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Seth's Blog: Hardware is Sexy, But It's Software that Matters (typepad.com)
American author and entrepreneur Seth Godin argues that though hardware is nice and dandy, it is the software that matters. And not just software that runs on a computer, "but the metaphorical idea of rules and algorithms designed to solve problems and connect people," he writes. Godin has used the piece to note how Apple has increasingly grown focused on hardware, and as a result, it's not putting much effort to fixing its software. He writes, "Automator, a buggy piece of software with no support, and because it's free, no competitors. Keynote, a presentation program that hasn't been improved in years. iOS 10, which replaces useful with pretty. iTunes, which is now years behind useful tools like Roon. No significant steps forward in word processing, spreadsheets, video editing, file sharing, internet tools, conferencing, etc. Apple contributed mightily to a software revolution a decade ago, but they've stopped. Think about how many leaps forward Slack, Dropbox, Zapier and others have made in popular software over the last few decades. But it requires a significant commitment to keep it moving forward. It means upending the status quo and creating something new." From the article: Software can change faster than hardware, which means that in changing markets, bet on software. It's tempting to treat the user interface as a piece of fashion, some bling, a sort of jewelry. It's not. It's the way your user controls the tool you build. Change it when it stops working, not when you're bored with it. Every time you change the interface, you better have a really good reason.John Gruber disagrees. He writes: Software, in general, is much better than it used to be. Unlike 1995, we don't lose data due to bugs very often. (For me personally, I can't even remember the last time I lost data.) But our hardware is so much better than our software, the contrast is jarring. An iPhone is a nearly perfect object. Sleek, attractive, simple. The hardware is completely knowable -- there are only five buttons, each of them easily understood. iOS, however, is effectively infinite. The deeper our software gets, the less we know and understand it. It's unsettling.
...ruminates on how it's not the bong that matters, but the weed that goes into it.
Stays up late writing blog post on same idea, but extrapolated to hardware & software.
As the apps guy says... it's the APPS that matter
Gruber's an idiot. Hardware sucks. Hardware is a VCR that is blinking 12:00 all the time because buttons are complicated. Software is a smartphone that always has the correct time, because software can deal even with daylight savings and time-zone changes that can occur at any time.
Homer, you're crazy! Tell him this is all crazy.
Homer, I'd like you to remember Matthew 7:26.
The foolish man who built his house on sand.
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An incompetent VC idiot who lost a quarter of fund's portfolio value in five years tells everybody how to make money... hahaha
They both fuckin matter.
The hardware is completely knowable -- there are only five buttons, each of them easily understood.
If he knew about the hardware, he would know the action of every button is software defined!
Neither of these fools understand hardware or software beyond a superficial measure.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
When I was a kid and turned on a BBC Micro, it was ready to use instantly. Same with the old TV I had. And I could watch anything I wanted to watch on that TV, whether it was from the aerial or the computer or the VCR. And on that VCR, I could just fast forward through any initial stuff on the tape I wanted to skip. And some of those devices worked for a decade.
Today's world of hardware that costs hundreds or thousands but fails within a few years, if it even gets that far, is not an improvement. Today's world where hardware can't be serviced or repaired is not an improvement. Today's world where it takes a minute for my PVR to show me a picture, and seconds to switch to the next TV channel, is not an improvement. Today's world where I can't watch content I've paid for on a device I've paid for, or can't run software I've paid for on a computer I've paid for, or can't listen to music from my iPhone because the headphones don't fit any more, because of artificial barriers to connectivity, is not an improvement.
Hardware got faster and bigger, but thinking that makes it better when all this other stuff is getting needlessly broken is spectacularly missing the point. And the user who buys these devices doesn't much care whether it's the hardware or the protocol on the wire between two devices or the firmware that is causing the problem. They just want the stuff they bought to do what they bought it for, and in many respects today's equipment is very much worse at that than the equipment we made a decade or two ago.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Let's see...users are willing to fork out a few hundred dollars every few years for the latest tech trinket, yet they want all their software for free. They balk at even a modest charge of $10 or $20 for something really useful. Gee...I wonder why bugs go years without anyone looking at them or features remain on the backlog for decades? If we want innovation in software, we have to be willing to pay something for it.
