably
| most appropriate.
| stemlord wrote:
| Nyc yellow cabs are _far_ cheaper than uber /lyft. They also
| tend to know the city better. Rideshares wiped out yellow
| cabs then drove up the price.
| andjd wrote:
| > wiped out
|
| Really? Yellow taxis are alive and well in NYC.
|
| The drivers who were 'wiped out' are the ones that bought a
| medallion at the peak of a bubble. They were victims of
| predatory lenders as much or more than Uber or Lyft.
|
| Most drivers rent cabs and medallions for a fixed price and
| then keep whatever fares they earn. Even drivers who own
| medallions would typically let them out to other drivers so
| the cab could be on the streets for as close to 24 hours as
| possible.
|
| Rideshare services have made the medallions less valuable
| because drivers for them don't need to rent a cab and
| medallion, and so the owners can demand less for renting
| them out. In other words, it has given labor _more_ power,
| and the typical cab driver is doing better.
|
| If you've been noticing less cabs lately, it's probably
| Covid related, as the pandemic has diminished the demand
| for all types of travel, particularly in Manhattan.
| xeromal wrote:
| Biggest hurdle to tradition cabs is simply
|
| > Credit card reader broke
| vidarh wrote:
| London largely solved this by making it a violation of
| rules to have the car on the road with a broken card
| reader. Suddenly card readers got a whole lot more
| reliable. I haven't had an issue with a driver refusing
| to take a card since that started (but I have run into
| several with non-regulation card readers; clearly still
| trying to avoid paying taxes...)
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Even having a credit card reader isn't as convenient as
| knowing the price in advance before you get in and then
| having that price _automatically_ charged, without having
| to do anything when you arrive except get out of the car.
| sitkack wrote:
| Taxi lobbies wouldnt exist w/o the transferability and
| leasing of medallions. The idea that a "permit" can be
| transferrable is ridiculous. This is the structure that
| caused one of the the problems. Taking a non-cab on
| Manhattan proper is usually a waste of time. To take a cab
| in NYC, you walk out to street that has a place to pull
| over. Form the "I need a ride pose", or raise your hand and
| look the cabbie in the eye and boom, you are off to your
| destination in seconds. I don't think I have ever waited
| over a minute for a cab in NYC. If you need to get to the
| airport, call for a black car.
|
| It broke my heart listening to my cab driver talk about how
| much he paid for his medallion.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion
| tashoecraft wrote:
| This just isn't true. There's still tons of yellow cabs in
| NYC. And you know what had the most terrible taxi
| experience, yellow cabs. I've never been unable to pay via
| card in an uber/lyft. I've never had my driver pull the
| emergency brake and tell me his car is broken because I
| said I lived in Brooklyn and they didn't want to drive
| there in a uber/lyft. I never had the AC be not working or
| refused to be used in an uber/lyft.
|
| And yet all of those things happened in yellow cabs and
| much more. Yellow cabs are truly terrible experience. And
| they were never far cheaper.
| smachiz wrote:
| My recent survey of Uber/Lyft cars is they're absolutely
| every bit as shitty as some of the Yellows out there.
|
| No cabby objects to going to Brooklyn and hasn't for
| almost 10 years.
|
| Uber/Lyfts at JFK constantly call and try to ask where
| I'm going before they pick me up.
|
| The Curb app is fine.
|
| The problem is not the medallions but the centralization
| of medallions. Owner/operators are usually much better
| than the dude renting the cab and medallion from some
| shady ass company.
|
| The TLC should do more to fix the cabs - and we should
| support them fixing cabs and owner/operators at the
| expense of Uber/Lyft. The competition is good, but
| Uber/Lyft are no better than the medallion squatters.
| stemlord wrote:
| They are far cheaper right now. I promise you. It's also
| been this way for a while. And yes, yellow cabs still
| exist, but you will not see a sea of yellow down Broadway
| like has historically been the case. Even before covid.
| silisili wrote:
| > And they were never far cheaper.
|
| When Uber started, this was true. Uber has gotten, pardon
| the pun, uber expensive in most places I go.
|
| I now take a cab from the airport because a) it's easier,
| and b) it's cheaper. I'm not sure I'd say 'far cheaper',
| but that probably depends on locales.
| hollosi wrote:
| Knowing the price in advance vs hoping for the best is
| worth a lot, even if on average the latter was cheaper.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Knowing the city is no longer relevant in the age of
| Navigation apps with live traffic data.
|
| Microscopic knowledge of every corner of the city won't
| help you predict a traffic accident blocking your most
| efficient route, or a crazy homeless guy pushing a dumpster
| onto the road.
|
| Not to mention but even if the p50 or p99 driver has
| amazing knowledge, as a customer, it frustrates me to no
| end to have to explain to a taxi driver where I'm trying to
| go because they happen to not know MY location, and are too
| proud to just punch it into Google Maps.
|
| This doesn't happen with Uber/Lyft.
|
| And we haven't even gotten to the "My credit card machine
| isn't broken" scenario. Being able to walk out of the car
| at your destination and just take off is worth it for that
| alone.
