Slashdot Mirror
The Apple Two
theodp writes "Over at Slate, Tim Wu argues that the iPad is Steve Jobs' final victory over Steve Wozniak. Apple's origins were pure Woz, but the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad are the products of the company's other Steve. Jobs' ideas have always been in tension with Woz's brand of idealism and openness. Crazy as it seems, Apple Inc. — the creator of the personal computer — is leading the effort to exterminate it. And somewhere, deep inside, Woz must realize what the release of the iPad signifies: The company he once built now, officially, no longer exists."
I'm pretty sure Woz came to terms with that realization decades ago. He hasn't had a say in any of Apple's higher level decisions since his plane crash in 1981, and he hasn't worked for them at all since 1987. He probably doesn't even think of it as "his" company anymore (if he ever really did). The guy has done a lot of cool stuff since then, and is probably way more interested in talking about his more recent engineering diversions (like his attempts to get Toyota's attention about their accelerator problems) than discussing the philosophy of a company he left behind when The Bangles were still Walking Like an Egyptian.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Even the market? Wow. I never knew that.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
"The company he once built now, officially, no longer exists."
Since we're talking about competing philosophies rather than the destruction of the entire company, and further given that there's been no press releases declaring the death of Woz's ideals, i'm not sure that word means what you think it means.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I mean, it's really official. As in the company Woz built was called 'Apple Computer, Inc.' and in 2007 the company by that name officially ceased to exist and became 'Apple, Inc.'. Woz had nothing to do with any company called 'Apple, Inc.'.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
As hard as it is to believe, Apple has actually managed to make Microsoft look like a more open company. You have more freedom, at a far lower price, when dealing with Microsoft than you do when dealing with Apple.
Frankly, I never thought we'd see the day where just being able to run the applications you wanted to run was a "feature" of a given operating system and platform. But here we are, with Apple dictating exactly which applications are acceptable, and exactly which ones aren't, based on fuzzy and secretive criteria.
I have to give a big "Fuck You" to anyone who supports Apple, or any company like Apple, but buying their products and encouraging their hideous business model. You people are the scum of the earth, and enemies of freedom.
If that was the case, would Wozniak's wife still work for Apple's sales department? .plist files can simply purchase and use an iPad.
I think Woz is smart enough to understand that times are still changing, and those that want more open devices can simply go out and purchase an HP slate with its USB port, and all sorts of do-das. Those who don't want to mess with configurations, settings and
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Woz actually DESIGNED all of those products, and IIRC he did actually work on the mac as well while Jobs couldn't design his way out of a wet paper bag.
That's not to say that Jobs isn't an EXCELLENT CEO though. Probably one of two or three that are actually worth their compensation and relevant to their companies.
Consider this development along with yesterday's story on amateur radio, where so much is going on now in software, with people using mainly expensive radios with everything on inscrutable ICs, and fewer and fewer hams are building their own equipment. Radio Shack no longer offers the range of retail components that they did just a decade ago. As time goes by, there's less and less electronics in our daily lives which we have any chance of understanding ourselves. Technology companies have become a priesthood.
I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. Change happens over time, and I'd like to think it's usually for the better. I'm not hot to run out buy an ipad, but I can see the usefullness, and the next time I'm in the market for a laptop I may consider getting one of those instead. It sure beats trying to haul an Apple ][ around with me everywhere I go, or even the HP dv8 I just bought (it's nice, but it's not exactly compact).
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
From reading the article, I only see that the company moved into a different direction to a closed platform away from the hacker ideals of Woz. Big deal. How is that a "victory"?
Apple is a public company and they have to run it as a business to create a return to the stockholders. I don't know of any company that has been able to do that catering towards hackers.
Jobs is taller than Woz. That "victory" has as much validity and meaning as the changing ideals.
This ridiculous hype makes me want to throw up. Can we please introduce a rule where we can have only one article that mentions the iPad per day?
Jobs wants to make appliances. Woz wants to make computers. I think there's a real difference here; I enjoy tinkering with a lot of devices, but I'm not about to start taking apart my toaster or TV. That's what the iPad and iPhone are to me, appliances that are meant to be as reliable as possible as my toaster, and this is where Jobs' mantra of "It just works" is so key; you don't want your toaster to have problems, and more importantly, you don't want to need to get into the guts of a toaster just to make toast.
On the other hand, I love working on computers, both software and hardware. I've fried two Arduinos teaching myself how to make neat projects involving stepper motors, LEDs, etc. I accept that I may break this equipment, as I accept that I may lock my computer up because I'm overtaxing it. I accept this and try to not fry or crash the next time. A learning experience to be sure, and one that I enjoy having.
One aspect that always seems to be overlooked in all this discussion about "the future of Apple" is that Apple still makes a lot of other hardware and software; you still need to have a Mac with the developer tools installed to write anything for the iPhone/iPad. Apple gives away a lot of software for content creation as well as software creation.I don't see how they can let their other software and hardware fade away...they need people to create the apps and the content that is so readily consumed by the iPhone and iPad.
Single dumbest post I have seen on slashdot in 10 years.
Apple dumped the geek/hobbyist market to go after the highly profitable moron/trendy market.
A personal computer is a computer that _does what you want it to do._ For a shockingly large number of people, Apple's present product line does exactly that, which explains their present high popularity and booming market share, especially among consumer media devices.
Back in Woz's day, it was important to have a BASIC interpreter on your personal computer, but not because it made the computer more "open" in some vague ideological terms. It was important because that was how a lot of useful computer software was transmitted. As a kid I remember typing in BASIC source listings from computer magazines for things like games and other cool stuff. Of course I also learned to write my own software, but nowadays there are about a million different ways of doing that. It sucks that Apple won't let you have a sandboxed Logo or Python interpreter on your iDevice, but it doesn't mean that the device is somehow not "personal."
For better or for worse, the walled garden is the future of consumer electronics. It's good for security, good for the consumer, and not so good for tinkerers. But don't make the mistake of assuming that means the computer isn't "personal" anymore.
Really? The first PC was the Altair 8800 (shipped in 1975 and ran Microsoft Software no less), the first fully assembled PC you could buy ready to run was the Commodore PET in 1977 (shipped in January - Apple ]['s shipped the same year in June).
But neither were made by a couple of hip guys from silicon valley named Steve - so it doesn't count right?
