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Ehhh... the iPhone OS is a derivative of OSX in many senses: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/07/13/iphone-os-x-architecture-the-mach-kernel-and-ram/

I'm not saying Microsoft has a chance in hell at succeeding, but it could very much be a Win7 derivative and still be nothing like Win7.

BTW, what happened to MS Surface? That seemed pretty cool.

You're kidding, right?

I believe the labels' thinking at the time was that this was a test, and experimental roll-out.

Perhaps in part, but I think it's more that they were forced to go with Jobs' plan to sell (not rent) music at a flat price because they all knew that previous attempts to sell music online had failed: the Sony Connect store, Duet, MusicNet, Pressplay, etc. All were so restrictive and user-unfriendly that buying songs on iTunes at a flat $.99 was a breath of fresh air, even with the DRM they had at that time.

If devices like iPad are the future of computing, then I guess we can kiss a lot of languages goodbye unless they come from Cupertino and are blessed by Jobs, since even developers don't like jailbreaking(it's illegal according to Apple).

Ah, a slippery slope argument. The fact is that Apple does NOT have a monopoly of the market, and people who want to develop in some other language has got plenty of choices to do so. And there's not even the merest hint of a suggestion that Apple is going to be the monopoly vendor of computing devices.

What about this scary scenario, Both Apple and MS hold ~50% of the market(mobile or otherwise), and hence are not a monopoly and can trample on developer's rights. Don't tell me that's unlikely, just look at Windows Phone 7 Series.

The iPhone is (one of?) the first general computing devices to ban other languages, and others are learning from their success.

Also, you don't need Apple to be a monopoly, just a big player is enough to affect software development.

What about articles such as:

http://gizmodo.com/5506692/ipad-is-the-future

http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/ipad/

http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175600/The_iPad_is_the_future_for_home_computing

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/04/02/ipad-the-destroyer-19-things-it-will-kill/

Surely they are more than a merest hint of a suggestion?

You can write shitty apps in ObjC and people do it all the time. The App store is chock full of shitty apps like Fart apps.

There are a lot of shitty apps, and a lot of excellent apps. As I said, if Flash and their ilk were allowed there would be MORE shitty apps. It's a favour to consumers to keep the signal to noise ratio on the App Store as high as possible, and not allowing Flash apps helps that ratio.

So, lets kill a ton of good Flash Apps and content on the Web just because there will be some more shitty apps to sift and search through? And here I thought storage, bandwidth and power of servers on the internet was dirt cheap for a company wallowing in cash like Apple.

How is this flamebait? Seriously?

Here is just ONE example of Thurrott and how he has no creed.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592E3270-32C8-4852-975C-162E788749CA.html

And there are others like:
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/24671/
Or Apple copying Microsoft?
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10489/
Or just generally being an idiot?
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/23845/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10584/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/17300/

Thurrott does not belong on Slashdot

The problems with Flash are many and technical. It's so badly designed from a security perspective, that it's almost like a Microsoft product. The giveaway that it is not is that it runs on a handful of linux architectures. Games could just as well be written as Java Applets, which would increase the security and portability of the games. For movies, Flash is just plain wrong and other wrappers should be used, Ogg Theora being the obvious choice after MPEG or QuickTime.

Yeah but you really ought to give MSFT credit, they have gotten bullshitting down to a fricking art form. For those not old enough to remember or who weren't into PCs at the time read The Yellow Road To Cairo to see how MSFT under old Darth Gates managed to pretty much grind innovation to a halt for FIVE years, while killing or nearly killing several competitors, all while selling not a damned thing at all besides screenshots and bullshit.

Say what you want about old Billy boy, it takes some 50 pound brass balls to bullshit an entire industry for half a decade with nothing but a bluff. To keep a lie going THAT long, and get everyone to believe it? Man I'd hate to play old Bill in poker. Hell I'll admit he bluffed the shit out of me too, I didn't get OS/2 until it was practically on life support because I was waiting for the Cairo coolness. say what you want about old Bill, he is one cold calculating son of a bitch.

It is a shame it turned out to be bullshit, but I figured it was, old Ballmer monkey just ain't got the bullshitting skills that Bill had. To pull off good vaporware you got to make the audience believe in the vapors not just throw out a press release or an occasional leak. Ballmer needs to go spend some time at the feet of his master before trying to pull that off again, he just ain't got the skills.

The Newton flopped.

100,000 the first year.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/600D65E6-A31E-45CA-AFC5-42BC253F5337.html

While the iPad has at least tripled that

http://www.pcworld.com/article/193781/ipad_sales_estimated_to_top_600000.html

I had a couple Newtons, an MP 130 and later a 2000

I'm not sure I agree that Carbon isn't a native API. Sure, it was a wrapper to let people port to OSX, but my memory (admittedly dim) from when OSX launched is that the Cocoa Apple was pushing was for Java (though the Objective C was available)? [...] Still, I suppose at worst that's semantics.

