It's stunning that the MSIE share of the browser market fell by only 5.8 percent in 2008. This speaks to the power of the default browser setting, and the inertia in the user community. FireFox, Safari and Chrome together only managed to chip away 5.8%? If Microsoft put forth a less than entirely crappy effort, MSIE would probably stop losing ground at all.
This criticism is fair, albeit stated a bit hyperbolically (they are guilty from time to time, but it's not really their normal pattern). There definitely exist examples of things that have suffered mightily from lack of attention, after the initial promising release. iChat AV is one such. It's a great video chat client, except for it being nearly unusable, due to extremely poor handling of the network connections that large numbers of users find themselves on. If you can get a connection, it works great, but good luck getting that connection. Since other chat clients have figured this out, clearly iChat AV could be improved to handle most of these things which used to be considered "edge cases", too, but in several years, it has not yet been.
The concept of the solid ablative shield for this type of propulsion is probably too limiting. Once one of these physicists realizes that they can baste it with a layer of something else between blasts (water, or hydrogen, or mercury) the designs will improve. The challenge of building the physical shield is reduced, as it doesn't need to double as the fuel, and it won't matter so much it doesn't erode with perfect smoothness each pulse.
Switching to Mac could only be more expensive than switching from XP to Vista in some alternate universe where your time could be worth negative dollars. In that universe, Vista gets cheaper every day, then becomes free, and eventually pays you to use it, as you spend more and more time waiting on Vista, clicking on insipid "security" pop-ups to make really extra sure you want to install this virus, cleaning up after said virus, etc.
That is a very curious thing. Microsoft clearly spends a great deal of money on R&D. They also have some very talented developers. But they clearly have a seriously disfunctional bureaucracy, one hallmark of such is a tendency to react to problems like Vista as though they were "public relations" problems, rather than "product quality" problems. Frankly, I'm amazed at how long Microsoft has maintained this level of mediocrity. They are so big, have been at it so long, and have had essentially unlimited resources for so long that you would think, eventually, they would accidentally produce a low-suckage version of Windows at some point, if only by random chance.
Your theory on the troll mod is total bullshit. Most of us IT security guys here have been modded "Troll" so many times that we haven't seen mod points for years, and will never see them again, despite "Excellent" karma. Like every other troll mod here, very special idiot moderators with unlimited mod points are probably to blame, along with other random idiots who just happened to have a few mod points now and then.
Uhm, no, because the term "bricked" was invented to mean broken beyond repair, not good for anything but a paperweight, like, uhm, a brick. Why on earth did you keep talking after you got that far?
Thank you for standing up for semantic sanity. Every time I see the term "bricked" used at Slashdot, it's used incorrectly, and a discussion like this follows. I don't understand why this is so difficult for people to understand, because "bricked" is so very clearly self descriptive. It's like people are trying to sound "cool" or something. Perhaps this vignette will help folk remember:
"Oh, an inconvenient but recoverable problem has occurred with an electronic device! It must be bricked!
"Uhm... no. It's not. It's recoverable. And now you appear to be about as smart as a brick."
Nearly every company that suffers a breach like this tries to assure people about what the bad guy's didn't manage to steal. Don't believe it. Even if it might be true at the strict technical level, it's still not relevant to the analysis of the severity of this issue. The bad guys already have databases full of names and addresses which they will cross reference against the data they stole.
It's been hammered over the past few months by speculation on Job's health, and the general market downturn. It might be that investors figure that the value of Steve Jobs at the helm has already been squeezed out of the stock price. If it goes down further in the coming year, I expect that to be as a result of the general economy.
You are wrong on so many fronts. To start with, the Mac OS "licensing" deals that you refer to were licenses for what is now an ancient, Windows 95 era operating system that nobody gives a shit about today. Those "licenses" were put in place by idiots who didn't understand the market they were in. They were a huge mistake, and left in place the well documented cannibalism would have killed Apple. Steve Jobs saved the company by ending these agreements. Apple also bought at least one of those licensees out of their financial dilemma, Power Computing. All in all, damn few people have any reason to complain about that, and odds are, you're not one of them. Get over it.
And what is that crap about Intel Macs not running software from before 2004? That's just a lie, and you probably know it.
Additional bullshit correction is left as an exercise to the reader.
Well, this is actually an answer to a question asked by the Fortune 500. Even if they intended to write native clients for their custom apps, this sort of things gives them flexibility.
Hrm... tinfoil might not be good enough... might even be counter productive. The high energy particles that smack into something in the tin foil would probably generate a spray of secondary particles, all of which would be more likely to smack into something in your brain than the original particle (which would be more likely to pass right through your "me-jelly").
Well, some of my developers have built real stuff on all of the other mobile platforms. They all suck. Despite the issues with figuring out how to make money on it, the iPhone gets a whole lot of stuff right on the technology side. which makes it pretty exciting.