Is there an option to read Slashdot summaries in yellow roll-up text on a black background?
Goals change, life goes on. Apple has been on this path since the original Macintosh. This is nothing new. I don't think an oversized iPhone warrants all the melodrama it's been getting.
I purchased my iPod a few years ago, and putting music on it was easy. I could buy the songs I wanted and all was well. The I wanted to do something else, I want to transfer the song;s off my iPod. I want another.. what?
What do you mean everything has to come from Apple unless I hack the damn thing?
I had ambitions of owning a Mac. This stopped imediatly and even after warning my friends about it they still purchased iPhones. Jail hell of Apple lockdown.
I'll pass thanks
Really? No Commodore, Atari, Tandy? TI? Kaypro? Or others too may to mention? Apple invented the home computer? They invented the 6502? PCBs? Keyboards? Floppies?
ENOUGH with the fanboi revisionism! How come you technogeeks who can keep track of every new toy can be so innacurate when it comes to history?
And how impressive is Woz anyways? The guys who designed chips for the C64 did much more complex work! Why no love and respect for Charpentier or Yannes?
this post is just plain BS - Apple didn't 'create' the PC - the PC was created by Alan Kay.
Woz was pushed out by Jobs very early on, actually right after the Apple II. never since has he influenced Apple in any way.
Apple has always been a walled garden, built on hype & ignorance.
I love how "Apple's computer-accessory devices are fairly closed" is somehow the opposite of "Apple makes general purpose computers". As though it were impossible to make both a fully programmable, general-purpose, use-any-way-you-like piece of computer equipment and also make computer equipment that has a more limited function and is vendor-locked.
Seriously, get a grip. Apple isn't even pretending that the iPad is a replacement for a general-purpose computer, and more than AT&T is pretending their smartphones are replacements for general-purpose computers. Until someone suggests that Apple will stop selling general-purpose computers it's INSANE to say that the iPad represents a fundamental change in the way anything works. (And we'll totally ignore the relatively small portion of the general-purpose computer market that Apple makes up).
Heck, if you want to complain about vendor-locked, dumbed-down hardware you should take a look at the last 20 years of cell phones. Cellular providers have consistently killed features and interoperability on their handsets for decades and the show no signs of stopping anytime in the future. Compared to the rest of the mobile-data ecosystem the iPad is one of the most open platforms available.
Steve Jobs was always obsessed with what Bill Gates had / was. Which is why Apple is what it is today. Closed and controlling.
I like Apples products, I just hate the dictatorship them impose on them. That is all a product of Steve Jobs. Once he is gone, hopefully Apple will become more customer choice friendly.
The iPad is so last weekend. Can we find another story already?
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I don't understand how the ipod, ipad, or iphone can be attributed to Steve Jobs. Yes, he is the CEO and ultimately responsible for the products they sell, but Jonathan Ivy is really the one who has spearheaded the design and engineering of these devices. If anything, it would be better to say that Jonathan Ivy has out-done Woz. Steve is just along to promote, market and evangelize.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
but if I meet you, I'll offer you a beer.
Seriously, we have about 3 news on the iPad a day. Am I posting about the new pad my gf is using ?
(follows numerous post on the non existence of a slashdoter's gf)
...between making general-purpose computers that are great for creating content, and creating limited devices for consuming that content?
Sure, the iPhone, iPad and AppleTV aren't very good general-purpose computers. They don't have the same keyboard and pointing devices. They are limited to the walled garden of approved apps. You have to buy in to Apple's other products to get the most out of them, etc. But they are great at what a lot of people are using their computers for these days -- watching TV, listening to music, browsing the web, looking at photos, etc., etc.
I don't know anyone who could have an iPad as their only computer -- even Grandma needs to upload her digital pictures somewhere, and the iPad doesn't fit the bill. But it strikes me as a great computer for hanging out and casually consuming email/web/video/photos/etc. while talking to people, watching TV, etc. This helps content creators by increasing the way people can consume their content. And that obviously helps Apple sell more MacPros.
So the whole premise of this story is bogus: why would Woz be disappointed that Apple was making devices for content consumption. How is that at odds with content creation, which was always Apple's focus?
-Esme
As far as I know, Apple dropped "trusted" computing support in 2006. They dropped DRM for iTunes in 2009. And of course MacOS X is based on FreeBSD and major portions of the OS are open source.
So the fact that they make a few completely closed products doesn't fully characterize their entire culture of openness vs. closedness. The truth is more complicated. I am no Apple fanboi (I'm a Ubuntu fanboi) but I consider MacOS to be a lot more "open" than Windows, in some ways at least. For instance, MacOS ships with development tools.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Apple's 2009 Annual Report shows that it sold $13B in Macs, $8B in iPods, $~7B in software, music and accessories, and $13B in iPhones and related services. I think they get a nice commission from AT&T for the 2 year contract. So, yes, they do indeed sell more peripherals and phones and "other stuff" than they do "computers". Not surprising since the iPhone is significantly lower priced than a Macbook, and the iPod as well. Both have mass market appeal. But computers are their core business--this is a nice bump but if you average it over many years you'll see that the computers are what's kept the company alive. They have $6B in annual expense around their retail stores. I think they need to be real careful about those because that could eat up their $33B in cash pretty quickly in the event of a downturn. "Looking" better than ever and that's why I'm short on Apple. Their share price is based on continued growth like they have had, possibly on a global basis, and I just don't see that's possible with what products they have. It's a classic bubble, get off the titanic, it won't get over $275...
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Actually, there's a great comedy movie on the rise of the Steve's and Bill (Gates) It's called Pirates of Silicon Valley. Jobbs and Wozniak were all-American hippies.
Without Wozniak, there would be know beginning. Without Jobs (who dabbled with acid), the project would have had no ambition, and Microsoft would be even more dominant than today.
If you want someone to blame, blame Bill Gates. He copied Apples software, and made a platform independent version. This allowed the Japanese to learn how to make computers (just as happened with cars) without having to invent any of their own original technology. Jobbs was furious about this and rightfully vowed to keep hardware and software together and so not able to be ripped off by copy-cats, and he's only getting started.. For the Ipad, Apple are using their own silicon and I don't blame them. They own a semiconductor outfit now. I'm glad they're still doing what Apple have always done under Steve Jobbs - putting the technology into the "hands" of the people. He's still a revolutionary.
