Slashdot Mirror
Wozniak To Apple: Consider Building an Android Phone
snydeq writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has some advice for Apple CEO Tim Cook: consider offering a phone based on the rival Google Android platform. Speaking at the Apps World conference in San Francisco, Wozniak made the suggestion of an Apple Android device when responding to a question about the fate of the faltering BlackBerry platform, saying that BlackBerry should have built an Android phone, and that Apple could do so, too. 'BlackBerry's very sad for me,' Wozniak lamented. 'I think it's probably too late now' for an Android-based BlackBerry phone. Apple, Woz said, has had some lucky victories in the marketplace in the past decade, and BlackBerry's demise may provide a cautionary tale: 'There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.'"
Consider scrapping beta.
My understanding is that the phrase "MOVIN' ON UP" comes from the theme song of a 1970s and 1980s American TV show called The Jeffersons. It is also my understanding that the show revolves around an African-American couple and the trials and tribulations they must deal with in their daily lives.
Given its ties to the African-American culture and experience, I find it a very odd phrase to be used here. While there are African-Americans here, no doubt, it is my understanding that the Slashdot demographic is generally that of the middle-aged white male.
The contrast between the phrase's origin and how it's being used here gives me the impression, perhaps wrongly, that we're being mocked by it.
It's inherently contradictory, at its most elemental level. The Slashdot beta is obviously inferior to the existing site. Some may even go so far as to say that the beta site is a steaming pile of horse shit. So being forced to use it clearly is not comparable to "moving on up" in society.
At a deeper level, the use of that phrase gives me the impression, again perhaps wrongly, that we users of Slashdot are considered an "underclass" here, much as African-Americans have been historically treated as such in the United States. It's as if we're being told that we are individuals with no free will; we are forced into doing the bidding of others. In this case, we are forced against our will to use the rancid Slashdot beta site.
I think it's a very poor choice of words, personally. While I don't care much for political correctness, I also do not care much for the unnecessary use of phrases that may be misinterpreted so easily. I care even less for wording that may very well be mocking me and my fellow Slashdot users, especially when there's the possibility that there's a racial element to it.
I think it is clear nobody likes your shitty Beta design. If you don't give us the option to continue using the "classic" mode we will leave.
Indeed, fuck the beta site.
This could have been a good flame war, fun for all the family. Instead we have the beta site hanging over us, preventing half the fanbois from participating. Fuck the whole thing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
For a start, remove the MOVIN ON UP banner.
Postpone any plan to 'migrate' people to the beta at this time and make it clear that you have.
Go back and at least make sure all the current comments-handling functionality is in place on the new site before even thinking of trying it again. Run a story on the current site about the beta again when you have done that, and see how it's received in the comments [you know - the thing Slashdot excels at] before switching people over to it.
Then again, the above only matters if you're concerned about keeping the current user base. That's open to question.
There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.
Of course there is. Apple isn't allowed to distribute copies of Android to the public except under license from Linus Torvalds, Google, and other contributors to Android. If Apple accepts the license of Android (mostly Apache v2 and GPLv2), it has to give the public an implicit or explicit license to patents that Apple holds that Android allegedly infringes. So unless Apple wants to end up dropping lawsuits against Samsung, it has to refrain from making an iDroid.
Fuck Beta
Since slashdot is now run by marketing, why not let them know about the beta where they might listen? Slashdot Media on LinkedIn.
Be relentless!
Universal Studios tried disabling beta, and it failed. But you can do better by searching (Ctrl+F) for the word "classic" near the bottom of this page.
There are a lot of snarky comments in the “fuck beta” threads right now, and reading what little has been posted by soulskill, the admins actually think that they are being unfairly targeted by a mob mentality. This is a problem because the issues here will likely get managerial attention at Dice soon and if the executives see what looks like a bunch of juvenile shite in the comments, they are likely to buy into that false world view. If that happens, then Beta will be pushed through and Dice will think of themselves as victims of Anonymous or whatever.
For this reason, I wish to lead a call for all users to spend the time from now until the boycott on the 10th to repost this as soon as a new story is posted.
----------------------
Dice: Frankly, many of us want a new design, Classic is broken in so many ways. But beta is terrible, and this is what is wrong:
* The value that Slashdot brings to its users is not in its articles. Frankly, the articles are terrible. The value that Slashdot provides is a discussion forum for self-selected nerds.
* As such, it is vital that you remember that the community is not just an audience, it is also your primary content creator.
* Your new redesign does not allow the community to create (or even consume) content because:
- It makes it impossible to follow discussions in the comments sections. This is largely because of the max-width on window and the fact that of the space left over is taken up by a useless sidebar. The vertical spacing is also overdone.
