Except its stories like this that keep me from using any adobe products and then recommending alternatives for any clients/friends/family when I can.
Exactly. This doesn't come as a surprise given that the quality of their flagship products has been declining steadily over the last 10 years. I've used Photoshop since the 90s. I remember a time when Adobe came out with innovative software which was a pleasure to use. Simple but powerful. Now most days I curse them for some bug, horrible Windows inspired UI, or bullshit Acrobat plugin their astonishingly low quality installers chose to give me without asking. Just the other day I had to manually install their 'Updater' program because it got into an endless loop of download/failed install, of itself! Their software really is low quality nowadays. Feels like quark in the 90's all over again.
Hearing that they are also suing their customers doesn't surprise me, and confirms the feeling that soon I'll be looking for other software to perform image editing tasks which is not user-hostile, overpriced and upgraded regularly just to screw over customers. There is already some of it out there which looks promising for my chosen platform.
What would have been fair to the company in question would be to negotiate payment for the rogue licenses - I'm sure they'd learn their lesson and lock down the computers after that. Asking for millions is just money-grabbing and confirms my declining opinion of that company.
Let's be clear, if it's not e-ink or similar, this is in no way competition for the Kindle/Nook/Sony eReader
Interesting that you say that, because e-ink versus LCD for me would be a mark against the e-ink device. Purely because I don't want a low refresh rate, low resolution, greyscale display. Those disadvantages aren't enough to make up for a reflective screen (longer battery life, debatably easier to read). I suspect most of the buying public agree, but we'll see this year which, as both readers will be head to head (regardless of whether you see them as competing). Of course there have been some attempts to bridge the gap, but LCD wins on everything that matters to me at the moment. Evidently you value a reflective screen more.
I do agree Android will be a significant competitor to Apple in this space (perhaps the only significant competitor apart from Kindle, unless MS gets its act together and actually executes something like Courier).
I imagine it'll be just under $1000 initially (i.e. overpriced for most people), and then will gradually slide down in price till it's close to netbook prices. That's what they did with the iPhone and touch, and it worked out well for them. So initially it'll be dismissed on Slashdot as overpriced, no e-ink, no keyboard, no full Windows 7, but depending on the UI, future pricing, and what apps/content is available, it could very easily grow to dwarf any Kindle sales.
Personally just having full colour browsing, video and media on a slate form factor with a good touch UI would be worth say $800 to me, so long as it is thin and has reasonable battery life.
First and foremost, I was pointing out the flawed reasoning of the GP who implied that because a mouse with five buttons is bad, two buttons is worse than one because it is nearer to that five
Apparently, you didn't read more than the first line, and no, I didn't imply that a mouse with two buttons is 'worse than one because it is nearer to that five', whatever that means. The point of the comparison was to show that a mouse with 2 buttons is not necessarily better than one with 1 button, just as one with 5 buttons is not obviously better than a mouse with 2 buttons.
Having 2 buttons is confusing for novice users, and not at all necessary (as Mac OS X shows) - if an OS is properly designed (i.e. not assuming 2 button mice) it can be used with mice with any number of buttons, from 1 to 5.
Although, they will of course code to a two-button standard as this is (a) what most people are used to and (b) offers greater sophistication.
This sort of woolly UI by consensus is what Microsoft excels at, and it's exactly why their interfaces leave you swimming in a morass of dialogs, all alike, all with buttons like 'Advanced Properties', and 'Apply' - added complexity does not always equate to sophistication. Here is a succinct reply to the above distillation of your argument:
a) Just because some people are used to it (i.e. Windows users) doesn't make it a good idea b) More of something does not always make things better - you have presented no evidence whatsoever that 2 buttons is better than one, you just assume this.
To drag this back on-topic, many things that iPhone OS ditches from Mac OS turn out not to be necessary either and just add to confusion for novices and wasted brain-space for long-term users (double clicks for opening some things for example, rather than single tap for everything), and I'm glad that they won't make a Microsoft style slate, which doubtless requires a mouse with two buttons, a stylus, and a keyboard just to operate properly.
Photoshop. Mac is still, and long will be the favorite computer of most graphicians/artists. Tablet+screen has some serious disadvantages. You draw in one place, image appears elsewhere. With a good touchscreen capable of providing precision comparable to decent Wacoms, this can become a dream tool for an artist.
I'd love one of these too for work, but two things stand in the way of it. The new tablet will probably have a touch-screen for finger input (like the iPod) as you'll want to use your fingers to use it (strike one), and Photoshop will not run on the ARM chip most likely used to get decent battery life.
If it was an easy thing to add, they might consider it, but as it is, this seems highly unlikely as it would doom the tablet to a high price, clunky hardware, and ultimate failure as a consumer electronics device.
What you describe would be a nice device as a subsidiary to a main computer, but not as a standalone computer as it wouldn't have the horsepower - shame Wacom can't shove a cheap LCD behind one of their existing tablets to let you see what you're drawing on top of - I'm sure they'll do it eventually if they haven't already, but it won't be cheap.
Sure maybe it's not that hard to use a second hand and it's not THAT big of a deal but why stick with it at all? What's the benefit of using two hands for an operation that only takes one on a proper mouse?
Why stop there, why not have 5 button mice as standard? It's because the concept of right and left click, and the subtle distinctions in use and result between them, make for a confusing user interface, which Apple chose to eschew in favour of something simpler. As it happens, recent mice from Apple allow for right clicking (if you must), along with scrolling gestures, zoom gestures etc, etc.
The only reason people on Windows get so hung up on having to use the control key is that Windows apps have ended up putting just about everything in a contextual menu, so it's necessary (or at least easier than the alternatives) to right click about a hundred times a day, and many people I know get by almost entirely choosing stuff from the menu that pops up when you right click. Having two buttons and using them in this way is one manner of doing things, and it may be the way you're used to, but that doesn't make it the best.
