|
Jastiger posted:Bang and Olufsen were nice, and pretty, but waaay high end luxury audiophile stuff in my experience. Back in the day (B&W and early color televisions, radios, turntables etc.), they were known for solid well-engineered products. Then they started focusing more and more on the design aspect through the 80s and 90s. Their products were still high quality, but the prices were out of proportion since you were also paying a lot for the design. They still produce some products that are truly great, like the BeoLab 5 and Beolab 9 speakers, and you do get some pretty neat integration features if you run an all B&O setup. But most of their products are still horribly overpriced for what features you get, especially their TVs. Back in the day, people wouldn't think twice about keeping a TV for 10 or maybe 15 years, so a B&O set was seen as an investment. With the speed that TVs are getting new features these days, their relatively long product development process just can't keep up, and people don't want to pay 5 times as much for the same features as a Samsung, just because it says B&O on it. The market has moved away from them, which is a shame, because they've had some real cool industrial design over the years.
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 16:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 18:03 |
|
|
Jastiger posted:Bang and Olufsen were nice, and pretty, but waaay high end luxury audiophile stuff in my experience.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 17:03
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:But wasn't/isn't Asus a really good mid range computer parts manufacturer? The laptop in the picture is mine. Overall it's not a bad machine, it just has a crap sounding audio setup (even if you plug the little external subwoofer in). They're not the only ones doing it by any means - I think my father's 17" Toshiba monster laptop has Harmon/Kardon branding It's kinda of like how every cheap Nokia dumb phone seemed to have Zeiss branding on the crummy plastic camera lens - I just can't see it fooling anyone (and in Nokia's case probably backfired when they started putting legitimately good cameras with that branding in newer phones)
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 21:33
|
|
|
1-Up posted:B&O use Philips components, so you are just paying way too much money for the design. People like to trot out that little fact all the time, always in a sort smug "I'll tell you a secret" kinda tone. As someone who's been on the inside (as it were), it annoys me greatly. Of course B&O use components from Philips, LG, Samsung and so on. How many LCD panel manufacturers are there in the world? And wouldn't it be idiotic for B&O to design their own TV tuner board? So of course they use a bunch of standard components, just like every other manufacturer in the world, high-end or low-end. But it's what you do with them, how you integrate them, and how you tune the end result that's important. That's why in the old days, B&O would put Phillips CRTs in their TVs and make them look twice as good as the competition, because they spent time and money on calibration and putting a secondary anti-glare screen in front of the CRT. You don't get those results from simply slapping together standard components. And then you get into the whole system integration thing, where you can literally control the audio and video of your entire house from a single remote, even to the point of controlling lighting, motorized curtains, projector and so on. All you have to do is press the "Movie" button and everything reconfigures itself for watching movies. Of course, the B&O installers will charge you out the nose for such a setup, but it's 100% more slick than anything else I have seen. Unfortunately, the shift to LCDs and plasma panels really pulled the rug from under B&O. They had a bunch of people who were simply masters at perfecting CRT TVs, but they didn't realize how quickly the flat panel would take over the market, so they really struggled for years to make their flat panel TVs look nearly as good as the old CRT models. And now the smart TV and UHD etc. race simply moves too fast for them. It's no good having the nicest-looking and slickest TV in the world when it costs 5 times as much as everyone else's TVs and is outdated just as fast as them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2015 21:52
|
|
|
B&O have moved more into providing accessories for existing devices, like iPods and so forth over or providing something with finely crafted gloss, like their TV that automatically adjusts it's position depending on where you are sitting. They're pretty much designer electronics nowadays. They also have moved into partnering with companies like Audi and HP to provide brand-name flourishes on devices, such as that Asus laptop. And apparently they're so good at doing things in aluminum that they offer that as a service to other companies.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 02:36
|
|
|
Hey speaking of over-priced products with luxury labels attached to them... Why yes I do need an extra 10 inches of bezel to put the ferrari logo on  My brother had one of these way back in the mid 2000's, I seem to remember it was stupidly expensive at the time too Google tells me in the neighborhood of $720
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 03:44
|
|
|
WebDog posted:like their TV that automatically adjusts it's position depending on where you are sitting. Who started the dumbass trend of "mount your TV 6 feet off the ground", that poo poo is for waiting rooms and sports bars
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 06:45
|
|
|
WebDog posted:They also have moved into partnering with companies like Audi They've sold of the automotive division now. I guess they needed the instant cash boost, but I thought that department was doing pretty well. It's still the best car audio system I have ever heard, at any price level. quote:And apparently they're so good at doing things in aluminum that they offer that as a service to other companies. Yeah, stuff like BMW iDrive knobs and door kick plates with etched logos on them, they do a lot of that. Apparently nobody else can do colored anodizing quite as well as they can.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 06:52
|
|
|
Speaking of cars, we'll eventually find out if this was dumb or not: BMW, Audi and Daimler dished out $3.1 billion to buy Nokia Maps.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 07:00
|
|
|
Well Nokia is still going strong in 2240!  