Hardware may be a "solved problem" for x86 cpus, but anything beyond that is still unexplored territory. Elon musk is sad that so much talent is focussed on some cloud solution while that talent is terribly missed engineering. I agree with that. We need electric cars that can replace ICE ones, we need robots that can take care of the elderly, and this is only partially a software problem.
#HardwareMatters
Software is the story.
Everyone keeps saying that they are not going to update their current hardware, so I guess the future is gonna have to be in software.
When you don't have to. Stick to your core competency. Software is notoriously hard to manage precisely because it is nebulous. You cannot see it, touch it, feel it, smell it, or taste it. A strictly intellectual construct. Hardware is easier to conceptualize as it is tangible. Does apple really need to redo MS Word? Or Docker? Or a host of others.
Sure software can change faster, but all that does is create crappy software. Who hasn't experienced sales screaming "We have to ship feature X before our competitors!!!!!!!! "
My advice to Apple is stick to your knitting. You don't want to have to spin off some useless software applications that you over spent on in a few years.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Why was in house dx12 support not ready? Why is the port of a game so bad on a desktop? Staff are just not the best anymore.
Video is done at HD or 4K with free software or low cost solutions or software from a big hardware brand. Good enough to upload and share.
Music is streamed and created by creative people or a group created by committee to sell well.
VR is still been hyped as not inducing user issues and needs a gpu and cpu to get the frame rate.
The problem now is branding and the optics of the brand in social media. The staff presenting well as a group on social media is useless.
Having your best staff stop to help educate new team members for years is years lost on a product with your brand on it.
Average staff with no creativity or ability now been placed in top projects is not useful long term to any brand.
Stop including staff that need "support" for years on software projects. If useless staff have to be hired keep them away from software the consumers buy.
A new building for new staff and their special projects will keep new staff well away from slowing down actual products.
Government officials, inner city politicians, bloggers, tour groups can be shown what they need and want to see.
Hire only the best to work on products and code great software again.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
He is, IMHO, 100% correct with his analysis, including the critisism of the quality of what made Apple great. Apple abandoned their opinion leaders (us) about the time they started requireing a sign-up to get the devtools. Slowly but surely their Unix isn't quite that attractive as it used to be and the quality of their utility software has been in steady decline ever since. The last few versions of Preview can't even render PDFs correctly anymore.
Meanwhile the open web, pushed by Google, is taking over. Devices and web environments are steeply growing in power, and the line between website, service, VMed and native app is blurring faster than we can follow.
I've been seeing it ever since I finally understood ChromeOS.
Remember when it came out? Everyone, including me, was like "WTF?".
But now we understand. Chromebooks are the poor mans and the developing worlds (80% of all potential users globally) MacBook Air. They're dirt cheap, boot nigh instantly and run for a day on one charge. And Google takes care of you all along the way.
Today it's blatantly obvious that Google, of all megacorps, has the best long-term strategy and thus is pushing a standards based open web. It's the only plattform they can win with and it is more and more becoming the plattform with which people can develop safely and be guraranteed some sort of userbase, no matter the underlying OS or device. The Pixel comes as a premium phone - an unusual thing from Google - but everyone knows it's just an upgraded iPhone knock-off hardware wise. The real deal is with Google Assistant and the unlimited storage they offer.
As for the web being the plattform that is evolving the fastest - yes, of course it is. Updates are as close as refreshing a pageview and storage and AI are dropping in prices and power in huge leaps as we speak. I've been torn to and fro about wether I should leave the web for some 'real' programming and environment ever since I switched my career into it 16 years ago, but I have to say that it never has been as interesting as it is now to stick with it, sit back, and quietly watch as the toy language JavaScript takes over fields no one ever even dreamt of 10 years ago.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Wtf?