Many of the things that we take for granted in computer interfaces are in fact cruft from previous software or are simply there because 'that's the way we've always done it'. Things like two button mice, double click versus single click, right click to get a menu, command shortcuts, folders versus files, etc etc are all concepts which confuse the hell out of beginner computer users, and frankly most of them are concepts which just aren't required. I've seen many people furiously double clicking everything, even links on the web, because the distinctions between double clicking and single clicking really aren't that obvious or well thought out - often they're simply arbitrary.
It's interesting that in their latest OS - Mobile OS X (which I suspect Jobs sees as completely replacing Mac OS at some point), Apple have thrown out almost all the stuff we take for granted and started anew. I'd say iPhone OS is therefore a lot easier to use, as it doesn't rely on double clicks, right clicks, etc. The only thing they've really fucked up is the copy/paste behaviour, which was a difficult problem, but is not intuitive enough if you ask me. Mobile OS X doesn't have windows, menus, desktops, folders, contextual menus, window widgets, documents folders, etc. etc. Some things have been lost in that transition, but remarkably little - it's still pretty full featured from a user's point of view.
This is what makes their forthcoming tablet so interesting; how will they take Mobile OS X on a step, and scale it up to a size approaching that of small laptops? It's also what makes the HP slate announced by Ballmer so stultifying; we've seen that sort of bodged attempt to port a desktop OS to a new form factor before, and it didn't work in 2001 when Gates tried it first.
As to right clicking on a mouse, I can't say I miss it on my iPhone, and I wouldn't miss it on a desktop OS, so long as a more intuitive way of interacting with the machine replaced it - it's a stupid idea that belongs in the past. I'd like to see more ideas dropped and refined on desktop OSs, and this sort of attitude of 'we must have everything as it was before' is exactly what keeps us with the uninteresting and unproductive interfaces we've seen dominate the desktop for the past 20 years. If people had that attitude back when the mouse was introduced, perhaps we'd all still be chording 5 key combos instead of clicking on icons.
Silverlight supports Accessibility APIs natively. It also works on Mac and Linux (through Moonlight). It can also be easily scaled if, for example, hosted in a DIV with relative size (and, optionally, positioning).
Silverlight is technically very good. That is not the reason people oppose it. They oppose it because Microsoft has typically used control over technology to kill competitors (Java, HTML, CSS, SVG, etc), and Silverlight is an obvious play to extend control to any internet media by replacing Flash. They will make it just good enough to get market share then use it as a club to bludgeon partners and users with, and if you get in their way, they'll 'fucking kill you'. They've done it before after all, and they'll do it again.
As such it doesn't interest me - I'd prefer a more open solution that doesn't give Microsoft control.
Because it still has a start menu, window widgets, app menus, keyboard shortcuts, and all the baggage it has inherited from decades of being a desktop OS. That doesn't work as well as an OS like Mobile OS X, or possibly Android, built from the ground up for a touch based interface.
Firstly, I'm surprised that such a logical fallacy gets modded up, but then this is an Apple story ("X prediction was wrong in the past, therefore Y prediction must be wrong too"?!) But what's wrong with that often-quoted statement? He doesn't say the Ipod will fail, he says it's lame. Since when does being popular mean it can't be lame? Oh okay - it's now fair game to ridicule every Apple fan who criticises Windows and Internet Explorer. Given how popular they are, they obviously can't be lame, right?
You have a remarkable talent for arguing with yourself. The arguments you attack are absurd, of course, but only because you're misinterpreting the intent of the original statement. The original comment on Slashdot is infamous because it illustrates how out of touch with mainstream thinking geeks can be. I'm sure your Sansa is fine, but the original iPod (not the shuffle) was a game-changing device, not because of its technical prowess (it was indeed 'lame' in technical terms), but because it integrated beautifully with a desktop, had a nice simpler interface, and fitted just enough music in a pocket sized package to be revolutionary and acceptable as a mainstream replacement for something like a walkman.
I think that statement a salutary reminder of how out of touch geeks can become, particularly in an echo-chamber like Slashdot.
I expect this tablet will be similar re the many competing tablets/ereaders/etc. out there at present. It wouldn't take much to completely change this area of computing, given the limited utility of something like a Kindle and the clunkyness of the current crop of Windows tablets (not the unreleased MS Courier, which looks good, but is sadly still a prototype). We'll have to wait and see what Apple comes up with before knowing if its an expensive flop or another revolutionary device though - the gap between the two can be very narrow.
You really think that they hadn't had the SDK in the works right from the start, that they just whipped it up after reading some Slashdot comments or something?
Maybe it was the massive developer backlash when told that web apps were 'a very sweet solution'? That might have done it. Dismissing that as 'reading some Slashdot comments' is really a little disingenuous.
I do have one last thing.What about developers?... We've come up with a very sweet solution.We've got an innovative new way to create applications for mobile devices. Really innovative.The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. It gives us tremendous capability.You can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. - Steve Jobs June 11, 2007 at WWDC
Either Jobs was lying to Apple developers and misleading them into wasting time on web apps, or they initially went with the web apps solution and only changed direction when it became evident that this was not acceptable for third party developers. The SDK certainly took a while to be released after the device (almost a year), shows signs of being a bit rushed, and has only recently become more polished, so I'm inclined to think Apple was not omniscient pre iPhone launch and was scrambling to catch up with demand for a way to get third party apps on there once they realised they had a hit on their hands. I prefer that explanation as it is simpler and does not ascribe remarkable prescience to Apple, coupled with a strange two-track strategy of web and binary apps, however we won't know till someone with inside knowledge tells the story.
