I'm just glad I get my email through GMail (Google Apps actually). Those accounts get as much spam as any of my other accounts but almost none of it reaches my inbox which I can't say for any of the other email services/servers/programs I use. Very few false positives these days either.
Except Apple is gradually adding multitasking. OS 4 is getting much closer to a final solution. They're just taking the time to do it right. Even if the processor is multicore it's still not a 6 core Xeon so they can't just waste CPU time. Unlike most manufacturers they actually care about not pushing out a crap product with all the bells and whistles that won't actually work well.
I don't think it makes sense not to allow code translation to Obj-C though. I don't know how they can really enforce that anyway since the code can look just like any other code and compile just as well (if not better - thanks to good optimization by the translator).
It provides quality jobs to people that like to drug and abuse sheep of course! I think this is why we have a prison system though.. people convicted of child molestation, murder, and using Internet Explorer 6 should have to be test subjects for stuff like this.
Evolution is revolution. What I wouldn't pay to have all the other consumer junk I have done right. Having a design that I not only like on day one but am not cursing a year later, if the device hasn't died by then, is absolute revolution.
Why does the remote for my tv have weird buttons that don't do anything, some that do mysterious undocumented things, and others that are just wrong (one I had for a long time had the channel up/down buttons reversed in function)? Why does my car have cup holders under the dashboard where nobody in North America could fit any cup they bought on an actual roadtrip (hello McDonalds I'd like the 8oz soda.. it's all my car can handle) and constant replacement tires and a replacement of the ignition every other year (yes I know I shouldn't have bought a Ford)? I am so sick of everything I buy, regardless of price, being complete crap. I don't want stupid feature X - I just want the device to do what I need it to do and not suck or die on me. At least Apple does a good job of delivering on that usually. Not many other brands do consistantly.
I did get one a decade ago. It sucked. All the ones I've had running Windows or Linux sucked. I've considered a Mac-based one but I expect it'd suck. Why? Because desktop OSs are crap and are triple crap for a tablet. Also without good multitouch, small form factors, good battery life, and wireless tablets are crap.
If you've never noticed that EVERY desktop environment available is crap then you've obviously never used a computer or helped anyone else use a computer. iPhone OS is still pretty lacking but it's better than any version of Windows, Mac OS, KDE, Gnome, etc that I've used. I have seen some stabs at a netbook environment that were moving in the right direction too but they all were still more concept than reality. Keep the OS simple and let applications provide whatever level of complexity is needed to complete a given task. As iPhone, Android/Chrome, etc move towards a task/document centric approach instead of application centric and find the right middle ground for safe/easy versus flexible I think we'll all be a lot happier.
A modem is better than Wifi/3G? THANK GAWD I don't have to use those horrible devices anymore. If someone could just convince everyone to stop printing you'd have killed my pair of most hated devices.
I doubt there are more apps for WinCE than iPhone OS. My experience is WinCE typically doesn't run most Windows apps, or much of anything really. And writing apps for WinCE can be a real pain - at least as bad as developing for iPhone.
Both have syncing but iPhone can sync many files over the air with MobileMe, Air Sharing, etc. Doubt your modem can do that.
Multitasking is really overall a bad idea. Apple has gradually been adding it to iPhone OS in such a way as to keep it from totally screwing the pooch. For a few apps it's really justified but the vast majority it is just waste. Sounds as if Apple is getting it right. I doubt Microsoft did but I don't have any specifics on their implementation other than assuming it's normal WinCE.
640x480 is doable (not bad for back then really) but is certainly not better. Stylus driven is really not the same as a touch display. Even touch is nowhere as good as multitouch. My DS, video camera, still camera, and some older PDAs have stylus or single-touch and they really suck when your used to multitouch. Better than no touch though.
I'm not that impressed with that in 1998. I hand built a handheld computer at about that time that was smaller, had built in camera, mp3, and VoIP, local wireless and cellular wireless, and ran a full Linux OS. And I did that for a few hundred dollars as a stupid hobby project because I was annoyed at how limited my cell phone and PDA were. Again not as pimp as the iPhone but very close in concept. If Microsoft had been on the ball they should have brought us all a real iPhone-ish device a decade sooner.
