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Steve Jobs Says PC Folks' World Is Slipping Away
theodp writes "Provoked by an iPad ad promising a 'revolution,' Valleywag's Ryan Tate fired off a late-night missive to Steve Jobs. Jobs responded, and the two engaged in an after-midnight e-mail debate over lockdown, Cocoa vs. Flash, battery life, and whether 'freedom from porn' is a bug or a feature. 'The times they are a changin',' quipped Jobs, 'and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is.' Tate was unswayed by the Apple CEO's reality distortion field, but did come away impressed by Jobs' willingness to spar one-on-one over his beliefs — at two in the morning on a weekend."
Sounds to me like Jobs just got trolled hard. 10/10 for Ryan Tate.
Hehe, I will say that in the last image of the email exchange, Steve Jobs really zinged Tate.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Doesn't really surprise me at all. Steve wants a controlled user experience and geeks want the freedom to do whatever the hell they want to do. The two clash. Steve is right though, we don't have to buy his devices, so don't. It's that easy. I do like Steve's quote at the end of the exchange, however. For as many people bitch about Apple here, there aren't enough that actually go out and do something about it. Even if you're not a developer, you can still vote with your wallet. If you want to drive FOSS to greater prominence, either help by using it or help by creating and fixing it. Complaining about Apple on the internet won't do much. Creating or helping to improve FOSS is only real way to stick it to Apple.
What Jobs is saying, is that he's finally found a way to reach the masses of computer noobs that Mac has been aiming for all along. The problem with the original Macs is that they required someone to actually use a computer.
Now that he's turned computers into toys, he can finally get "Grandma." But this doesn't really change anything in the computer world.
It's something to brag about for sure, on a marketing level. On a features level, he succeeds only by not having them. Kind of like how McDonald's succeeds by not having a steak dinner.
This guy just wrapped up all the common complaints that Adobe and the non-Apple customers want you to believe what's wrong with iPad, and sends off a profanity laced alcohol induced email exchange to see if he can out wit Steve Jobs.
I'd say that Steve stayed pretty much on message with what he's been always saying, even without his PR department to filter out his intent. And the blogger just looks like, well, a troll.
Steve Jobs seems to ignore everything that caused products to be successful: Price to performance. Lets see here the iPad
The iPad costs ~$500, a cheap notebook costs $300-400, paying $500 for a notebook usually gets you a fast, powerful notebook. With a notebook I'm not limited by stupid design decisions, even Microsoft lets me do what I want and doesn't restrict programs. If I want to install an emulator, thats fine. If I want to install Photoshop, thats fine. I don't have to worry about petty squabbles about how Flash is sooooo evil and destroying the world! I can just choose to install Flash or not. With a notebook I can pay ~$5 for a USB card reader rather than $30 for a single-format card reader. With a notebook I have choices of just about everything else, I'm not locked into expensive hardware.
The iPod won marketshare for having a good UI and being small. The iPad has a decent-ish design and decent UI. However, when I can get a laptop with a UI that I've been using for most of my adult life... Why change? The iPad runs expensive applications, a laptop runs free applications.
I think I'm not alone in thinking how annoying it is to have common-sense features be added in at a later date which would have already been done with a simi-open platform.
No one wants real applications! We will never have an iPhone SDK! After all, programs are -terrible- to run. No one wants an alternate browser! No one wants copy/paste! No one wants multi-tasking!
Sorry Steve, I don't understand your opposition to common sense. I have an iPod touch because at the time it was the cheapest wi-fi enabled device to have a good internet experience on the go with some games/music/movies. I'm not going to get an iPad because there are cheaper devices that do a -ton- more.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"As much as I enjoyed watching SJ take that clown to school, it probably isn't a good idea for him to do so since there's likely to be litigation against his employer in the near future."
Jobs was doing well until he brought up porn.
Porn has been published in every medium known to man since the beginning of time. We have literally found porn cave paintings. Porn is nothing new, and will continue to exist. And as long as it's existed, kids have always gotten their hands on it.
Steve acting as if it was some new fad that Apple is attempting to stem is disturbing. I'm not saying they need to start putting porn in the app store, but c'mon, Apple stopping sideloading so they can keep the iPhone free of porn? There are already ways of getting porn on the device (web), and kids can very easily jailbreak the thing to load on whatever they want. Apple is making a dumb stand on principle.