- Slashdot has a fragile but effective moderation system. Your changes make it impossible for readers to leverage that system to read a high quality discussion and ignore the trolls.
- It disregards conventions of the community. UIDs matter. We’re nerds. We understand that you need to attract a younger audience, but for a lot of us (including the younguns) it is thrilling to see a post from somebody who has been there from the beginning.
* In the last 24 hours Soulskill has bitterly commented that the community has been involved since October and that they also get emails supporting the new design; only the comments are an echo chamber. This comment demonstrates a deep incompetence in your development team. Soulskill should have been citing A-B testing numbers. A-B testing is cheap, easy and effective but instead you are taking stabs in the dark.
* Your ability to attain user acceptance is dismal. A number of years ago, when Taco needed to modernize the site, he solicited the community for designs, and awarded the best designer and used that design. That is how you leverage a community and gain their acceptance: incorporate them in the design process. As a bonus, you won’t have utterly useless redesigns that will either ruin your website or have to be scrapped.
Check out some of the predictions that came out when /. went to Dice. It is amazing how well some people can predict the future.
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
Mod parent up.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
Because what is good for Dice is good for Slashdot and what is good from Slashdot is good for us !!
NOT !!
P.S. It will not work !! Beta is dead !! BUT !! Classic is already dead !! Beta is the new classic !! WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE !!
Consider offering a site that is not based on garbage.
Ask for Babs...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I wonder what caused him to start smoking crack?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Beta Sucks
Join the boycott Feb 10-17.
If Beta is still here on the 18th I will not return.
Do not fix what is not broken.
And This Too Shall Pass
It's that time of year again! Wozniak needs to remain visible and he delivers his usual controversial quotes to internet to feed the link baits.
Beta sucks btw.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Funny. Like committing hari-kari to keep from getting killed. You never were a businessman, Woz.
an ill wind that blows no good
That is all.
"Government is like fire; a handy servant, but a dangerous master." -- George Washington
Fuck beta.
I've long considered Steve Wozniak a person to respect for his contributions to the early home PC market, but this right here? This is where he jumped the shark.
What kind of brain-dead moron, when confronted with low ad revenue for a site, proceeds down a path that pisses off the users?
"Hey, I have a hemorrhoid! I'll shove a hand grenade up my ass to fix it!"
There are very good reasons.
1. profit - Apple already earns most of the profits to be made http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/08/22/apple-samsung-dediu-profits/
2. Control - unless they fork it, Google is in control , and if you are going to fork it why not just stick with IOS
3. Good taste - Apple does NOT want to be associated with all the low end crap
4. No eco-system - Apple will NOT want to support iTunes etc etc on a platform they don't control, particularly if people try to run the Apps on 3rd party phones
So if Apple were to make a high quality Android phone , it would probably cost the same money as the iPhone , so they may as well stick to IOS because its working for them.
Consider retiring or putting more effort into research before suggesting what you did.
Oh and down with Beta...
You cannot ignore us forever... soon enough we will ignore you.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
That's about a likely as Microsoft building their own Linux distro
n/t
Account abandoned. I can't fucking spell for shit and Slashdot doesn't even allow time-limited edits of posts. Plus you'
I logged in just to say that. I NEVER login.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
...the anally-inserted chilli-soaked cactus of haemorrhoid remedies
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
The moral of BlackBerry's demise is, "Don't make be a show-moving turd and make crappy decisions when you're not the the world's most valuable and profitable company at the same time." I think Apple has a bit of a cushion before Mr. Cook is commiserating with Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie.
Seeing as how Apple managed to survive without ever shipping a Mac running Windows, I doubt we'll ever see Apple-made hardware leaving the factory with Android installed. That said, it's a neat idea, but it's about as pointless as wishing Ford would ship a Mustang with a Corvette engine.
In other news, slashdot beta still sucks.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
fuck beta, fortunately i am still on classic in my browser at work
I'm one of those "retards" that still have a dumbphone, but having tried both iOS and Android, if I'd ever get a smart one, it sure as hell would not be one running Android.
Commenters are doing such things, but it is foolish to think that management is going to throw good money after bad to redesign the site again when they've had a bad year with Slashdot Media financially. Their best bet is to simply turn it into another buzzfeed-like linkfarm and hope it generates revenue somehow (maybe sell it). So ... yeah. Let's just take her out back and put her out of her misery.
Maybe some angel investor will come in and buy up the property and allow us to like support the site's maintenance via paypal.
