[HN Gopher] The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010) ___________________________________________________________________ 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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-09 23:00 UTC)