Sure, there are some spec differences, but it's not like the Macbooks are being hobbled out of fear of cannibalism like they were in the past.
While this is mostly true for Apple nowadays, in fact MacBooks were briefly available with a beautiful unibody case, before being encased with plastic again when Apple realised that doing this was drastically curtailing sales of the MacBook Pros, so that's at least one recent example. Now we're back to plastic for MacBooks, which is an artificial division used to avoid cannibalism of MacBook Pro sales.
So what does this mean? One person made a comment that it was no good, therefore nobody can ever question an Apple product again?
No, not at all, Apple produces flops and makes mistakes all the time. However I think it's quite a good comparison for many reasons, and a salutary reminder that what seems to make sense in the world of Slashdot bears little to no resemblance to what makes sense to most people.
Any slate from Apple is likely to be limited in functionality, have a paltry feature list, a processor 2 steps back from the cutting edge, and be unpopular with geeks for that reason - witness all the posts here complaining in advance about no keyboard, no cellular, no full OS, I've used tablets (i.e. Windows tablets) before and they suck etc etc.
It will probably still be a success, depending on price, because of the focus on doing the stuff it does do very well, and will be integrated with other parts of people's computing life so that it fills the ereader niche better than other products.
As someone who has used and supported hundreds of tablets and convertibles...tablets are simply not a practical replacement for the standard notebook or desktop.
Good thing they won't be building a 'tablet or convertible' then, and won't be trying to shoe-horn a desktop OS into a tablet form factor like other tablets mentioned here which run Windows. Those are attempts at replacing the laptop, which I doubt we'll get from Apple. But this isn't about revolutionary hardware (which we will not see), or devices which run Windows (which are frankly irrelevant). The Kindle is probably a more apt comparison, though it's also very different, or the as yet unreleased MS Courier concept.
What this sort of bullet point comparison to currently shipping products completely ignores is that if the software is sufficiently well thought out, the device transcends its list of features. I imagine the hardware will be as simple as possible, ARM based slate format with a touchscreen, long battery life, and perhaps one button to turn it on. But the hardware doesn't really matter; it's not going to be the first, or the fastest, or the smallest, or the lightest, or the biggest, tablet, though I'm sure Jobs will come up with some superlatives to try and sell it.
The magic sauce that Apple can provide here is in the software; the integration with a massive store selling every kind of media you can imagine, straight to the device, the integration with your desktop computer and phone, calendar and address book, the integration with your existing media library in iTunes, an existing catalogue of apps and games, and finally the pleasure of interacting with a UI which has actually been designed from the ground up for a touch screen interface, instead of grudgingly adapted for it. Good design matters, as Apple products demonstrate. All that stuff is available in pieces from other people, but it's quite hard to put together in a nice package.
The iPhone OS is actually pretty revolutionary as operating systems go - it removes a lot of chrome we've become used to over the years - menus, window widgets, overlapping windows (save alerts), and replaces it with something simpler, and I expect the next evolution of it will take things a little further along this path.
However the greatest potential this device has to shake things up is not in the hardware or software, but in promoting the transition from paper to pixels which began with the www and has been accelerating ever since. If they provide the tools to package and sell snippets of html based content in the style of iTunes LP packages, they could provide the micro-purchase web that content producers have been waiting for, and many consumers who prefer their content not to be infested with ads are willing to pay for. I hope it supports epub, pdf, plain html and other common formats too, just as the iPod supported MP3, and if iPhone software is ported, it will.
You mean they didn't envision something so innocuous becoming so ubiquitous? It's hardly innocuous to the government or military as it is inimical to full control of citizens and soldiers.
So my bet is an x86 based super-thin tablet version of the MacBook sporting multitouch support, some custom shell for streamlined app launching (which will look very similar to iPhone), and an open architecture supporting existing OSX apps
This is the sort of horrible kludge Microsoft would come up with - trying to run desktop apps on a touch device.
Any slate will run iPhone OS - the variant of OS X which is tailored for a touch interface, and iPhone OS apps, which are tailored for a small screen (of varying sizes, as when an iPhone rotates). That'll require a little bit of tweaking, but not much, for existing apps. It'll look similar to an iPhone because it'll be running the same OS. We already know it's ARM based anyway, which rules out desktop OS X. As for pushing customers towards the Mac - the Mac is the last great thing as far as Jobs is concerned; devices are the new playground, and also where the money is for Apple.
A larger iPhone/iPod would be a very successful product, as it could be used for reading, consuming media, and anything else that requires a larger screen. That's all it would take for Apple to have a hit in another product segment - they already have most of the software ready for media/video/reading, so it's just a matter of getting the hardware right.
Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000.
All those factors apply to the iPod as well, which has been a resounding success, so I'm not sure what your point is. As to the price, if they can make an iPhone to sell for 459€ then I fail to see why a tablet has to cost over $1000, weak US dollar notwithstanding.
It's interesting that your predictions chime pretty much with what other people expect, and are excited about; I guess the lesson is that your requirements are not those of many people.
In my opinion, that battery sucking screen would be infinitely better than the low-res black and white screen on something like the kindle, worth the sacrifice in battery life. And unlike the kindle/nook it won't be a one-trick pony, but instead will run apps form the very successful (with customers) app store, surf the web beautifully, and deal with media in an elegant way. None of those things are easy (as evidenced by the Kindle).
The slate as described by you will do as well as the iPod/iPhone, so long as they can keep the cost down below $1000. It might not be for you, but there are plenty of other manufacturers who I'm sure will up their game when an Apple slate comes out, and won't rely on iTunes etc.
