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Why Microsoft Shouldn't Copy Apple's iOS Walled Garden
Kethinov writes "Will the computers of the future be tools for freedom or for censorship? An insightful Ars editorial examines this question in depth, concluding that Apple's walled garden approach to iOS is fundamentally flawed and thus Microsoft should reconsider their plans to apply the same model to WinRT. The authors are careful to present a nuanced analysis that adequately weighs the competing interests of security, convenience, and user freedom, ultimately concluding that Mac OS X and Android offer better models because while their walled gardens are on by default, they offer supported mechanisms to opt-out if desired, thereby offering users the same security and convenience benefits without sacrificing user freedom in the process."
A similar article by software engineer Casey Muratori looks at the effect Windows 8's closed distribution system will have on game development. The restrictions involved in getting approval for the Windows Store would preclude 2011's game of the year, Skyrim, from appearing there, as well as 2012's top candidates. The requirements contain clauses that would cut out huge swathes of the video game industry, like this one: "Your app must not contain content or functionality that encourages, facilitates, or glamorizes illegal activity."
Go buy an XBox if you want to play games. Microsoft doesn't really care if you can't play top-shelf titles on Windows 8, and would probably prefer the hassle of not supporting DirectX for the general PC class systems. They'd be much happier selling you an XBox. Not only does it lock you into their console, it helps lock game developers into their console too.
I agree, but Apple has changed things a bit, there still has to be a central marketplace for the average user to find things...that's what Apple changed. Google has a central marketplace, but it's also ridden with viruses, malware, etc and isn't very nice at all. I wish there was some alternative, where maybe Microsoft would merely control people who have other marketplaces, and it would be up to say..CNET to insure that their download was safe, etc. This is sort of what they are doing with listed x86 programs, but because it's centralized it congests wait times. I don't know the answer, I wish it were simple...but even though it hurts developers...Apple doesn't give a shit, and because of this, neither does the customer. As a result any non-centralized strategy will be heavily undermined, because...consumers want simple. So, unfortunately Microsoft and Google both have no choice but to mimic Apple to some degree. That said, clearly Microsoft is more committed to cross platform than Apple is, with Microsoft services running on iOS and Android.
wont matter no one will be able to upload there game using the current MS developer panel. constantly times out or "cant read package" on very large size packages. why cant you read the package? did the upload fail? or did i misplace a comma in my text? did the compiler screw up the executable?
They will do it poorly, but it might be very profitable. And who cares about all that 'freedom' crap? 'Freedom' doesn't sell. It's a very tiny fringe market.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Microsoft should by all means copy Apple's walled garden model. Then they can both proceed straight to hell, holding hands.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
They should introduce more restriction.
Every restriction in the two big proprietary operating systems will help free and open ones.
Why post this now? GA is 10 days away and it's far too late for some whining on slashdot to make a difference. Why not post this a year ago when the dev preview came out?
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
and in doing so usher in the age of linux. Apple expensive and restrictive, windows, cheaper but just as restrictive, linux, cheapest, and least restrictive.
Of all the approaches available to them, which would make Microsoft the most money? Including both direct profits, and any future benefits which might be had by increasing Microsoft's effective influence to further profit in related areas.
That is what the executives at Microsoft are asking. They don't care about openness, or user freedom, or anything else like that - except in so far as it affects the success of the company. So work out the answer to that question, and you can predict Microsoft's future actions.
The answer looks clear to me. A manditory app store would not only make Microsoft a fortune, but save them from the problem of needing to run an eternal upgrade cycle to keep users constantly buying new software. The power it gave them would also open up untold opportunity in other areas - they could use it to mandate support or lack of support for specific technologies (eg, no OpenGL-compatible games permitted), or prohibit software that could compete with Microsoft's own.
That's for Metro apps. Skyrim is a Win32 app. Sure, the Metro bit is a walled garden, but the Win32 bit is still as open as ever on x86, you simply just avoid ARM based Win RT devices... job done.