I suppose you've got a point there. What I was trying to to get at was that Carbon wasn't the original set of APIs for OS X. Apple developed Carbon after Adobe, Microsoft and Macromedia (understandably) all balked at rewriting their existing System 7-8-9 apps at a time when Apple's continued existence wasn't a sure bet, let alone the acceptance of OS X. Still, it took Adobe a number of years before they even made the change to Carbon--it wasn't until 2003 that Illustrator and Photoshop no longer had to be run in "Classic" mode.

I'm with you on the memory thing; seems like all I can remember anymore are the six-mile walks to school I made every day as a kid, that they were uphill both ways and how there was a foot of snow on the ground all year long here in California back in those days.

But Apple did say they were going to port Carbon to 64-bit. They just changed their mind. Ultimately, that's their call to make, but I remember at the time I was pretty surprised.

Yeah, it was a pretty ruthless thing to do but it's certainly no worse than Adobe telling it's customers to abandon the Mac platform and migrate to Windows, as they did back when Apple was in serious trouble back in the late Nineties. That's my big problem with Adobe's current complaining--they have done far worse things to Apple in past. At one point Adobe even demanded that Apple pay them to port their apps to OS X. Considering that Adobe wouldn't exist if Apple hadn't licensed PostScript from them for use in their laser printers back in the Eighties, that's pretty shitty.

I guess Jobs thinks Adobe can't afford to drop Mac anymore than Apple can afford to lose them. He's probably right, though if he keeps pushing he might hit that tipping point.

In my opinion, Adobe needs Apple a lot more than Apple needs Adobe. While the printing and graphic design industry is still mostly Mac and a good source of income for Apple, they make more money selling computers, iPods and iPhones to home users now. And you can bet that if Adobe were to cease releasing Mac products, Apple would do what they did when Adobe let the Mac version Premier lag too far behind the Windows version--they bought Final Cut and put a lot of effort into turning it into a polished competitor. Result? Final Cut is now a major player in the professional film and video editing fields. Adobe ended up dropping the Mac version of Premier entirely and the Windows version is considered something strictly for amateurs.

There are currently several alternatives to Photoshop out there. At the moment, they're nowhere near as good, but if they suddenly had Apple's resources working to improve them, Adobe might be surprised. Having worked at various jobs in the printing and graphics field, I can tell you this: people in that industry would rather learn new software than convert to Windows. Adobe could become irrelevant in a very short time.

At any rate, even though we disagree on a few points, I appreciate the response :)

Hey, it's fun having a rational discussion with someone here on Slashdot! Kind of rare, too--most disagreements on this site tend to degenerate into personal attacks. You've no doubt noticed that our civilized discourse hasn't been moderated up at all...

Just FYI, here's a link to an amusing history of the relationship between Apple and Adobe. It's a bit biased towards Apple but I think the facts are pretty accurate none the less.

Note: I got the last line from RoughlyDrafted, which slurps heartily at the anus of Steve Jobs but is usually good with actual facts (even if the opinions are made of speculation). But I am told by someone I know who I was surprised to learn was one of those who had to clean up the mess that she was a few managerial levels up from the Sidekick mess and wasn't the person (if any) who authorised being cavalier with backups.

OTOH, facts, comedy, cruelty. Ballmer probably Fucking Killed Sidekick personally.

Apple made a hard decision to cut support for a legacy framework, with broad impact to many of its developers. This very trait is often lauded in comparisons to Microsoft, where many people would dearly love for terrible legacy frameworks and APIs to be deprecated (or even just 'nuked from orbit'). Moreover, Apple isn't obligated to do any work to make Adobe's life easier.

If you want to continue silly tit-for-tat analyses of such things, Adobe screwed Apple over a decade earlier by refusing to port anything to Cocoa -- sticking with Carbon in the first place. This Roughly Drafted article provides more of the historical color.

Five Tremendous Apple vs. Adobe Flash Myths

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/04/10/five-tremendous-apple-vs-adobe-flash-myths/

A bit of his summary:

And so, through a mix of incompetence, belligerence and emotionalist hypocrisy, Adobe has been pumping a non-stop stream of propaganda about how critically important Flash is on mobile devices, even though millions of people been using the highest ranked smartphone for three years now without suffering any ill (not even the rest of humanity on lessor smartphones have missed being able to render desktop Flash content, because they haven’t been able to either). There’s a reason for all that talk: Adobe is terrified.

(the native Apple developers couldn't code their way out of a cardboard box when it comes to a multi-user multitasking OS- they spent millions proving that in the 90's)

BZZZT! Wrong!

It was more like the scope of the project (Pink, Taligent, Copland, Gershwin, Rhapsody) kept growing and being re-defined. But I'm sure that is a concept that is completely foreign to most devs. that read /. And BTW, did you know about the other big names that failed on the way to OS X?

Here's some info on that.

So, I guess Apple, IBM, Sun, HP and Microsoft ALL suck at multi-user programming, right?