As for the GPS. That’s not the worst problem. The worst problem is, that without a data connection, GPS is not working and useless. It just tries to find satellites.
To be fair, this is also a problem on phones like the iPhone. Getting a GPS fix can take a lot longer, or actually be impossible, without using the AGPS. Probably the small chips/antennae they use in cell phones due to the limited space just aren't as good. There has to be something else in that Tom Tom box that makes it so huge!
it has cut down tremendously on the spam claiming to be from my domains.
If you're using a lack of SPF records as a determinant in whether or not a message is spam
Well, if they were, that would be a problem wouldn't it. But that's not what the OP said. I also use SPF, and use it because it allows other mail servers to decide mail is spam based on the fact it claims to be *from* my domains, when it doesn't come from a mail server authorised for those domains. So if everyone used SPF, no spammers would be able to impersonate me without first hijacking my server.
That's exactly the opposite of using the _lack_ of SPF to determine anything, it's using the positive existence of SPF records for a domain to exlude all other messages claiming to be from that domain.
All I need to do is set up a direct debit to any organisation and the money will disapear from your account.
A direct debit requires a signed mandate form, sure you can fake the signature, but you can also do that with a cheque.
Knowing their bank details doesn't make it easier to impersonate them, in fact getting hold of a cheque with their bank details AND their signature (by for example working in a shop and accepting cheques) would make it much easier to impersonate them.
Like I said before, this is the game, not my computer. You can dig all you like though.
But where's the responsibility then in using code paths that are untested and unverified? Is my computer a BETA testing platform for their spiffy new line of code? No. You're creating a product and you want it to be as stable as possible for as many computers as possible.
You have no idea who is to blame here. It could be a hardware fault exposed only by this game, a software flaw in the drivers, or a software flaw in the game. Without further steps to debug the problem in question, it's really hard to say. It seems most likely to be a flaw in the game, but the most you can say is that it's a flaw exposed by this game on your hardware.
Perhaps you should contact the developers and ask them if they have any steps they'd like you to follow to try to work out what is actually causing this?
Comparing wiretapping to the attempt at national censorship?
If we compare on this point alone, I consider the US to be almost as bad as China. Is it worse to openly censor content, or covertly operate massive surveillance programs, disappear your citizens without charge indefinitely, refuse their lawyers permission to even talk about the case, and have them tortured by third parties in an attempt to extract information? There is no presumption of innocence as soon as the word terrorism is invoked. What you call 'wiretapping' is now way beyond that, and mass tracking of citizens, their movements, and their communications has become routine.
Anyone trumpeting 'freedom' in the US or the UK needs to take a long hard look at what their governments are actually doing.
Of course the last statement about media was quite silly, there is a distance between state and media in the states, and censorship is nowhere near as widespread, though self-censorship in the name of patriotism is common.
Now, there are huge human rights abuses in China, lack of controls over corporations, corrupt local officials, selective enforcement of laws etc, etc. On many other levels life is worse, and the government has more power, but the comparison with the insidious abuse of state power in the US is apposite.
If you've seen one of these in person, you know that e-ink has print-like density. It's sharp and clear.
Sounds just like the vague excuses people come up with for vinyl. e-ink is going to lose out to colour display tech which has a decent refresh rate (OLED/LCD) because most people do not value the things you do. Browsing the web in black and white is never going to cut it, no matter how sharp and clear it is. I've seen one in person and they're not very impressive, and nothing like print since the screen is not even white. However I don't hope to persuade you of this... just thought I'd point out that people who object to you are not ignorant, they just have different requirements from such a device ( web, games, video, colour, touchscreen).
I'd easily sacrifice a B&W screen with slow refresh for a bit of battery life, no question, and so I suspect would millions of others. There has been no compelling device thus far in the LCD camp to put this to the test.
Um you actually need access to the keyboard cache for some programs.
Of course, but I wonder if it should be a per-application cache rather than storing all sorts of strings from all apps (I think it is global). That would make more sense, and remove any possibility of malicious use.
There is very little difference between what happens here and in any other OS using standard APIs I can really screw up a windows box if you will just run my program.
Agreed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look for something better. I would welcome the chance to restrict desktop apps with policies I decide myself as to which data etc they can access on my computer - default to a locked down configuration and let me allow them access if I wish. The vast majority of apps don't need the address book for example.
The iPhone is not configurable by the user enough in my opinion - they could do more, which is what this guy is pointing out. Why can't you decide which apps access your phone number or address book? Why can't you limit the access of apps to the file system.
I'd certainly like to, on Windows, OS X and Mobile OS X, but at present the iPhone has some controls but not quite enough in this respect, and the desktop OS's have pitiful access control for normal users (as you point out).
One other thing of note is that a great deal of this involves poking about in/var/mobile/... at preference and temporary files....Even if you obsfucated the string the filesystem could simply report if anything under that directory were being accessed and what the call stack was like, though I think it unlikely they would go to these lengths.
They'd be better just to lock down access to the files which apps have no business accessing directly - get system apps to save their preferences elsewhere for example, or restrict permissions artificially for sandboxed apps via the filesystem apis and refuse access to all files except the sandbox. That way even if someone gets past the filters (that's a game of whack-a-mole really, and the current controls are easy to defeat) they cannot access the files.
They need to move to restricting access fully at the point of access, not scanning for possible violations at one point in the process (apps may not access files when tested for example).
Also I do think apps that need access to address book records should be forced to ask for permission first (as with location), as often users will not want to provide that information and games etc have no business knowing it.
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Except its stories like this that keep me from using any adobe products and then recommending alternatives for any clients/friends/family when I can.