He likes the iPad
Of course he likes the iPad. The iPad is actually a lot like the original Apple computers in terms of what it's trying to do. Steve Jobs is actually trying to push a whole new category. (Not wholly new, but one that's only been obscure so far.) He's pushed things so far, that there is no current killer app for this device. It's just like the advent of the original Apple, when everyone was saying that it was very cool, but what the heck is it good for? It wasn't until later that VisiCalc became the killer app.
Steve Jobs and company have gone out so far on a limb, we don't quite know what to do with this thing. I've coined a new unit: the milliTaco. It's 1000th of the innovation required to make a game changer and confuse a Slashdot editor. With the iPod, it wasn't the features and stats, the killer was the legal music download ecosystem they created. With the iPad, it's the ability to interact with a networked computer in ways and situations that we haven't before, without looking like a total dork:
http://amzn.com/B001G713NO
The killer apps are yet to come, for those of us who see the potential in this thing to implement.
Though, I can't imagine using it as my only computer as a student, blech
Well, duh! That's not what it's for!
They are for people with other things to do.
The idea you need to be able to build or program a computer in order to use one is as dead as disco.
Can we rename slashdot to appledot? Do a search for apple. There is an article about apple or the ipad or some icrap at least every day or sometimes multiple articles per day for the last week or more. Ridiculous! Go ahead, comment away about my negativity. There must be somebody out there that feels the same way?
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
So, it's significant how? Oh, right, everyone in the media owns one, and just can't stop yammering about how totally awesome they are for, like, media stuff and junk.
That's like Slashdotters declaring that this will be the year of Linux On The Netbook because we're all packing EEEs with Ubuntu remix. One swallow makes neither a summer nor a porn movie.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...can we get some more histrionics?
Apple Inc. -- the creator of the personal computer -- is leading the effort to exterminate it.
WTF are you talking about? "Exterminate?" Apple is somehow preventing me from going to amazon and ordering the parts for a new gaming PC? Are they run by Daleks now? Or I could go to Xilinx and get a demo board with an FPGA containing PPC processors and Ethernet cores. Now *that's* hardcore, baby. ;-)
This all makes me want to buy an iPad to help the product line have a long life because the reactions it is causing amongst the self appointed Guardians Of Us All are absolutely hilarious.
While a computer you can modify might not sound so profound, Wozniak contemplated a nearly spiritual relationship between man and his machine.
I owned an Apple II. It was neat. There was, however, nothing religious or spiritual about the experience. It played games and I did some word processing and my first programming. It was a device. Period. Anything else is self important wankery by people seeking to fill a void in their lives by walking some imaginary One True Path of computer knowledge. Computers are handy state machines, not a relationship.
Seriously, the reactions of many guys like this is very religious. Oh no, our private club has been invaded by heretics and icky girls who break away from our precious canon and prayer books! Do they not tinker? Do they not want to spend their entire weekend setting jumpers and modifying power cables? What is this "life" of which they speak? Blasphemy!
... revolutionary... establishment... anti-establishment... counterculturals...
And on and on and on. Get out your buzzword bingo cards, Cartman- long haired hippy edition!
The company he once built now, officially, no longer exists.
Oh noes! You mean things change and evolve? Damn! And here I was hoping my fancy new HDTV has tubes I could take down to the corner soda shoppe and run through the tester. 2^5 Skidoo!
I'm sure he's crying himself to sleep every night with nothing to console him but his endless millions upon millions of dollars.
[SHOCKING & MISLEADING INTRODUCTION.] [STATEMENT OF OPINION.] [WILD SPECULATION BASED ON A FLY-SPECK OF FACT.] [OUTLANDISH CLAIM.] [POINTLESS EMOTIONAL TAG.]
Use this guide to write perfectly good Slashdot articles. Just replace the bracketed sections with whatever fits and the editors will put it up -- news or not!
That is HILARIOUS. Like Jobs built anything involved with any of those projects.
Woz is God! Deal with it Jobs! You will ALWAYS be 2nd.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
I recall when I went from a radio kit I built myself to a store bought fully assembled receiver. Or when I went from a printer interface box I hacked to make work with my computer, to a plug and play printer. While I am as capable of as much romanticizing of the past as anyone else, there is always a new product to build, so I do not have to whine about how the good old days are gone.
In this case the GPC is evolving and there is no reason why it can't be replaced by something else. Many of us do not have stand alone Hi Fi stereos in our house, hand built of otherwise. Many of us do not have stand alone VCR or DVD players in our house. We might have one to rip DVDs, but generally the content is on a stream. The purpose of Apple was to replace old stuff with better new stuff, in the case at the time a terminal with a stand alone computer. Many people mistake this replacement for an open system with a closed system, and in part the power of Apple was that one had access to the CPU itself. But the real power of the Apple was that everyone could have a computer, even if they were not able to get a mainframe. The power of the Mac was that everyone could use a computer even if they did not know how to use a command line, though not everyone could afford it, but that is still the case. The Mac was 'closed', but that was not the point. If the iPad works, which I don't know if it will, the tablet idea has so far been a failure, it will be because hid even more complexity from the user, so that even more people can do what most people use a computer for, which is, of course, to look at p0rn, assuming the content is not in flash.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The iPad isn't just the end of homebrew; it's the first step into the true commoditization of the PC. Until the PC is a true appliance, it won't truly be usable by everyone in society.
I do tech support for my aging father and his PC. What he needs is a PC appliance: a device that just works. PCs based on Windows and MacOS need constant care and feeding. He needs a PC that works like a TV: plug it in, turn it on, and use it. Sure, it needs to know some basic information about who's using it (email address, etc.), but beyond that it should just work.
Steve Jobs has introduced something very close to this in the iPad. The only barrier at the moment is that the iPad is intended to be a secondary computing device tethered to your primary device. But, it will only take a few tweaks of the software and hardware to turn it into a low-end priamry computing device --- something that is suitable for 80% of users.
Propellor heads like myself will never be satisfied with such a device; but, I (and the rest of the /. fanboys) don't represent the majority of users.
The iPad is a vision of the future.
Jobs' ideas have always been in tension with Woz's brand of idealism and openness. Crazy as it seems, Apple Inc. — the creator of the personal computer — is leading the effort to exterminate it.
The bulk of consumers expecting their computing devices to behave like appliances are leading the effort to exterminate it. Just switch it on and it works. It's not entirely Jobs' fault. He sees himself as giving the customer what he/she wants.