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 07:06
|
|
|
Let's not forget one of the most well-known examples of "and the mighty did fall" brands predicting their place in the future, Pan-Am in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Apparently this is an actual promotional ad from 1970.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 07:11
|
|
|
Sappo569 posted:Hey speaking of over-priced products with luxury labels attached to them... Thanks to those stupid endorsement deals I was able to afford a pretty good second hand laptop in university because it was black and yellow and covered with LivestrongTM bullshit that no one cared about anymore.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 09:27
|
|
|
WebDog posted:Well Nokia is still going strong in 2240! Nokia will start building (Android) smartphones again next year, so it's not completely impossible. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 09:34
|
|
|
Decius posted:Nokia will start building (Android) smartphones again next year, so it's not completely impossible. Wait, what? I thought Microsoft bought Nokia, which is why Nokia went from awesome sturdy phones to Nokia Lumia (with windows phone) to Microsoft Lumia. Did Microsoft just but the Lunia design and trademark from Nokia or something?
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 09:46
|
|
|
MS bought the rights to the names and the hardware part of Nokia, but retired the name Nokia already (and probably will retire Lumia too). Nokia isn't allowed to use the name for smartphones until sometime 2016/2017, but they are allowed to use the name for tablets (the N1 for example). They have been coy about it for quite some time, but recently they made it pretty clear that they will build smartphones again: http://www.windowscentral.com/nokia-reaffirms-plans-get-back-smartphone-business http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/18/us-nokia-phones-idUSKBN0OY21320150618 It's a "designed by Nokia, built by <Chinese company>"-deal, but which manufacturer doesn't work this way nowadays?
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 10:01
|
|
|
ElwoodCuse posted:Who started the dumbass trend of "mount your TV 6 feet off the ground", that poo poo is for waiting rooms and sports bars People going for gigantic TVs and home theaters maybe? I think the idea there is to sit in your fancy recliner in your huge room, lean back, and watch movies or sports or porn or whatever. So you put the TV in an appropriate place based on that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 10:29
|
|
|
Man, my first ever cell was a Nokia brick, and that thing was indestructible. Kept a charge for a week, no matter how many hours I wasted playing Snake on it. It would probably still work today if I hadn't wanted something with more than three features and thus started a long line of cellular drowning or accident victims. I'd totally buy a Nokia smartphone, it might mean I'd actually have a phone that lasted til the end of my contract.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 12:58
|
|
|
I'd love an Android smartphone with just 3-4 days battery life, or a week if at all possible. I hate having to plug in my phone twice a day.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 13:06
|
|
|
KozmoNaut posted:I'd love an Android smartphone with just 3-4 days battery life, or a week if at all possible. I hate having to plug in my phone twice a day. I think the Sony Z3 could do at least 2 days. I don't know what voodoo magic they used to make that happen since they're still using the same components in every other Android phone. I wish Apple would put out an iPhone MAXX with an Androidesque battery size instead of going thinner and thinner. An iPhone with a 3000mAh would probably last 3 days easy. At least give the clunky C models ungodly battery life.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 13:43
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:Let's not forget one of the most well-known examples of "and the mighty did fall" brands predicting their place in the future, Pan-Am in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Well, depending on your religious beliefs, they did carry some people from this earth.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 15:47
|
|
|
Decius posted:MS bought the rights to the names and the hardware part of Nokia, but retired the name Nokia already (and probably will retire Lumia too). Nokia isn't allowed to use the name for smartphones until sometime 2016/2017, but they are allowed to use the name for tablets (the N1 for example). T There also have been some backroom rumours flying around about lincensing Sailfish OS from Jolla, which is a company found by ex-Nokia employees who got kicked out/left when Nokia Mobiles was bought by Microsoft. In a nutshell, there basically is at this moment two Nokia companies: The Microsoft-Nokia which is quickly dying, and NSN-Nokia, which is the left-over parts which MS did not purchase and which still makes network systems and that navigator system amongst other things. After the name rights-deal has run its course in late 2016, NSN-Nokia can continue from where Pre-Lumia Nokia left off and Microsoft can do nothing about it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 16:33
|
|
|
Krispy Kareem posted:I think the Sony Z3 could do at least 2 days. I don't know what voodoo magic they used to make that happen since they're still using the same components in every other Android phone. I'd quite happily double the thickness of my phone if it meant doubling the battery life. But marketeers seem to think thinness sells.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 16:44