| mring33621 wrote:
| If this is true, it simply means that Uber/Lyft outcompeted
| the yellow cabs in some other set of attributes, rather
| than price.
|
| I'm guessing availability and ease of use.
| rrdharan wrote:
| I don't think the situation has stabilized, either for
| NYC or for Uber. Too many variables. It's also possible a
| stable equilibrium doesn't emerge and it's just a
| pendulum that swings between upstarts and incumbents,
| regulated and deregulated, apps, cabs and dollar vans...
| pentae wrote:
| Being able to get into a car and get whisked off to your
| destination without having to talk to someone about
| directions is pretty nice
| evanelias wrote:
| That, plus willingness to take you to a destination
| outside of Manhattan. Yellow cabs would often refuse to
| go to an outer borough. Refusing a destination within NYC
| was actually against the law, but the law basically
| wasn't enforced.
| stemlord wrote:
| That's a good point. Getting to EWR in Jersey used to be
| hard.
| jaster wrote:
| Or that they used VC money to outcompete companies using
| artificially low prices, and _then_ raised the prices to
| make some profit once they got a hold on the market
| mypalmike wrote:
| It's time to disrupt the disrupters.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| qwertyzxcvmnbv wrote:
| Other parts of the world have cheap reliable taxis with no
| medallion crap, and Uber is just as eager to put them out of
| business.
| shakezula wrote:
| Once they were established in a different country, yeah.
| But would they have been able to start and secure their
| business in those countries? That's less certain, imo. Part
| of the real value prop of Uber was that taxis were
| expensive and clunky, and they made it faster and cheaper.
| verve_rat wrote:
| They made them cheaper by ignoring minimum wage laws the
| world over. No wonder taxi companies couldn't compete.
| dmix wrote:
| People keep saying this but everywhere I go I still see
| city taxis operating with radio/telephone systems that plus
| the usual black car airport/limo services. They still have
| their piece of the market where they still provide value.
| The death of the incumbents seems to be a bit oversold but
| regardless competition is not the problem here.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > taxi lobbies are ... anti-capitalist
|
| So what if they are?
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| Well, considering that capitalism has been the biggest
| source of good in the world, lifting untold numbers out of
| poverty and raising the standard of living across the
| globe... I'd say anything that gets in the way of that for
| protectionist reasons needs to go.
| originalvichy wrote:
| OK, but what if applying "capitalism" to a service
| industry pushes workers towards poverty and lowers their
| standards of living?
|
| That's what has happened in Finland. Established, trained
| and taxpaying cab drivers had to compete against
| untrained drivers who haven't got a business license or
| pay taxes.
|
| This triggered a race to the bottom and drove many into
| unemployment, poverty and bankruptcy.
|
| Literally no one gained anything from this other than
| foreign-based ride-hailing apps: remaining drivers (many
| of them immigrants) barely get paid due to the price race
| to the bottom, customers get worse service and worse ride
| comfort and slower drives due to independent drivers not
| even going through a basic city knowledge test.
| Government loses tax money and much of the revenue is
| siphoned to foreign countries.
| secondcoming wrote:
| In contrast, the presence of Uber in London gave Black
| Cab drivers a well-deserved kick. Before they were
| expensive, refused to accept card payments and often
| would refuse to drive you somewhere that wasn't
| convenient for them.
|
| The mayor actually tried to ban Uber but the public
| backlash was so great that they panned that move.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| You can definitely find instances where it has failed
| some workers, overall though the tide has lifted
| everyone's boats. This is where a limited social safety
| net is warranted.
| bigthymer wrote:
| > Well, considering that capitalism has been the biggest
| source of good in the world
|
| Really? Capitalism == Peak of goodness?
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| No, but possibly one of the greatest forces of good we
| have conjured as humans.
| thoraway77f wrote:
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Capitalism has only done all the good things it's
| credited with if you ignore the externalities starting to
| come due in the last decade. There's a cost, and
| capitalism only works by socializing it. Even the good
| stuff is built on publicly funded research and projects.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| The externalities are definitely an issue, and some will
| need to be addressed, however I'd argue those would exist
| regardless of the economic system in place. Humans tend
| to be a bit rapacious in the context of any economic
| frameworks.
|
| I am not against forms of socializing aspects of society.
| Fire service works wonderfully, universities are
| fantastic, etc.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > cryptocurrency
|
| I don't see the analogy.
| [deleted]
| kag0 wrote:
| cryptocurrency is to banks/paypal as itunes was to
| traditional music buying/licensing
|
| I'm not saying I agree (or disagree) but the analogy is
| fairly clear to me
| evanextreme wrote:
| I wouldnt say thats a correct analogy though, a traditional
| bank / cryptocurrency provide similar user experiences
| these days with how their mobile apps work. At the end of
| the day even in crypto an overwhelming majority of users
| interact with blockchains from centralized bank like
| platforms that function in an incredibly similar way,
| especially with the advent of neo banks like Chime.
| Downloading a song was a completely different experience
| from driving to a store to get a CD.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| You're missing the point.
|
| The music comparison is not driving to the store compared
| with downloading.
|
| It's pirating to downloading legally. iTunes made it just
| as convenient to buy as it did to pirate, which is the
| main reason people pirate anything - inconvenience. Steam
| did exactly the same thing for PC gaming. Netflix did the
| same for TV and Film. (Only now stuff is split between so
| many streaming services pirating is becoming the path of
| least resistance again).