Maybe I'll grow another dick. :3
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I have a hopefully coherent thread written here which could be a point of discussion assuming enough people want it on the front page as a stand alone article.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Always a heretic in the church of Apple. That's why we love him.
maybe Woz does this...idk...but on the merits this is an awesome idea. this is what actual "innovation" in business looks like
the iphone running Android would make Google into Apple's bitch...
strategically, you get them on your hardware with the option of using Android software...fine...if Google gets testy, **users can switch to iOS easily**
Android users on iPhone would always be *one click* away from iOS...that would let Apple dictate development terms to Android
fanboi disclaimer: I use devices with both Android and iOS so im not pimping one over the other..
Thank you Dave Raggett
How can that be possible? How can they have possibly have 35 employees and not one competent web designer?
Wozniak has ruffled feathers before, in fact many times. This post concerns merely one issue though.
That is why, even as a longtime apple 2 -> Mac - OS X -> iOS pro developer I admire him for his candor when he slams Apple.
Usually he is right, even if he attacks his own investments, both financial or intellectual.
The best time he attacked apple was back around 1991 or 1992, when in a little publicized shaming of Apple, he complained about Apple's near retarded renaming of names and macros in the header files so that everything you compiled year to year would continually break. Including... THE ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE interface headers!
I had 500 kilobytes of hand crafted assembler and I got so sick of apple ruining my life with capricious and continual spelling changes (they foolishly use way too many abbreviations, and then gradually add more letters over time, like microsoft)... that I made my own headers for assembly language based off frozen header forks.
That way my stuff can always assemble and compile for many many years. This was for a variety of products with over 500,000 paid for licensed copies.
When wozniak bitched about the header utter disrespect at apple, I was so happy to have him in my corner.
Truthfully, Apple source code headers have always been 4 times more logical and better than microsofts, but in OS X they at least have various mechanisms to allow older code to compile with newer headers, with over 5 year overlap, if not 7. Also in OS X there are tools that can extract headers from apps or from the entombed headers in ".framework" files. So the header horror years are long over, except when bridging legacy mac, legacy windows, and Cocoa all into one huge namespace. ... i am digressing...
Breaking it year to year was foolish and wozniak called apple on it, for apple hiring morons.
Wozniak was always semi approachable, and I also like the fact that one of two of wozniaks non personal phone lines was always listed and publicly accessible in his den his whole career, for the polish joke on the tape he left. Many I know called it up in the late 70s early 80s. I was thrilled to see the thing in the recent movie "Jobs". Truthfully, Steve Jobs too, except in person on the sidewalk, was also very very openly approachable, primarily via beth or his other secretaries as intermediaries. And steve was far more humble than biographers give credit. In mid 2000s he drove his own kid to school every day on the way to work, not too many fathers did that.
I'm willing to accept them replacing the comments with Google+ at this point if it means beta goes away.
Let me endorse this. It's a very well thought out opening post for a discussion, and both Slashdot staff and users could benefit from reading it.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
If the admin does believe it unfair, then maybe a POLL in in order.
A remarkable tale. Not only is Woz reported as having farted at the Church service, we are to believe that he expected applause for his flatulence? But no, this must be a '/. beta bug', coming out of the closet.
Try http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 at least until they switch completely over. I don't know I what I did but currently I never see the Beta.
I was very interesting in reading what the slashdot crowd would have to say on this topic and on the opinion of Woz. However:
1. The slashdot crowd is too pissed of with Beta, so all they do is keep complaining about it, and,
2. If they didn't complain and Beta was rolled out in silence then I would still not be able to read what the slashdot crowd had to say on the comment of Woz, because the discussion section of Beta sucks.
So, pretty please, with sugar on top, take back the fucking Beta.
half the space is wasted with all the comments jammed in a narrow column, WTF slashdot beta?
Blackberry DEFINITELY should have come out with one of their phones (hardware) running Android. However i cannot say the same for Apple.
I would absolutely love a modern, high performance Android phone WITH A REAL KEYBOARD. (and not on the side!!!)
DICE, the community is trying to tell you something. We hope you are listening. This Slash Beta idea you all got obsessed with rolling out is a REALLY bad idea. You obviously tried pencil whip the user feedback portion of your launch plan otherwise the comment system wouldn't have devolved into an outright revolt against the Beta in EVERY. SINGLE. STORY. you have posted today.
Additionally, you should keep in mind that while we love Slashdot, we recognize all good things must come to and end. If this is what you want to do, then do it. However, don't expect a large portion of the community to follow you down that path. I know this because they have told you ALL DAY. I know this because I this community, unlike many others, is made up of the people who have the skills and abilities to REPLACE you. I know they will replace you because you've made them passionate about the cause. Even I, a 4 digit UID and pro-lurker, am fired up enough to post! Fix this guys or the community will fix it for you.