Have you even used the App Store? It has thousands and thousands of free apps. And you can program your own apps pretty easily (could be a little better but helps protect the market from the spam Android gets).
I don't get book tablets. The reason my laptop isn't as good as a tablet is because it folds in the middle. Why take the worst feature of a laptop and put it into a tablet? If they do that they need to make it so you can use it in slate form when a book isn't a handy format but then they'll have extra bulk and weight for nothing. Doesn't really add up. Maybe make it so two slates can hook together to form a book that works in unison - that might have some uses.
I hope MS does have the sense to go the App Store route. It'll give customers a better experience. Is sure easier than managing a dozen DVDs, going to a dozen websites, and pulling a few things off random Flash drives to get your new computer setup. It would be cool if the App Store would let you save templates of what apps you have installed on different systems and re-install them on new systems all at once. Maybe the new enterprise tools will allow that.
There is certainly still room for improvement in the tablet market. While the iPad is pretty cool and is the closest yet to what I started working on making for myself so many years ago it's still far from perfect. I think eventually we'll see a merge between these lightweight desktops and what we think of desktop operating systems today to get something less restricted but easier and safer to use that will take over both markets (effectively remerging them). I think Chrome OS's idea of apps running in the cloud will get merged in there somewhat too although I tend to think the app will be on the device but heavy processes will run on the cloud when it's available to speed things up.
Still interesting that Microsoft played with the concept back then. To bad they never really took it all the way.
You could improve the system by letting people bet on their locality rather than a large area. Even with crude data there is a lot of correlation with previous patterns people have watched over time and learned to recognize without being able to clearly define. Would be interesting to tweak the system to recognize people that are more accurate and weight their predictions higher.
I think combining one or more expert systems with the crowd can produce more interesting results. Single systems rarely accurately model a problem any better than a single person does but by polling many expert systems, as well as people, you can get a more accurate result.
I can't really agree fully that more education makes people better decision makers. I think educated people tend to suffer from underestimating the value of their opinion and from thinking other people will be reasonable. The majority of the educated people I know really think that if you're nice to people they'll be nice back - no wonder geeks get beat up so much in school.
I replaced Al Gore with a small script program and nobody noticed. I was going to replace Rush Limbaugh but I haven't yet figured out how to push that much spam through a pipe without exceeding my system resources.
If your job is THAT involved I might have to break out something more advanced than Bash.
If it's my own project that I'm interested in and I have no outside distractions or pressing concerns I can program 20 hours a day but when it's work or I have a kid climbing over me or a wife that keeps wanting me to come out of my cave then it's a lot harder. I especially find deciphering other people's bad code and documentation draining but if I'm doing something really hard like designing a prediction system to suggest what products customers will buy based on random factors such as time of year, time of day, weather, what site they came from, etc THAT will keep me involved for quite a while (statistics, neural nets, and genetic programming all in one - fun!). I'd rather sit and figure something tricky out and bash out code than play video games or watch tv any day.
I keep thinking I need to schedule a week every couple of months where I just get a hotel room somewhere by myself, turn off the phone, email, im, and Slashdot/Facebook/etc and just write code the way I used to before I had a family and an on-call job. It was those sessions of intense coding where I came up with the best stuff. It's damn hard to do when you're coding in thirty minute blocks.
I tried a couple sites it completely mangled too. I think the most noticeable problem is that it just tries to render CSS as if the sites were all made for a small screen. Might be an okay long term expectation but today it sucks. As long as developers are to busy to check on small screens it'll keep sucking. It's better to do like Safari and render a normal sized screen and scale it down and allow zoom.
If Adobe wins I'll sue them for damaging my device. Let them fix their product first and then maybe they can be included. I should sue them anyway for damaging my computer.
There is no difference between data and code. Data tells a program to perform some function based on information it receives. Code tells a program to perform some function based on information it receives. You've obviously not been coding long if you really thing there is a difference between code and data. 1's and 0's are 1's and 0's.