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Sort of a tangent but your parenthetical about streaming
| services is why, after roughly 10 years of "keeping my
| nose clean," I've found myself slowly firing up my home
| server more and more frequently with "very legal and very
| cool" content I am slowly (but increasing in speed)
| acquiring. I don't mind paying for my content. I have
| several subscriptions. But the constant shuffles and
| searches for where i can watch anything is becoming a
| bigger and bigger obstacle. I'm going to pick the easiest
| route, not the cheapest one. Hell it's why I don't
| download music - I don't love Spotify as a company, but
| damn they make it easy to listen to my music. If they
| were to fracture or 20 other competitors pop up and
| licensing starts getting all spread out/hard to follow,
| then you can bet music will be in line for me too.
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| Not sure how familiar many here are on the difference in
| savings rates available in crypto stablecoins vs
| traditional banks.
|
| My US FDIC savings account offers a measly interest rate
| of 0.03% APY right now. By contrast rates on crypto
| stablecoins are often 7-10% APY easily with some such as
| UST on a Terra offering an amazing 19.53% APY.
|
| Yes the crypto stablecoins are riskier in some ways than
| USD and FDIC insurance is still the gold standard, at
| least up to their limit. On the other hand, there are now
| decentralized insurance protocols available on stablecoin
| yields which cover risks of a stablecoin or an unintended
| behavior in a smart contract for ~2% APY.
|
| Everyone should do their own research of course, but
| crypto can be compelling in that at the very least it can
| allow your savings to preserve their purchasing power net
| of inflation, something that isn't possible with a
| traditional bank savings account.
| anchpop wrote:
| > On the other hand, there are now decentralized
| insurance protocols available on stablecoin yields which
| cover risks of a stablecoin or an unintended behavior in
| a smart contract for ~2% APY.
|
| I hadn't heard of this, how would someone get set up with
| something like this?
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| Three options I am aware of are Nexus Mutual, InsureAce
| and Bridge Mutual.
|
| Fair warning, I am not endorsing any of these as I
| haven't done the research on the insurance options yet.
| sdoering wrote:
| I have no knowledge of stablecoins. But are my savings
| secured? As in if the bank breaks down, becomes insolvent
| and dissolved my money is still backed by the government
| and I will not loose a dime?
|
| Else I don't care about 0.03% or 7 to 10%.
|
| Regardless of me thinking that a growth economy is eating
| the planet. When it comes toy savings I am more
| conservative as a mythical pope mixed with Ronald Reagan.
| I don't care about it growing. I care about it not
| vanishing in the blink of an eye.
|
| Everything else is just playmoney. No problem if I loose
| it or use it to light a fire in my fireplace at home.
| Just printed paper (virtual) that I can spend for
| whatever.
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| As I mentioned in the GP, for 2.5% per year you can
| insure any amount of stablecoin savings against risk of
| loss, so yes they are secured. In a traditional bank your
| savings are only secure up to a specific limit which is
| $250k in the US and less everywhere else in the world.
| Also in a bank your savings are not secure against
| inflation which is currently -7.5% in the US and as high
| as -54% in Turkey.
|
| In other words, for a US resident, putting money in the
| bank is currently virtually guaranteed to lose at least
| 7.5% of it's purchasing power per year. It brings new
| meaning to the expression "safe as money in the bank."
|
| Here is an example:
|
| 1. Purchase UST on an exchange on a 1:1 basis with USD
|
| 2. Send it to the Terra Station self-custody wallet on
| your phone
|
| 3. Deposit the UST into a decentralized app (dApp) at
| www.anchorprotocol.com to earn 19.53% APY accruing every
| 6 seconds
|
| 4. Purchase the equivalent of FDIC insurance for ~2.5%
| APY from any of Nexus Mutual, InsurAce or Bridge Mutual
|
| 5. Enjoy a nice safe net ~17% APY on a USD stable deposit
|
| * Bonus: Because of the payout mechanism this fixed APY
| yield is considered a capital gain and not interest
| income so it is taxed more favorably than a traditional
| savings account and you don't trigger a taxable event
| until you sell.
|
| These returns are on the order of 50-100x those of a
| traditional bank with a similar risk profile. I would
| suggest it is worth investigating and maybe trying it out
| with a small amount to see for yourself.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| Nexus Mutual InsurAce is a small insurance, which isn't
| backed by a bigger insurance. Traditional insurances can
| cross protect the risks e.g. fire & water, europe & asia
| or sell some risks to a reinsurance company. Maybe there
| is no regulation on how much reserves in fiat they have
| to keep. So no not the same protection.