Reply to That ||
I'm a gadget guy. I've owned a lot of them, from Palms to Gameboys to iPods. The iPad doesn't really appeal to me, but I'm sure it is great for some people. My wife, for instance. She likes to knit while sitting in her recliner with her Shih Tzu on her lap, with CNN/Fox News/MSNBC/Weather Channel/whatever on TV in the background. The iPad would be the ideal tool for her to look up patterns for knitting, or if she wanted to look something up they're talking about on the news.
/. community, even though there are MILLIONS of DS's out in the wild.
/., sales for the iPad would be in the tank. This is primarily because OS X would be too cumbersome to use on the unit, and multi-tasking would be a battery killer, but also because even if Apple did fulfill most of /.'s wish list, they still wouldn't buy it because it's made by Apple.
Now all this business about hacking/tinkering/etc. I used to own a Nintendo DS Lite, and I loved it. It was a great device. I thought it would be awesome if I could download apps over the internet. It had wi-fi, but no web browser, so that was a no-go. Even if it did have a browser (Opera doesn't count since it was impossible to find), it's not like there was a memory card on which I could save downloadable apps. What if I wanted to write apps for it? Nintendo charges an arm and a leg for a dev kit, plus you have to be an already established company. I know all of these solutions are available in the homebrew/gray market, but they're few and far between, and they aren't that accessible to the common schlub. Yet, there's no moral outrage from the
Apple on the other hand allows you to register & download it's official development tools for free, gives hundreds of code examples, and provides a boatload of developer documentation. The only time you need to pay Apple is if you want to sell/share your software via iTunes, and that's a paltry $99, not the princely $10,000 sum Nintendo charges for a dev kit. If you want to load your apps that you wrote onto your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch without paying the money, then jailbreak it--it's easier than setting up your DS to use homebrew apps (not that I endorse doing it).
My guess is that if Apple did release the iPad with multi-tasking, full-blown OS X, and addressed all the other complaints we here on
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
F*ck you, submitter! Yeah, f*ck you. Come on, man, why create problems where none exist?
I bet IBM were pretty depressed that they were no longer the "same company" when they started making PC-s instead of typewriters? No! Innovation happens, whether it comes from Steve Jobs or not.
Have you all PC-lovers missed the hints during the last *couple of decades* that the PC will go away? It's not just Apple that does this. Technology is becoming more mobile and more friendly. Is that bad? It's great! More technology in more hands, more communication and more opportunities! iPad is but a fragment of the big picture.
PC-s will never fully go away, they're great at what're great! They are tools for heavy users: business document editing, graphics/3D/art work, hubs of digital music studios, development stations for programmers. In 100 years we'll still have PC-s. But why use a PC for everything? Do you drive a Kenworth truck to buy groceries for dinner cause "it gives you more freedom"? No. And I'm sure Woz is smarter than that too!
So, through a convoluted series of events, I was offered a free iPod Nano.
"Cool", I thought, "I can play mp3's in my car without hauling around my laptop." So I plug the thing into my computer, and it shows up as a block device. Welp, it's an mp3 player, I'm supposed to copy mp3's to it, right?
I do this, and try to play them, and they're not listed. Huh? I plug the thing back into my computer, and they're there, but I can't play them. WTF?
After some Googling I discover that you can't just copy mp3's to the iStick -- you have to fire up Apple's software, which is labyrinthine and ridiculous, and jump through hoops to transfer them.
Fuck this -- if they can't make a device that works in the easiest way possible, but involves doing things the hard way since they're just trying to pimp their other iShit, I want nothing to do with them. Haven't touched anything else Apple since then, except for that Mac the music library has as a public computer. Turns out OSX sucks, too, although at least it comes with an X server and ssh client.
You can use it on the road, in your hotel room, in your living room, office cafeteria or coffee shop down the street.
I don't see myself getting a laptop anytime soon again after I get an iPad. I'll give my MBP to my mother as my iMac fulfills my needs for a "real" computer and the iPad will suit my needs for portability with a screen large enough to work on.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I must just not have the nostalgia gene.
Pretty much everything goes from homebrew to integrated/shiny.
And thank goodness for it.
Do people really want to go back to the days when you had to coax things just to work? To times when you almost began to suspect the lunar phases might be causing your cobbled together computing device to not boot up? Do people want to hand tune their televisions? Crank their cars? Get ice delivered every day so you don't die from expired food?
I mean, geez, you can just go to home improvement stores and buy piles of 2x4s. Why back in the day we had to chop down our own trees and plane out our own planks!
And all the lamentations are pointless. The iPad will not make the PC parts market go away. The two will happily coexist. People can treat computers as applicance *or* a hobby. We have choice! It really is a floor wax and a dessert topping! Choice is good! We have the Apple side for the appliance folks, and Linux for the hobbyists and Windows for the masochists! ;-)
If a part broke, you could replace it yourself with a soldering iron.
Yeah, well, I challenge any of these whiny old timers to take their soldering gun to an 1156 pad ball grid array. Go ahead. I'll wait.
apple didn't invent the pc - story credibility ruined
However that was six years after the early versions came out. Gates was the "Rockefeller" of the PC industry, consolidating the software anarchy using dubious business means. And made a fortune out of it too.
False.
A few PCs existed before Apple's brand. Off the top of my head - the Altair. And the number one best-selling computer of the 70s? The Tandy-Radio Shack 80 (TRS-80). It's sad how Apple and Microsoft have rewritten history to effectively erase other companies/inventors' achievements from our collective memories.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What utter rubbish. It's total hyperbole. Woz wants/wanted everyone to be able to compute. The ipad allows even more people to do even more computing. Of course he likes it. End of story. It's like a bunch of trolls were promoted to Editor today on Slashdot.
It is amusing, seeing MS apologists and Mac fanboys argue over who has the more open system.
A linux user.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Last I checked my MacPro was about the most expandable & open comercial computing platform I could find. While I'll grant that OSX is not as "open" as Linux or BSD, it is based on the later and I can download and tinker with the kernel and other parts if I so choose.
Look at it this way, OSX is one of the last comercial UNIX platforms now that Sun and SGI are gone.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
At least the Woz can choose when and where he takes a dump.