I think your boilerplate code is bullshit. Most apps are written with common libraries. That would appear the same as code translated from another language. Are they going to tell us we can't use code libraries next?
I've used a lot worse languages than Obj-C. It's not a very user-friendly language though. The iPhone version doesn't even offer garbage collection. It's ridiculous for programmers to have to manage their own memory to that level still. THIS single issue is probably the number one reason iPhone programs often suck. At least it isn't as pointer crazed as C++. In the vast majority of code there is no reason why programmers need to deal with memory or pointers themselves and often it just leads to problems even for coders that know how to handle them. They should offer a higher level language for writing the majority of code in with the ability to tap into Obj-C, C, C++ for just the parts really needed. That's common programming practice for anybody who doesn't have their head up their ass.
There are a lot of badly written programs available for the iPhone that are written 100% in Objective-C. These rules are not resulting in a better user experience and therefore are not good for the platform. I'm all for singling out bad programs and getting rid of them but this isn't the way.
I think the perfect Apple product would be beautiful and designed to be closed but easy to unlock. The iPhone's seemingly easily jailbroken security is close but their developer restrictions are sometimes ridiculous.
First not allowing interpreted code. WTF does that mean? It's not okay to embed Prolog in your program but you can use HTML, SQL, Javascript, and XML? What about Java bytecode? What about objects that are highly configurable to the point where they are basically scripted? What if I store a game level as a bitmap the user can edit? Very fuzzy ground with little point.
Now this whole not allowing code written in another language to be translated into Objective-C? So long as the code is valid Obj-C how would they know? How is it different than hand translated code? Is hand translated code okay? Why? This is a completely stupid rule. If they are just seeking to avoid slow/suck code why don't they test the app during the review process instead of making stupid rules? I don't want Flash on the iPhone/iTouch/iPad because Flash sucks. If they can translate it into Obj-C that doesn't have the issues Flash usually has then I'm all for it. Why get in a pissing match with Adobe over the issue. Why force people to use suck-ass Objective-C. Again how is this different than if I make a program that has an engine that lets you declare and configure objects from saved settings (say in a db or XML) and then initialize the Obj-C objects in the engine from those at runtime? (I've actually done that - seems pretty normal not to hardcode such things.)
Making rules that go against common programming practice that are very close to unenforceable is just stupid.
We should all save our pennies and go buy their company out and free the network. Turn it into a co-op or something. I wonder how many people it'd take to make a substantial hostile takeover effort. Seems like a 1 billion dollar company could be taken control of by a million 'freedom fighters' at $500 each investment. Just have to take a bit over half to have control right? Maybe get a few companies, such as Google, to chip in on the effort and we could get that million number down to something a little more plausible. Get 250,000 to invest $1000 each and get some friendly companies to match our effort? I'd buy $1000 in stock in a chosen company to help force it to do what I wanted. More if it didn't have to be done all at once although it seems a sudden grab would work better than a gradual grab so we don't cause the value to go up.
I agree with the need for a camera and user accounts (or at least access levels). The later is an absolute must if they want it to seriously be considered for schools. The weight doesn't bother me but I frequently use my 4.7lb MacBook as a handheld. The big difference IMO is that it's a slate which makes it easier to manage. Typing I think will be a situation similar to the iPhone where people that don't use it often find it awkward but those that use it all the time develop muscle memory and can type almost as fast as on a normal keyboard. For example, email on my iPhone is my preferred mail client. I manage a dozen email accounts and several hundred messages a day on my iPhone. I'm not sure I'll switch to the iPad for this use because I like how minimal it is on the iPhone. Likewise I like to do Facebook more on my iPhone than on my laptop. I mostly use email and Facebook for chat so I rarely feel the need for another chat client but it would be nice to see added. Chat is one of those few things that really makes sense to really run in the background and be accessible while in other apps so that's another good reason for Apple to supply it. I think multitasking is overrated (when apps correctly start/stop instantly) but for music and chat it is a good idea. For me, very much a power user, I have few limitations with the iPad because I can remotely connect to my server and do everything else I need. It would be awesome if Apple offered this as a built-in app. It'd be a really cool if in addition to connecting to your own computer you could have desktops stored in a cloud somewhere. I could see Amazon offering such an app if Apple doesn't.