Story with Wozniak, Apple and Android...MUST RESIST! SPOCK! SPOCK! Slahsot Beta - SPOCK!
Scotty, beam. Me. Up! SPOCK!
MC - COY! I. NEED. Sorrian Brandy!
Give me the brandy!
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This previous line was supposed to read "Like UTF-8 Support." in Unicode look-alike characters.
Incidentally, I don't think they need to throw out the new layout entirely. Just fix the things about it that are horribly broken. Like the huge swaths of empty space at the sides of the screen. Especially the right. Also the comment system.
Alas, I fear that it's only marginally less likely that Apple would build an Android phone than Slashdot is to address any of the community concerns about the layout.
Slashdot media has 35 employees. Can you believe the insanity of that? 35 fucking employees to run this site and a bunch of shit spin-offs. There is plenty of fat to trim there that will make Slashdot profitable for _years_, all they have to do is scrap this shitty beta and fire these incompetent assholes.
As a long time slashdot reader, and thus a long time Internet user, I have seen many other technically oriented websites fade away as they chase "mainstream" viewership. Slashdot did not lose quality overnight with the beta design, this is just another example of how Dice is casting aside it's core community in its attempts to better "monetize the asset" of slashdot. If this trend continues, the "beta" switch will be he last straw for many. What web site is the "escape plan" for my fellow dedicated "slashdot of old" users?
Just voted it up.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
This is absolutely astounding. This is one of the most absurd articles I have seen posted to /. in years...the amount of fanboy rage, absurd theories, wild conjecture, fallible prophesying....so much. This is such a juicy article. We have practically been waiting for this since the beginning of the iOS vs Android wars...
...and instead we have focused our efforts on drawing attention to the horrid design that is threatening our digital homestead.
If that doesn't drive home the point that beta = bad, well, I just don't know what will.
Flawless karma be damned, fuck beta.
After over 15 years of this site being my home page I will simply walk away and never look back if the concerns of the user community are not taken into serious consideration. Slashdot is the community.
I really hope that someone with the skill and resources is creating an alternative for us all to flock to with a similarly functioning moderation system.
Well, I guess it will be time to move on when beta becomes standard and/or the only option.
Sad that I will lose my "Karma: Excellent", but beta is really bad - actually, horrible.
Dice: Please go back to the drawing board and just make the classic/current design slightly nicer/better - that's all we need. No new fancy UI which I can't really use.
It will be a sad day when I ask for deletion of my account - all those times I spent trying to write really informative comments - lost in time like tears in rain...
Is it time to brush up on our Japanese?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
... ah forget about it. FUCK SLASHDOT BETA. The coments aren't even working here, all I've got is a stupid message "Shazbot! We ran into some trouble getting the comments. Try again... na-nu, na-nu!".
Fuck you Dice Holdings.
Has anyone seen this?
Took the tour, laughed at gems like "A redesign 16 years in the making ... you know it's going to be good." LOL.
"Intuitive menus" that feature prominently the desolate ghettos that are the new "Channels," SlashBI, SlashCloud, etc. The rest is just a randomly sorted list of "popular topics."
"Social media integration" Oh, they've got Facebook spy bugs now! Too bad those dumb little buttons are probably blocked by a fairly large contingent of the userbase has those sad little abominations blocked (bonus points for IPTables or HOSTS based solutions!) they seem to exist solely to provide free advertising for cheap, lazy entities and to vigorously ejaculate banal content around the internet, like a giant mug of frothy, steaming semen. For god's sake, the stopwatch on my phone has a share feature, so you can litter your facebook with "My time is 00:01:22."
To top it all off, the tour ends with the text "The New Slashdot. Newsier. Nerdier." What the hell is so nerdy about a rotten abortion of an update that, so far as I can tell, the community nearly unilaterally despises? Hey advertisers! Come pay to advertise on a site that just alienated it's user base!
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
Need an example why Beta is bad? Try finding comments relevant to this topic (or any other topic) on Beta, then try it on the normal Slashdot. ... This also means that if the admins are using the Beta layout themselves, they will never find the more detailed complaints and only see "Fuck Beta".
Any way to disable beta?
go to the bottom of the page and hit classic mode.
Try http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 at least until they switch completely over. I don't know I what I did but currently I never see the Beta.
Evidently it remembers your last use. If you are in beta and click the classic mode link, then the next time you come back you will still be in classic mode. At least for now.
Commenters are doing such things, but it is foolish to think that management is going to throw good money after bad to redesign the site again when they've had a bad year with Slashdot Media financially.
