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History Repeats Itself — Mac & the iPad
Keith found an interesting story telling a bit about how Steve Jobs operates. It involves small teams of young engineers willing to work 90-hour weeks in total secrecy, and a complete willingness to throw away bad ideas without flowery language. The iPad is surprisingly similar to the Mac."
Its not a computer like any other. Its not turing complete, not even within the limits imposed by the memory. The designer chose to restrict the set of algorithms to be executed to a miniscule subset of all possible ones.
It's not a computer because it's not Turing complete. And the reason it's not Turing complete, is that it can't run any program. And the reason it can't run any program is the app store moderation.
It has a lot of properties from a Turing machine, but the tape is bounded by people accepting and rejecting certain patterns.
"So they want to maintain a certain level of quality in applications that get onto the device, nothing wrong with that."
Yes, there is something wrong with it, when they are actively preventing people from using their iPads in ways that do not meet "quality" standards. I suppose that "quality" also means "nothing sexually themed," "nothing that mocks public figures," and "not using programming languages that Apple employees do not use."
Why should Apple dictate how iPads are used?
Oh, and just for your information, saying that requiring C/C++/Obj-C is matter of "quality" made me laugh a little.
Palm trees and 8
That only works so long as you already know what you're going to watch.
If you happen to change your mind on your way or you end up in a different mood, then it's not going to cut it.
It also will be less useful if more than one person might use the device.
Apple users have plenty of excuses to tell themselves they aren't being shat upon.
"only a geek would want that" "only a pirate would want that" "it's really for our own good" "it preserves the quality of the platform"
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> The iPad and iPhone never advertised nor implied that you could run any general user software.
Untrue. The specifically want people to believe this and while not explicitly stating ...might be fertile ground for a big fat lawsuit.
that this is the case clearly want their potential customers to understand this to be
the case.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'm sorry, but your and Apple's attempts to get the Ipad classified as "not a computer" are terrible. The Ipad, as well as the Iphone and Android phones (WinMo phones, Symbian S60 and so forth) are general purpose computers according to the definition.
Shamelessly ripped from Wikipedia.
The Ipad still executes a program, it still has a arithmetic logic unit, control unit, memory and I/O device. This makes it a general purpose computer. Being limited in both hardware and software just makes it a very poor general purpose computer.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
So, that 32 GB of flash memory is doing what...
I believe it is storing data. You fail here at manipulating definitions, storing data does not refer specifically to using a GUI to move files. It does store, manage and manipulate data, in fact Itunes does the exact function you describe. It does not fail the definition because it doesn't manage files like Windows.
Manipulate data, so you cant save a game with the Ipad, shock horror this is manipulating data. It's also writing and reading data from a storage device when doing this (managing files). The simple fact that the Ipad can install programs means that it can store and manipulate data.
So it is a general purpose computer, just not a very good one. No amount of re-definition or marketing will change this because it does the same function as other general purpose computers, just not as well.
The Ipad (correct English please) fails basic punctuation. It is a proper noun and I will treat it as such. On the plus side you can now use Ipad in Scrabble (also a proper noun).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.