He told the Gawker editor that he'd understand if he had kids. One has to wonder if this is a result of a bad experience Steve has personally had with his family, and not so much a business decision.
Yeah, -1 squared is 1. So, is woosh an uprate now, or are you just bad at math?
Sent from my iPad.
Hari Seldon wrote all about it.
E
If the iPad can provide the functionality they need, and contrary to the false statement, free p0rn(who wants to pay for an app to pay for p0rn anyway) and let the kids write papers with a bluetooth keyboard and not have updates fail because MS cannot verify via WGA an accuse the user of theft, then why buy anything else?
I feel a little disturbed that I can't change batteries, add memory, or write my own programs like I can on my Mac, but then I don't fix my own car anymore either. The worlds moves on, and one either moves or gets run over. And just look at the unemployment rate in the US to see what happens to those that get run over. Sure you can hold rallies and complain about taxes and blame the immigrants, but you are still run over.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Didn't we despise Microsoft because of how successful they were?
Maybe you did, but my objection to them was for the multiple crimes they committed, and the dismal quality of their products.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ok, tell me this though.
How are you going to get the thing to print? Not everyone has a wi-fi enabled printer, myself I still make do with a parallel port printer. Do I print things? Not often, but occasionally I need to for work and the like.
Are you going to enjoy being locked out of the web? There are tons of flash games out there, tons of flash movies, etc. What benefit are you getting to accept it?
Are you going to be broke paying for applications? It is entirely reasonable to not have to pay for a single application without pirating on a PC/Linux. Almost every pay program has a free alternative on PC/Linux. On the other hand, due to Apple's draconian policies, a paid app may be the only app "approved" to do something.
What about storage? The average person is going to have GB worth of movies, music, documents, photos, etc. Flash memory is -expensive-. Also, how are you going to transfer things to the iPad? And backups? What about durability? If a component of a PC fails, its easily replaced. Nothing is truly "fatal" if you have the money.
The iPad makes a passable secondary "computer" but as a primary computer? I'm better off with my 7 inch EEE 701...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
What Jobs is saying, is that he's finally found a way to reach the masses of computer noobs that Mac has been aiming for all along. The problem with the original Macs is that they required someone to actually use a computer.
Now that he's turned computers into toys, he can finally get "Grandma." But this doesn't really change anything in the computer world.
It's something to brag about for sure, on a marketing level. On a features level, he succeeds only by not having them. Kind of like how McDonald's succeeds by not having a steak dinner.
I agree.. and yet you can't even boot, for the first time, a 3G iPad without connecting it to a computer with iTunes. WTH were they thinking with that?
Negative freedoms: the biggest load of BS to infect pop sociology in the last century. When someone claims to offer or desire "freedom from" anything, run for the hills, because they are either too naive to understand the costs or too traumatized to care. Neither viewpoint is healthy.
And an openable hood.
No, not really, the steak dinner is still the more appropiate analogy.
Having hand cranks wouldn't serve much (if any) purpose on a modern car, so truly most people *wouldn't* want it. Steak dinners, however, are actually desireable and there's a sizeable market for them still. In the case of PCs they're the corporate world, which may love to lock down their employees' computers but despise having them locked from *them*, and for the variety of tasks corporations need computers for, an Apple toy (sorry, "appliance") will never be enough.
But Jobs' and the Apple fans' dismissal of the business sector isn't surprising. That's why Microsoft considers Linux, and not Apple, its biggest threat: because Apple's ideology of dividing the world between 'geeks' and 'consumers', refusing to even acknowledge the existence of the corporate market, is what ultimately locks them from being more than an 'also ran' first to IBM and now to Microsoft.
Wake me up when the corporate world abandons regular computers in favor of Apple's toys. But not before.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
The problem is that "something different" may not be good.
Obligatory car analogy: It would be like trading in your 10 year old car for a new one that looks cool and is comfortable, but is completely autopiloted, and only lets you out at certain stops. Businesses have to apply to the car maker so the car would stop at their brick and mortar store. And without warning, this can be taken away, so if someone used to stop at a Target, they wouldn't have that option tomorrow and only get Wal-Marts. Continuing the analogy, someone patches the ECM with a steering wheel to allow manual control, but the next year's cars always come with protection against that.