Windows needs to make "future" applications unable to get out of their install directory, and unable to write to a global registry.
Viruses can't do a whole lot if they can't get to system files, can't modify anything but themselves.
Windows would suddenly catch up with this whole Internet fad if they secured their OS from viruses finally.
Sure allow trusted legacy aps an option to be run, but aps for the future should be basically sandboxed.
I believe if Microsoft made their OS secure against viruses, they'd actually be a step ahead of Apple. The main old reason Apple doesn't have a lot of viruses is that it had a lower market share for a long time.
God spoke to me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code
Amazing that you quoted the second page of the article and forgot the part about Skyrim being PEGI 18, which is over PEGI 16. That's what would be in question, not the ESRB rating.
One step at a time. If Microsoft can get people entrenched into the Windows Metro OSes by Windows 9 or 10, they will force all apps to come from the Microsoft's store. From a greedy bastard standpoint, they have no reason not to.
The fact that Apple is very strict (not talking about the mature content thing which I find ridiculous) regarding how an app should behave or designed, makes that a lot of apps are easier to use because the learning curve is low. You don't need to learn things over & over again. Hence the reason - and imho correct - that a lot of users find it a more user friendly platform.
If I read the passages about why Steve Jobs was against Apps in the first place, he had the fear that it could lead to tainting the user friendly experience in which they invested a lot. Which I think - after seeing my share of bad designed software - was a valid fear.
I have an Android smartphone as I find iPhones ridiculous expensive. But if I look at the quality difference between what is available in the Google Play store on my smartphone & the iOS store on my iPad, there is a difference. And I do - personally - think that this is because Apple does run a very strict ship in guidelines, how an app should work, what you expect as behavior, etc. I don't think it is because iOS developers are so much more talented then their android counterparts.
This may come over as a nightmare for those who like to tinker or loves freedom to design or develop an app like they want it, but reality is that when it comes in designing good and consequent interfaces, 90% of the developers can't do it even if their live depended on it. Give them to much room and you really get some of the horrendous software available on the Google play store. Sometimes I find it a pity that Google doesn't enforce some basic guidelines because it is the only way some developers would put some sense in what they are developing.
So no is not the iOS concept that is flawed, it is that stubborn idea that a lot of techies have that they have the same needs or mindset as the general public.
Why Microsoft Shouldn't Copy Apple's iOS Walled Garden
Microsoft should not copy Apple, it should sue Apple for copy right infringement. The idea of proprietary file formats, making switching costs high, getting people and making it difficult to leave, monoculture, etc etc were all invented by Microsoft and pushed for decades. Of course it is sad people jump out of one walled garden and jump right into another in the form of iOS. But still, if Microsoft copies Apple it will be a xerox copy of a xerox copy.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is probably very obvious, but the market is ultimately going to decide what is and what isn't a good idea. If the "walled garden" will be generating more profit for Microsoft than the (relatively) unrestricted status quo, then it flourishes and continues. If enough people reject the approach and go looking elsewhere for an OS, then perhaps Microsoft learn their lesson and revert.
I doubt that enough people are going to be annoyed by the restrictions and move to another platform. "It really isn't worth the hassle."
Nevertheless, if the gamer crowd can provide enough support for commercial linux game deveopment, my selfish self will be more than satisfied with the freedoms (or lack thereof) granted by Windows 8.
anyone got a list of x86 based tablets that can run Linux distros.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
in the end the best thing to benefit Microsoft's competition will not be anything they did but the dumb things Microsoft did
Why complain if Microsoft wants to shoot itself in the head?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Nowadays everything goes through the search pages of google, thats why business everywhere spend milions on SEO and SEM. What will happen in an App store centric world?. Take for instance the travel industry, which relies heavely on online marketing. In the coming years the users would switch from searching for travel offers through google, to using their preferred travel apps. With the added benefit that apps have the potential to be more attractive and dynamic than HTML/Ajax websites. I think in the coming years there will be a transition, a switch from the browser to the app store as a mean to access the internet.