One thing I'd like to point out about the iPad (and even my MacBook) is heat. Every decent PC laptop I've had has been a portable thermo nuclear heat source with noisy fans that are almost always foolishly placed on the bottom where they choke when you sit the laptop on a soft location like your couch, bed, or lap (and frequently burn the later). The iPad does not have this problem.
To me it's okay that for some tasks my iPhone is best, others my iPad, others my MacBook, and still others my iMac. The biggest annoyance to me, so far, is I haven't found a bag that can carry a MacBook, a Windows laptop, an iPad, and a crap load of cables, tools, and spare parts without looking like a suitcase or having wheels. Maybe I'm a big guy and just don't think of all this as much to carry but I'd like something more like a large briefcase to put it in. I'm okay with carrying around 50-100lbs of equipment in one hand while I cart around my kid in the other. (Possibly this is why the 1.5lb weight seems like nothing to me.)
Re:Still not worth purchasing
on
iPad Jailbroken
·
· Score: 1
The eee PC isn't a bad platform but it's intended use and audience is nothing near the same as the iPad. THIS is why all the geeks decrying the iPad just don't get it. THIS is why most geeks can be technically good at building systems and writing software but still keep churning out crap - because they don't understand end-users. The touchscreen, accelerometer, non-PC OS, etc is exactly why the iPad is better than the eee PC.
Re:Still not worth purchasing
on
iPad Jailbroken
·
· Score: 1
Name one other tablet that has as good of hardware specs and an environment that is as easy to use for the normal consumer. Linux -- umm no, Windows -- worse, Mac OS -- nope still a crappy PC OS, Sugar -- haha horrible, Android -- promising but no. I've used, and programmed for, most platforms including mobile platforms. They don't compare. If you're only standard is the 'freedom' of your platform then you can just boot up a 30lb clunker with a 10 minute battery life and boot FreeDOS I guess.
You can have a fully unlocked Windows installation and it's still useless for doing much of anything. A web browser that doesn't work, no Unix subsystems or shell, etc. It barely counts as a computer. It's little more than an over-complicated and buggy game console. At least the iPad does what it's meant to do.
I'd be happy if they added the camera and dropped the price before Christmas. I'll probably want to give them as Christmas gifts and would upgrade mine for the camera if the price was right.
SSD drives still aren't cheap. I recently bought an 128GB SSD drive for my laptop and it was $350. Sounds as if Apple is stressing the market right now by buying everything up for the iPad. I'd guess seeing lower prices and high capacities will depend on the SSD manufacturers being able to crank up to handle the demand. Everyone moaning and groaning about how horrible the iPad is should be thankful that it'll make SSD cheaper faster (after causing the prices to go up for a short while). There is no excuse for a mobile device having a platter based drive anymore.
Have you used a PC tablet? They suck!
on
iPad Jailbroken
·
· Score: 1
If you got a normal tablet or computer it'd suck. If I wanted that I could have, and did, buy it a decade ago. If Microsoft locked up the platform it'd be unbearable because the default platform would be so poorly designed, buggy, and lacking of basic functionality. You'd still be able to get a virus but you wouldn't be able to remove it.
The only reason to jailbreak the iPad IMO is to do connection sharing. I'd imagine the restrictions on THAT exist so that AT&T and others are willing to give such cheap data plans.
My PC is more often than not just a thin client. I do most my work on my servers. A mere 4GB of RAM is to wimpy for real work. I'd say I'm out of Wifi coverage maybe an hour or two a day while driving and at the store. I'm almost never out of 3G coverage.
If you need a warranty then you can't handle installing and running random apps. The poor sucker stuck supporting you doesn't want to deal with your mess either.
I've been a registered iPhone developer and I could compile and run whatever I wanted on something like 50 devices. While I agree it'd be nice not to have to pay to be an iPhone developer $100/year is hardly an issue. You spend far more than that trying to purchase the tools and education needed to be a decent Microsoft developer (yes I know they offer some crap free tools). The biggest limitation is truly that you have to own a Mac or at least have access to a Mac. You can buy a Dell Mini for <$300 and install MacOS, which the last version cost $30 or is easy to download from Torrent, though or many other PCs will run MacOS so it's not as bad as it could be. THAT is the most annoying part of being an iPhone developer IMO though.
As I said you don't have to go to Apple to get what you want. You can do whatever you want if you're willing to take full responsibility for your own actions, voiding your warranty, and are smart enough to follow a simple HOWTO guide. May as well blame Apple for selling scissors and trying to get you to put them in a safety case before running with them.
I blame the do-whatever-the-fsck-you-want attitude of the PC market for why consumers have such a bad experience. Example: Most Windows issues ARE the fault of the user or because their cheap ass hardware craps out. Microsoft does nothing to require hardware to be of good quality or to keep users from getting themselves in trouble. Therefore most people think Windows sucks even if they are to lazy/cheap to switch to a Mac or Linux (which both also suck BTW - just less). Windows does suck but the vast majority of it's problems aren't really it's problems. I think requiring a license to access a computer or the Internet would be going to far but a simple safety isn't a bad idea. I like it on my rifle too.
If you don't mind shifting through lots of crap. I think an ideal solution would be to have reviewed, and approved, apps as the default with an option to see everything. Like turning off filtering in Google Image Search.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just glad I get my email through GMail (Google Apps actually). Those accounts get as much spam as any of my other accounts but almost none of it reaches my inbox which I can't say for any of the other email services/servers/programs I use. Very few false positives these days either.
Except Apple is gradually adding multitasking. OS 4 is getting much closer to a final solution. They're just taking the time to do it right. Even if the processor is multicore it's still not a 6 core Xeon so they can't just waste CPU time. Unlike most manufacturers they actually care about not pushing out a crap product with all the bells and whistles that won't actually work well.
I don't think it makes sense not to allow code translation to Obj-C though. I don't know how they can really enforce that anyway since the code can look just like any other code and compile just as well (if not better - thanks to good optimization by the translator).
It provides quality jobs to people that like to drug and abuse sheep of course! I think this is why we have a prison system though.. people convicted of child molestation, murder, and using Internet Explorer 6 should have to be test subjects for stuff like this.
Evolution is revolution. What I wouldn't pay to have all the other consumer junk I have done right. Having a design that I not only like on day one but am not cursing a year later, if the device hasn't died by then, is absolute revolution.
Why does the remote for my tv have weird buttons that don't do anything, some that do mysterious undocumented things, and others that are just wrong (one I had for a long time had the channel up/down buttons reversed in function)? Why does my car have cup holders under the dashboard where nobody in North America could fit any cup they bought on an actual roadtrip (hello McDonalds I'd like the 8oz soda.. it's all my car can handle) and constant replacement tires and a replacement of the ignition every other year (yes I know I shouldn't have bought a Ford)? I am so sick of everything I buy, regardless of price, being complete crap. I don't want stupid feature X - I just want the device to do what I need it to do and not suck or die on me. At least Apple does a good job of delivering on that usually. Not many other brands do consistantly.
I did get one a decade ago. It sucked. All the ones I've had running Windows or Linux sucked. I've considered a Mac-based one but I expect it'd suck. Why? Because desktop OSs are crap and are triple crap for a tablet. Also without good multitouch, small form factors, good battery life, and wireless tablets are crap.
If you've never noticed that EVERY desktop environment available is crap then you've obviously never used a computer or helped anyone else use a computer. iPhone OS is still pretty lacking but it's better than any version of Windows, Mac OS, KDE, Gnome, etc that I've used. I have seen some stabs at a netbook environment that were moving in the right direction too but they all were still more concept than reality. Keep the OS simple and let applications provide whatever level of complexity is needed to complete a given task. As iPhone, Android/Chrome, etc move towards a task/document centric approach instead of application centric and find the right middle ground for safe/easy versus flexible I think we'll all be a lot happier.
Who says you can't use freeware apps? Why do you go bitching about things you've obviously not even used. You don't have to charge for App Store apps.