Let's hit a couple points:

Touch keyboards seem a lot more limiting when you touch type 80+ wpm on a physical keyboard. Grandma's hunt-and-peck speed isn't going to be affected much. There are stands and docks available. I paired a random folding bluetooth keyboard last night with no hassle.

There are plenty of multi-IM chat programs. Most are not updated for ipad yet, but they work fine for the time being via upscaling. Keep in mind this is a device with 150k+ compatible apps on launch day, plus hundreds of native ones, and most developers NEVER EVEN TOUCHED THE DEVICE before releasing v1 of their ipad software. That fact continutes to amaze me.

How did you want it to support MS office, that you think it doesn't do so? Obviously you're not talking about file format compatibility through the iWork apps, the third party Office-compatible apps, or published apps via Citrix (not to mention VNC/RDP)? Is the problem that this thing doesn't have a native version of the MS Office suite (on day 1 no less)? Are you really surprised by this?


Now, the continued outcry over Flash support is just stupid. Flash was never a good solution for online video, it just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Flash games are not exactly crucial to my online experience, but YMMV. Most importantly, the majority of flash apps are NOT MADE FOR TOUCH INTERFACES: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/02/20/an-adobe-flash-developer-on-why-the-ipad-cant-use-flash/

(tl;dr - Flash apps make heavy use of "hover", something that makes no sense on a touch UI (yes, I have a wacom-based tablet and understand how that tech works. that's a pen interface, not a touch interface).



I'm still trying to wrap my head around this fact: there is now a $500, 10", 1.5lb, .5" thick, slate formfactor, 10 hours battery life, fast, 3d accelerated, multitouch freakin' tablet on the market. It runs an OS built for multitouch. There are over 150,000 apps available on launch day.

And people are falling all over themselves to complain about it.

The iPad is something out of Star Trek or HHGTTG, the sort of thing nerds have been dreaming about for decades. Yet there are people for whom the most important aspect of this is the lack of flash (and a camera, and a desktop OS, and it's too heavy, and the bezel's too big, and the app store is evil, and, and, and)...

Way to really, really miss the point. These are most likely the same people that said the same sort of things about the iPod, the iPhone, the Wii, hell, probably the color tv and automatic transmission, too.

Bottom line is that the iPad is a glimpse at what the future of (casual) computing is going to look like. If you don't want to get onboard, that's fine, but don't cry when you realize the train has left the station without you.

There was a reason Microsoft withdrawed from OS/2

Yeah, it was so they could stab IBM in the back by saying they were going to help with OS/2, but then secretly using resources for W95 instead. That left IBM with a few weeks to launch of OS/2 but with none of the applications Microsoft had promised to deliver. It also left IBM with a bunch of code that was mixed thoroughly with code copyrighted by Microsoft, which had no intention of doing other than further damage to OS/2.

Clever, unethical, and dishonest as hell. MS DOS was meant to be replaced by OS/2. Bill Gates said in 1998, "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time. As the successor to DOS, which has over 10,000,000 systems in use, it creates incredible opportunities for everyone involved with PCs." He even went as far as signing an agreement to provide applications for OS/2. When he reneged, OS/2 was obviously without apps, and who would know better than Microsofters about that?

Being friends with Microsofters is worse than pointless because they smile in your face and then stab you in the back. There is no way any Microsoft apologist can be a beneficial business partner or employee.

.

A report purporting to vindicate the performance of Adobes Flash plugin in comparison to open standards broke through the weak editorial barriers of the tech community yesterday. Its wrong, heres why. .

The report was created by Jan Ozer, a proponent of Flash who makes his living selling books and seminars about Adobes technologies. The original article is even interrupted by an advertisement promoting Ozers Streaming Production and Flash Delivery Workshop.

After noting Ozers bias, one site commenting on it wrote, we dont think that [his bias] has any effect on the test outcomes [his report presented].

The problem wasnt that Ozer faked data to promote Flash; some of his findings actually indicate that even the early beta implementations of HTML5 beat the latest version of Flash in video playback tests. The real issue is that Ozer framed the debate around an absurd premise to shift the conversation from real issues to contrived garbage.

A press release of fake science

Coverage of Ozers press release uncritically reported his findings that certain browsers were no better (or at least not much better) at rendering video from YouTube via Googles experimental HTML5/H.264 site than via the standard Flash version of YouTube.

Ozer detailed only the reported CPU Utilization for his test Mac running Safari, Chrome, and Firefox browsers, and a PC running the same three browsers in addition to Internet Explorer. He compared the performance of Flash 10 with the latest Flash 10.1, and contrasted HTML5 playback on browsers that supported that as an alternative to Flash, not too subtly suggesting that HTML5 and H.264 were riddled with problems that inspire fear, uncertainty and doubt, while Flash simply works everywhere.