Their best bet is to simply turn it into another buzzfeed-like linkfarm and hope it generates revenue somehow (maybe sell it). So ... yeah. Let's just take her out back and put her out of her misery.
Maybe some angel investor will come in and buy up the property and allow us to like support the site's maintenance via paypal.
Maybe I'll grow another dick. :3
It's even more foolish to think that Dice is going to respond to a bunch of "Fuck Beta" comments.
Who wants to be associated with the "beta" of anything? 1. Rename to "Awesome Big Fuck." 2. Sit back and watch the praise flow in. I'm not a manager but I work for one. I know how these types of decisions are made.
I don't really care if they go back to classic or keep beta, I would like the numerous bugs in classic fixed, however, regardless of which interface is used.
Mod parent up.
Why would you ever mod up somebody hiding behind an anonymous coward? If they aren't willing to sign their name, why should they be listened to?
es
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They don't need to port Android to the iPhone. They simply need to unlock the iPhone. It has essentially the same hardware as an Android phone, and I bet cynaogenmod would be running on the iPhone in short order if Apple simply unlocked the bootloader.
One can currently buy a Mac laptop and entirely wipe the MacOS on it and install Windows. This would be the same thing for the iPhone. Let people decide what OS they want to run on their iDevices.
Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.
Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott [slashdot.org]
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss the Beta - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
Discussion of Beta
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live
Boycott Slashdot Feb 10-17
Barrapunto.com if you speak Spanish.
If Apple left Apple stuff out of the iDroid, then it more than likely wouldn't pass the Android compatibility tests. This would block applications that rely on things in the CDD over which Apple claims a patent. It would also block a lot of applications that rely on Google Play Services, which are available only on devices whose manufacturer demonstrates conformance to the CDD.
>> Android works, but iOS is superior
Not at all. My girlfriend has always been a hardcore apple fan/iPhone user. I've tried using her iphone 5 just to do some relatively simple stuff several times now and always ended up giving up and giving it back to her to get done whatever I needed to do. I think the iPhone user interface is highly unintuitive and a fundamentally terrible design. The screen is also tiny and poky. Since she has seen and tried using my (now relatively old) Samsung S3 even she, the diehard apple fan, can't wait to buy an android phone next.
I've been a mostly C/C++ embedded software dev. for 30 years and recently wrote my first Android phone app. Most of my career has been doing embedded programming on many different platforms and I have to say that eclipse + ADT is probably the slickest/best embedded development environment I've ever seen/used. Java is pretty easy too.
The reason I wrote the phone app was for a startup I'm helping with. We also need to do an iPhone app. To get our iPhone app on iTunes' App Store will be an absolute frickin nightmare compared to the ease of getting our Android version on the Play Store and all the early signs are that the Objective-C/iOS API will be much more of a pain in the ass than the Android API.
Fuck Beta. FUCK DICE :3
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I like open source and Linux and all that but Google can't design a worthwhile UI to save their life. I started out with an Android phone and was totally disgusted with it. Switched to an iOS phone and you couldn't pay me enough to go back to Android. I'm normally not an Apple fanboi but for a mobile UI, Android is simply the worst.
android provides two things:
- free, ready to go OS
- app ecosystem
apple already has both. using their existing OS incurs no additional cost. and it is a framework that they already know how to work around.
even if they wanted to make a dirt cheap phone based off of an iphone 3gs, it would be a matter of making hardware that would fit the bill as secondary market product. they ALREADY HAVE the os and ecosystem.
so WHY... in the WORLD... would apple do that? why in the world would woz say that?
and i come at this as a pc user with an android phone... this is truly mystifying.
nope. go die.
Too bad those dumb little buttons are probably blocked by a fairly large contingent of the userbase has those sad little abominations blocked (bonus points for IPTables or HOSTS based solutions!)
HUSH! You'll get apk the HOSTS guy going. Bad enough that we have Beta Slashcott going on!
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
If they could improve the toolchain for Android development at the same time, especially if it only built apps for their phones, it would be a significant improvement on the toolchain, and a curated store would improve the Android market in Apple's favor.
I really hate this beta. Join the boycott Feb 10-17. If Beta is still here on the 18th I will not return. Do not fix what is not broken.
x
Maybe someone could make a Greasemonkey script to convert beta to classic?
I think Woz's comments are taken out of context. Apple has nothing to gain from making an Android phone. Only Android has something to gain from it.
What Woz probably meant was make a iPhone that can run Android software. I mean it's not like there is anything special about Android that would prevent it from being able to. Hell Apple could probably make a better Android than any Android OEM. The thinig is that the Android SDK, API's and the entire fragmented ecosystem is just utter hell to develop for and damn near nobody wants to develop for it unless there's a gun to their head (eg Electronic Arts)
Let alone the rampant fragmentation and piracy.