"Think about how many leaps forward Slack, Dropbox, Zapier and others have made in popular software over the last few decades"
None of these are even a decade old! They are cloudy web x.0 incarnations of old unix utilities!
And Seth should know this! He is as old as I am!
Now get the hell off my lawn!!
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
How can anyone possibly comprehend the "effectively infinite" game of chess? Perhaps it has something to do with its intuitive set of governing rules.
He can't have used web-browsers much.
Since Chrome goobles up whatever amount of RAM eventually it will be too much and you will want to kill that fucker.
Twice in a short time period Vivaldi (Chrome based by guys from Opera) and Chrome made Windows either by itself or through swap ~1TB of data each time to my SSD.
Well, let me clarify. Seth Godin Is correct, but, and this is crucial, everyone knew this already. He is making a trivial point and proclaiming it as profound. You don't get to do this in 2016! That was news in maybe 1960 grandpa. Software is extensible, malleable, and potentially infinite.
John Gruber is closer to correct, until he too makes an unforgivable error. " iOS, however, is effectively infinite. The deeper our software gets, the less we know and understand it. It's unsettling." The first sentence is correct while the second sentence begins to drift into unbounded philosophy. The third sentence, well I can't relate to the "unsettling" comment at all. And I use computers for a living.
The "potentially infinite" aspect of software is one of it's most appealing attributes! Our computing systems can be complex rather than trivial. They respond to human will, human needs, the human mind. They reflect part of our nature. The consequences of this are multifaceted and profound:
1). Don't like a system, program, or function? It can be changed;
2). Errors can be corrected;
3). Areas of inadequate functionality can be reinforced as much as you want;
4). We get some of the "new" every few months or years. Most people need a little variety, a little to learn, a little challenge now and then. Done well this keeps people interested in their computer systems;
5). As circumstances and expectations change the software can change to meet the new circumstances;
6). Over long stretches of time, programmers, designers and architects get notionally unlimited "do-overs" to learn from the past, improve their skills and product output, and make more appealing systems. A simple example of this was the switch from text mode interfaces to graphical interfaces.
Can things go wrong? Well duh, programmers are people and people make mistakes. However remember the unlimited do-overs, those are impressively powerful, and combined with a competitive product marketplace, mistakes get removed. It can take a long time in some situations (believe me, I know) but bad design or implementation decisions cannot survive indefinitely.
The one thing Godin said that was bang on the money? Apple has let major parts of it's software portfolio languish or drift. Let's see, OSX and iTunes would have to lead that list. However although this might be disturbing to some, Apple will either pick up the pace or they won't. If they won't then the competitive product marketplace starts to kick in a driver for innovation and improvement. It can be disruptive and not the customer's preferred outcome, but it is an answer.
Look at it this way. What if I had asked /. for their preferred product development direction in smartphones, say 15 years ago? The answer would have been, most likely, "I want Research in Motion to improve the Blackberry", or possibly "I want Palm to make a quantum leap with the PalmPilot". Do you want that now? No. Sometimes you need new market entrants or disruptive innovators to shake things up.
Henry Ford is apocryphally quoted as having said the following. "If I had asked the customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse." That's what we are talking about here. This is the basis for the innovative esteem that Henry Ford is held in, and also Steve Jobs. You know, that stuff we all know but sometimes underrate the importance of.
This is the holy trinity of computers:
* Hardware + Software + User Experience
Great Hardware enables great software.
Great Software empowers the user experience.
Great user experiences has people loving computers.
Crappy hardware can only make for poor software.
Poor software makes for laggy user experience.
Laggy user experience has people hating computers.
--
If you're frame rate (or UI) is not targeting at least 60+ Hz, you're doing it wrong. Only amateurs target 30 Hz.
Did you mean "Apple has increasingly BECOME focused on"? Americans...
Hardware does matter, for the simple reason that it is what the software runs on. Software does nothing without the hardware. Hardware is useless without software. They work in conjunction, they both matter.
That piece of junk aggregator is $120 a year, vs. itunes, which is $0.
Itunes ain't perfect, but at least it's free.