Uhm... "Flamebait" this was not. Using the exact same argument as its parent, applied on the flip side of the developer relationship (cost, rather than revenue) should have merited an Insightful mod. Alas, there is no "understands subtle arguments" requirement for moderators.
My company, illumineX, makes a blogging client for the iPhone, iBlogger. There are a dozen competitors, most of them are free. We charge $9.99. We are told that it's one of the most expensive apps on the store. We're also told that it's one of the most complex (blogging client apps are surprising complex, if they support more than one blog type). Many of our customers used most or all of the other applications, first, and were happy to pay for iBlogger, because they feel it's worth the price. Are we making enough money to justify the work that it took to make the app? Not even close. Are we going to lower the price? Well, one of our few competitors who charged money lowered their price for a month. It went back up. Why? I'm gonna guess that sales didn't go up much, and tech support costs went way, way up.
Apple's long term success may not depend on complex apps being available. If it does, however, then there are serious problems with the iTunes App Store market.
No, you have definitely got it wrong. Most of the iPhone developers I know are exactly the opposite of whiny. They are energetic, hard working, play by the Apple defined rules, and working really hard to justify their really expensive hobby of making cool software. They tend to do this because they have experience with lots of other technologies, and they like the Apple technologies better, they are more fun for developers, but they are, often, less profitable.
There are lots of issues with making complex apps under this pricing universe, and it's definitely a deterrent to making more interesting complex apps. People seek technical support for complex apps. If the app costs $0.99, and they ask you a single question about a problem they caused themselves, they have burned enough time to tank a whole day's worth of sales.
Another issue is that Apple doesn't provide software vendors with contact information for our customers, but does allow (and with iPhone OS 2.2 actively encourages) them to complain in the app store, under essentially anonymous handles, about issues that they caused themselves. For example, an app we make is highly praised by most users, but a few complain vociferously that it's "unstable" or "crashes a lot". Yes, in fact our QA tells us this is definitely true -- but only if you run it on a Jail Broken iPhone. Doh! So sorry you didn't contact us for support. So sorry you don't understand you shot your foot off and we neither gave you the gun nor pulled the trigger.
iTunes App Store is basically an ongoing experiment. It's not clear that third party software developers can devise a business model on it which will make a profit.
Slashdot Mirror
It's stunning that the MSIE share of the browser market fell by only 5.8 percent in 2008. This speaks to the power of the default browser setting, and the inertia in the user community. FireFox, Safari and Chrome together only managed to chip away 5.8%? If Microsoft put forth a less than entirely crappy effort, MSIE would probably stop losing ground at all.
This criticism is fair, albeit stated a bit hyperbolically (they are guilty from time to time, but it's not really their normal pattern). There definitely exist examples of things that have suffered mightily from lack of attention, after the initial promising release. iChat AV is one such. It's a great video chat client, except for it being nearly unusable, due to extremely poor handling of the network connections that large numbers of users find themselves on. If you can get a connection, it works great, but good luck getting that connection. Since other chat clients have figured this out, clearly iChat AV could be improved to handle most of these things which used to be considered "edge cases", too, but in several years, it has not yet been.
The concept of the solid ablative shield for this type of propulsion is probably too limiting. Once one of these physicists realizes that they can baste it with a layer of something else between blasts (water, or hydrogen, or mercury) the designs will improve. The challenge of building the physical shield is reduced, as it doesn't need to double as the fuel, and it won't matter so much it doesn't erode with perfect smoothness each pulse.
Switching to Mac could only be more expensive than switching from XP to Vista in some alternate universe where your time could be worth negative dollars. In that universe, Vista gets cheaper every day, then becomes free, and eventually pays you to use it, as you spend more and more time waiting on Vista, clicking on insipid "security" pop-ups to make really extra sure you want to install this virus, cleaning up after said virus, etc.
That is a very curious thing. Microsoft clearly spends a great deal of money on R&D. They also have some very talented developers. But they clearly have a seriously disfunctional bureaucracy, one hallmark of such is a tendency to react to problems like Vista as though they were "public relations" problems, rather than "product quality" problems. Frankly, I'm amazed at how long Microsoft has maintained this level of mediocrity. They are so big, have been at it so long, and have had essentially unlimited resources for so long that you would think, eventually, they would accidentally produce a low-suckage version of Windows at some point, if only by random chance.
Your theory on the troll mod is total bullshit. Most of us IT security guys here have been modded "Troll" so many times that we haven't seen mod points for years, and will never see them again, despite "Excellent" karma. Like every other troll mod here, very special idiot moderators with unlimited mod points are probably to blame, along with other random idiots who just happened to have a few mod points now and then.
Uhm, no. Your economic argument would also apply to most functional electronic devices more than 2 year old.
Uhm, no, because the term "bricked" was invented to mean broken beyond repair, not good for anything but a paperweight, like, uhm, a brick. Why on earth did you keep talking after you got that far?