I will first date myself as having to take a mandatory course in slide rule use as a Freshman EE major at an ABET school. ..."the learning curve is low."
That ABSOLUTELY is the most important issue when it comes to being the "help desk" for every non-EE peer, family member, aquaintance, etc. since purchasing my first Apple IIc many years ago.
I have my own personal hard copies of the original Apple programming guidelines, NOT because I ever wrote any application programs, but because I wanted to be able to explain to USERS how the software responded to THEM, and that THEY were not mice in a maze being expected to respond in a certain way to the software; sadly, I see many arrogant programmers and IT self-proclaimed professionals out there who do NOT get the idea that the USER is the purpose for the technology.
I still think that Hypercard is the BEST overall application program EVER produced for general purpose computer use, without any exceptions.
And you had to jailbreak to get another browser. But Apple gets away with it due to fanboys in government (look at the Google FTC threat).
If the EU forces Microsoft to disable secure boot on Windows RT devices and allow alternative apps then they will deserve their Nobel peace prize.
censorship, EU, anittrust, and other laws may stop MS from being able to lock it down.
MS is to big for them to get away with big time lock down and at best the only lock should be that the app does messes the rest of the system up.
I don't any 3rd party DRM system will work in MS store will work so no EA origin, no steam, no SafeDisc, , no StarForce, no SecuROM, no Impulse / GameStop App , no game tap.
we need to make windows 8 bomb so hard that they may need to have a SP 0.5 rushed out to have the old UI to come back.
"I'll give you that Linux is the cheapest and least restrictive."
:)
Linux is absolutely the most restrictive. They insist you run linux, which bars 95+% of users from participating.
Apple's walled garden approach to iOS is fundamentally flawed ... in a way that is earning them millions and millions of dollars. Developers are putting up with it; consumers are putting up with it; there is no reason to think that other tablets shouldn't emulate the same walled garden approach.
Sideloading is permitted on Win8 as well, though. You don't even have to pay for it. The option is less public than on Android - it requires either having Visual Studio installed or using the command line (Powershell, sepcifically), but it's there, it's free, and the info isn't hard to find if you do a search for it.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh974578.aspx
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
not having any walls is more flawed. Nothing is perfect, but personally I'd rather have apps vetted rather than having to worry about it myself, if something is going to corrupt my system or is malware.
Short version: MS has said anything OVER ESRB- Mature won't be allowed (aka Adults Only games):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh694083.aspx
Skyrim (and every game currently on the XBOX) would be allowed. I'm pretty against walled-gardens, but this is just plain wrong.
Walled? You can scale walls.
You can escape, never to return.
There is no escape from the Village.
Apparently you don't get out much. That or you are insanely optimistic.
Why $firmA shouldn't copy $firmB.
Customers are attracted to $firmA because something about their products resonates with them. The same is true of $firmB. If one tries to copy the other, it's only a copy. Everybody knows it's a copy. Because the methodology of the first is the driver of the 2nd, it'll always be an inferior copy. Worse, you are putting your competition in the driver's seat. You and your customers BOTH lose in this scenario, and MSFT trying to copy AAPL isn't the only example.
1. Bing gets fancy background on search homepage. Google copies. Yuck! I was attracted to Google's search for its simplicity, and repelled by Bing for it's eye candy. Google annoys me by copying Bing, and probably doesn't attract people who think Bing is better.
2. Yahoo's FaceBook integration. If I wanted FaceBook, I'd be on FaceBook, dammit.
So yes, of course MS shouldn't try to be Apple. If I wanted the Apple experience, I'd have Apple products. I wouldn't be using a laptop with XP and thinking about purchasing another one with Windows 7. Windows 8 is a total "skip it" for soooo many reasons. This just adds to the skipit factor.
