This Kinect offered to Apple first thing...
What on Earth did they think Apple would do with it?
The open source driver for Microsoft's Xbxo 360 Kinect add-on has been ported to Mac OS X - an irony given that Kinect developer PrimeSense originally punted the motion detection tech at Apple. Kinect was released in the UK this week, but debuted in the US a little sooner than that, giving coder AlexP the chance to run Kinect …
If Apple produce a physical TV / internet / games device this might have been useful.
If by Red Tape he means Apple wanted to have exclusivity then I don't blame them. Can you patent the use of 2 cameras, IR + 2 mics ? In most of the world, you can't patent the idea (i.e. use imaging / sound to control a games device) or even the software.
Jobs Halo because, well, it's controversial on this site to even think Apple make sensible decisions.
When it's said that Cinnect has been hacked, is this more akin to someone having written a driver for it (in itself not such an easy task), or is there a whole load of cracking of encrypted datastreams etc.? I am presuming that there is no physical change to the hardware.
It's just that I don't really see writing a driver for some hardware as hacking that hardware and I'm curious to know what's actually been done.
I know that putting together a driver for an undocumented piece of hardware is hacking and I am very impressed that this has been achieved so quickly. The problem that I have is that, while I know that this is hacking the device, I just associate hacking hardware devices with opening them up and getting out the soldering iron. It's probably due to a background in engineering and electronics and I certainly don't want to belittle what this guy has done.
I'd really like to know how this has been achieved so quickly, as even reverse engineering a driver would seem to be an impressive task, but if the datastream were to be encoded or obfuscated in some way, this is a far more impressive task.
now that it's been revealed to cost about £35 in reality, the more people buying them for £130 the better!
all the previous complaints were about the hardware being sold at a loss, and subsidised by games that people wouldn't buy for linux/osx/etc. Now it's revealed that every sale is a significant gain, no matter the use, I don't see the problem.
Why do people always forget to factor in the development costs?
Sure, the parts cost £35, but do you think people work for free?
Y'know the people who created the design, designed the hardware, PCB, casing, packaging, software, advertising, programming API and so on. They all get paid, some more than others.
A DVD costs pence to make, but the content costs millions to film, edit and so on.
"Development costs are sunk costs"
every cost needs to be factored in when looking to get an ROI.
"given that they get a good part of £95 every time they sell one"
shipping, retail packaging, cost of manufacture, retailers margin, advertising etc are for Free now?
god lads, can people think even a *small* bit beyond what they read