A modem is better than Wifi/3G? THANK GAWD I don't have to use those horrible devices anymore. If someone could just convince everyone to stop printing you'd have killed my pair of most hated devices.
I doubt there are more apps for WinCE than iPhone OS. My experience is WinCE typically doesn't run most Windows apps, or much of anything really. And writing apps for WinCE can be a real pain - at least as bad as developing for iPhone.
Both have syncing but iPhone can sync many files over the air with MobileMe, Air Sharing, etc. Doubt your modem can do that.
Multitasking is really overall a bad idea. Apple has gradually been adding it to iPhone OS in such a way as to keep it from totally screwing the pooch. For a few apps it's really justified but the vast majority it is just waste. Sounds as if Apple is getting it right. I doubt Microsoft did but I don't have any specifics on their implementation other than assuming it's normal WinCE.
640x480 is doable (not bad for back then really) but is certainly not better. Stylus driven is really not the same as a touch display. Even touch is nowhere as good as multitouch. My DS, video camera, still camera, and some older PDAs have stylus or single-touch and they really suck when your used to multitouch. Better than no touch though.
I'm not that impressed with that in 1998. I hand built a handheld computer at about that time that was smaller, had built in camera, mp3, and VoIP, local wireless and cellular wireless, and ran a full Linux OS. And I did that for a few hundred dollars as a stupid hobby project because I was annoyed at how limited my cell phone and PDA were. Again not as pimp as the iPhone but very close in concept. If Microsoft had been on the ball they should have brought us all a real iPhone-ish device a decade sooner.
Have you even used the App Store? It has thousands and thousands of free apps. And you can program your own apps pretty easily (could be a little better but helps protect the market from the spam Android gets).
I don't get book tablets. The reason my laptop isn't as good as a tablet is because it folds in the middle. Why take the worst feature of a laptop and put it into a tablet? If they do that they need to make it so you can use it in slate form when a book isn't a handy format but then they'll have extra bulk and weight for nothing. Doesn't really add up. Maybe make it so two slates can hook together to form a book that works in unison - that might have some uses.
I hope MS does have the sense to go the App Store route. It'll give customers a better experience. Is sure easier than managing a dozen DVDs, going to a dozen websites, and pulling a few things off random Flash drives to get your new computer setup. It would be cool if the App Store would let you save templates of what apps you have installed on different systems and re-install them on new systems all at once. Maybe the new enterprise tools will allow that.
There is certainly still room for improvement in the tablet market. While the iPad is pretty cool and is the closest yet to what I started working on making for myself so many years ago it's still far from perfect. I think eventually we'll see a merge between these lightweight desktops and what we think of desktop operating systems today to get something less restricted but easier and safer to use that will take over both markets (effectively remerging them). I think Chrome OS's idea of apps running in the cloud will get merged in there somewhat too although I tend to think the app will be on the device but heavy processes will run on the cloud when it's available to speed things up.
Still interesting that Microsoft played with the concept back then. To bad they never really took it all the way.
You could improve the system by letting people bet on their locality rather than a large area. Even with crude data there is a lot of correlation with previous patterns people have watched over time and learned to recognize without being able to clearly define. Would be interesting to tweak the system to recognize people that are more accurate and weight their predictions higher.
I think combining one or more expert systems with the crowd can produce more interesting results. Single systems rarely accurately model a problem any better than a single person does but by polling many expert systems, as well as people, you can get a more accurate result.
I can't really agree fully that more education makes people better decision makers. I think educated people tend to suffer from underestimating the value of their opinion and from thinking other people will be reasonable. The majority of the educated people I know really think that if you're nice to people they'll be nice back - no wonder geeks get beat up so much in school.
I replaced Al Gore with a small script program and nobody noticed. I was going to replace Rush Limbaugh but I haven't yet figured out how to push that much spam through a pipe without exceeding my system resources.
If your job is THAT involved I might have to break out something more advanced than Bash.