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| Nexus Mutual and InsureAce are two independent entities
| but still those are fair points.
|
| However did you know that FDIC insurance only requires
| 1.35% reserves? Of course they can also have the FED
| print money which drives further inflation for everyone.
|
| Net, net, no the guarantees are not the same but
| government-backed insurance isn't as safe as we would
| like to assume.
|
| Also, outside the US, deposits are only 100% insured up
| to very modest limits. Banks offer no insurance above
| these modest limits.
|
| As a timely example in Ukraine only deposits up to
| 200,000 UAH are insured. At the current UAH:USD
| conversion rate, that means only up to $6,600USD of
| deposits are protected. Anything over that amount has
| zero coverage.
|
| Crypto stablecoins can provide options for those in need.
| Please don't immediately dismiss them simply because you
| personally may not see the use-case.
| [deleted]
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| If you're making a company guarantee you 17% APY that
| feels like either some sort of insurance fraud or a ponzi
| scheme.
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| The current payout rate is 19.53%, so nets to 17% after
| paying for insurance to a 3rd party.
|
| The accounting is transparent and on the Terra blockchain
| so it certainly isn't a Ponzi scheme. However the payout
| rate is not guaranteed or constant and does fluctuate
| from time to time. The UST/Anchor Protocol payout is
| likely not sustainable and should come down overtime.
| That said the Terra Foundation recently put an additional
| billion dollars into the incentive pool so the rates
| should continue for at least another year.
|
| I would never advocate putting money into anything
| without investigating the risks for oneself. That said,
| even money in the bank isn't always safe as savers in
| Cyprus learned the hard way after the GFC when their
| government decided the banks needed a bailout more than
| depositors needed their savings.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I took a look at Nexus mutual - where do they claim
| they'll pay out 17% guaranteed if the investment fails?
| It looks like it requires a loss of at least 20% of the
| cover amount to make a claim, and that's due to either a
| network failure or a theft of some sort.
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| They claim they payout if the stablecoin:USD peg is
| broken by x% for more then y days. The other insurance
| products provide similar payout policies.
|
| The Anchor Protocol guarantees the accrual of UST at a
| specified rate (currently 19.53%) but just like your bank
| does not guarantee the interest rate paid in savings
| deposits for any fixed period of time, the payout rates
| on Anchor and other similar protocols can and does vary
| over time, though Anchor Protocol has paid just shy of
| 20% APY for over a year and the fund has been backstopped
| with an extra billion dollars so should be stable for at
| least another year.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It sounds like those insurers are offering insurance
| that's way too cheap for the risks of a deal purporting
| to give you 20% APY in free money. That, or the insurers
| are planning to run off with the cash too...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yeah, they are basically just currently picking the
| pennies in front of the soon to come steamroller. Though
| in this case, the "insurer" has basically no regulatory
| obligations so the owners are probably making out like
| bandits. If the insurer has no money and no FDIC like
| scheme to back up any insurer failure, then it's just
| going to be the "investors" who will get wrecked.
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| Three separate insurance companies offer similar rates to
| protect stablecoin savings so the market seems to
| disagree. These are all well capitalized insurance
| programs run by well-known entities so - not fly by night
| outfits. That said none have been stress tested in a
| market crisis as yet.
|
| My only argument is that anyone dismissing crypto as a
| scam with no use case who hasn't taken the time to
| investigate is doing themselves a disservice.
|
| This is a rapidly evolving field with lots of innovation
| and while it pays to be skeptical, it also pays to be
| curious.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Having an insurance company guarantee your 20% APR for
| 2.5% APR is not a use case, it's one of:
|
| - The insurance company scamming you,
|
| - The insurance company using you to scam their
| investors.
|
| - All of the above.
| davidgerard wrote:
| Green has been casually dropping mentions of the concept of
| cryptocurrency in irrelevant situations quite a bit lately.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Kind of funny that you tried to slip cryptocurrency into this
| analogy.
| dingaling wrote:
| > and the major labels had no choice but to join on their
| terms.
|
| iTunes launched with DRM. It was eliminated from 2008.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Wasn't it Amazon Music that first that launched without DRM?
| tempnow987 wrote:
| The DRM was totally reasonably. Even though it was hackable,
| you didn't really need to, at least in my use cases it was
| fine.
|
| I contrast that with some phone I bought before that
| supported some number of songs (nightmare), with zune
| (nightmare). Apple picked a level of lockdown that I'd guess
| for 80% of users didn't interfere. That compares to the other
| foks dramatically.
| mattl wrote:
| It was also Mac only for the first 6 months or so.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| FairPlay DRM was an utter breath of fresh air compared to the
| DRM we were using at AT&T. There were other companies like
| InterTrust competing at the time to build incredibly-
| restrictive powerful DRM, and despite all this crazy work
| (many PhDs in cryptography!) the labels _kept asking for
| more_ before they would begrudgingly put a few titles on
| sale. FairPlay DRM was "just good enough" to satisfy the DRM
| requirement while also being pretty easy to break, and it
| remained more or less regularly "broken" for many years. This
| _didn 't matter_ because it turned out that very few people
| pirated content by breaking the DRM (especially when you
| could just rip a CD yourself.) As you pointed out, Apple
| eventually got rid of it.