However, his results made no comment on the visual quality of Googles Flash vs raw H.264 implementations. Previous tests I performed indicate that Googles beta version of YouTube running HTML5 delivers raw H.264 video with remarkably better picture equality compared to the HD version of its Flash video for the same file. You can see for yourself by viewing anything on YouTube in HD quality via both Flash and HTML5.

Additionally, Ozer seemed to gloss over the fact that his tests really say next to nothing about the efficiency and performance of the Flash runtime compared to the use of open standards, because he wasnt testing Flash content rendering, but really only the playback of video data delivered via a Flash wrapper.

To deliver video, Flash really isnt doing anything special. Thats why browsers supporting HTML5 can do this themselves without needing something like Flash (or its doppelgänger, Microsofts Silverlight).

HTML5 savvy browsers like Safari and Chrome can also animate content and even (with a little more work) do the kinds of fancy interactive apps and games that Flash was originally targeted toward, all using open web specifications....

Symbian must be one of the worst designed OSs in existance

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/6856C375-FE4E-4BC8-B753-B48AF3BD8B30.html

In Symbian when a error is signaled with a leave (‘throw an exception’) no objects are deallocated. They just leak, if you don't manually record each object allocated to be cleaned up. This process is extremely tedious, error prone and boring. The result is that it's very hard and time consuming to make correct programs in Symbian, on the verge to be impossible in many cases.

I have to take issue with the credibility of the writer here. He is apparently an experienced c++ programmer however he believes that without the standard c++ exception implementation it can be almost impossible to write 'correct' programs, well exceptions are - and the clue is in the name - meant for 'exceptional circumstances' only, not for standard error handling, so anyone who can't write a 'correct' program without relying on the use of exceptions is not doing it right, in the general course of a program running, exceptions should NOT occur. That said, nokia's implementation is not ideal, but further to that point they probably had little choice given the early adoption of such a young language.

Symbian must be one of the worst designed OSs in existance

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/6856C375-FE4E-4BC8-B753-B48AF3BD8B30.html

After about 2 minutes of googling, it looks like the answer is still "yup, but modified" (as I initially said).

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/07/13/iphone-os-x-architecture-the-mach-kernel-and-ram/

Apple have, of course, not patented "multitouch" or "capacitive screens". They have patented "Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics".

It's all about the heuristics. See http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/02/13/the-iphone-multitouch-patent-myth/ for a reasonable description.

Remember similar hype over the Macbook Air? Just search a couple of fanboy sites for the Macbook Air and see how it was portrayed.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/01/22/how-the-macbook-air-stacks-up-against-other-ultra-light-notebooks/

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/01/30/is-the-macbook-air-another-cube/

Choice quote:

Asus, best known for its popular $350 EEE PC toy notebook , is also making inroads into the light notebook business.

Remember similar hype over the Macbook Air? Just search a couple of fanboy sites for the Macbook Air and see how it was portrayed.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/01/22/how-the-macbook-air-stacks-up-against-other-ultra-light-notebooks/

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/01/30/is-the-macbook-air-another-cube/

Choice quote:

Asus, best known for its popular $350 EEE PC toy notebook , is also making inroads into the light notebook business.

It was 1997, and was not actually needed to keep the company alive.

Microsoft invested $150 million, Apple still had over $1 billion in the bank. Apple agreed to drop a suit which they would have won over some Apple patents which Microsoft infringed on (not to be confused with suits which Apple lost beforehand over copyright and bad contracts) and stolen code.

No, he'll always be "the shill for SCO" to me and not worthy of the click-through.

> The way you express it, DEC would have a had a case
> against Microsoft for stealing their technology. Are
> you aware of any evidence that this happened?

As a matter of fact, yes. See http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/07/30/readers-write-how-microsoft-got-windows-nt/#more-3661

| "So, Cutler walked down the street to Microsoft and offered them
| Mica which became NT. Later DEC sued MS and, in an out of court
| settlement, got royalties for the filched technology. Part of the
| deal included targeting NT (back) onto the Alpha platform."

Here is a collection of references. See also Readers Write: How Microsoft got Windows NT, Everything2: The similarities between VMS and Windows NT and Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (use googlebot useragent to view full story).

DEC did sue Microsoft, but they settled for royalties.

Or to bullshit the press and the competition when your product doesn't cut the mustard, see The yellow road to Cairo as an example. No matter what you think of MSFT you really have to give them credit, because their early 90s products compared to the competition (NextSTEP, OS2, even System 7) were really pretty shitty, but by throwing enough BS and a few well placed leaks with the press they made everyone think they had a super OS waiting in the wings just getting the finishing touches put on it.

To be able to kick the competitor's asses without actually having a product is pretty damned impressive in my book, and proves that in the right hands with careful planning leaks can be a powerful tool. What was it old Jack Trammell said? Business is war? Well it is pretty impressive to me to kick your competition off the battlefield by just the illusion of having the bigger gun.