Exactly. This doesn't come as a surprise given that the quality of their flagship products has been declining steadily over the last 10 years. I've used Photoshop since the 90s. I remember a time when Adobe came out with innovative software which was a pleasure to use. Simple but powerful. Now most days I curse them for some bug, horrible Windows inspired UI, or bullshit Acrobat plugin their astonishingly low quality installers chose to give me without asking. Just the other day I had to manually install their 'Updater' program because it got into an endless loop of download/failed install, of itself! Their software really is low quality nowadays. Feels like quark in the 90's all over again.
Hearing that they are also suing their customers doesn't surprise me, and confirms the feeling that soon I'll be looking for other software to perform image editing tasks which is not user-hostile, overpriced and upgraded regularly just to screw over customers. There is already some of it out there which looks promising for my chosen platform.
What would have been fair to the company in question would be to negotiate payment for the rogue licenses - I'm sure they'd learn their lesson and lock down the computers after that. Asking for millions is just money-grabbing and confirms my declining opinion of that company.
Let's be clear, if it's not e-ink or similar, this is in no way competition for the Kindle/Nook/Sony eReader
Interesting that you say that, because e-ink versus LCD for me would be a mark against the e-ink device. Purely because I don't want a low refresh rate, low resolution, greyscale display. Those disadvantages aren't enough to make up for a reflective screen (longer battery life, debatably easier to read). I suspect most of the buying public agree, but we'll see this year which, as both readers will be head to head (regardless of whether you see them as competing). Of course there have been some attempts to bridge the gap, but LCD wins on everything that matters to me at the moment. Evidently you value a reflective screen more.
I do agree Android will be a significant competitor to Apple in this space (perhaps the only significant competitor apart from Kindle, unless MS gets its act together and actually executes something like Courier).
I imagine it'll be just under $1000 initially (i.e. overpriced for most people), and then will gradually slide down in price till it's close to netbook prices. That's what they did with the iPhone and touch, and it worked out well for them. So initially it'll be dismissed on Slashdot as overpriced, no e-ink, no keyboard, no full Windows 7, but depending on the UI, future pricing, and what apps/content is available, it could very easily grow to dwarf any Kindle sales.
Personally just having full colour browsing, video and media on a slate form factor with a good touch UI would be worth say $800 to me, so long as it is thin and has reasonable battery life.
First and foremost, I was pointing out the flawed reasoning of the GP who implied that because a mouse with five buttons is bad, two buttons is worse than one because it is nearer to that five
Apparently, you didn't read more than the first line, and no, I didn't imply that a mouse with two buttons is 'worse than one because it is nearer to that five', whatever that means. The point of the comparison was to show that a mouse with 2 buttons is not necessarily better than one with 1 button, just as one with 5 buttons is not obviously better than a mouse with 2 buttons.
Having 2 buttons is confusing for novice users, and not at all necessary (as Mac OS X shows) - if an OS is properly designed (i.e. not assuming 2 button mice) it can be used with mice with any number of buttons, from 1 to 5.
Although, they will of course code to a two-button standard as this is (a) what most people are used to and (b) offers greater sophistication.
This sort of woolly UI by consensus is what Microsoft excels at, and it's exactly why their interfaces leave you swimming in a morass of dialogs, all alike, all with buttons like 'Advanced Properties', and 'Apply' - added complexity does not always equate to sophistication. Here is a succinct reply to the above distillation of your argument:
a) Just because some people are used to it (i.e. Windows users) doesn't make it a good idea
b) More of something does not always make things better - you have presented no evidence whatsoever that 2 buttons is better than one, you just assume this.
To drag this back on-topic, many things that iPhone OS ditches from Mac OS turn out not to be necessary either and just add to confusion for novices and wasted brain-space for long-term users (double clicks for opening some things for example, rather than single tap for everything), and I'm glad that they won't make a Microsoft style slate, which doubtless requires a mouse with two buttons, a stylus, and a keyboard just to operate properly.
Photoshop. Mac is still, and long will be the favorite computer of most graphicians/artists. Tablet+screen has some serious disadvantages. You draw in one place, image appears elsewhere. With a good touchscreen capable of providing precision comparable to decent Wacoms, this can become a dream tool for an artist.
I'd love one of these too for work, but two things stand in the way of it. The new tablet will probably have a touch-screen for finger input (like the iPod) as you'll want to use your fingers to use it (strike one), and Photoshop will not run on the ARM chip most likely used to get decent battery life.
If it was an easy thing to add, they might consider it, but as it is, this seems highly unlikely as it would doom the tablet to a high price, clunky hardware, and ultimate failure as a consumer electronics device.
What you describe would be a nice device as a subsidiary to a main computer, but not as a standalone computer as it wouldn't have the horsepower - shame Wacom can't shove a cheap LCD behind one of their existing tablets to let you see what you're drawing on top of - I'm sure they'll do it eventually if they haven't already, but it won't be cheap.
Sure maybe it's not that hard to use a second hand and it's not THAT big of a deal but why stick with it at all? What's the benefit of using two hands for an operation that only takes one on a proper mouse?
Why stop there, why not have 5 button mice as standard? It's because the concept of right and left click, and the subtle distinctions in use and result between them, make for a confusing user interface, which Apple chose to eschew in favour of something simpler. As it happens, recent mice from Apple allow for right clicking (if you must), along with scrolling gestures, zoom gestures etc, etc.
The only reason people on Windows get so hung up on having to use the control key is that Windows apps have ended up putting just about everything in a contextual menu, so it's necessary (or at least easier than the alternatives) to right click about a hundred times a day, and many people I know get by almost entirely choosing stuff from the menu that pops up when you right click. Having two buttons and using them in this way is one manner of doing things, and it may be the way you're used to, but that doesn't make it the best.