Thank you for standing up for semantic sanity. Every time I see the term "bricked" used at Slashdot, it's used incorrectly, and a discussion like this follows. I don't understand why this is so difficult for people to understand, because "bricked" is so very clearly self descriptive. It's like people are trying to sound "cool" or something. Perhaps this vignette will help folk remember:
"Oh, an inconvenient but recoverable problem has occurred with an electronic device! It must be bricked!
"Uhm... no. It's not. It's recoverable. And now you appear to be about as smart as a brick."
Nearly every company that suffers a breach like this tries to assure people about what the bad guy's didn't manage to steal. Don't believe it. Even if it might be true at the strict technical level, it's still not relevant to the analysis of the severity of this issue. The bad guys already have databases full of names and addresses which they will cross reference against the data they stole.
How do you make a small fortune as an iPhone developer?
Start with a large one.
Mamoo dogface to teh banana patch.
It's been hammered over the past few months by speculation on Job's health, and the general market downturn. It might be that investors figure that the value of Steve Jobs at the helm has already been squeezed out of the stock price. If it goes down further in the coming year, I expect that to be as a result of the general economy.
Hrm... Apparently he hasn't lost anything really important! Woz hanging with self-proclaimed D-Lister Kathy Griffin
You are wrong on so many fronts. To start with, the Mac OS "licensing" deals that you refer to were licenses for what is now an ancient, Windows 95 era operating system that nobody gives a shit about today. Those "licenses" were put in place by idiots who didn't understand the market they were in. They were a huge mistake, and left in place the well documented cannibalism would have killed Apple. Steve Jobs saved the company by ending these agreements. Apple also bought at least one of those licensees out of their financial dilemma, Power Computing. All in all, damn few people have any reason to complain about that, and odds are, you're not one of them. Get over it.
And what is that crap about Intel Macs not running software from before 2004? That's just a lie, and you probably know it.
Additional bullshit correction is left as an exercise to the reader.
Well, this is actually an answer to a question asked by the Fortune 500. Even if they intended to write native clients for their custom apps, this sort of things gives them flexibility.
Like when you want to post to Slashdot, but all you have is a Nomad.
Hrm... tinfoil might not be good enough... might even be counter productive. The high energy particles that smack into something in the tin foil would probably generate a spray of secondary particles, all of which would be more likely to smack into something in your brain than the original particle (which would be more likely to pass right through your "me-jelly").
There. Fixed it for you.
Except that the thread originator was similarly arbitrary which was the whole point. Sarcasm is still dead.
Well, some of my developers have built real stuff on all of the other mobile platforms. They all suck. Despite the issues with figuring out how to make money on it, the iPhone gets a whole lot of stuff right on the technology side. which makes it pretty exciting.
Uhm... "Flamebait" this was not. Using the exact same argument as its parent, applied on the flip side of the developer relationship (cost, rather than revenue) should have merited an Insightful mod. Alas, there is no "understands subtle arguments" requirement for moderators.
My company, illumineX, makes a blogging client for the iPhone, iBlogger. There are a dozen competitors, most of them are free. We charge $9.99. We are told that it's one of the most expensive apps on the store. We're also told that it's one of the most complex (blogging client apps are surprising complex, if they support more than one blog type). Many of our customers used most or all of the other applications, first, and were happy to pay for iBlogger, because they feel it's worth the price. Are we making enough money to justify the work that it took to make the app? Not even close. Are we going to lower the price? Well, one of our few competitors who charged money lowered their price for a month. It went back up. Why? I'm gonna guess that sales didn't go up much, and tech support costs went way, way up.
Apple's long term success may not depend on complex apps being available. If it does, however, then there are serious problems with the iTunes App Store market.
No, you have definitely got it wrong. Most of the iPhone developers I know are exactly the opposite of whiny. They are energetic, hard working, play by the Apple defined rules, and working really hard to justify their really expensive hobby of making cool software. They tend to do this because they have experience with lots of other technologies, and they like the Apple technologies better, they are more fun for developers, but they are, often, less profitable.
There are lots of issues with making complex apps under this pricing universe, and it's definitely a deterrent to making more interesting complex apps. People seek technical support for complex apps. If the app costs $0.99, and they ask you a single question about a problem they caused themselves, they have burned enough time to tank a whole day's worth of sales.
Another issue is that Apple doesn't provide software vendors with contact information for our customers, but does allow (and with iPhone OS 2.2 actively encourages) them to complain in the app store, under essentially anonymous handles, about issues that they caused themselves. For example, an app we make is highly praised by most users, but a few complain vociferously that it's "unstable" or "crashes a lot". Yes, in fact our QA tells us this is definitely true -- but only if you run it on a Jail Broken iPhone. Doh! So sorry you didn't contact us for support. So sorry you don't understand you shot your foot off and we neither gave you the gun nor pulled the trigger.
iTunes App Store is basically an ongoing experiment. It's not clear that third party software developers can devise a business model on it which will make a profit.