If it's my own project that I'm interested in and I have no outside distractions or pressing concerns I can program 20 hours a day but when it's work or I have a kid climbing over me or a wife that keeps wanting me to come out of my cave then it's a lot harder. I especially find deciphering other people's bad code and documentation draining but if I'm doing something really hard like designing a prediction system to suggest what products customers will buy based on random factors such as time of year, time of day, weather, what site they came from, etc THAT will keep me involved for quite a while (statistics, neural nets, and genetic programming all in one - fun!). I'd rather sit and figure something tricky out and bash out code than play video games or watch tv any day.
I keep thinking I need to schedule a week every couple of months where I just get a hotel room somewhere by myself, turn off the phone, email, im, and Slashdot/Facebook/etc and just write code the way I used to before I had a family and an on-call job. It was those sessions of intense coding where I came up with the best stuff. It's damn hard to do when you're coding in thirty minute blocks.
I tried a couple sites it completely mangled too. I think the most noticeable problem is that it just tries to render CSS as if the sites were all made for a small screen. Might be an okay long term expectation but today it sucks. As long as developers are to busy to check on small screens it'll keep sucking. It's better to do like Safari and render a normal sized screen and scale it down and allow zoom.
If Adobe wins I'll sue them for damaging my device. Let them fix their product first and then maybe they can be included. I should sue them anyway for damaging my computer.
There is no difference between data and code. Data tells a program to perform some function based on information it receives. Code tells a program to perform some function based on information it receives. You've obviously not been coding long if you really thing there is a difference between code and data. 1's and 0's are 1's and 0's.
I think your boilerplate code is bullshit. Most apps are written with common libraries. That would appear the same as code translated from another language. Are they going to tell us we can't use code libraries next?
I've used a lot worse languages than Obj-C. It's not a very user-friendly language though. The iPhone version doesn't even offer garbage collection. It's ridiculous for programmers to have to manage their own memory to that level still. THIS single issue is probably the number one reason iPhone programs often suck. At least it isn't as pointer crazed as C++. In the vast majority of code there is no reason why programmers need to deal with memory or pointers themselves and often it just leads to problems even for coders that know how to handle them. They should offer a higher level language for writing the majority of code in with the ability to tap into Obj-C, C, C++ for just the parts really needed. That's common programming practice for anybody who doesn't have their head up their ass.
There are a lot of badly written programs available for the iPhone that are written 100% in Objective-C. These rules are not resulting in a better user experience and therefore are not good for the platform. I'm all for singling out bad programs and getting rid of them but this isn't the way.
I think the perfect Apple product would be beautiful and designed to be closed but easy to unlock. The iPhone's seemingly easily jailbroken security is close but their developer restrictions are sometimes ridiculous.
First not allowing interpreted code. WTF does that mean? It's not okay to embed Prolog in your program but you can use HTML, SQL, Javascript, and XML? What about Java bytecode? What about objects that are highly configurable to the point where they are basically scripted? What if I store a game level as a bitmap the user can edit? Very fuzzy ground with little point.
Now this whole not allowing code written in another language to be translated into Objective-C? So long as the code is valid Obj-C how would they know? How is it different than hand translated code? Is hand translated code okay? Why? This is a completely stupid rule. If they are just seeking to avoid slow/suck code why don't they test the app during the review process instead of making stupid rules? I don't want Flash on the iPhone/iTouch/iPad because Flash sucks. If they can translate it into Obj-C that doesn't have the issues Flash usually has then I'm all for it. Why get in a pissing match with Adobe over the issue. Why force people to use suck-ass Objective-C. Again how is this different than if I make a program that has an engine that lets you declare and configure objects from saved settings (say in a db or XML) and then initialize the Obj-C objects in the engine from those at runtime? (I've actually done that - seems pretty normal not to hardcode such things.)
Making rules that go against common programming practice that are very close to unenforceable is just stupid.
We should all save our pennies and go buy their company out and free the network. Turn it into a co-op or something. I wonder how many people it'd take to make a substantial hostile takeover effort. Seems like a 1 billion dollar company could be taken control of by a million 'freedom fighters' at $500 each investment. Just have to take a bit over half to have control right? Maybe get a few companies, such as Google, to chip in on the effort and we could get that million number down to something a little more plausible. Get 250,000 to invest $1000 each and get some friendly companies to match our effort? I'd buy $1000 in stock in a chosen company to help force it to do what I wanted. More if it didn't have to be done all at once although it seems a sudden grab would work better than a gradual grab so we don't cause the value to go up.