I hear a lot of complaining, but zero explanation.
What was the simple stuff you were not able to do with an iPhone 5?
I have been developing for Android and iPhone for 4 years now. What are the early signs that the iOS API will be much worse than Android?
That site has to be a parody.
Accept Eris as your Fnord and personally sate her
The sad truth is that it probably isn't.
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
Fixed and lousy keyboard, fixed launcher, very limited sharing between apps.
Bad speech recognition, tons of missing APIs for integrating different apps, intrinsically unsafe Objective-C language, for starters.
A boycott is not necessary... if the experience that slashdot presents is unusable, people who are bothered by it won't use it.
Simple.
Some will continue to use slashdot even after beta goes live and becomes the standard slashdot site.
I probably won't be one of them, once it becomes mandatory, unless some rather significant changes are made between now and then.
But that won't be because I'll be doing anything as formal as "boycotting", it will simply be because using slashdot won't be enjoyable anymore.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
To get our iPhone app on iTunes' App Store will be an absolute frickin nightmare compared to the ease of getting our Android version on the Play Store and all the early signs are that the Objective-C/iOS API will be much more of a pain in the ass than the Android API.
I know both the Android and iOS APIs.
There are some things each API does better than the other. And one is written in Obj-C and one is written in Java. HOWEVER...
The iOS API is much more consistent than the Android API. Sure, it's Obj-C. And you have to learn Obj-C. And you might complain that Obj-C is new and different and not Java (which does NOT make it a bad language. Different != bad.) But if you know Obj-C, and if you know Java, the iOS API is just generally more sensible and easy to use. I would not define the iOS API as a pain in the ass. You'd call it a pain in the ass, but then again, I know it, and you don't.
The Android API has several advantages. The Activities concept is a nice thing the iOS 6 and later APIs are just starting to play with. But they also make several boneheaded decisions. Rotating the device creates a new activity? WTF? Fragments? Fragments are nice but they're window dressing on a broken concept that iOS at least got right the first time. And native code support on Android is... lacking. Yes, you can technically do it, but not without jumping through a lot of development hoops you don't have to with the iOS tools. It would be nice if Android at least shipped with some Neon optimization code paths. And low latency audio on Android? Nope, still not there. Great if you're playing back or recording an audio file. Not great for much else. And don't get me started on all the bizarre OpenGL issues that iOS doesn't have.
I don't mean to trash on Android too much. What I'm basically saying is I'm having trouble taking this seriously as a level headed comparison when it's basically "I spend a lot of time with Android, I know it, and I like it. I don't know iOS, and it seems totally crazy to me!" The iOS APIs are basically child APIs of what shipped in OS X, and from there what shipped in NeXTStep. A lot of developers have spent a lot of time with the APIs over the last 20 years. It's not like these are bizzaro APIs that came out of nowhere that have never been peer reviewed, iterated on and improved, or worked with for long periods of time. Which is more than I can say for the Android APIs.
Yeah, I tried to delete some apps off an iOS 7 iPhone and was confused as how to do it. Apps are listed under the Settings icon/window/tab/app, but there's no option to delete them.
Turns out you need to hold your finger on the screen until the app icons shake and then you can move/delete them. How is that intuitive?
Word verification: pranks
What was Wozniak drinking that evening? "Nokia" OS on our beloved iSmashers? That will never happen! What a fool he made of himself.
I guess he's a brillant engineer, but often engineers need a businessman at their side for success (and vice versa).
License iOS to the competitors, and let them do their own app markets. Other hardware and iOS with a less-cencored market than the app store could brinf mroe money to apple (with less risk and investment) than trying to compete in the Hardware business.
Power Macintosh 6100.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_6100
It had a DOS card with a Cyrix processor on it. A friend had one.
People should stick to what they know. Eric should pursue being an asshole, and Steve should work on his role as perpetual victim.
whatever this puke color is called and determined that slashdot would make 200,000,000 dollars if they switched to a blue theme.
I hear it's going to be big.
who were pathologically loyal, and utterly confused as to their actual level of tech savvy, should be criminal. In the future, corporate courts will prosecute this type of behavior.
Normally, I would laugh on the inside, but it turns out he was totally ahead everyone on the whole gluten craze, so basically...you might be on to something.
The margins on Android phones are razor thin. Apple has complete control over the iPhone, giving them a plausible rationale for marketing a premium phone. If they release an Android phone, that rationale evaporates.