|
| In my later security evaluation career I saw a similar
| dynamic play out for other DRM companies, and even saw how
| corrupt the industry was. If you knew the right people or had
| enough market power your DRM would be "good enough", and if
| not: tough luck. Technical evaluation didn't matter.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Spinning fewer available songs as an advantage is some high level
| bullshitting. Particularly when you immediately go out and get
| all those "edited" tracks.
| risyachka wrote:
| >> is some high level bullshitting
|
| you meant high level marketing:)
| [deleted]
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| "... but I repeat myself"
| voxadam wrote:
| You're talking about the company that publicly extolled their
| own "courage" when they removed the headphone jack from their
| phones.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Which was sad. If they had said "this makes your phone last 5
| minutes longer when it gets wet" even _I_ would have been
| cautiously optimistic. But "courage" is a stupid argument.
|
| That said, the real reason is they decided bluetooth
| headphones were finally reliable enough
| gibolt wrote:
| Reliable enough AND that they were going to sell them.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That's true. But they were going to sell them because
| they were reliable enough. For a while there, bluetooth
| headphones were a nightmare.
| goldfeld wrote:
| Bluetooth is a nightmare. My jbl little box won't catch
| my phone's awesome vibes unless they touch, otherwise
| audio gets chopped. I'm still trying to find my simple
| in-in jack which has much better range than "touching"
| and will make the setup give me less cancer.
|
| Also to hell with cordless peripherals, my so called
| keyboards and pointers are all catching dust because
| there's an inexorable demand for these little toxic
| disgusting things called batteries, and don't you dare go
| a year or two without using your computers and thus
| managing their little chernobyls! technology from Apple
| and the modern crowd can be trusted alone as much as a
| newborn and a rattlesnake.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| This is a very, _very_ personal and subjective take.
|
| I've literally countless bluetooth audio and non audio
| devices and I don't have issues with any of them.
| cronix wrote:
| My MBP disconnects from BT speakers several times a day.
| It's 2 feet away, both are stationary.
| bmitc wrote:
| Apple is notorious for having terrible Bluetooth on their
| devices.
| exikyut wrote:
| (Because *they'd made the things reliable enough,
| themselves.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465668)
| raytube wrote:
| Jack removal makes sense, if going for a dust and waterproof
| soap bar.
|
| My Samsung is supposedly waterproof, but moans if I do much
| as breathe in the charge hole.
| oblio wrote:
| No, it doesn't. It's bullshit.
|
| There's stuff like the Ulefone Armor 9 FLIP rugged
| smartphone which has the headphone jack and has even better
| ingress protection than the iPhone:
|
| > the extra padding and protection that comes with an
| IP68/IP69K-rated, MIL-STD-810G certified outdoor smartphone
|
| https://www.techradar.com/reviews/ulefone-armor-9-flir-
| rugge...
|
| Apple removed the headphone jack for Airbuds and to get
| extra money. Their accessory division would be a Fortune
| 500 company, on its own.
|
| You don't get to be a billionaire by giving money away (or
| not picking it up when users throw it at you).
| stevewodil wrote:
| > A 3.5mm audio connector hidden behind a flap
|
| I'm not saying your argument is invalid but...sure the
| iPhone could also have a waterproof headphone jack if we
| wanted port covers on it too. The phone you linked looks
| nothing like something I want in my pocket all day
| lliamander wrote:
| > The phone you linked looks nothing like something I
| want in my pocket all day
|
| I rather doubt most people would really be able to tell
| the difference.
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| You realize that no one has to buy Bluetooth headphones
| from Apple right?
| oblio wrote:
| You realize that Apple offers Apple only features for all
| its stuff, therefore pushing its own products very hard?
| :-)
| scarface74 wrote:
| You're free to choose not to have Apple features and get
| regular old headphones.
| oblio wrote:
| Individual responsibility does not work against $3tn
| corporations.
|
| I personally choose to not buy any Apple product, but
| that's not going to bring the demise of Apple.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So why does your personal choice have to bring the end of
| Apple?
|
| Did Apple get to be 3 trillion by forcing people to buy
| stuff or buying selling things that people were willing
| to give it money for?
|
| But by you choosing to not buy Apple Bluetooth headphones
| you have a worse experience.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| > Apple removed the headphone jack for Airbuds and to get
| extra money. Their accessory division would be a Fortune
| 500 company, on its own.
|
| Nothing makes this read stronger than the fact that Apple
| still does, in fact, offer a portable device with a
| headphone jack, the iPod Touch.
|
| You can buy an iDevice that makes calls and texts, or one
| with a headphone jack. You can not have both in the same
| machine.
| bmitc wrote:
| No it doesn't. The LG V35 was faster, thinner, lighter, had
| a headphone jack, and had the exact same IP rating as the
| equivalent iPhone of the time.
| mattnewton wrote:
| The Samsung phones are waterproof, I have seen it
| accidentally tested.
|
| I love my iPhone but, I really think it's no coincidence
| the headphone jack removal coincided with the release of
| airpods, just over a year and a half after the purchase of
| beats by Dre.