My laptop needs a fully functional web browser, removable media and ample storage. Oh, and a useful method of data input. The iPad has none of those things. I have no issue with people liking the thing, but I honestly cant think of anything I would use it for. My 15 year old Linux 486 tablet has more viable uses to me.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Who here thinks Jobs is that spiteful?
I must've missed the news where United Stated banned the term 2.0. I thought only the French did it!
It could be taken apart if you had the tools, but most people didn't. IIRC, the people I knew who did take apart them had special-ordered the long-handled T15 and the case cracker, and the ever-present high voltage on the exposed CRT.
And what, exactly, you were going to do inside them? At best it was a memory increase, although I suppose the SEs and SE/30s could have HDD upgrades and I think the SE/30 might have had some weird video card slot. But it was far from the Apple II and later desktop Mac models (or PCs) that are designed to be user-modifiable. iMacs have some of the common parts easily accessible, but some things are really hard to get to and the entire thing really isn't designed for disassembly.
The iPad is still just a new device. It does not show the end of an age any more than the newton did several years ago. If anything has destroyed the company that Woz built, it is the ipod culture that was built several years ago. The willingness of ipod users to buy media from the same company that produced the device has simply been extended to the iphone and the ipad. The closed nature of these devices is simply an attempt by apple to ensure that they retain control over the income provided by their specific purpose devices. A general purpose mobile device is probably the furthest thing from apples mind because it does not fit in with the business model created to rule the ipod.
... a hit from that bong Tim Wu is inhaling.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
More accurately, Bill Gates wrote BASIC for the Altair.
Apple runs MS software, so what?
Apple II changed the computing industry for the consumers.
\The PET was announced in January, didn't ship until October.
What about the PDP 8? It came out in 1965.
Or the first graphics computer, the PDS 1?
It's almost like each generation of computers was built on the previous generation~
Dork.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In other news, no one cares.
No.
Also, you're required to read each article thoroughly and comment on them here. Possibly by law.
At least, that's the best explanation I can think of for the number of comments from people who aren't interested in an iPad and are sick of people talking about it.
Tweet, tweet.
Not walking through the Mall, but using the Amazon App in front of the shelves at MicroCenter is something I've done. I've also looked up reviews of books while going through the shelves at Half Price Books. And yes, it's very useful. I have a Cradlepoint hotspot, so I have 3G through WiFi on my tc1100 tablet as well as my iPad.
I'm pretty sure Woz came to terms with that realization decades ago. He hasn't had a say in any of Apple's higher level decisions since his plane crash in 1981, and he hasn't worked for them at all since 1987.
While he probably doesn't do any work for Apple, he is still an employee and still receives a token paycheck.
http://www.woz.org/letters/general/53.html
(It wouldn't surprise me if he asked for $1.01 per year, just to be able to say he makes more money than the CEO.)
You do know that besides yourself, no one cares what apps you use,
that there is no actual infringement on your liberty on the part of Apple, any other computer hardware/software/services company, or any of us,
and that your post with its snide remarks about your imagined "Apple cult" is both "nonsense BS mentality" and a sign of a mental disorder, right?
We'll look forward to your next post in some alternative energy thread about your 'right' to put sugar in your gas tank and the Gasoline Cult.
If Steve Jobs was a real genius, he'd have figured a way to keep greasy fingerprints off the screen. I'll give it six months... netbooks were all the rage last year, I got one and it was crap, screen was way too small. Seemed like a neat idea, which in reality wasn't.
The Apple II actually worked.
My laptop needs a fully functional web browser, removable media and ample storage. Oh, and a useful method of data input. The iPad has none of those things. I have no issue with people liking the thing, but I honestly cant think of anything I would use it for. My 15 year old Linux 486 tablet has more viable uses to me.
So what you are telling us is that you use or laptop as a desktop replacement? I was talking about people who have a desktop (PC or Mac) and a laptop just for portability and how the iPad could replace the laptop but not their main computer at home. The iPad has a keyboard dock or you can use the Apple Wireless keyboard with it. So you can use the touch screen and/or a keyboard that is either integrated in to a dock or a wireless keyboard. No doubt, there will be adapter cables that let you plug in a USB keyboard through the dock connector in the future.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Max Headroom on DVD! All 14 episodes! I've got to have them. Your link made my day.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Commodore did.
And Radio Shack, with the TRS-80, had a lot to do with it, to.
And IBM invented the term.
This is news? Really? Companies have to innovate or die. Any company that rests on its accomplishments is setting itself up for being overtaken by another company.
I read the Slate article. A better culture clash would be between Apple and Google. Apple's innovations all seem to be Steve. Google, though has somehow managed to spread its innovations throughout the company. The Android OS and phones that support it are a reasonable threat to the iPhone, this despite many other companies trying (and some being in the market beforehand (think Palm)). Apple is a different company w/o Jobs, but Google seems to not have that problem. Could there be a correlation between that and the Open/Closed nature of their products?
this is a false dichotomy forged by suggesting that this Steve is good, ergo this steve is bad, then amplifying those traits by mapping them on to perceived standards of today.
I built and sold homebrew computers in the era when the apple II hit the market. At the time we all laughed at the apple as a "toy" because it was so locked down and not built from components. Back then, sonny, you built a computer like an Imsai, altair, cromenco, by starting with a metal box, putting in a non-switiching power supply, choosing the largest capacitors you could fit in the box, then an s-100 (altair) buss. then you picked a cpu board from one manufacturer, some memory cards from another, a keyboard uart decoder from another, a keybaord from another, a video card, and a TV screen modded with an RF converter on channel 4.
These apples were hideously locked down. Switching powersupplies with just wires coming out of a metal box, no way to ugrade the capacity and very little excess capacity. the keyboard was integrated into the case ! and wholly shit a mother board with soldered in chips, video, meomery, and CPU.
Even the address space of the cards you plugged in was decoded on the motherboad not the cards (which allowed the cards to be smaller than the ones for the S-100 bus). THe cards even got regulated voltages not raw rectified AC.
they sucked all the flexibility out of it.
the software was essential to the operation of the hardware not separate from it: a lot of the video management was done in software. the timing one the disk drives they put out used soft sectors not hardware determined sectors (only one hole punched in the floppy instead of 20, one for each sector). Even the memory refresh was handeled on the video updates which in turn were backsided on last half of the 6502's instruction cycle (when it would not be fetching). It was one of the very first systems to successfully use dynamic memory. (Only a fool would not use static memory in an altair, since you had to do all the refresh handling on the memory card).