People trading their computers in for what are effectively game consoles means that they are trading their freedom to run what they want, when they want for an environment locked down and managed by someone else who can do anything they please.
My question is: Do we want to go this route of sacrificing openness for ease of use? Yes, viruses and Trojans are a nuisance, but do we want to trade our relatively open computers for what would essentially be terminals, locked to some for-profit corporation's motives and future? For me, it is a no-brainer. I will keep my computer, and my phone will be on an open platform. If Android phones become unrootable or impossible to put custom ROMs on, I'll move to the Nokia N900 and encourage others to follow.
Do we want all our computers to be like PS3s where at any time, functionality can disappear at a moment's notice like the "other OS", and there would not be a single thing we can do about it? I'm sure the usual antagonists of open computing would love a wholesale move to a locked down platform, but is that where we want to take computing as we know it? Do we want to move to a computing model where what we buy, we are only permitted access to whatever the company allows on a whim? Yes, PS3s have no virus or spyware problems, but we are trading freedom for security here, and in the end, we will end up with neither.
Go out, buy nothing but an iPad and tell me how good your computing experience is 12 months from now.
Me? Wouldn't work at all (which is why I don't own one). For my mother, older sister, an elderly couple who's network I manage and about twenty other people I can think of? It would be perfect (and make my life much easier).
Freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Nice job combining those bottom two, Steve. How did the CEO of the company that produced the 1984 commercial go from that to this utter drivel?
I am free from programs that steal my private data on my PC if I choose to be.
I am free from programs that trash my battery on my PC if I choose to be.
I am free from porn on my PC, if I choose to be.
Do you see the difference Steve?
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
The most amazing part of this entire thing is the complete role reversal. The running woman in 1984 no longer represents Apple or its products. She is now represented by the PC and its many forms with the drones being Apple users basking in their "freedom". You never have more freedom when you have fewer choices. NEVER.
This is the very reason I won't buy Apple's products. The doublethink being presented here by Steve goes against everything I believe computing should be about.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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wtf? How does free software equate to software anarchy? How does free software equate to sex free computing? How does software anarchy equate to sex free computing?
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
I feel your pain, I really do.
But what if your old car would go to random places all of a sudden and crash into brick walls at random times? And when you went out to browse your porn half the time your car would get a flat tire while you were out there and a bunch of punks would beat it up and you'd spend hours and hours getting it to work halfway decently.
So Steve Jobs glides up in his gleaming white Gulfstream V jet and says, "Hey, I have a cool car that drives better than anything on the planet. We make sure you can drive on this excellent network of safe roads, and leave the potholed, poorly made old style ones behind. You know, I'm sorry, but not only did those maintenance guys do a lousy job, they had no taste."
So you take a look at his roads and sure enough, everything is gleaming and works and there are no strange brick walls to be found, anywhere. But ... there is something missing ... something important!
"Where's the porn?" you ask. "And how about Rush Limbaugh and National Review?"
"Oh, the porn hurts the kids, and National Review makes fun of our sacred cow Obama(tm), You know, we are all Democrats here, even if we don't quite admit it," he says. "Don't worry, though, you can use Safari to browse any web site you want."
"And you know what, we know you want to look at porn and we're a big company and can't approve of that garbage. But all you need to do is run Safari or the movie player and you can find that junk you want, just not on our shiny roads. So you go a little out of your way for it, but your experience is still safe and when you're back you will be assured that your car will still work, instead of get banged up."
And isn't that funny, that might just be better for porn, actually, because you are always safe. How many native porn apps do you have on your computer? I would bet, none. How many porn web sites do you visit? If you are concerned with this issue, probably quite a few. The point is, the makers of porn are not stupid, and they will bring you what you want.
The App Store does have some downright sad speech restrictions. My Obama IQ game, for instance, was not approved until after the 2008 elections were safely passed. Pretty pathetic, no? Not that one anti-Obama game was ever going to tip an election one way or the other, but the sales would have been nice to get.
Complete freedom of speech is preserved on the Internet. The App Store is not a vehicle for free political or sexual expression, and to me, that's OK. As long as you can browse the web, you are free.
Some people who argue against Apple just don't realize how horrible a task it is to eradicate a piece of spyware from a Windows computer. I used to work in IT and my experiences in trying to devirus a computer were just plain horrible and pathetic. Fortunately I've been an almost exclusively Apple user for many years and since I started being one, my computing experience has become far better and smoother and more fun.