Firstly, Linux has the opposite problem, nobody wants to tune the UI, so it remains clunky. When it's changed, it's a total re-write the user has to learn again, dealing with new flaws and foibles. Yet people happily complain about Microsoft changing Windows in, many times very dumb ways but still, minor ways. (Windows 8 excepted.)
Secondly, he is essentially, correct: Even my recent Phone upgrade included new icons and a Facebook app (bloat); plus some stability improvements. It also reset many settings, which has proven to be a pain in the arse. A few articles ago, Slashdot bemoaned the deliberate unfriendliness of modern user-interfaces.
IMHO, most games are scrapped because the interface is outdated, resulting in novel and interesting games disappearing forever. When Quake III Arena appeared, one reviewer claim it's crowning feature was the detailed eye-candy the players ran past. Indeed, I've seen newbie players choose the axe because it looked cool.
No significant steps forward ...
I agree with the complaint about old software losing their update cycle but "significant steps forward" frequently means a modern UI. Then again, if one wants 1300 functions and UI dialogs, one can buy Microsoft Office. Smaller devices are aiming for core functionality and that's not going to change, so the software doesn't need "significant steps forward".
If hardware fails, the software can always run on air (albeit slower).
Apple learned a long time ago ... in the System7/7.5/8/OS9 days ... that if you want third parties to develop on your platform, you need to stand back and let that happen. They have introduced software (much of which is cited in the summary) to fill holes in the ecosystem, but they are pointers to lead third party developers to create something better and sell it.
They learned that lesson because they sometimes did step in and kill interest in developing for the Mac (more so with OS9, but the lesson stuck).
iTunes is a little different, in that it's a gateway to Apple income, so updates concentrate on that area, but it's wrong to expect it to be a state-of-the-art audio application. iTunes actually has no audio abilities; it uses QuickTime and Core Audio (built into the OS itself), and both are usable by any third party developer to make their own audio related apps.
When there was a glaring hole in the software ecosystem (Keynote, etc) Apple built a simple but functional app to be included with the OS It was never as functional as Microsoft PowerPoint; it was never intended to be. It was a kick in Microsoft's pants to keep developing PowerPoint for the Mac.
The point is the lack of feature enhancement is not by accident; it's deliberate. Apple wants developers to develop for the Mac, and they've learned that one way to do that is to leave room for 3rd Party Developers to fill in the void themselves.
"An iPhone is a nearly perfect object. Sleek, attractive, simple."
*Gag* Really? A "perfect object"? This ain't no dodecahedron we're talking about here. It reminds me of an old soap dish. Stop with the worship of cheaply designed disposable tech. It's a bad mindset and bad for the environment.
Sleek? so thin the damn things bend/break all the time. Oh wow, such engineering. How about we go after "battery lasts a week between charges" rather than "Can be used to jimmy a door"
Attractive? I don't think so, personally. They look boring. Really boring.
Simple? Please don't insult the average person's intelligence. This is from the people who thought a mouse with more than one button was too complicated for the average moron.
Umm, sure 5 buttons, one of them being a fingerprint reader. Oh, and 3 axis accelerometer, multiple thermometers, a magnetometer, a microphone, a multitouch touch screen, a couple software defined radios, a lightning port that does a more than just USB, whatever else I forgot. All capable of being inputs which can control things in the phone. I think maybe Mr. Gruber was fooled by the sleek exterior and thought he knew the hardware. The hardware is so unknowable that there are forum discussions about other stuff that might be in there but not enabled, like FM radios and barometers.
Anyone that refers to modern proprietary hardware as completely knowable simply proves they don't.
Of course the border between hardware and software, the "firmware" layer if you will, has gotten very flexible. Without the software the hardware is a brick. Without the hardware the software, well, isn't.
This whole debate is completely academic and useless. Every time an app crashes we have proof that software needs improvement. Every time a Note 7 bursts into flames or an iPhone gets the touch flu we know hardware needs improvement.
Talk about a waste of time, why do we pay attention to these experts?
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI