I've always heard that BetaMax failed because they refused to allow pornography to be stored on their tapes; is this an actual urban legend, or is Apple just cramming fingers in its ears?
I believe your story is a bit conflated. VHS succeeded because the porn industry wholeheartedly embraced it, but that was not due to a moral stance afaik.
My understanding of the story involves a compounding of factors:
Because Sony had a really good idea of how much money was to be made from the home video market (after seeing the industrial success of the joint U-Matic format), they made sure that they held all the Betamax patents and hoped to hold the market captive based on their reputation.
Because JVC (and its parent, Matsushita/Panasonic) wanted to take on Sony, they were willing to license their VHS technology for less which led to increased marketplace competition in the form of more vendors selling VHS-compatible equipment.
As a result, the entire production chain for VHS (cameras, tape stock, duplicators, etc.) was significantly cheaper and therefore attractive to the low-budget video segment which automatically could not afford to release on multiple formats.
This also meant that VHS decks were initially less expensive for the video store to buy, and therefore less expensive for customers to rent (to expose the customer to the format) and later to buy (to expand market penetration).
Since these consumers already had a VHS deck, they of course would continue to rent other titles as VHS and to buy VHS tape stock.
Certainly there are other factors that were in play -- the idea of recording an entire football game on one tape, etc. And the overall affordability of VHS and the proactive efforts of the VHS consortium to do market research and saturate the market should not be overlooked. And given the choice Sony would probably have preferred the moral high ground at not being the smut-peddler's choice.
Ultimately though I've heard from several places that the early Betamax duplicators especially were much more expensive than for VHS. I would like very much to get my hands on price lists for such gear around, say, 1978-1980 and see if that bears out.
In the top free apps list in the app store, #23 is "Sex Positions Game - 18+ Free". The second screenshot proclaims "Adult Content - Download to View" and "Beautifully Illustrated Positions!"
A few weeks ago, I saw "Adult Sex Strip" in there. A quick search shows it's still in the app store, along with quite a few "interesting" hits for "adult", "porn" and other typical keywords.
Thanks so much for helping to set our moral compass straight, Steve. Go fuck yourself, I think I will help myself to an Android phone with my next upgrade.
An odd stance from Steve "I did more acid than Tim Leary and your mom combined... and speaking of which I did your mom when I wasn't doing Joan Baez" Jobs, but I guess age and children do weird things to people.
TechCrunch's MG Siegler, who originally reported the e-mail exchange, noted the "and" typo in Jobs' response, but he said he verified the sender by checking the e-mail's IP headers.
Who needs porn apps when Safari gives you access to… the Internet!
There's also some stupid Unity3D based "adult" browser game that will be trivial to "port" to the iPad/iPhone. One-click porn porting coming in Unity version 3 this summer, assuming the devs will pony up $100 for an iPad dev account.
I'm beginning to hate Apple, and I'm a fan of their products. This closed market stuff is working for them now, but it can't last forever. Also, it's bad for everyone.
Why can't it last forever? How long have video game console systems been going? Regular people love their closed, expensive, easy to use Xbox/Playstation/Nintendos. The last thing they want is a TV they have to sysadmin.
(ok, 30 years is not quite forever)
(and, yes, my TV runs linux, though i haven't yet bothered to figure out how to access a shell)
I've always heard that BetaMax failed because they refused to allow pornography to be stored on their tapes; is this an actual urban legend, or is Apple just cramming fingers in its ears?
(Captcha: Softwood Mr. Heh.)
I believe your story is a bit conflated. VHS succeeded because the porn industry wholeheartedly embraced it, but that was not due to a moral stance afaik.
conflated
Ah, I knew there was a word whose definition was "check snopes.com"
My understanding of the story involves a compounding of factors:
Certainly there are other factors that were in play -- the idea of recording an entire football game on one tape, etc. And the overall affordability of VHS and the proactive efforts of the VHS consortium to do market research and saturate the market should not be overlooked. And given the choice Sony would probably have preferred the moral high ground at not being the smut-peddler's choice.
Ultimately though I've heard from several places that the early Betamax duplicators especially were much more expensive than for VHS. I would like very much to get my hands on price lists for such gear around, say, 1978-1980 and see if that bears out.
In the top free apps list in the app store, #23 is "Sex Positions Game - 18+ Free". The second screenshot proclaims "Adult Content - Download to View" and "Beautifully Illustrated Positions!"
A few weeks ago, I saw "Adult Sex Strip" in there. A quick search shows it's still in the app store, along with quite a few "interesting" hits for "adult", "porn" and other typical keywords.
Thanks so much for helping to set our moral compass straight, Steve. Go fuck yourself, I think I will help myself to an Android phone with my next upgrade.
I'd hit it.
The girls, I mean. Not Steve. Or the iPad.
(Well, maybe the iPad...)
An odd stance from Steve "I did more acid than Tim Leary and your mom combined... and speaking of which I did your mom when I wasn't doing Joan Baez" Jobs, but I guess age and children do weird things to people.
Gotta love this:
This story is really going to cramp the style of everyone googling for "steve jobs porn".
Or "android porn". Or...
iPad porn.
Porn, there's an app for that. No wait there isn't...
Source on your userpic?
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, kind of Run Lola Run's resetting plotline thing crossed with a horrorshow. It's pretty fun.
Damn your Disney connections, Jobs, damn them!
Who needs porn apps when Safari gives you access to… the Internet!
There's also some stupid Unity3D based "adult" browser game that will be trivial to "port" to the iPad/iPhone. One-click porn porting coming in Unity version 3 this summer, assuming the devs will pony up $100 for an iPad dev account.
I'm beginning to hate Apple, and I'm a fan of their products. This closed market stuff is working for them now, but it can't last forever. Also, it's bad for everyone.
I wonder if there's a lawsuit in there somewhere.
Why can't it last forever? How long have video game console systems been going? Regular people love their closed, expensive, easy to use Xbox/Playstation/Nintendos. The last thing they want is a TV they have to sysadmin.
(ok, 30 years is not quite forever)
(and, yes, my TV runs linux, though i haven't yet bothered to figure out how to access a shell)