Many of the things that we take for granted in computer interfaces are in fact cruft from previous software or are simply there because 'that's the way we've always done it'. Things like two button mice, double click versus single click, right click to get a menu, command shortcuts, folders versus files, etc etc are all concepts which confuse the hell out of beginner computer users, and frankly most of them are concepts which just aren't required. I've seen many people furiously double clicking everything, even links on the web, because the distinctions between double clicking and single clicking really aren't that obvious or well thought out - often they're simply arbitrary.
It's interesting that in their latest OS - Mobile OS X (which I suspect Jobs sees as completely replacing Mac OS at some point), Apple have thrown out almost all the stuff we take for granted and started anew. I'd say iPhone OS is therefore a lot easier to use, as it doesn't rely on double clicks, right clicks, etc. The only thing they've really fucked up is the copy/paste behaviour, which was a difficult problem, but is not intuitive enough if you ask me. Mobile OS X doesn't have windows, menus, desktops, folders, contextual menus, window widgets, documents folders, etc. etc. Some things have been lost in that transition, but remarkably little - it's still pretty full featured from a user's point of view.
This is what makes their forthcoming tablet so interesting; how will they take Mobile OS X on a step, and scale it up to a size approaching that of small laptops? It's also what makes the HP slate announced by Ballmer so stultifying; we've seen that sort of bodged attempt to port a desktop OS to a new form factor before, and it didn't work in 2001 when Gates tried it first.
As to right clicking on a mouse, I can't say I miss it on my iPhone, and I wouldn't miss it on a desktop OS, so long as a more intuitive way of interacting with the machine replaced it - it's a stupid idea that belongs in the past. I'd like to see more ideas dropped and refined on desktop OSs, and this sort of attitude of 'we must have everything as it was before' is exactly what keeps us with the uninteresting and unproductive interfaces we've seen dominate the desktop for the past 20 years. If people had that attitude back when the mouse was introduced, perhaps we'd all still be chording 5 key combos instead of clicking on icons.
Silverlight supports Accessibility APIs natively. It also works on Mac and Linux (through Moonlight). It can also be easily scaled if, for example, hosted in a DIV with relative size (and, optionally, positioning).
Silverlight is technically very good. That is not the reason people oppose it. They oppose it because Microsoft has typically used control over technology to kill competitors (Java, HTML, CSS, SVG, etc), and Silverlight is an obvious play to extend control to any internet media by replacing Flash. They will make it just good enough to get market share then use it as a club to bludgeon partners and users with, and if you get in their way, they'll 'fucking kill you'. They've done it before after all, and they'll do it again.
As such it doesn't interest me - I'd prefer a more open solution that doesn't give Microsoft control.
Why is Windows poorly designed for a tablet?
Because it still has a start menu, window widgets, app menus, keyboard shortcuts, and all the baggage it has inherited from decades of being a desktop OS. That doesn't work as well as an OS like Mobile OS X, or possibly Android, built from the ground up for a touch based interface.
Firstly, I'm surprised that such a logical fallacy gets modded up, but then this is an Apple story ("X prediction was wrong in the past, therefore Y prediction must be wrong too"?!) But what's wrong with that often-quoted statement? He doesn't say the Ipod will fail, he says it's lame. Since when does being popular mean it can't be lame? Oh okay - it's now fair game to ridicule every Apple fan who criticises Windows and Internet Explorer. Given how popular they are, they obviously can't be lame, right?
You have a remarkable talent for arguing with yourself. The arguments you attack are absurd, of course, but only because you're misinterpreting the intent of the original statement. The original comment on Slashdot is infamous because it illustrates how out of touch with mainstream thinking geeks can be. I'm sure your Sansa is fine, but the original iPod (not the shuffle) was a game-changing device, not because of its technical prowess (it was indeed 'lame' in technical terms), but because it integrated beautifully with a desktop, had a nice simpler interface, and fitted just enough music in a pocket sized package to be revolutionary and acceptable as a mainstream replacement for something like a walkman.
I think that statement a salutary reminder of how out of touch geeks can become, particularly in an echo-chamber like Slashdot.
I expect this tablet will be similar re the many competing tablets/ereaders/etc. out there at present. It wouldn't take much to completely change this area of computing, given the limited utility of something like a Kindle and the clunkyness of the current crop of Windows tablets (not the unreleased MS Courier, which looks good, but is sadly still a prototype). We'll have to wait and see what Apple comes up with before knowing if its an expensive flop or another revolutionary device though - the gap between the two can be very narrow.
You really think that they hadn't had the SDK in the works right from the start, that they just whipped it up after reading some Slashdot comments or something?
Maybe it was the massive developer backlash when told that web apps were 'a very sweet solution'? That might have done it. Dismissing that as 'reading some Slashdot comments' is really a little disingenuous.
I do have one last thing.What about developers?... We've come up with a very sweet solution.We've got an innovative new way to create applications for mobile devices. Really innovative.The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. It gives us tremendous capability.You can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. - Steve Jobs June 11, 2007 at WWDC
Either Jobs was lying to Apple developers and misleading them into wasting time on web apps, or they initially went with the web apps solution and only changed direction when it became evident that this was not acceptable for third party developers. The SDK certainly took a while to be released after the device (almost a year), shows signs of being a bit rushed, and has only recently become more polished, so I'm inclined to think Apple was not omniscient pre iPhone launch and was scrambling to catch up with demand for a way to get third party apps on there once they realised they had a hit on their hands. I prefer that explanation as it is simpler and does not ascribe remarkable prescience to Apple, coupled with a strange two-track strategy of web and binary apps, however we won't know till someone with inside knowledge tells the story.
Sure, there are some spec differences, but it's not like the Macbooks are being hobbled out of fear of cannibalism like they were in the past.