The story here is that Newsweek found a dozen people who can provide anecdotal accounts of individuals not being successful while selling software in the App Store. Because while Apple turned the mobile software market from a failure to an astounding success, it's important to keep in mind that not everyone who makes a half-assed attempt to get rich quick via the iPhone will be snorting coke off hooker's asses in Cancun within a few weeks (just the approval process takes longer than that! Plus you have to save up for years to buy a Mac, and then scrounge up $99 for a certificate. That's all simply well out of the reach of most developers who want to get rich quick in mobile software.)

This is all newsworthy because Apple has sold a couple billion apps in its first year, and explaining away the success of the App Store is critically important for Apple critics. Casting a cloud over Apple's software store also helps provide some relief to the struggling stores run by competitors, and distracts away from the problems affecting Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

That's also why the problem of Apple's successful trajectory with the iPhone is a core issue for Gartner, plenty of one-man consultant groups who shill for competing platforms and carriers, and of course, all of this is newsworthy to Slashdot because it offers some opportunity for negative discussion about Apple.

The story here is that Newsweek found a dozen people who can provide anecdotal accounts of individuals not being successful while selling software in the App Store. Because while Apple turned the mobile software market from a failure to an astounding success, it's important to keep in mind that not everyone who makes a half-assed attempt to get rich quick via the iPhone will be snorting coke off hooker's asses in Cancun within a few weeks (just the approval process takes longer than that! Plus you have to save up for years to buy a Mac, and then scrounge up $99 for a certificate. That's all simply well out of the reach of most developers who want to get rich quick in mobile software.)

This is all newsworthy because Apple has sold a couple billion apps in its first year, and explaining away the success of the App Store is critically important for Apple critics. Casting a cloud over Apple's software store also helps provide some relief to the struggling stores run by competitors, and distracts away from the problems affecting Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

That's also why the problem of Apple's successful trajectory with the iPhone is a core issue for Gartner, plenty of one-man consultant groups who shill for competing platforms and carriers, and of course, all of this is newsworthy to Slashdot because it offers some opportunity for negative discussion about Apple.

The story here is that Newsweek found a dozen people who can provide anecdotal accounts of individuals not being successful while selling software in the App Store. Because while Apple turned the mobile software market from a failure to an astounding success, it's important to keep in mind that not everyone who makes a half-assed attempt to get rich quick via the iPhone will be snorting coke off hooker's asses in Cancun within a few weeks (just the approval process takes longer than that! Plus you have to save up for years to buy a Mac, and then scrounge up $99 for a certificate. That's all simply well out of the reach of most developers who want to get rich quick in mobile software.)

This is all newsworthy because Apple has sold a couple billion apps in its first year, and explaining away the success of the App Store is critically important for Apple critics. Casting a cloud over Apple's software store also helps provide some relief to the struggling stores run by competitors, and distracts away from the problems affecting Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

That's also why the problem of Apple's successful trajectory with the iPhone is a core issue for Gartner, plenty of one-man consultant groups who shill for competing platforms and carriers, and of course, all of this is newsworthy to Slashdot because it offers some opportunity for negative discussion about Apple.

The story here is that Newsweek found a dozen people who can provide anecdotal accounts of individuals not being successful while selling software in the App Store. Because while Apple turned the mobile software market from a failure to an astounding success, it's important to keep in mind that not everyone who makes a half-assed attempt to get rich quick via the iPhone will be snorting coke off hooker's asses in Cancun within a few weeks (just the approval process takes longer than that! Plus you have to save up for years to buy a Mac, and then scrounge up $99 for a certificate. That's all simply well out of the reach of most developers who want to get rich quick in mobile software.)

This is all newsworthy because Apple has sold a couple billion apps in its first year, and explaining away the success of the App Store is critically important for Apple critics. Casting a cloud over Apple's software store also helps provide some relief to the struggling stores run by competitors, and distracts away from the problems affecting Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

That's also why the problem of Apple's successful trajectory with the iPhone is a core issue for Gartner, plenty of one-man consultant groups who shill for competing platforms and carriers, and of course, all of this is newsworthy to Slashdot because it offers some opportunity for negative discussion about Apple.

The story here is that Newsweek found a dozen people who can provide anecdotal accounts of individuals not being successful while selling software in the App Store. Because while Apple turned the mobile software market from a failure to an astounding success, it's important to keep in mind that not everyone who makes a half-assed attempt to get rich quick via the iPhone will be snorting coke off hooker's asses in Cancun within a few weeks (just the approval process takes longer than that! Plus you have to save up for years to buy a Mac, and then scrounge up $99 for a certificate. That's all simply well out of the reach of most developers who want to get rich quick in mobile software.)

This is all newsworthy because Apple has sold a couple billion apps in its first year, and explaining away the success of the App Store is critically important for Apple critics. Casting a cloud over Apple's software store also helps provide some relief to the struggling stores run by competitors, and distracts away from the problems affecting Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

That's also why the problem of Apple's successful trajectory with the iPhone is a core issue for Gartner, plenty of one-man consultant groups who shill for competing platforms and carriers, and of course, all of this is newsworthy to Slashdot because it offers some opportunity for negative discussion about Apple.

