And you now longer live in fear of the RRoD, instead you have the RDoD (Red Dot of Death) to look out for as that is the new error signal for the box, but hopefully the main cooling issue from the original design should be a thing of the past. I have heard reports of it once again chewing through discs if you move the console whilst it’s operating, but if you do that you kind of deserve to hear the grinding noise it makes.

All in all its a good, solid move from Microsoft and seems to be bringing in a new customer centred thought process, instead of charging excessive amounts for peripherals that should have been included in the first place. Even as a PS3 owner I have to applaud them.

As much as I appreciate what Apple and Mr. Jobs do for producing expensive, closed platforms that are usually surpassed by cheaper products available elsewhere. I just can’t agree with their current attitude to their customers.

I used to like Apple, but recently it has gone downhill and turned petty in its bid to continue to charge valued customers over-inflated prices for equipment that is only industry leading for a short period of time…

Maybe its just me that wants the full experience of the internet, but I do see flash as an integral part of that experience. Without it youtube would not be the success it is and you wouldn’t have anywhere near as many games to occupy your time online. Some of the most creative and interactive websites have been flash only sites and I wouldn’t want to effectively have content like that inaccessible to me or other people.

Apps created in flash have appeared on the iPhone before (they used to use a simple converter that was previously bundled with flash but has been removed now because Apple didn’t like Developers doing this) and have appeared on other devices with touch screen interfaces with no apparent issues in the past, so I’m not sure how Apple think this could be an issue.

Steve Jobs is taking this posture because he wants more control over what goes onto the platform and doesn’t like the idea that people can play games on the iPad or iPhone for free via flash rather than having to pay for them through the App store.

Unfortunately he has a very loyal, captive market that continue to purchase Apple products because of the hype that surrounds on of their launches. And in all my experience I haven’t found a single Apple product that hasn’t been surpassed by a considerably cheaper product within months, if not weeks.

I can only applaud anything that saves time and allows more design freedom on the fly.