| ineedasername wrote:
| >Samsung phones
|
| Yep, an S7 went swimming with me for about half on hour
| one day and after a quick pat down it worked just fine. I
| wouldn't mind the switch away from jacks so much if most
| phones & bluetooth earbuds supported higher quality
| codecs, but it seems relatively rare.
| raytube wrote:
| I put my s7 face down in snow and it took 24hrs or so to
| accept a charger. Thought the port was dead. Wireless
| charging could be good in that regard.
| itronitron wrote:
| Sounds like a great children's book, "The Incredible Journey
| of Headphone Jack "
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Even more ridiculous, on their first iphone they spun not
| having video support as a positive.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And most other high end phones followed suit. I can't
| understand why people are so attached to cords. They tangle,
| get caught into stuff and are plain inconvenient.
| Anechoic wrote:
| _I can't understand why people are so attached to cords_
|
| In my case:
|
| - one less battery to charge (on work trips in particular,
| I have a lot of devices/equipment that need daily charging)
|
| - no worries about bluetooth synching or wireless
| interference
|
| - less likely to lose
|
| - better sound quality
|
| To each their own.
| jsymolon wrote:
| Also add, one less battery to change and entering the
| environment.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You can't imagine how many wired headphones I've thrown
| away because they have gotten frayed...
| IntelMiner wrote:
| My AKG K240's have a standard mini XLR to 3.5mm
| connector. I've had to replace it maybe once in the 8
| years I've had the headphones
| scarface74 wrote:
| So since you aren't opposed to getting an extra
| connector, you shouldn't have any issue getting a 3.5
| inch to lightning connector...
| bmitc wrote:
| Take better care of them? Or are you referring to the
| terrible wired ones Apple used to have?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Bluetooth syncing issues? I put my AirPods in my ear and
| my phone immediately switched to them. I put my phone in
| my pocket and switch to my iPad and the audio switches. I
| get a phone call and answer it and my phone switches
| back.
|
| If my wife wants to listen to the same thing I'm
| listening to, we can share the audio.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| ...and I tell my iphone to stop sending audio to the
| bluetooth speaker and it disconnects, then immediately
| reconnects, until I un-pair it. And when my wife pulls
| into the driveway my phone call unexpectedly switches to
| her car. Or my headset just announces "disconnected" in
| my ear in the middle of a zoom occasionally. It's
| positively weird how infrequently these type of things
| happen when you just ... plug or unplug a wire.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Until they get caught on something while walking around,
| running through the airport, trying to get on and off
| planes, etc.
|
| There is a reason I use Bluetooth headphones with Apple
| chips...
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| My AirPods Pro work well _almost_ all the time, but
| notably, not 100% of the time. Everything feels like
| magic until the things won 't pair for some reason, or
| there's minor gaps in the audio, or the case won't show
| its charge state when opening it near the phone -- and
| there's zero UI or feedback to deal with it. It's
| infuriating.
|
| Lastly, I enjoyed _both_ wired headphones AND my Airpods
| when I still had my iPhone 6S. The choice between wired
| _or_ wireless is a false dichotomy.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And then you can buy headphones with a lightning
| connector or a $10 adapter...
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| So the solution to a problem that didn't exist before is
| to buy new hardware? Seems pretty wasteful _and_ worse,
| not to mention some of that hardware is a vehicle with
| only an AUX port.
|
| The $10 adapter apple sells doesn't sound as good as the
| one they used to build into their phones, and removes
| inline volume/play/pause controls. Not only that, but now
| I lose access to my phone's charging port in order to use
| a wired connection (Charging needed during GPS usage),
| unless I buy an even more expensive adapter -- most of
| which are unreliable and have universally terrible
| reviews.
|
| Macs still enjoy the best of both worlds with wired +
| wireless support -- including the upcoming 2022 models --
| and it's hard to deny the phone (And tablet!) experience
| hasn't gotten worse without the 3.5mm jack.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If your vehicle has only an aux port...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Lightning-Braided-
| Compatibl...
|
| Time moves on, should they also have not gotten rid of
| the 30 pin adapter?
|
| The play and pause control still works on the headphones
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| That adapter forces one to choose to listen to music _or_
| charge a phone, which is very problematic when using GPS,
| as it 's very battery intensive, especially as the phone
| is often in direct sunlight.
|
| >Time moves on, should they also have not gotten rid of
| the 30 pin adapter?
|
| Apple is still releasing _new_ hardware with a 3.5mm
| port! The port is far from outdated. Again, _both_
| wireless and wired audio coexisted nicely on the iPhone,
| this is a problem of their own doing, and they 've made
| the experience objectively worse.
|
| We're just going to have to agree to disagree.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Apple is also releasing new hardware with multiple USB-C
| ports and an SD card reader. Does that mean it should
| also release an iPhone with all of those features?