|
|
|
Going a bit further into Nokia, the company from 2000 to 2010 was "Dumb Moves in Marketing: The textbook". First of all, they are a textbook case of technology company focusing on the wrong aspects; instead of creating new services and technology, they wanted to make their phones cheaper, not better. For example, I know from several sources that the original nGage was more or less know internally to be a made-to-fail product because of internal management wankery. In addition, the company had a ready-for-production prototype system, which while it looked a bit silly, had _every_ feature which made the iPhone a success, two years before the Apple phone was launched. Nokia also decided at first to abandon touch screens, since "they are so expensive technology and error-prone when typing, nobody wants them", yeah that turned out well. I can also argue that Nokia was the market first on pretty much every aspect which was later made successful by Apple. They had app stores (which were hideous, difficult to use and most importantly, really picky about the phone types since the OS at that time was a complete nightmare to develop for. No backwards support ever, even between minor updates. Also, Nokia had the music store pretty much like Apple, but they decided to abandon it almost within the timeframe the first Comes-with-Music-phones hit the market. They managed to gently caress up so many things and strangle so many ideas to the cradle that finally, they were in complete dead-end when they decided to go with Microsoft and skip making their own OS ecosystem. MS Phone was a disaster, Microsoft cheated them in every occasion and internally, Nokia was a mess. One telling part was that Samsung beat them to the Phone 8 market, even when Nokia had 6 months advance as the "priority partner". Finally, when Nokia got to their senses and started to restart their Non-MS product development, Microsoft bought the entire development line to ensure that they have at least one propietary developer. And at that point, the company was sold at peanuts per dollar price. EDIT: Nokia also developed a massive god-complex against their partners when at the top, and was more or less known to be a complete bastard to work for as an contractor or external developer. EDIT2: And the company this rant is about is the Microsoft-part of Nokia. The NSN-Nokia is, as far as I know, not as dense as their predecessor. Der Kyhe has a new favorite as of 17:06 on Aug 21, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 16:59
|
|
|
Der Kyhe posted:Nokia also decided at first to abandon touch screens, since "they are so expensive technology and error-prone when typing, nobody wants them", yeah that turned out well. This is largely unrelated, but I'm still pissed that this is the direction the market went. I loving hate touchscreens, especially on phones because hey, Nokia was right, they're really error-prone, and not just when typing. But good luck getting a good phone with a non-touchscreen interface these days, or better yet no touchscreen at all. I'm still sticking with a phone from like 2009 that can barely use any apps, because at least it has a loving keyboard.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 17:34
|
|
|
Touch screens are cool and are useful for some things but I loving hate typing on one. I clung to my old phone for as long as possible because it had an actual QWERTY keyboard with actual physical buttons. Maybe I'm just too old but I have trouble typing on the drat screen and autocorrect "fixes" the stupidest poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 17:47
|
|
|
Jeez, just use Swype or something.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 17:51
|
|
|
Crow Jane posted:Jeez, just use Swype or something. I try not to judge too quickly, but I just looked up Swype to find out what it was, and literally the very first and biggest picture they have, front and center on their website, is someone using their 'fast and accurate keyboard' to make a spelling mistake.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 18:21
|
|
|
Cleretic posted:This is largely unrelated, but I'm still pissed that this is the direction the market went. I loving hate touchscreens, especially on phones because hey, Nokia was right, they're really error-prone, and not just when typing. But good luck getting a good phone with a non-touchscreen interface these days, or better yet no touchscreen at all. Yes, but this was a case of "right idea for wrong reasons". They were right in a sense that at that point, touch screens were expensive technology, and they still are somewhat error-prone compared to a physical keyboard. However, they decided to kill touch screens at first thru-out their entire line-up because they wanted cheaper products, which turned out to be a massive mistake. Should they have been working on a solution where physical keyboard is a special device for special models, or the Jolla approach, where physical keyboard is an optional external device, they would have been golden. However, the management at that time completely missed the idea that people want multimedia devices (such as the iPhone or any Android today) and were fixated over the idea of making "a same product but cheaper than competition". For some reason, the idea that you could have a game system, consumer product and business-exclusive services in one product was completely alien to them even if every piece of the puzzle was in front of them, and competition was getting close to getting their poo poo together. That lead to the situation where their ancient Symbian-OS was unable to do what their competition could, and they were nowhere near making anything resembling a comparable product. That lead to the decision to adopt Windows Phone 7 as their only OS, and the rest is history. EDIT: The Sailfish OS is a direct descendant of what would have been the "Android-killer" from Nokia, sold as a 'failed concept' to Jolla and made an existing product with the bare-bones resources available. Consider that Jolla operated with a crew less than 200 before their first launch, which was like "one development group out of several dozens" from the old Nokia. Der Kyhe has a new favorite as of 18:35 on Aug 21, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 18:28