The idea is that "iTunes LP" would serve as the non-song content you used to get when you bought an album: the beautiful LP cover, lyrics, and other stuff. But upgraded to the digital era.

The problem with this non-story is that Apple isn't selling iTunes LP extras, it's giving it away when you buy the regular album associated with it.

It was a defensive move to prevent the labels from inventing their own proprietary format instead. iTunes LPs are just self-contained websites built using web standards: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Apple created a JavaScript framework called TuneKit to allow these "self contained websites" to interact with iTunes, playing content etc.

The same format is used to deliver iTunes Extras, the same bonus format for movies. Essentially, both are designed to make extremely easy to author bonus content that labels and studios (including indies) can use to add value to their existing work.

Obviously, Apple doesn't want to launch the new format with a bunch of crap, and taint it with mocking commentary that equates garbage or wierdo music with the format. So it launched the new format with iTunes 9 using a dozen big music acts and a similar number of recent movies. There has been the typical hysterical fit from poorly sourced, half-right "tech news" pieces that claimed Apple hates indies and will charge $10,000 (!) to develop the titles.

This is clearly all uninformed bullshit because there's no way Apple would develop content for third parties for just $10,000 a pop. Not even a professional authoring artist would do these for that kind of budget. Compare the free involved with authoring a DVD or BluRay disc, or creating all the artwork for a band's website or a multimedia CD-ROM.

Slashdot picked up the story and keeps trying to bump it up into the air because it sounds bad for Apple. The reality is that this is the best possible album format design anyone in the FOSS community could have hoped for. It's open, you can built it yourself, and kids can even apply some remedial HTML skills to remix their own content downloads. It's the web with a minimal business model.

New iTunes LP and Extras built using TuneKit Framework, aimed at Apple TV
Why Apple is betting on HTML 5: a web history
Apple plans to open iTunes LP for independent labels

The idea is that "iTunes LP" would serve as the non-song content you used to get when you bought an album: the beautiful LP cover, lyrics, and other stuff. But upgraded to the digital era.

The problem with this non-story is that Apple isn't selling iTunes LP extras, it's giving it away when you buy the regular album associated with it.

It was a defensive move to prevent the labels from inventing their own proprietary format instead. iTunes LPs are just self-contained websites built using web standards: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Apple created a JavaScript framework called TuneKit to allow these "self contained websites" to interact with iTunes, playing content etc.

The same format is used to deliver iTunes Extras, the same bonus format for movies. Essentially, both are designed to make extremely easy to author bonus content that labels and studios (including indies) can use to add value to their existing work.

Obviously, Apple doesn't want to launch the new format with a bunch of crap, and taint it with mocking commentary that equates garbage or wierdo music with the format. So it launched the new format with iTunes 9 using a dozen big music acts and a similar number of recent movies. There has been the typical hysterical fit from poorly sourced, half-right "tech news" pieces that claimed Apple hates indies and will charge $10,000 (!) to develop the titles.

This is clearly all uninformed bullshit because there's no way Apple would develop content for third parties for just $10,000 a pop. Not even a professional authoring artist would do these for that kind of budget. Compare the free involved with authoring a DVD or BluRay disc, or creating all the artwork for a band's website or a multimedia CD-ROM.

Slashdot picked up the story and keeps trying to bump it up into the air because it sounds bad for Apple. The reality is that this is the best possible album format design anyone in the FOSS community could have hoped for. It's open, you can built it yourself, and kids can even apply some remedial HTML skills to remix their own content downloads. It's the web with a minimal business model.

New iTunes LP and Extras built using TuneKit Framework, aimed at Apple TV
Why Apple is betting on HTML 5: a web history
Apple plans to open iTunes LP for independent labels

Daniel Dilger on Roughly Drafted is speculating that it's an inside job.

Interesting article about the Microsoft/Pink/Danger/Sidekick relationship and leaks indicating that Microsoft are trying to kill Sidekick without telling the partners. Microsoft would never do such a thing of course ...

Rich.

Daniel Eran Dilger, unrepentant Mac Fanboy, provides a rather thorough and documented analysis here: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/08/gartner-declares-android-a-second-place-winner-in-2012-why/ Worth the read, even if you don't agree with Dilger's alternate position.

Gartner declares Android a second place winner in 2012. Why?

> Looking into its crystal ball, Gartner Group has predicted that Google's Android will become the second largest smartphone platform by 2012. Problem is, nobody's talking about how terrible Gartner is at predicting things, or that Gartner's "research" has historically been paid for by special interests. So why the headlines?

> But calling Windows Mobile a dud at this point isn't very bold, even for Gartner, a group that has dutifully suckled the teat of Bill Gates throughout a series of sour spells. Microsoft's shill budget for Windows Mobile is probably as sad as the beleaguered mobile platform's web browser. That would certainly explain why a Gartner analyst wrote a month ago that he was "concerned about its future and I worry that WM7 [in 2010] could even be the last throw of the dice [for Microsoft]."