While this is mostly true for Apple nowadays, in fact MacBooks were briefly available with a beautiful unibody case, before being encased with plastic again when Apple realised that doing this was drastically curtailing sales of the MacBook Pros, so that's at least one recent example. Now we're back to plastic for MacBooks, which is an artificial division used to avoid cannibalism of MacBook Pro sales.
So what does this mean? One person made a comment that it was no good, therefore nobody can ever question an Apple product again?
No, not at all, Apple produces flops and makes mistakes all the time. However I think it's quite a good comparison for many reasons, and a salutary reminder that what seems to make sense in the world of Slashdot bears little to no resemblance to what makes sense to most people.
Any slate from Apple is likely to be limited in functionality, have a paltry feature list, a processor 2 steps back from the cutting edge, and be unpopular with geeks for that reason - witness all the posts here complaining in advance about no keyboard, no cellular, no full OS, I've used tablets (i.e. Windows tablets) before and they suck etc etc.
It will probably still be a success, depending on price, because of the focus on doing the stuff it does do very well, and will be integrated with other parts of people's computing life so that it fills the ereader niche better than other products.
As someone who has used and supported hundreds of tablets and convertibles...tablets are simply not a practical replacement for the standard notebook or desktop.
Good thing they won't be building a 'tablet or convertible' then, and won't be trying to shoe-horn a desktop OS into a tablet form factor like other tablets mentioned here which run Windows. Those are attempts at replacing the laptop, which I doubt we'll get from Apple. But this isn't about revolutionary hardware (which we will not see), or devices which run Windows (which are frankly irrelevant). The Kindle is probably a more apt comparison, though it's also very different, or the as yet unreleased MS Courier concept.
What this sort of bullet point comparison to currently shipping products completely ignores is that if the software is sufficiently well thought out, the device transcends its list of features. I imagine the hardware will be as simple as possible, ARM based slate format with a touchscreen, long battery life, and perhaps one button to turn it on. But the hardware doesn't really matter; it's not going to be the first, or the fastest, or the smallest, or the lightest, or the biggest, tablet, though I'm sure Jobs will come up with some superlatives to try and sell it.
The magic sauce that Apple can provide here is in the software; the integration with a massive store selling every kind of media you can imagine, straight to the device, the integration with your desktop computer and phone, calendar and address book, the integration with your existing media library in iTunes, an existing catalogue of apps and games, and finally the pleasure of interacting with a UI which has actually been designed from the ground up for a touch screen interface, instead of grudgingly adapted for it. Good design matters, as Apple products demonstrate. All that stuff is available in pieces from other people, but it's quite hard to put together in a nice package.
The iPhone OS is actually pretty revolutionary as operating systems go - it removes a lot of chrome we've become used to over the years - menus, window widgets, overlapping windows (save alerts), and replaces it with something simpler, and I expect the next evolution of it will take things a little further along this path.
However the greatest potential this device has to shake things up is not in the hardware or software, but in promoting the transition from paper to pixels which began with the www and has been accelerating ever since. If they provide the tools to package and sell snippets of html based content in the style of iTunes LP packages, they could provide the micro-purchase web that content producers have been waiting for, and many consumers who prefer their content not to be infested with ads are willing to pay for. I hope it supports epub, pdf, plain html and other common formats too, just as the iPod supported MP3, and if iPhone software is ported, it will.
In answer to you naysayers, I have only this to say:
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
innocuous
You mean they didn't envision something so innocuous becoming so ubiquitous? It's hardly innocuous to the government or military as it is inimical to full control of citizens and soldiers.
So my bet is an x86 based super-thin tablet version of the MacBook sporting multitouch support, some custom shell for streamlined app launching (which will look very similar to iPhone), and an open architecture supporting existing OSX apps
This is the sort of horrible kludge Microsoft would come up with - trying to run desktop apps on a touch device.
Any slate will run iPhone OS - the variant of OS X which is tailored for a touch interface, and iPhone OS apps, which are tailored for a small screen (of varying sizes, as when an iPhone rotates). That'll require a little bit of tweaking, but not much, for existing apps. It'll look similar to an iPhone because it'll be running the same OS. We already know it's ARM based anyway, which rules out desktop OS X. As for pushing customers towards the Mac - the Mac is the last great thing as far as Jobs is concerned; devices are the new playground, and also where the money is for Apple.
A larger iPhone/iPod would be a very successful product, as it could be used for reading, consuming media, and anything else that requires a larger screen. That's all it would take for Apple to have a hit in another product segment - they already have most of the software ready for media/video/reading, so it's just a matter of getting the hardware right.
Translation: the only button is a power button, it has a battery-sucking colour screen as opposed to an e-ink display, it requires itunes on a mac or PC to use, the only Apple-approved way to run programs is via an app store, it has a non-user-replaceable battery, and it will cost upwards of $1000.
All those factors apply to the iPod as well, which has been a resounding success, so I'm not sure what your point is. As to the price, if they can make an iPhone to sell for 459€ then I fail to see why a tablet has to cost over $1000, weak US dollar notwithstanding.
It's interesting that your predictions chime pretty much with what other people expect, and are excited about; I guess the lesson is that your requirements are not those of many people.
In my opinion, that battery sucking screen would be infinitely better than the low-res black and white screen on something like the kindle, worth the sacrifice in battery life. And unlike the kindle/nook it won't be a one-trick pony, but instead will run apps form the very successful (with customers) app store, surf the web beautifully, and deal with media in an elegant way. None of those things are easy (as evidenced by the Kindle).
The slate as described by you will do as well as the iPod/iPhone, so long as they can keep the cost down below $1000. It might not be for you, but there are plenty of other manufacturers who I'm sure will up their game when an Apple slate comes out, and won't rely on iTunes etc.