How well has Nokia made out since dumping Symbion and MeeGo for someone else's OS? Yeah, that bad.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Steve became the change. "Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow" While your false messiah is working all his 'miracles' through his foundation, such as, the miracle of the H1B visa increase, and the miracle of the blocky user interface from ten years ago, ours has long since ascended. ...and through his sacrifice allowed others to rise and grow, unlike that old carcass.
All you spammers should kill yourselves.
Article is obvious Slashdit troll and everybody discusses Beta website version.
That's why it's good (for Apple) that Woz isn't and never was CEO of Apple. He obviously has absolutely not the faintest idea what he is talking about marketing and business-wise. I use Android for my phone and tablet, just recently backed off of buying an iPad Mini for development because it was to expensive ... and even *I* get the value-add that the sophisticated iOS devices bring along.
Apple should stick right where they are, perhaps move in closer with the opinion leaders a little again. Like XCode for free and without registration, direct access to iOS devices and filesystem, direct deployment of apps to iOS devices and some other stuff that's pissing of the top 0.2 % expertlayer of computer users, i.e. us, with Apple. That would be about all the changes I would make if I were in charge.
The rest is going absolutely perfect for Apple, a fashion mindshare Google, Samsung, MS and others would kill for and bizar gros margins of 30%+ on post-PC devices included. Thinking of bringing Android into that picture makes me cringe - and I'm not even an Apple Fanboy.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
whooooosh.
and BTW, beta sucks. join the slashcott, everybody.
You do realize that you can actually filter out based on +1, +2 etc. don't you? The cog wheel on the right by the insightful,funny tabs, have you clicked it?
All the people condemning the beta should be shot for being so darn set in yesterday mode that they cannot see the benefits of the new sight. This is a classic case of update blues .... seen this time and again when no training is provided with new software.
Grow up you lot and remember that the guys a /. are trying there best here to provide something of better value.
Superior Software combined with superior hardware.
In corporate America, the beta fucks you.
For now I see Android competing with iOS but I do think it's just a matter of time before there will be no advantage for Apple to continue developing their own OS. Woz is right, Apple could easily find themselves in the same situation as Blackberry and they need to be ready to deal with it.
And BB 10 > iOS.
Seriously. Give BB 10 a try. It's clean, responsive and secure. Plus with the latest 10.2.1 OS you can load Android APK files directly on the device. It really is a solid platform.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
WTF? The subject was supposed to be "BlackBerry 10 > Android". Thanks a lot Slashdot.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I like you sig, however, I would be remiss to say that PL/1 helped put my kids through school, so I question whether it was a total loss.
he drove his own kid to school every day on the way to work, not too many fathers did that.
But he was more than willing to deny Lisa as being his daughter.
Just like plenty of Dads in paternity cases.
He didn't say they should stop selling iOS devices, he said they should start selling Android devices as well. Your post seems to be predicated on the idea that Woz thinks they should stop selling iOS devices, which he never said. But maybe I misunderstood you.
you guys are wierd.
I appreciate the mod points, but where did you get "funny" from?
I'm sure that an Android phone made by Apple would be a radical success in the market, but it is unlikely to be successful enough to make up for the vertical integration control that Apple has over iOS. The point of the iPhone and iPad has nothing to do with selling iPhones or iPads. The point of selling them is to get an Apple controlled system in the hands of users which they can then leverage to get money for everything someone does with their device.
They get a major cut of music, books, videos, apps, etc that you get through your phone or tablet, even for ad revenue from free apps. This and access to the information the devices provide is what makes them as successful as they are. This is why Microsoft released Windows 8 on the world (to try and copy the vertical integration through Metro.) And this is why Apple can not afford to release an Android phone, because it would actually harm their bottom line more than the sales would help.
AJ Henderson
You need FAT support if you want to be able to mount an SD card that the user has inserted (which likely was already formatted as FAT), mount a USB flash drive that the user has connected (which likely was already formatted as FAT), or mount the storage of a digital camera that the user has connected (which likely was already formatted as FAT).
... would be aghast at such heresy. This calls for a public stoning! Anyone know where to get some Orange Sunshine?
It's not like they are the least secure mobile OS out there. Let's make it easier for the bass turds making malware to grab naive people's money!
you've had with iOS
we'd all like to know this time !
Woz is the technologist. Jobs was the businessman. Nuff said.
tanks
Key phrase was "secondary phone market".