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| iPhone never had SD card support, so that's a non-
| sequitur [Edit: Because we're talking about unnecessarily
| deprecated features, not new ones]. And yes, iPhone with
| USB-C support would be _incredibly_ well received! Time
| to ditch the Lightning port asap.
| scarface74 wrote:
| It's not a non sequitur that Apple should have kept a
| headphone Jack on the iPhone because it is on other
| devices?
|
| They did have 5 generations of phones with 30 pin
| adapters.
| Weebs wrote:
| also, better latency
| rozab wrote:
| It takes a fraction of a second to 'pair' my wired
| headphones to my phone and have music start coming out.
| With BT I would have to charge them, turn them on, fiddle
| with a menu, wait for them to connect, and listen to a
| silly sound effect. Even the tiny fade-in they add really
| annoys me. I like instant feedback with my devices, I like
| how I can feel the jack click into place and music starts
| coming out with no perceptible delay.
|
| I can't say I've ever had a problem with cords tangling or
| being inconvenient.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I just open my AirPods Pro case and stick the buds in my
| ear and audio automatically switches to my AirPods.
|
| Even with my $59 Beats Flex, I just press a button and
| turn them on and they automatically pair. When they are
| taken out my ear and stuck together via the magnets,
| audio returns to my phone.
|
| Not to mention how they seamlessly switch from my iPhone,
| iPad and Mac as I change what I'm doing.
| recursive wrote:
| Many reasons have already been mentioned, but I have some
| more.
|
| Corded peripherals may be inconvenient. In my experience
| though, they are usually less inconvenient than bluetooth
| ones. This probably varies by application.
|
| Another major problem is latency. If I want to use
| headphones to play a keyboard, very little latency is
| tolerable. Bluetooth doesn't even come close.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Are you playing the keyboard on Apple devices? If not,
| what does it have to do with Apple removing headphones?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| They're replying to a post that said
|
| >And most other high end phones followed suit. I can't
| understand why people are so attached to cords
|
| Not apple specific.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Are you playing a keyboard on any phone?
| recursive wrote:
| No. What is your obsession with phones? Apple has removed
| the ability to use wired headphones. So the wired
| headphones I have couldn't be used with my (hypothetical)
| Apple phone.
| selfhifive wrote:
| Charging every last peripheral is annoying.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If I'm listening to something and my phone battery is about
| to die, I can just plug it in and continue listening. Not
| really an option with any Bluetooth headphones I've tried,
| even my set with a cord connecting the two doesn't allow
| use while charging.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If I'm listening to something and my phone is about to
| die, I put it on one of my Qi chargers all around the
| house.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| OK? How does that allow me to continue using Bluetooth
| headphones when they're dying?
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| falcolas wrote:
| > Boycott slavery?
|
| I'd expect that of any company operating today, frankly.
| But what's that got to do with their marketing speech?
| krageon wrote:
| > I'd expect that of any company operating today,
| frankly.
|
| Almost every company actively uses slave labour and can
| therefore be assumed to be entirely okay with it.
| xtracto wrote:
| Reminds me of Nintendo Seal of Quality for the NES. The
| uncontrolled amount of crap games coming out for Atari was the
| demise of the home videogame wave at that time.
|
| Nintendo felt the need to closely control the supply of games
| and their quality to "guarantee" a good experience.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| In reality that seal was nothing more than a marketing term
|
| Nintendo with its lockout chip held an absolute stranglehold
| on supply of NES games that came out
|
| The "Angry Video Game Nerd" of the mid 2000's was proof
| enough that plenty of shit got shoveled out on the NES
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Or yesterday, when they claimed that buying a $4000 Mac Studio
| advances social justice. That must have been the most tortured
| attempt at checking off that box I've seen in a while.
| toyg wrote:
| "The Reality Distortion Field is already at max capacity,
| captain!"
|
| "I don't care, WE NEED MORE!"
| palindrome818 wrote:
| This book was actually totally worth reading (I mean not on 1x
| but 2x for sure)
| mariodiana wrote:
| tl;dr moral of the story: _But I never again promised a customer
| that I could do something beyond my full control._
| kuharich wrote:
| Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1896189,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879322
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _The day Steve Jobs dissed me hard_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1896189 - Nov 2010 (122
| comments)
|
| _The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879322 - June 2013 (104
| comments)
|
| Also this little one:
|
| _The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15208241 - Sept 2017 (1
| comment)
| paulpauper wrote:
| that whole period from mid to late 90s to early 2000s had so many
| easy and cheap entrepreneurial opportunities. You didn't need to
| spend millions to reinvent the wheel to make a product or exit.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Well it's a good thing that Apple no longer does these kinds of
| crazy, passive-aggressive moves with suppliers and developers any
| more. Whew!
| zionic wrote:
| Nah. We have enough AT&T-style soulless megacorps. Give me some
| flavor.
| tonmoy wrote:
| I'm pretty sure GP was being sarcastic
| [deleted]
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Says a lot that a man who has been dead for over a decade still
| generates content worthy of the HN front page.