Part of what I, a long-timer Windows user like about the "Microsoft ecosystem", aka, "Wintel" is that we got a wide variety of compatable hardware in exchange for a dominant OS and some security issues. True, it's a trade that a lot of people make without thinking; but some of us make it on purpose because we remember the 80s world of competing hardware in the living room (only works on Atari, not ported to Commodore yet, may never get an Apple port, blah, blah, blah).
The Wintel ecosystem and all the compatable hardware is what makes Microsoft worth having around. If they try to vertically integrate, it's right back to the 80s and Microsoft could Commodore itself into oblivion. I know a lot of people on /. hate MS, but I've been standing by them over 10 years here. Maybe, just maybe, some of you are starting to come around. I know it's absolute heresy; but without MS forcing hardware open, Linux is almost a non-starter. There is no "Unix for PCs" without PCs.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Oh yes what a GREAT way to make a collaborative platform: make it so the apps CANNOT share data with each other
You do not understand the iOS model. Apps cannot arbitrarily write into another application space. But they CAN provide another app data via a number of channels - from URL schemes that open another app and passing in data using a URL, or also through various clipboard mechanisms that are allowed to pass in rich data types - you can also open a dialog to open apps that take in a data type you are producing.
Basically you can pass data to an application in a way it's expecting to get data. That makes WAY more sense from a security standpoint than arbitrary filesystem access by every application. Most users need that level of protection, and those that do not are technically proficient enough to escape the limitation if they wish.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>That's for Metro apps. Skyrim is a Win32 app. Sure, the Metro bit is a walled garden, but the Win32 bit is still as open as ever on x86, you simply just avoid ARM based Win RT devices... job done.
OP has made the most sensible post in the entire topic. Naturally, it gets completely ignored.
Devs can just refuse to develop for, or port existing apps (iOS, Android) to the Microsoft Store.
And certain prominent devs (especially you Mozilla/Firefox) can refuse to 'Metroficate' their existing software to conform to Windows 8's paradigm.
No activator, no widespread usage. This problem does not even exist.
There's no technical reason for Skyrim not to appear in the Windows Store other than the sandbox and the store restrictions, however.
It would speed up their irrelevancy. Wall! Microsoft! Wall! Go for the Power and the Money! Go! Go! Go!
http://www.kmfms.com/
!
MS constantly reverses its opinion on Windows Gaming, then it pushes it, then it neglects it, then it forgets it even has it, then it is the next big thing.
Games for Windows is a prime example.
And MS KNOWS damn well that the only reason a lot of us haven't gone to Mac and/or Linux fulltime is gaming. But it has this multiple personality syndrome were it tries to have all its cakes and eat them to and hug them and squeeze them to death and ignore them because ignoring a girl you like is the best way to show you like her.
Saying MS has a policy on gaming is laughable. it has brain farts.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
MS is a second tier company now. Where are the best and the brightest going? Amazon, Apple and Google.
So that stack is a stack of one.
a year old video game is like reheated lunch
Nintendo makes money selling decades-old video games in Virtual Console on Wii. Heck, The Tetris Company makes money selling the rules of a decades-old video game to developers.
the xbox's walled garden makes a good statement about what MS does with walled gardens.
I was okay with that, because you don't buy a console to do general purpose stuff. You buy it for a very limited number of tasks (unlike a PC or potentially future tablets).
Say I want to buy a device to play a game and user-created mods to that game. This is "a very limited number of tasks", yet the forced curation of the consoles interferes with even this task. Very few console games support user-created mods compared to PC games.
[Forced curation] discourages developers from shipping buggy or broken games with the mentality that it will get patched later.
Instead, developers end up not shipping them at all because the developer couldn't get a license in the first place. Remember Bob's Game? Under forced curation, how is someone who has never been to Austin, Boston, or Seattle supposed to build his company to the point where it qualifies for a license?
My pc works perfectly well on win XP. as of now I see no reason to buy a new one. [...] my cut off date for changing my PC is the end to sales of Windows 7
Or April 2014, when security patches to Windows XP stop, whichever comes first.