|
|
|
I'd happily pay an extra $25 for my phone if it was like an old slide phone with a QWERTY board but also had a touch screen. I want X phone but with more features not if that means taking away what X phone did that I liked. Smart phones are a neat piece of technology but I touch type, drat it. I need to feel buttons or that doesn't work right.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 18:31
|
|
|
Around 2011 or so I agreed with you guys, but touch screen tech really has come a good and long way from the days when not adopting them was conceivably a wise business decision. It's still not great, but I type up whole long-winded bullshit posts on a Galaxy S4 all the time with minimal errors. I completely agree that not even having the option for a physical QWERTY keyboard these days is baffling though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 19:06
|
|
|
I have about as much of a degree of inaccuracy with a full-sized keyboard as I do with a touch-screen. Though that says more about my typing abilities than touch-screens. I do think that in the next five years there will be a reaction against touch-screens and physical inputs will return in some capacity (though probably not in ways we expect or hope).
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 19:55
|
|
|
umalt posted:I have about as much of a degree of inaccuracy with a full-sized keyboard as I do with a touch-screen. Though that says more about my typing abilities than touch-screens. I do think that in the next five years there will be a reaction against touch-screens and physical inputs will return in some capacity (though probably not in ways we expect or hope). The biggest thing really is that people that actually know how to touch type very fast kind of need the tactile feeling of buttons. That's how touch typing actually works. Touch screens don't have that tactile response so they're finicky as hell if you know how to touch type. It also feels very, very strange to actually look at the thing I'm typing on. I could hammer out texts on my old QWERTY phone real quick while looking at other stuff. Check for errors, then send. This drat touch screen I screw up every other word a lot of the time. Though it does lead to some funny autocorrect things. Sometimes it leaves me going "holy poo poo autocorrect actually knows this word! Wow!"
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 20:07
|
|
|
Cleretic posted:I try not to judge too quickly, but I just looked up Swype to find out what it was, and literally the very first and biggest picture they have, front and center on their website, is someone using their 'fast and accurate keyboard' to make a spelling mistake.  Haha, you weren't kidding.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 20:34
|
|
|
maybe they meant like what to grab to eat for lunch, but man
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 20:58
|
|
|
Ha. Yeah, that's pretty bad, but the app itself is pretty okay. Certainly better than typing each letter individually.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 21:08
|
|
|
Most Android keyboards already have that, FYI. And by most, I mean every one out of the four I've tried.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 21:13
|
|
|
Yeah, phones do. I had to download it separately for my tablet for some reason, though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 21:16
|
|
|
About 18 months or so ago I got a new phone, a Motorola Photon Q, because it was the best phone on the market to still have a pull out Qwerty keypad. And man does it suuuuuck and is out of date majorly. I hate touch screens but I'm going to have to end up using one next phone I'm sure.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 21:19
|
|
|
Choco1980 posted:About 18 months or so ago I got a new phone, a Motorola Photon Q, because it was the best phone on the market to still have a pull out Qwerty keypad. And man does it suuuuuck and is out of date majorly. I hate touch screens but I'm going to have to end up using one next phone I'm sure. I had a pull out keyboard ~4 years ago when they were already antiquated and I loved it. When that one bit the dust a couple years ago I had to get some monstrous behemoth phone just to have any hope of typing effectively on the touch screen. I'm pretty sure this phone is larger than my old phone with the keyboard pulled out, and it's still shittier to type on. Also i just decided to try out this swipe thing. Amazingly i haven't hit any spelling thrips... whoops, spoke top soon. Haha, double letters are just as much of a clattering as i would have expected. Also it still takes way longer.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 23:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 18:03 |
|
|
  Touchscreens.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2015 23:16
|
|