As for the GPS. That’s not the worst problem. The worst problem is, that without a data connection, GPS is not working and useless. It just tries to find satellites.
To be fair, this is also a problem on phones like the iPhone. Getting a GPS fix can take a lot longer, or actually be impossible, without using the AGPS. Probably the small chips/antennae they use in cell phones due to the limited space just aren't as good. There has to be something else in that Tom Tom box that makes it so huge!
it has cut down tremendously on the spam claiming to be from my domains.
If you're using a lack of SPF records as a determinant in whether or not a message is spam
Well, if they were, that would be a problem wouldn't it. But that's not what the OP said. I also use SPF, and use it because it allows other mail servers to decide mail is spam based on the fact it claims to be *from* my domains, when it doesn't come from a mail server authorised for those domains. So if everyone used SPF, no spammers would be able to impersonate me without first hijacking my server.
That's exactly the opposite of using the _lack_ of SPF to determine anything, it's using the positive existence of SPF records for a domain to exlude all other messages claiming to be from that domain.
All I need to do is set up a direct debit to any organisation and the money will disapear from your account.
A direct debit requires a signed mandate form, sure you can fake the signature, but you can also do that with a cheque.
Knowing their bank details doesn't make it easier to impersonate them, in fact getting hold of a cheque with their bank details AND their signature (by for example working in a shop and accepting cheques) would make it much easier to impersonate them.
and nobody is quite sure as to how public bank account numbers ought to be.
Your account number and sort code are written on your cheque. Bank account numbers should be treated as public information.
Like I said before, this is the game, not my computer. You can dig all you like though.
But where's the responsibility then in using code paths that are untested and unverified? Is my computer a BETA testing platform for their spiffy new line of code? No. You're creating a product and you want it to be as stable as possible for as many computers as possible.
You have no idea who is to blame here. It could be a hardware fault exposed only by this game, a software flaw in the drivers, or a software flaw in the game. Without further steps to debug the problem in question, it's really hard to say. It seems most likely to be a flaw in the game, but the most you can say is that it's a flaw exposed by this game on your hardware.
Perhaps you should contact the developers and ask them if they have any steps they'd like you to follow to try to work out what is actually causing this?
Comparing wiretapping to the attempt at national censorship?
If we compare on this point alone, I consider the US to be almost as bad as China. Is it worse to openly censor content, or covertly operate massive surveillance programs, disappear your citizens without charge indefinitely, refuse their lawyers permission to even talk about the case, and have them tortured by third parties in an attempt to extract information? There is no presumption of innocence as soon as the word terrorism is invoked. What you call 'wiretapping' is now way beyond that, and mass tracking of citizens, their movements, and their communications has become routine.
Anyone trumpeting 'freedom' in the US or the UK needs to take a long hard look at what their governments are actually doing.
Of course the last statement about media was quite silly, there is a distance between state and media in the states, and censorship is nowhere near as widespread, though self-censorship in the name of patriotism is common.
Now, there are huge human rights abuses in China, lack of controls over corporations, corrupt local officials, selective enforcement of laws etc, etc. On many other levels life is worse, and the government has more power, but the comparison with the insidious abuse of state power in the US is apposite.
If you've seen one of these in person, you know that e-ink has print-like density. It's sharp and clear.
Sounds just like the vague excuses people come up with for vinyl. e-ink is going to lose out to colour display tech which has a decent refresh rate (OLED/LCD) because most people do not value the things you do. Browsing the web in black and white is never going to cut it, no matter how sharp and clear it is. I've seen one in person and they're not very impressive, and nothing like print since the screen is not even white. However I don't hope to persuade you of this... just thought I'd point out that people who object to you are not ignorant, they just have different requirements from such a device ( web, games, video, colour, touchscreen).
I'd easily sacrifice a B&W screen with slow refresh for a bit of battery life, no question, and so I suspect would millions of others. There has been no compelling device thus far in the LCD camp to put this to the test.
Um you actually need access to the keyboard cache for some programs.
Of course, but I wonder if it should be a per-application cache rather than storing all sorts of strings from all apps (I think it is global). That would make more sense, and remove any possibility of malicious use.
There is very little difference between what happens here and in any other OS using standard APIs I can really screw up a windows box if you will just run my program.
Agreed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look for something better. I would welcome the chance to restrict desktop apps with policies I decide myself as to which data etc they can access on my computer - default to a locked down configuration and let me allow them access if I wish. The vast majority of apps don't need the address book for example.
The iPhone is not configurable by the user enough in my opinion - they could do more, which is what this guy is pointing out. Why can't you decide which apps access your phone number or address book? Why can't you limit the access of apps to the file system.
I'd certainly like to, on Windows, OS X and Mobile OS X, but at present the iPhone has some controls but not quite enough in this respect, and the desktop OS's have pitiful access control for normal users (as you point out).
One other thing of note is that a great deal of this involves poking about in /var/mobile/... at preference and temporary files....Even if you obsfucated the string the filesystem could simply report if anything under that directory were being accessed and what the call stack was like, though I think it unlikely they would go to these lengths.
They'd be better just to lock down access to the files which apps have no business accessing directly - get system apps to save their preferences elsewhere for example, or restrict permissions artificially for sandboxed apps via the filesystem apis and refuse access to all files except the sandbox. That way even if someone gets past the filters (that's a game of whack-a-mole really, and the current controls are easy to defeat) they cannot access the files.
They need to move to restricting access fully at the point of access, not scanning for possible violations at one point in the process (apps may not access files when tested for example).
Also I do think apps that need access to address book records should be forced to ask for permission first (as with location), as often users will not want to provide that information and games etc have no business knowing it.