Go buy an XBox if you want to play games.
Requiring all games to be made for a video game console with forced curation risks creating a scenario where a game is censored simply because its developer is too small. This has already happened in one well-known case on a console platform other than Microsoft's. How are small developers supposed to be nurtured into large, profitable developers under such a scenario?
But how hard is it to re-sign all your sideloaded apps with a new certificate and re-install them every time your developer license expires at the end of the month and is renewed?
you simply just avoid ARM based Win RT devices
Should Windows RT become popular (which I admit is unlikely), good luck getting all your customers to do the same. Just like good luck getting console gamers to buy a PC to put in their living rooms, even if nearly every HDTV does have VGA and HDMI inputs to display video, and even if PCs do take Xbox 360 controllers.
ACL permissions are more fine grained than POSIX if by "POSIX" you mean ugo/rwx permissions. But nobody bothers setting up the more comprehensive types (including your "you can for example..." examples because they're more than is necessary.
Indeed, the standard permissions from DOS which are the equivalent of the ugo/rwx version are far LESS fine-grained than those POSIX ones. You have system and other only.
It's centralized. You don't have to search the whole disk, just the registry itself, which is pretty fast.
You don't have to search the whole disk with INI files either, just those files with .ini or .cfg suffixes.
Text files are wasteful of space in several ways (representing numbers as unicode characters, filesystem entries, etc.).
And storing a one- or two-digit integer in a DWORD isn't wasteful?
a structured file that a slight mistake in editing can break.
The typical structure I've seen in a typical INI file is sections where keys have values. Do most apps have much of a need for more fragile structure than this?
.INI is only one way to store config data; there's other forms of flat files, plus XML and so on.
The registry has proved to be not general enough to store every data model either.
With the registry, you don't have to worry about whether the file needs to have a specific type of newline character
You don't with text files either, provided your app correctly handles both newlines. Python does this automatically with the "rU" mode. And in practice, the rule "ignore all \r characters and recognize only \n" will handle everything from Windows and UNIX, or pretty much everything that matters on a home PC or workstation except files from Mac OS before X.
Because registry values are stored with known types and lengths, parsing them is faster than parsing numbers, hex values, etc. out of text files
So if a binary file is faster to parse and smaller over the wire than a text file, why are most web pages served with pseudo-SGML or ordinary XML instead of binary XML encoding?
It's hierarchical.
So are the ini files. Have a look at dhcpd.conf
This goes back to fragility: "a structured file that a slight mistake in editing can break."
It's transactional
Only required because you have a database where EVERYTHING writes into the same file. The program reading its own ini file could store per-user ini files and solve the transaction problem entirely
I think the idea is that something transactional won't leave a half-written, half-empty INI file should the application crash or run out of disk space in the middle.
They don't have to deserialise ini files.
"Deserialize" means "parse", and yes, INI files have to be parsed.
But then I'm a fan of INI files.
And tools already written to write to .reg and uninstall requires entries in the registry to let it uninstall.
However, Oblivion still has an ini file for things like setting the frame writeahead for the display, etc.
The fact that they still use ini files should tell you something.
Volume-licensed Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise systems joined to a domain can sideload apps signed by the domain's CA, according to this post. PCs on DoD's network would need to join the secured classified domain.
A corrupted text file is significantly faster to parse and fix, than a corrupted binary file.
Even by a user who is not a programmer? Most users, who are not programmers, aren't likely to take the time to learn to interpret parse errors; they just want to get something done. So they're more likely to look for a "go back to the way it was" button no matter whether the problem is in a text or binary file.
Drop a simple Access database with a table or two and you're golden for a stand-alone client app.
Wouldn't that make your client app require the purchase of an edition of Microsoft Office that includes Microsoft Access? But with s/Access/SQLite/g, I'd agree.
Basically [an iOS application] can pass data to an application in a way it's expecting to get data.
But can an iOS application pass data to Safari so that Safari can upload the data to a web server using an <input type="file"> element?