> In one of Microsoft's antitrust suits, Gartner's core competency as a shill group was detailed when confidential internal memos surfaced showing that Microsoft had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort that "successfully lobbied and changed the Gartner Group TCO [Total Cost of Ownership] model to show Windows as providing the lowest overall TCO [in comparison to NCs]."

> In contrast, RIM and Apple largely live or die on the merits of their products, not on the spin that chattering analysts can give their products. Tomorrow's Android makers are today's Windows Mobile makers, and Gartner is just doing the best it can to keep Windows Mobile alive in principle, even as the life is draining out of its frail earthly corpse.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/08/gartner-declares-android-a-second-place-winner-in-2012-why/

Exactly! Everytime it's time for a new Windows version to be developped Microsoft sais: Yeah we promise X and Y and game changing shit! Then it gets delayed. Then again. Then these so called worked on features (which are not worked on and were never planned!) are scrapped. Then we get the previous Windows with a few minor changes and additions.

It happens everytime! And the worst part is; everybody keeps falling for it! There are not even 128bit CPU's!

Come on everybody, wake up! Read this FFS and NEVER, EVER, post shit like this again!: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/4E2A8848-5738-45B1-A659-AD7473899D7D.html

And by showing a mockup without actually admiting at first that is IS a mockup it smells like they are trying to "pull a MSFT" which used leaked "details" and mockups of their OS Cairo (later named NT) to derail competitors and kill any momentum they might have gained if MSFT didn't have a "totally new" OS "just around the corner". Done right this kind of FUD can actually kill competitor's sales without actually releasing a product!

Say what you want about MSFT, but being able to kill competition with just the rumors of your new OS? That is pretty damned evil genius if you ask me. But considering how much booty ATI has been kicking lately with their GPUs if Nvidia is having any problems at all with fermi this would be the way to go. Throw as much bullshit and smoke as you can, try to get as much press as possible about your "ATI Killer" GPU, and hope you can keep the public running their older GPUs longer as they wait for your new product, instead of letting them possibly jump like I did to the AMD/ATI camp.

Don't forget there is still some bad feelings out there over the "bad solder" BS, and Nvidia needs as much positive press as it can get. If this turns out to be nothing but a mockup and smoke I say well played Nvidia, well played. Remember business can be nasty, especially between GPU manufacturers as we saw with the "quack.exe" sham. Nasty tricks are nothing new for either company in this game.

When you buy a computer, you're not buying just a device; you're also licensing software that makes that device work. So no, your first sale doctrine doesn't really apply because you're not just using a purchased item, you're buying hardware attached to a software license.

You may have trouble with that concept, the same as a vagrant has trouble with the concept of loitering or peeing in public, but the laws are there to protect business models, not to make you feel liberated from needing to pay for things other people have created.

It's one thing to take a device (iPod, PC,Wii, whatever), completely wipe the software and install Linux or your own code. It's very different to take those same devices, and use the existing software against its license to do something you want to do with it in order to violate the deal you got when you bought it.

There are plenty of people who don't think humans should be able to own private land (because they can't or don't), so you are not alone in having a purely selfish view of copyright that suits your personal needs. That does not mean you have any legal standing.

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Why Apple is betting on Light Peak with Intel: a love story

Microsoft also set aside that special $1,150,000,000 fund for repairing those loss leader Xbox 360s. Across the less than 12 million units it had shipped up to that point, that means the company dropped nearly another $100 per unit. Return rates were over 50% at one point, and are still fairly high.

Compared to that scale of money loss (and Sony's expensive effort to promote BluRay via the PS3), Nintendo's tiny Wii hardware profits look phenomenal. But they're still very thin margins and depend upon software licensing deals to make it worth doing.

--

Why Apple is betting on Light Peak with Intel: a love story

Because everyone knows that crossing "Interstate lines" essentially makes mail fraud unpunishable!

Oh yes, and PayPal, they're always on your side too.

Thanks for a good laugh.

Why Apple is betting on Light Peak with Intel: a love story

So you're convinced that hanging on to connectors created 10 or more years ago on laptops is a good engineering design call?

Here's some light reading on the topic for ya.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/10/21/apple-and-the-mini-displayport/

Written in October of 2008, even. Not Apple's fault if other manufacturers can't be "bothered" to move beyond the original VGA connector based on a DB-15.

The only thing PC engineers "get" is that people like you want an almost two-decades old connector instead of innovation that might cost $10 in cables? Is that the point?

Oh yeah, that article ends with three or four advertisements for places that sell cables... cheaper than Apple's.

Back to yawning. Keep trying.

If you look at the big problematic viruses that ransacked Windows XP and created the security/virus panic at Microsoft that resulted in Vista's new security focus, outbreaks such as Melissa virus or the more recent Storm trojan, you realize that all this bullshit being spewed by security experts about exploit vulnerabilities and root access is a distraction.