You had to buy apple floppy disks, and apple plug-in cards for many things cause they were not standard cards or drives.
And of course the apple II in hind sight was one of the most geniuous machines ever built. it's lock downs let hobbiest's soar in other directions. plug in cards were small and the pre-decoded addresses and regulated voltages let you put all your effort into what they did rather than barely getting them to work. the dynamic memory allowed cheaper larger address spaces and the standardization of the video (all apples had to have the same video card) meant all games written would work on all apples. the same was not true of the others' since every s-100 bus machine had some different video card standard.
the use oif software decoding of keyboards and disks and so forth introiduced an era that eventually led to the apple desk top bus in the macintosh. What a brilliant simplication. Now we of course have USB instead of different ports for keyboards, parallel printers, scsi drives, tablets, mice.... But the only reasons we went down that track was Woz's apple paved the way. by making so much of the hardware immutable, the software could rely on standard configurations in every machine and thus software timing of other events became reliable for the very first time.
so this is BS revisionism to say that Woz was all about openess and Jobs all about lock down.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This is life, not a freakin' soap opera. Woz owns iPhones, he owns an iPad, he has iPods and macbooks and probably at least one of everything Apple ever made. Oh yeah, and he has a bootload of Apple stock that keeps him rich as God. Obviously he's bitter and cries himself to sleep every night. If that's what losing an epic geek battle looks like, bring it on...
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Nope, this is a silly argument.
The iPhone/iPad/iPod universe may be closed, but the rest of Apple's OSes aren't. MacOS open-source their Kernel with Darwin. They open-source their web browser, WebKit. They include GPL software with their OS, including Apache and a slew of other BSD apps. Heck, you get developer tools for free with both MacOS and iPhoneOS.
The Apple 2 wasn't an open source device. Yes, you could hack together peripherals and write stuff in basic.
But other than that, there isn't some big philosophical shift in Apple's model in 1983 and today. In 2010 you need to use the app store to distribute stuff. In 1983 you have to buy dev tools and get retail shelf space. In 2010 you have DRM. In 1983 the computers weren't good enough to use DRM, so you had to use code wheels, lookup the word on page 161, line 6, word 12 in the manual and hard to photocopy code sheets. (Remember Sim City 1?)
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
you're calling CmdrTaco a troll?!?
You have big balls, but no brains...
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
posting this again, since something went wrong the first time:
this is a false dichotomy forged by suggesting that this Steve is good, ergo this steve is bad, then amplifying those traits by mapping them on to perceived standards of today.
I built and sold homebrew computers in the era when the apple II hit the market. At the time we all laughed at the apple as a "toy" because it was so locked down and not built from components. Back then, sonny, you built a computer like an Imsai, altair, cromenco, by starting with a metal box, putting in a non-switiching power supply, choosing the largest capacitors you could fit in the box, then an s-100 (altair) buss. then you picked a cpu board from one manufacturer, some memory cards from another, a keyboard uart decoder from another, a keybaord from another, a video card, and a TV screen modded with an RF converter on channel 4.
These apples were hideously locked down. Switching powersupplies with just wires coming out of a metal box, no way to ugrade the capacity and very little excess capacity. the keyboard was integrated into the case ! and wholly shit a mother board with soldered in chips, video, meomery, and CPU.
Even the address space of the cards you plugged in was decoded on the motherboad not the cards (which allowed the cards to be smaller than the ones for the S-100 bus). THe cards even got regulated voltages not raw rectified AC.
they sucked all the flexibility out of it.
the software was essential to the operation of the hardware not separate from it: a lot of the video management was done in software. the timing one the disk drives they put out used soft sectors not hardware determined sectors (only one hole punched in the floppy instead of 20, one for each sector). Even the memory refresh was handeled on the video updates which in turn were backsided on last half of the 6502's instruction cycle (when it would not be fetching). It was one of the very first systems to successfully use dynamic memory. (Only a fool would not use static memory in an altair, since you had to do all the refresh handling on the memory card).
You had to buy apple floppy disks, and apple plug-in cards for many things cause they were not standard cards or drives.
And of course the apple II in hind sight was one of the most geniuous machines ever built. it's lock downs let hobbiest's soar in other directions. plug in cards were small and the pre-decoded addresses and regulated voltages let you put all your effort into what they did rather than barely getting them to work. the dynamic memory allowed cheaper larger address spaces and the standardization of the video (all apples had to have the same video card) meant all games written would work on all apples. the same was not true of the others' since every s-100 bus machine had some different video card standard.
the use oif software decoding of keyboards and disks and so forth introiduced an era that eventually led to the apple desk top bus in the macintosh. What a brilliant simplication. Now we of course have USB instead of different ports for keyboards, parallel printers, scsi drives, tablets, mice.... But the only reasons we went down that track was Woz's apple paved the way. by making so much of the hardware immutable, the software could rely on standard configurations in every machine and thus software timing of other events became reliable for the very first time.
so this is BS revisionism to say that Woz was all about openness and Jobs all about lock down.
What it was both. lock downs of previously unlocked down things created growth to build on. you were not constantly re-inventing the wheel from scratch. In case you have not noticed it before the thing that makes apples great is they always are expensive: this is because they spec them out at high levels using fewer but a complete set of advanced components even on base models. This means software can always count on a feature being there and thus not shoot for the lowest common denominator. think back to pre-w
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
DOH!
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
That's a very old joke.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I understand and even agree with the complaints over the itunes/app store model. I understand that controlling the distribution of software and prohibiting the sale of apps that compete against Apple's bundled iPhone apps like safari DOES stifle innovation and competition. I hate that system too.
But I don't get the argument against Mac OS here. Is the complaint simply that not every layer of the OS is fully open source? That seems like a nitpick to me. It's hardly fair to call Mac OS "more closed than Windows" when every new machine and copy of their OS includes the full developers tools. I'm not aware of any Apple-imposed barriers to prevent any old hacker from building the next big app in his garage.
So is it just the hardware lockin we're mad about? It seems to me like tinkerers have little else to complain about with Mac OS. You're really just nitpicking about the fact that Apple has a few feeble mechanisms in place to prevent you from running OSX on generic hardware because their business model relies on hardware profits and not OS licenses (which, coincidentally, is also the reason that OSX Client licenses are essentially distributed on the honor system.) In short, you're complaining that Mac OS X isn't Linux. Fine. It's not Linux.