The number of people who buy a computer and actually tinker with the insides is small
That's probably only because computers are newer than cars. Who would buy a car with its hood locked shut, with the key available only to the dealer?
Writing code for the Mac has been free since around 2000. Visual studio express has been available only since 2005
MinGW, a port of GCC to Windows, has been around since at least 2000. DJGPP, a port of GCC to 32-bit DOS (and whose apps worked under Windows 9x), was around even before that; I remember using it in the second quarter of 1999.
Android is competing against IOS and quite successfully, as people become constrained by Apple's inflexible nature they will move away from Apple's platform.
Even as Microsoft and Apple continue to win patent lawsuits against manufacturers of Android phones? I'm told Microsoft makes more from licensing the FAT patent and other patents to Android device makers than it makes from licensing Windows Phone 7 to Nokia and other WP7 device makers.
Most major linux distros have ARM port.
Anyone got a list of ARM-based tablets that can run GNU/Linux distros? All the Windows RT tablets will be cryptographically locked down to run only operating systems signed by Microsoft, and even several Android tablets have locked bootloaders and/or missing drivers.
Debian-family operating systems allow more than one repository to be added. If you want to take control of the distribution of your software on Linux distributions, you could start by setting up your own PPA for Ubuntu.
I had to root my brother's phone when he found out that AT&T had removed the option to allow 3rd party app installs.
For one thing, as Anonymous Coward pointed out, AT&T stopped locking down "Unknown sources" seventeen months ago. For another, AT&T never locked down adb install; leaving that open is a requirement if a device is to get Google Play Store.
OpenGL support
Linux is absolutely the most restrictive. They insist you run linux, which bars 95+% of users from participating. :)
With Wine, VirtualBox etc, you don't have to run Linux in Linux.
How well do VirtualBox and the like run programs that depend on OpenGL or Direct3D?
Short version: MS has said anything OVER ESRB- Mature won't be allowed (aka Adults Only games)
Skyrim didn't get Mature in all regions; it got Adults Only in the PEGI region. See another Anonymous Coward's comment.
Devs can just refuse to develop for, or port existing apps (iOS, Android) to the Microsoft Store.
That's a prisoner's dilemma. There will likely be enough developers who decline to participate in the boycott of Windows RT and the Microsoft Store, just as there are enough developers not participating in the boycott of the major video game consoles.
What's the "good way to deal with repeated information" in the Windows Registry?
Symbolic links. See "Registry Symbolic Links" by Stefan Kuhr, 21 Oct 2005.
And if an application needs to use symbolic links, why can't it implement a symbolic link mechanism in its own configuration files? You could argue that the Registry allows a user to use a tool to add symbolic links even for applications that do not expect symbolic links, but what use case would this serve? I didn't see anything about this in Mr. Kuhr's article. The two described use cases are when the executives rename a product and when you want x86 and x86-64 applications to use the same configuration. Both of these use cases would work with application-implemented symbolic links, where an INI file contains a direction to import another INI file.
MS does not even want to copy apple's walled garden...
They just want to copy the ripoff scheme and take 30% of developer's revenue....
But can an iOS application pass data to Safari so that Safari can upload the data to a web server using an element?
Within an application you can do that in a web view, just not in safari generally.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So if I have data in application X, and I want to submit it to site Y, do I have to negotiate with the developer of each application X to get it to support site Y? If so, why is requiring a separate negotiation for each combination of X and Y helpful to the ecosystem?
More importantly, why would Microsoft host a large direct X based 3D game for high performance computers, and why would we give a fuck about playing it on windows RT?
This is just more misinformation about the nature of the compound operating system that windows 8 provides, you can still use steam the same way as in windows 7, the app store is only for the "not so metro" apps, the fact that you can even get win32 apps there is confusing and stupid. In this respect you can consider regular windows 8 to be equivalent to installing both windows and IOS, whereas RT is similar to having just IOS.