This could be a smart play to mitigate risk as long as they didn't dilute their brand.
and here we have it...you've shown us the source of 10^10 fanboi message board arguments...
iOS & Android are **operating systems**
iPhone, etc. are **devices**
if Apple let users run Android on their Apple devices, they would indeed be **one click** away from switching
they wouldn't **have to buy a new phone** because they are already using an Apple **device**
Thank you Dave Raggett
you know this is /. right?
someone on here probably *invented* the term 'beta' for tech usage...
alot of us are web coders...we know these problems because we deal with them every day...the problems in current web site design I mentioned are legit problems that hurt our industry & make people stupider for having visited a website (at times yes this happens)
we've done redesigns...we've had clients listen to us & clients who want the worst...now we see what is essentially our worst nightmare played out before our very eyes and commenting is the only way we can possibly stop it
Thank you Dave Raggett
Really really really. Now /. is actually readable!
Android and iOS are both being developed, and Apple can throw an awful lot of resources into iOS. I'm really hoping that both stay as viable alternatives for a long time. That keeps each side working hard on making things better for me.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This sounds an awful lot like the arguments I heard in the early 90s on open systems vs proprietary. Your points are all valid but do they make the iOS platform sufficiently better for it to carry on? Given that Android is actively developed, just how long are the advantages you describe going to be an issue?
Maybe?
Large chunks of iOS are open source, so I don't know if I buy the "iOS will die because Android has more momentum." Android up until 4.4 was still using iOS's web renderer and JavaScript runtime, and finally in 4.4 they forked it.
http://opensource.apple.com/
(A lot of iOS stuff is in the Mac section.)
The private components of iOS are still being actively developed, and share a lot of foundation with the Mac, which is also being actively developed.
I think, like any platform, continued development of iOS will be reliant on it's market share. If market share dips below 15%, you'll see interest wane. But in the US, majority share is still going back and forth between iOS and Android. Worldwide, we typically see iOS more around the 30% mark, but iOS active usage share and app store activity is far higher. So I think we're looking at years before we settle whether or not Android or iOS will become the only OS worth someone's development time, if that ever gets settled at all. I don't think a Windows style OS monopoly in the OS industry would be good at all. And as Google has taken more share, we've seen them becoming more abusive of their power (such as clamping down on source availability and certification for Android.)
For now I see Android competing with iOS but I do think it's just a matter of time before there will be no advantage for Apple to continue developing their own OS. Woz is right, Apple could easily find themselves in the same situation as Blackberry and they need to be ready to deal with it.
And that is a possibility. But it's also a possibility that Google could stop working on Android. Google gives Android away, makes no money from it, and puts a lot of support into it. I know, similar arguments have been made against Linux, but hear me out... If you're Google, and Android is only being done to keep people on Google services and ads, the best course of action is to hand over Android to Samsung (which, to be frank, is the only Android manufacturer seeing significant adoption), make a services agreement with Samsung, and then re-build their services agreement with Apple. That gives Google %100 share of the market, excluding the insignificant Microsoft bits, and no cost of developing Android.
If you're Apple, that possibility looks ugly enough to keep you developing on iOS. Plus Apple gets the advantage that if they want to build a new device category like a watch or something akin to a new class like a tablet, they have enough expertise and resources in house to rearrange all the OS bits in a way they see fit.
There is also the Mac. Even if Apple dropped iOS in favor of Android, they can't stop developing iOS. iOS is Mac OS X, and Apple still sells Macs. So even if this all plays out the way it all seems to in Woz's head, Apple can't even stop iOS development.
Woz should have understood that, which makes me wonder about him. He's spent enough time at Apple, he understands Apple values knowing and controlling both the software and hardware, and he should understand that iOS and Mac share source and their fates are intertwined. I'm not sure if he realized that advocating for Apple to spin down iOS development isn't possible with the Mac existing. I've previously had a high opinion of Woz, but he's not thinking like an engineer or innovator here, which worries me. Apple adopting Android would make them a lot like Nokia, Dell, or HP. And look where those companies are now. I'm not even sure Woz is correct. If Blackberry had adopted Android would they have survived? Or would they have been run off the market by Samsung like every other company that put their lot in with Android (except for Samsung?)
I also observe Google progressively closing off more and more of Android's API's, making iOS comparatively less of a walled garden over time. In that respect, Android's comparative advantage is decreasing steadily.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Now Apple will be able to spy on android users as wel as googles.
'Solutions Provider'
the term offends me...it's stupid marketing-style bullshit
do they sell hardware? then they're a damn hardware vendor
do they write software? then the're an OS vendor
do you make stupid distinctions with marketing words that make no sense to the conversation? yes
please, i know i'm spouting vitriol here but you must consider what i'm saying....you need to adjust your view of how the tech industry works
hype is always bullshit...always...
people like Steve Jobs talk alot of hype & that's what they're known for, but its not what made them successful
Thank you Dave Raggett