Or is it really just that you want to have your cake and eat it too? You want Apple to get out of the hardware business and sell a fully open source version of Snow Leopard for a price that will sustain their business model? You want a company to make exactly the product you want and no more, at exactly the price you want and no more, so that you can get exactly what you need without having to pay any extra to subsidize whatever other stuff that company might choose to spend their money on.
Well Gee, I'd like for Honda to make a car that included bluetooth audio without me having to upgrade the whole package and spend $3000 more on chrome exhaust pipes and a sunroof, but now I'm not talking about "freedom" anymore, I'm talking about subverting a manufacturer's ability to design and price their own products and servers, which is the opposite of freedom.
Woops a few of those "would"s should be wouldn'ts. Please excuse me and I hope you get the idea.
Plus, if you don't constantly put talcum powder on your hands
Exactly I have enough grimy controllers and keyboards around to know what using my screen as an input device will lead to.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
There was a time.. Seems long ago.. When geeks were called grease monkeys.. They used to mix and match different automotive components to create their own personal version of the ultimate automobile.. Try that carb with that manifold on that engine with that transmission and that differential.. on an on.. To me, the IBM based PC became my version of doing this. Just as the majority of people do not want to build their own car, the majority of people don't want to build their own computer.. but for those of us who do, it's hard for us to imagine such a machine as being "personal" any more that the old grease monkey would consider a stock assembly line car as personal.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Apple has set the computing world on fire with its announcement of the iPad. Loyal Macintosh users have waited centuries for such a fast as lightning product. Even though it took forever to get here, I feel that the iPad will revolutionize the industry of hyperbole.
It's fanBOI, reflecting the fact that many are waif-like and wear hoods because of their perceived shyness around normal people.
The *hardware* was locked down for sure. It's the same today, the hardware on a lot of name-brand computers is often locked down, but you can still build your own from the case up if you like. But, IIRC (and I was just a kid), the software on the Apple II's *wasn't* locked down. I seem to remember a friend programming in BASIC on his IIc, and third-party developers selling games for Apple's. This new generation of iPhones/iPad's/iWhatever's is different in that they are almost completely locked down even at the software side. That's way worse than just not being able to add some third-party memory chip.
The mainstream Apple notebooks and PC's are still open, it's true. But no way would I give my kid one of these iToys as his primary computer. I want him to be able to program and experiment the way I used to in BASIC back in the day.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Jef Raskin created it. In typical Jobs fashion, he forces his way when all the real work is done, and claims credit.
Jobs is looking to "exterminate" the personal computer? Hyperbole much?
What a great post. Here is an excerpt from an essay by Manuel De Landa that amplifies on your theme:
"Meshworks, Hierarchies, and Interfaces"
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"""
To make things worse, the solution to this is not simply to begin adding meshwork components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation. Certain standardizations, say, of electric outlet designs or of data-structures traveling through the Internet, may actually turn out to promote heterogenization at another level, in terms of the appliances that may be designed around the standard outlet, or of the services that a common data-structure may make possible. On the other hand, the mere presence of increased heterogeneity is no guarantee that a better state for society has been achieved. After all, the territory occupied by former Yugoslavia is more heterogeneous now than it was ten years ago, but the lack of uniformity at one level simply hides an increase of homogeneity at the level of the warring ethnic communities. But even if we managed to promote not only heterogeneity, but diversity articulated into a meshwork, that still would not be a perfect solution. After all, meshworks grow by drift and they may drift to places where we do not want to go. The goal-directedness of hierarchies is the kind of property that we may desire to keep at least for certain institutions. Hence, demonizing centralization and glorifying decentralization as the solution to all our problems would be wrong. An open and experimental attitude towards the question of different hybrids and mixtures is what the complexity of reality itself seems to call for. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, never believe that a meshwork will suffice to save us.
"""
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Actually his job is to a bit of a troll...
Here's a bunch more talk about "locked down" from people who don't own and have never used one of these devices. Let's go back to the days when iPod wasn't out yet - but there were dozens of personal music players on the market. There were players that had a one or two line display and up / down buttons to select a tune. Fine if there's only one album on there but almost useless for larger collections. There were players that only handled ATRAC files, some only handled WMA files. And the software that you had to use to load music onto them - remember Music Match jukebox?
That's the market that the iPod entered. With it's click wheel and big (for a PMP) display it was tons better for finding a tune in a library. The iTunes software was miles better than anything else and the way they worked together was previously unheard of. And while people speak of "locked down" now, iTunes and iPod happily load and play bog-standard MP3 files. That's where all those big music libraries came from - most owners bought one or two tracks from iTunes and then ripped a bunch of CDs and downloaded a bunch of MP3s. Those evil encrypted iTunes downloads were necessary to get the music companies to play along - but you can make a playlist of those encrypted files and burn them to a CD and end up with unencrypted tunes. That feature was built in.
What made the iPod a winner was more than it's elegant design and the way it worked with iTunes - it was also that Apple didn't tie you to one music supplier (MP3s from anywhere) and included a method for removing the encryption from purchased files. And this is why I bought an iPod - because it did what I wanted a portable music player to do and didn't prevent me from using the files I wanted to use. Much better than one of those ill-fated players that were tied to MSN music and had that silly "Plays For Sure" label on them. That didn't work out too well, did it?
The iPad is doing the e-book thing right, too. It uses the common EPUB format for books and there's thousands of those floating around the net. If you have a book in some other format you might want to check out Calibre - it's a very nice open-source e-book manager and format converter. It'll even turn a PDF into an EPUB file; very neat trick. The iPad still follows the iPod on music files - load up your pirate MP3s and listen away. That's the killer feature right there: you can have a huge music library and a huge e-book library without buying anything from iTunes (or anyone else, if that's your style).
It's still early days for digital media - only a very few albums or books are released exclusively as digital downloads now. You don't need one of these gadgets - yet.
Another stupid article submitted by Taco to ignite a debate over a lame idea.
... Apple has a 91% share of the $1000+ PC market. ...
Gee, what you are suggesting is that companies like Mercedes, BMW and Porsche might have a disproportionate influence on the automotive market place.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Too bad Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard are dead. They could sympathize.