Let me reiterate. THERE IS NO REASON TO EVER EVEN WANT TO BUY AN EXPENSIVE AND PHYSICALLY LARGE VIDEOGAME IN A TABLET APP STORE AND WINDOWS 8 DOES NOT TRY TO MAKE YOU DO SO.
You DO know how UTF-8 works, right?
Yes, I know how UTF-8 works in programs that are aware of UTF-8. I also know how UTF-8 breaks up into mojibake in any program that's not aware of UTF-8. Imagine that the first version of HTML been designed with a binary encoding with single-byte tags, and a new version introduced multibyte tags. Older programs would not understand the multibyte tags and would not be able to display a document containing them, not even in a graceful degradation mode.
B-Tree concept
I know what a B-Tree is. I just don't see the advantage of keeping everything in one system-wide tree in permanent storage, as opposed to keeping it in a set of flat files, one per application, and constructing the application's portion of the tree in memory at runtime. Then updating the application's settings as a transaction is as simple as writing out the new and then renaming it over the old version.
The owner of site Y (the only person who cares in this case) would have to get support from a variety of apps, yes... which already happens in that popular sites like Flickr offer an API that photo applications work with. [...] I DO think every web site of any significance should offer an API that richer clients can hook into.
So what should a lesser-known photo site do if its operator wants photo applications to add support for its API? How should a web site gain "any significance" in the first place?
Because it creates a variety of dedicated applications that more efficiently send data to a variety of targeted servers.
"More efficiently" for the user, or "more efficiently" for the revenue stream of the application's publisher?
The web is great at working everywhere but it's also got a substantial LCD UI issue.
Perhaps I don't understand what you're talking about, but I didn't see any problem when I switched from a CRT monitor.
I don't use windows. What self respecting geek does? Windows is a joke and only good for games.
I use to buy $500 a year in games I hardly ever played (more of a collector). I have a box full of smashed down game boxes from back in the day just to illustrate my point. But I more or less quit cold turkey like 7 years ago. I just got tired of the 800 pound gorilla and it threatening DRM and security wise how buggy the platform was. Sure I use to warez games but I was still buying 10+ games a year for $50 a pop not counting other software. The major attack vector was and still is the web browser(not warez) so I jumped ship.
Then I bit the bullet and moved into the Unix world. I had a vary hard time with the GPL philosophically. There are programs that should be GPL but I'm mostly against it. Then I graduated to Freebsd/Openbsd. And my life was changed. I would switch to windows just to play games but I grew tired of 5 minute changeover for a quick game and eventually stopped cold turkey without realizing it.
Back to the point. I no longer need windows! Not for apps. Not for games. And ironically I'm totally for a locked down windows. The only time I use windows is helping other people with their computers. These are people that are looking for the Apple experience on cheaper commodity PC hardware. I'm all for Microsoft giving people what they really want: an appliance. I want a computer so I don't use windows or spend any money on it. But I'm at the upper end of the 2% of computer users that are enthusiasts; we are the people that push the purchasing decisions. I'm content with letting Windows be a dumb locked dump platform and purchasing it just for that purpose. I have my workstation!
You can write any application you want for Windows 8 and distribute it to anyone whom wants it.
Obviously, this article is a bunch of FUD, because it is misleading people that don't understand the difference between a Win 8 UI Application (Formerly known as Metro) and a Win 8 UI Application distributed via the Windows App Store. Certianly, the Windows App Store can prevent any applications they want from being distributed; the say way the any distribution platform can and does (Google, Apple, etc..). While I’m glad the author cited facts and conversations with MS employees, it is very misleading.
To keep the Triffids in.
I don't know why I'm replying to an AC who couldnt' tell the difference between an ACL and a hole in the ground, but... yeah.
First of all, POSIX permissions also includes setuid, setgid, and sticky. Just FYI.