Melissa was a fucking Office macro virus. Storm is a trojan. All the "malware" on the Mac is stupid shit you have to authorize the installation for. None of Windows' malware/virus/adware crisis is really solved by ASLR. There are no advanced OS security features that can prevent people from authorizing the installation of a trojan masquerading as a video codec or a pirate copy of iWork. If you have admin rights on a machine, you can install all the trojans you need, and you can wipe out all of your own data without any need for "root access."

Charlie Miller is a smart guy, but complaining that ASLR on the Mac isn't bulletproof is like the Maytag repairman publishing how Maytag can eliminate a potential part failure. Doesn't he need to preserve something to be able to show up at award shows and demonstrate flaws on the Mac? It's not like anyone else cares about Mac vulnerabilities, apart from the antivirus companies trying to sell Mac users software they don't need - or so that the user can be "alerted" when they try to install a fake/pirate version of iWork that is really a bit of malware.

The only way to kill malware dead is to prevent users from installing software that isn't approved and vetted. That's what the iPhone App Store does, and all you freetards out there don't like that either, do you?

And on that subject, guess what company is copying Apple's App Store but introducing far more draconian restrictions: Microsoft sells restrictive new WiMo Marketplace via iPhone ads

If you look at the big problematic viruses that ransacked Windows XP and created the security/virus panic at Microsoft that resulted in Vista's new security focus, outbreaks such as Melissa virus or the more recent Storm trojan, you realize that all this bullshit being spewed by security experts about exploit vulnerabilities and root access is a distraction.

Melissa was a fucking Office macro virus. Storm is a trojan. All the "malware" on the Mac is stupid shit you have to authorize the installation for. None of Windows' malware/virus/adware crisis is really solved by ASLR. There are no advanced OS security features that can prevent people from authorizing the installation of a trojan masquerading as a video codec or a pirate copy of iWork. If you have admin rights on a machine, you can install all the trojans you need, and you can wipe out all of your own data without any need for "root access."

Charlie Miller is a smart guy, but complaining that ASLR on the Mac isn't bulletproof is like the Maytag repairman publishing how Maytag can eliminate a potential part failure. Doesn't he need to preserve something to be able to show up at award shows and demonstrate flaws on the Mac? It's not like anyone else cares about Mac vulnerabilities, apart from the antivirus companies trying to sell Mac users software they don't need - or so that the user can be "alerted" when they try to install a fake/pirate version of iWork that is really a bit of malware.

The only way to kill malware dead is to prevent users from installing software that isn't approved and vetted. That's what the iPhone App Store does, and all you freetards out there don't like that either, do you?

And on that subject, guess what company is copying Apple's App Store but introducing far more draconian restrictions: Microsoft sells restrictive new WiMo Marketplace via iPhone ads

Inside the iPhone: Mac OS X, ARM, and iPod OS X

Microsoft has had a model to follow since Jan 2007. They've had an SDK to copy since Jun 2008.

Microsoft has been in the Zune game for longer than Apple has had the iPhone. At some point, you have to stop bending over for the grand monopolist of the tech world, as it doesn't deserve your pity sex.

Come on, this sort of irrational fandom should be reserved for the Amiga and Cowon and Ogg Vobis.

From OLED to Tegra: Five Myths of the Zune HD

Actually, that article is pretty damn biased too. Or wrong. Check this part out:

"OLED also performs considerably worse in bright light because OLED is 100% emissive rather than being partially transflective.A good quality LCD actually uses ambient light to make its image brighter and more vibrant; OLED does not."

There is no such thing as a transflective color LCD, only black an white. At least, that's what i was told by our LCD manufacturer. Color LCDs are transmissive only, which is why they ALSO wash out in ambient light.

If you can't even recognize FUD, you're as blind as the summary writer.
-Taylor

While you "assure us" about your anecdotal experiences, Apple continues to sell millions of games and other apps for its developer base, and everyone is making money. Big names are making games and continue to release new titles that are pretty cool. Sure, the $0.99 to $4.99 aren't on the level of $30-$50 PSP and DS games, but they are cleaning up and growing in popularity and sophistication.

Apple is lining up developer support essentially for free on the back of its iPod/iPhone business. Microsoft is trying to pay for this kind of attention.

Also, even if 1% of the 75,000 App Store titles don't "suck," that leaves 750 that don't, which is more than you can even install at once.

From OLED to Tegra: Five Myths of the Zune HD

Microsoft has had a model to follow since Jan 2007. They've had an SDK to copy since Jun 2008.

Microsoft has been in the Zune game for longer than Apple has had the iPhone. At some point, you have to stop bending over for the grand monopolist of the tech world, as it doesn't deserve your pity sex.

Come on, this sort of irrational fandom should be reserved for the Amiga and Cowon and Ogg Vobis.

From OLED to Tegra: Five Myths of the Zune HD