Except with the Ipad, there are already tablets, touch netbooks and similar kinds of devices. So even if a "killer use" is discovered for them, it won't be anything that Apple did first.
Really though - claiming that we should treat a single product from a single company as revolutionary, because there might be a killer application for it in future? One could make that speculation about any product in existence.
Yes, but you missed his and cheaper than a laptop.
The Ipad is not that device. Yes, I can see tablets becoming more popular when they are much cheaper, but let's wait for the company that does that. There's nothing special about the Ipad, which is just one of several tablets available today, and it's one of the more expensive ones at that.
In the US and in most developed countries about 80% of the population are using computers now. Who really thinks that glorified office machines like the IBM PC and its children are really "personal computers" anymore?
The personal computer of today is the iPhone or an Android gadget. Like it or not, but as soon as you're talking about such numbers it's not the potential of an universal machine that counts, but the practical usability of a simple device. It's the terminal in your pocket, not the server in your basement or the universal machine that is the "personal" in PC.
My god, I can't believe how self-serving computer-geeks have become. Nine out of ten geeks today are just defending their self-described superiority and fear nothing more than devices end-users can actually use without becoming experts. I'm reading (and writing in) Slashdot since ages, but meanwhile I nearly get more out of discussing the iPad with a random girl than scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Microprocessor-free TTL. Less core than a Micral. Lame.
Da Blog
You mean duct tape. What the fuck might "duck tape" be?
"Duck tape" might be the original name of duct tape. Some folks who have presumably actually looked into the history of the term believe that "duct tape" is a mispronunciation of the original term, rather than the other way around.
See, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape#Etymology.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
Is the author talking about the same Apple? The love of geek never went away. If you think that, you clearly have never used an Apple product. Although far from perfect, They have done what no other company has done or attempted. They make systems so easy a 2 year old can use it at frist try (google the video) with almost literally a secret button for geeks. Out of box try running a perl script in windows command prompt. Now try it in OSX terminal... hmmm that's funny. You can run perl code out of box in OSX. WOW that's funny OSX still has a fully functional unix command line. Why can't they just put a button for geeks and a button for grandma? I'll tell you why. Grandma is virtually 99.9 percent guaranteed to push the geek button. Who is she going blame when she downloads a malicious app? Who is mr I think i'm geek going to blame when his iPhone starts locking up every 30 seconds. If you answered Apple, there may be a good chance you have actually done tech support of some fashion. That's fine for Microsoft, I'm mean seriously do they really need to worry about reputation hahahahaha. What else are you going to use?. When you entire company is built off the repuation of quality. Its sheer genius what they do. While I don't doubt the skill of the jail breakers. If they really wanted to lock down the iPhone/iPad, don't you think they could?
There is plenty of Jobs in Apple II. The fact that it is a finished personal computer, not a kit, is Jobs. The fact that the enclosure was made by designers, which is still controversial today in PC's, is pure Jobs. Jobs also pushed Woz to do his best work. Woz has also said, if not for Jobs, he would have worked on some anonymous project at HP or something. The idea that you can say the Apple II is Woz only is bullshit. The fact that it is such a balanced and holistically sound product in so many ways is the best thing about it.
As for the iPhone and iPad, Woz fucking loves them. He carries 2 iPhones everywhere, and I would be surprised if there is ever a time for the rest of his life when he ventures more than 2 meters from an iPad. He was at the Apple Store on iPad launch day like he's been there for every other product launch, soaking in the community he helped start. Woz came to grips long ago with the idea that computers are also for music hackers, movie hackers, novel hackers, and so on, not just for computer hackers. An iPhone or iPad does not prevent you from getting your computer hacking done. Nothing typically prevents a computer hacker from getting their hacking done. And you can program iPad in open HTML5, installed off your own Web site, or in managed Cocoa, hosted for free and optionally sold with very hacker-friendly terms by Apple. Or, you can contribute to fucking BSD if you want to hack the lower levels. It's a fucking great device for hackers. It's the best device for digital comic books ever.
Further, every Apple product has followed in the engineering tradition started by Woz. The A4 in iPad is very much in the spirit of the Apple II. The A4 is not special because of what they added to it, or loaded it down with, it's special in that they took a bunch of stuff out to make it smaller and lower power. For example, the standard ARM design has 3 USB and a Java interpreter. The A4 has 1 USB and no Java. It's very much in the spirit of Apple II where you had to do much more with much less.
Also, have you seen the videos of little babies using iPads? That is the kind of thing that makes Woz lose his fucking mind with happiness. I would bet Woz is as proud of iPad as any Apple product ever, including Apple II. Little kids who don't have the motor coordination to use a mouse are working with iPads without even being shown how to use the fucking things.
So I disagree with the whole premise of the article. I think it's bullshit to invent some schism between Jobs and Woz.
Also, it incredibly stupid to say that Woz would think Apple had finally lost its way with iPad. They lost their fucking way from 1985-1995 without Jobs. The NeXT project started at Apple as "Big Mac" and should have been completed at Apple. When Apple lost their way is not controversial. It's well known.
It's a fool's dream to really expect strangers to do your bidding perfectly and for free, isn't it?
As far as Ubuntu fanboism, I learned yesterday that Ubuntu One, which is a cloud-storage / music store / etc. initiative by Canonical, will keep the server component closed-source.
Here's bug 375272 comments.
For those not likely to RTFL, the comment highlights are:
Disclaimer: I'm generally classifiable as a Ubuntu/Debian fanboi (I really like Ubuntu). But I'm really just another twice-burned greybearded gadget geek, which makes me an ex-fanboi of everything else over the last 30 yrs.. I'm not surprised to see Ubuntu / Canonical has warts -- it was only a matter of time before Ubuntu did something that left me less-than-impressed.
C'est la vie -- I figure either I'm going to be annoyed or Shuttleworth is, and he's paying more for the project than I am.
Because, you know, they don't build Mac Pros or XServes, do they?
Apple is great a building integrated devices, and have maybe not created but built up markets where there wasn't one before. But they still do sell perfectly good computers. If you're not fanatical about home maintainance, you can include their notebooks and the iMac in there.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I could have swore it was an IBM or the Xerox Alto... Well, that's what the history books say anyway.
Typical Apple troll trying to re-write history for the Apple God Steve Gobs.
I'm not sure what your point is, really.
This might help. I call this new thing "satirificationising".
Da Blog