Second, admins most certainly do bother with the more fine-grained permissions that NT allows. Any large business or sensitive data storage (with a competent admin) will make extensive use of ACLs. It's true that Deny ACEs are relatively rarely used, but they do exist, and are sometimes the most expedient solution to a situation. Technically you can deconstruct most (though not all) of NT ACLs into POSIX permissions - it just requires potentially ludicrous numbers of groups - but it's a lot easier to do that kind of control on NT.
Third, DOS had absolutely no permissions system at all; it didn't even have the concept of a user. Readonly, System, Hidden, and Archive are flags, not ACEs; they provided absolutely no actual security and weren't designed to. They were intended to inform users and prevent accidents, and they achieved nothing more. I have no clue why you'd bring up DOS unless you're either trolling or so computer-illiterate you hold the mouse with the "tail" toward you, though; all versions of Windows from the last twelve years have been NT based, not DOS based.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Checking sales figures, market share, product reviews, user satisfaction surveys, and stock prices....yep, Apple's stuff sure seems "fundamentally" flawed to me.
a 1-digit number plus a newline, in unicode, takes as much space as a DWORD.
A 1-digit number in UTF-8 is one byte, and a newline is one more byte (or two if you want compatibility with Windows Notepad). For example, 5 followed by a newline is '35 0A' (or ('35 0D 0A' if you want compatibility with Windows Notepad). Were you assuming UTF-16? In addition, because each individual value has a type (as I understand it), each individual key still needs to store the marker for whether the value is a DWORD or a string. What definition of DWORD are you using?
Try editing a .INI file in a Unix-style editor
Gedit and Leafpad appropriately ignore 0D bytes. Most heavier editors, such as Geany, offer explicit newline modes.
or a Unix-style config file in Notepad
I edit UNIX style files in Notepad++ all the time. WordPad can read them as well.
Your solution is to push the burden onto app authors?
No, my solution is to push the burden onto library authors.
Even with frameworks like Python making it easy, it's still a hell of a lot better if you don't have to go parsing files at all.
I thought one still had to export and parse .reg files when moving parts of the registry from one machine to another, especially from a machine with one architecture to a machine with another architecture. Does 05 00 00 00 mean 5 or 83886080 (endianness)? One also needs to make .reg files to move settings from a Windows machine joined to a Windows Server domain to a Windows machine not joined to a Windows Server domain or a non-Windows machine or vice versa.
[The fact that] HTML was intended as a human-readable and -writable format [...] makes the jobs of web developers and browser authors just a little bit easier
And human-readable configuration files make it easier for people using text-processing tools such as diff on their configuration files.
The same way they ALSO need a computer with a web browser to test.
To test a web application, one needs a Mac or a PC running Windows or a PC running Linux, which could be the computer that one already uses. Gecko and WebKit browsers are available for all three platforms. To test an iOS application, one needs an iPhone and a Mac to run Xcode and a developer certificate, in addition to the Windows or Linux computer that one already uses. The computer that one already uses is cheaper than the computer that one already uses plus a new Mac.
Look at any web page, it's quite a lot of IMAGES and scripts, none of which a dedicated app needs to transfer.
Either the images are part of the application or they're data uploaded by users. There are four scenarios, and ultimately the same amount of data gets transferred in theory:
You claim it can cache the script but only for so long
Images, style sheets, and scripts that are saved with a unique filename for each version can be cached for a year or more using the "far future Expires" pattern. They need to be redownloaded when there are updates to be deployed, but so do native applications. I will grant you that capacity misses are more common on certain misconfigured web browsers.
Because it was nicer and more functional to use than most email clients.
So there was a point in time at which webmail was better than common native e-mail clients, even if I will grant you that point in time has since passed.
You only NEED to develop iOS, and possibly Android apps.
I will grant you this. But in what way is iOS application development, including the process of replacing your computer and buying a developer certificate, less expensive for a startup than Android application development?
Because you are become more deliberately obtuse
It is not deliberate. I apologize for failing to interpret your unwritten implications. What steps should I take to interpret them correctly the first time next time?