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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."
Google'c Chrome pads will wipe the floor with the Ipad.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
See, the problem with that is that only Adobe can "make sure" that their flash player can be well optimized for any device. They have failed to do so for Macs (and linux damn it!). If say, Flash was on the iphone and it was pretty bad or just not good enough, problems with battery life, CPU being hammered by the flash player, crashes, etc would be pointed at Apple by the majority of the public. Apple doesn't want to be blamed for that. They want to control their own system. On top of that, if the flash player worked better on the Android or RIM, then apple would look pretty bad in the eyes of the public. Also, if say, Apple adds new features and the flash player takes 1-2 years to take advantage of that, then those features cannot be used to differentiate their device with other devices. Apple doesn't want that either. They want to control their devices.
Where did he get the design for the original imac, the ipod and ipad? Maybe he didn't invent a lot of that stuff, but the world of computers and consumer electronics would be considerably different (and arguably, not nearly as interesting) without his involvement.
Only if your time is worth nothing. Having used Mac's for 8 years now, they've paid for themselves many times over in the time I've saved not having to deal with virus issues. Hell, when I used to go home to visit my Dad, it was always 3 - 4 hours of sitting in front of his PC fixing crap. Usually that involved a format and reinstall of Windows. Three years ago I bought him an iMac. I've spent about 2 hours in those three years and that was last christmas upgrading his system to OS 10.6. I went from doing roughly 15 - 20 hours a year to less than an hour a year.
Same thing at the office. We make money producing software and selling it to clients. We run a Mac shop. If we need to test in Windows, most of the machines have Parallels and either XP Pro or Windows 7 Professional. Yes they cost more up front, but guess how many lost day's we've had because someone downloaded a virus in the past 2 years? Nil. Computers are tools that should stay in the background and do their jobs not getting in the way.
If the macs save us just 1 day of downtime vs a PC over the course of the 3 years we keep them, they've paid for themselves twice over.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Right, I've had enough of this. Why do people simply allow this fallacy to continue? Apple's UIs are terrible!
The iPod is far more complex than it needs to be, the single good thing about the iPhone's interface is just a huge patent troll, the iPad I have never used so I will avoid comment, and the OS! Oh, the OS! A recording studio I practically lived in for a few months used a Mac, and on several occasions we spent hours just trying to move data onto an external drive - I believe the hardware on the year old box was failing, and when it wasn't we had to inexplicably use iTunes to move data files. Ok, so that was probably set up by some "security conscious" moron.
In general, though, the OS is terrible. One button mice were ok, they were a novelty. Fifteen years ago. Now I feel constrained by a 3 button, plus the extra four for scrolling. The only reason they've stuck with them is stubbornness - not because it makes sense, or because of the simplicity of it, but simply because The Mighty Steve refuses to admit that he might have been wrong. And dragging a drive to the trash - does that eject it or format it? I keep forgetting, since it is apparently random.
WTF is it that allows some of the most argumentative assholes on the web just overlook the one simple fact that Apple is really shitty at putting together a UI?
Be smart, help people!
I could do fine without Apple's influence on UI design (mostly raising the bar on how much eye candy is "acceptable.") It's certainly not worth the extremely negative influence they've had on software freedom on mobile devices (WebOS, Windows Phone 7, Android to some extent).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is patently false. Virtually every product released over the past 20 years (rather from the company's founding) have all come from someone else. Jobs has been responsible for one notable thing, and one alone, nothing else whatsoever. He recognizes and shepherds the bright ideas of others.
And in case you didn't know Jobs was not once but twice dumped by Apple relegating him to non-functional roles because he was such a problem he almost killed Apple. He's on a roll now but personalities like him never change. His current language and actions are not endearing him to the masses. That spells trouble.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.