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| > "Sorry, you need to use this software; there is no other way."
|
| That's your cue to set up mitmproxy (or the 2003 equivalent?) and
| figure out how to talk to the service directly.
| trasz wrote:
| Only tangentially related, but last year I've tried ripping some
| CDs with iTunes^wMusic.app and it's still unable to do it right -
| there was a lot of skipping. Which is frankly pathetic when
| compared with cdparanoia, which had that working some 30 years
| ago.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I'm immediately suspicious of anyone I meet in the tech industry
| who _doesn 't_ think Steve Jobs was a raging asshole. The number
| of people who've given first hand accounts of him screaming in
| meetings or going into full rage meltdown mode at the slightest
| provocation is in the hundreds. Any time from 1977 up until very
| near his death.
|
| I'm literally typing this on a late model macbook air right now,
| and I use MacOS because of its NeXT and BSD-like heritage, but he
| was not not a nice person.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| Agreed. Maybe assholes are still worthwhile human beings?
| walrus01 wrote:
| I guess the pertinent question is what set of people consider
| assholes to be worthwhile role models to be emulated, or not.
| [deleted]
| wdurden wrote:
| If you liked this one, you might also like ..
|
| https://panic.com/extras/audionstory/
| andygcook wrote:
| That was a fun read. Thanks for sharing.
| creeble wrote:
| >The name "Audion" simply popped into my head during a shower
|
| Not much of an electronics history buff, I guess. Also the name
| of (arguably) the most important electronics invention of the
| first half of the 20th century.
| abejfehr wrote:
| I found the actual keynote in case anyone's curious to hear the
| quote: https://youtu.be/MvCJ613HORA?t=566
| FiniteLooper wrote:
| I was also once dissed by Steve Jobs at a keynote!
|
| Back when widgets first came out for OS X I was in college and
| was beginning to learn programming. I was sill very bad, but
| these widgets interested me because they were essentially just
| little HTML/CSS/JS webpages. I looked around and saw there was no
| widget for CNN news.
|
| CNN had RSS feeds of their news, I found some other widget that
| displayed an RSS feed and basically just plugged this new data
| source in and it worked! Next I just restyled it to look like it
| the CNN website which at the time was light blue and pretty ugly,
| but I made this widget to match.
|
| I released it, and it got some downloads! Months later at the
| WWDC keynote, I was watching live and I saw Steve sit down at the
| demo computer and show off some widgets on the big screen. The
| CNN widget I made was there on screen at the keynote! I didn't
| believe it at first, I was in shock. Next though, when he showed
| my widget his only comment was that "it's not as nice looking as
| [some other news widget] but it gets the job done."
|
| Ouch! Not only was Steve Jobs personally aware of a piece of
| software I (kind of) wrote but he demoed it at WWDC! But he also
| said it looked pretty bad... And he was right, it did.
|
| Shortly after this I restyled the widget to look nice on its own,
| regardless of what the CNN website actually looked like. While
| this stung, it was a good design lesson to learn. Thanks Steve!
| ffhhj wrote:
| CD Baby's email unsubscribe doesn't work.
| pnut wrote:
| Sivers sold the company ages ago
| irrational wrote:
| 12 years later, does anyone have any additional perspective on
| this? The story didn't make much sense to me. Especially the end
| where they went ahead and uploaded the music to Apple anyway. Why
| would they do that? If someone treated me the way Apple treated
| CD Baby, I wouldn't put up with that level of abuse.
| pr0zac wrote:
| CD Baby was the biggest independent music distribution channel
| at the time (I have to image its been surpassed by Bandcamp
| now?) and iTunes was very clearly going to be one of the
| biggest markets available.
|
| Getting the hundreds of thousands artists that use your service
| banned from iTunes because someone was rude would've been a
| really terrible business decision.
| blihp wrote:
| It was an example of Steve being Steve: he wanted their back
| catalog but he also wanted to extract a pound of flesh for
| their perceived slight more. He had absolutely no problem doing
| or saying things that put partners (such as the Motorola Rokr
| presentation a couple years later) or even employees (the time
| he indirectly joked about getting rid of Tony Fadell on stage)
| in a bad light/spot. Not saying he didn't often have a point,
| but he did it in a way that often came off as petty and
| vindictive. In this case, he probably knew exactly where Apple
| was heading re: the music business and also probably viewed CD
| Baby as a competitor to be taken out, so there was that aspect
| to it as well.
|
| While I don't think they've been (as) vindictive at a corporate
| level since Steve, Apple as a company has been yanking
| 'partners' around like this whenever they had the power to for
| at least the last 15-20 years, depending on the industry.
| tinco wrote:
| His responsibility is primarily to enabling his clients (the
| musicians) to make money from selling their music. Regardless
| of his feelings Apple was offering a sales channel for his
| musicians.
| dundarious wrote:
| I don't think the artists would be happy to miss the
| opportunity to be on iTunes just because Jobs was slow,
| involved in marketing spin, and specifically obnoxious to this
| one guy. People and companies (yes, major ones) behave far
| worse all the time. Boycotts _can_ make sense, but relatively
| rarely compared to the number of times such bad behavior
| occurs.
| _1 wrote:
| Here's the notes he posted after the pitch from Apple:
| https://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66729&cid=6133882
| sivers wrote:
| Wow! Thanks for finding this! I'm so glad someone saved it.
|
| (I'm the original author.)
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Steve Jobs was not the nice humble guy everybody wants to believe
| in.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Who believes Steve Jobs was a nice, humble guy?
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