So I have a balanced perspective. Would it be nice if the new iPad was totally free? Sure.
But isn't the App Store a great invention, something that helps even small developers like me make a few bucks?
In the past couple of years I have bought far more App Store applications than Mac applications, and most of my Mac applications were made by, guess who, Apple. App Store applications are cheap, and they are easy to buy and use, and a lot of fun. And most of my App Store applications are from small developers, not Apple. So if you are looking at which business model serves the small developer, it might just be Apple's.
This is not a perfect world. It's a tragedy that evil people deliberately set out to ruin other peoples' computers in pursuit of a few bucks. But they do, and the iPhone software model stops them cold. If you're sick of having to be paranoid about evil people running your computer, you might prefer if it was run by Steve Jobs, as opposed to running it yourself.
That's a trade a lot of people want to make, and I'm sorry, I really can't blame them.
D
I think that O'Brien's reversal of the motto is more appropriate for Apple: SLAVERY IS FREEDOM. By giving up the right to make "grander" or "higher-level" choices, the user gains the perception that his device will be taken care of for him as far as its software is concerned. By voluntarily becoming a slave to Apple's App Store-iPhone OS ecosystem, the user gains peace of mind, and he gets to say he uses an iDevice to boot.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Dear artard,
You and your two friends can enjoy not buying apple products, but to my mind a new class of product by definition introduces more CHOICE to the market than was previously available.
There are probably more important things to stand against.
And so if Apple goes away that leads to more choice for consumers in what way? They get to choose between Microsoft and Microsoft? Because the reality is that Linux isn't truly consumer grade yet.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
What new class? If you mean the iPad, no, sorry to put a dark spot onto your world view, but His Jobsiness did not invent the keyboardless touch PC.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
the iPad DOES replace a PC for a large amount of people. Take off your slashdot-coloured glasses, and you'll realize that most non-technicals just use their PC to update their facebook, surf the web, and jot a few quick emails.
Dear dickhead,
Not all of us are willing to blow $500+ on a device that doesn't enable us to do anything we couldn't do before.
I need a laptop to get my job done. I need a mobile phone for a variety of reasons. I can't think of a single damn reason why I need a $500 tablet.
Until you get that not all of us are willing to spend $500 on gadget porn, you won't grok why some people think the iPad is a tremendous waste of money and attention.
Seriously? This is easily one of the stupidest fucking discussions I have ever seen on this site. Every dumb ass analogy there is has been used. Every unnecessary soap box has been stood on.
Hate the closed nature of the iPad and iPhone? Don't buy them. Do those devices simply not meet you business needs? Don't buy them. Think you know more about marketing a device than Apple? You're fucking deluded.
Is Apple somehow preventing you from buying and using other devices and services? No.
So what the fuck is the big deal?
I own a Mac. I love it. All the best computers I have ever owned have been made by Apple. They meet MY needs and have done so better than any other computer. Will you have the same results? Honestly, I don't give a shit. I have an Android phone. I love it. It has a physical keyboard, I don't need iTunes to use it, the ssh client was free, it's an AT&T exclusive and I can currently run Pandora in the background. See what I did there? Apple's product in that space didn't do what I wanted it to so, instead of freaking out about it and crying about Apple's "stupid" policies, I bought something else. Until that choice no longer exists, the rest of this talk about closed versus open systems and censorship and walled gardens is utterly pointless.
How long do you think "most non-technicals" will put up with typing on an uncomfortable, unresponsive piece of glass? Five emails, maybe ten?
I bet it's longer than they've put up with writing 160 character messages using 12 buttons.
Until so many people have chosen slavery that freedom becomes impractical or illegal. See software patents, h.264. It's important to make people aware that when they choose Apple, they choose to get locked in to a platform that dictates what they can and can't do, and that is deliberately designed to make it expensive to switch, and designed with forced obsolescence in mind.
The parent is not saying that Apple products should be legally banned. He's saying why they're bad, and why you shouldn't use one. All he's doing is providing a negative review of a product.
Much like having optional slavery introduces more choice to the job market than was previously available.
Some people can see farther than 5 minutes ahead. Pity you aren't one of them.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.