I agree with the need for a camera and user accounts (or at least access levels). The later is an absolute must if they want it to seriously be considered for schools. The weight doesn't bother me but I frequently use my 4.7lb MacBook as a handheld. The big difference IMO is that it's a slate which makes it easier to manage. Typing I think will be a situation similar to the iPhone where people that don't use it often find it awkward but those that use it all the time develop muscle memory and can type almost as fast as on a normal keyboard. For example, email on my iPhone is my preferred mail client. I manage a dozen email accounts and several hundred messages a day on my iPhone. I'm not sure I'll switch to the iPad for this use because I like how minimal it is on the iPhone. Likewise I like to do Facebook more on my iPhone than on my laptop. I mostly use email and Facebook for chat so I rarely feel the need for another chat client but it would be nice to see added. Chat is one of those few things that really makes sense to really run in the background and be accessible while in other apps so that's another good reason for Apple to supply it. I think multitasking is overrated (when apps correctly start/stop instantly) but for music and chat it is a good idea. For me, very much a power user, I have few limitations with the iPad because I can remotely connect to my server and do everything else I need. It would be awesome if Apple offered this as a built-in app. It'd be a really cool if in addition to connecting to your own computer you could have desktops stored in a cloud somewhere. I could see Amazon offering such an app if Apple doesn't.
One thing I'd like to point out about the iPad (and even my MacBook) is heat. Every decent PC laptop I've had has been a portable thermo nuclear heat source with noisy fans that are almost always foolishly placed on the bottom where they choke when you sit the laptop on a soft location like your couch, bed, or lap (and frequently burn the later). The iPad does not have this problem.
To me it's okay that for some tasks my iPhone is best, others my iPad, others my MacBook, and still others my iMac. The biggest annoyance to me, so far, is I haven't found a bag that can carry a MacBook, a Windows laptop, an iPad, and a crap load of cables, tools, and spare parts without looking like a suitcase or having wheels. Maybe I'm a big guy and just don't think of all this as much to carry but I'd like something more like a large briefcase to put it in. I'm okay with carrying around 50-100lbs of equipment in one hand while I cart around my kid in the other. (Possibly this is why the 1.5lb weight seems like nothing to me.)
The eee PC isn't a bad platform but it's intended use and audience is nothing near the same as the iPad. THIS is why all the geeks decrying the iPad just don't get it. THIS is why most geeks can be technically good at building systems and writing software but still keep churning out crap - because they don't understand end-users. The touchscreen, accelerometer, non-PC OS, etc is exactly why the iPad is better than the eee PC.
Name one other tablet that has as good of hardware specs and an environment that is as easy to use for the normal consumer. Linux -- umm no, Windows -- worse, Mac OS -- nope still a crappy PC OS, Sugar -- haha horrible, Android -- promising but no. I've used, and programmed for, most platforms including mobile platforms. They don't compare. If you're only standard is the 'freedom' of your platform then you can just boot up a 30lb clunker with a 10 minute battery life and boot FreeDOS I guess.
You can have a fully unlocked Windows installation and it's still useless for doing much of anything. A web browser that doesn't work, no Unix subsystems or shell, etc. It barely counts as a computer. It's little more than an over-complicated and buggy game console. At least the iPad does what it's meant to do.
I'd be happy if they added the camera and dropped the price before Christmas. I'll probably want to give them as Christmas gifts and would upgrade mine for the camera if the price was right.
SSD drives still aren't cheap. I recently bought an 128GB SSD drive for my laptop and it was $350. Sounds as if Apple is stressing the market right now by buying everything up for the iPad. I'd guess seeing lower prices and high capacities will depend on the SSD manufacturers being able to crank up to handle the demand. Everyone moaning and groaning about how horrible the iPad is should be thankful that it'll make SSD cheaper faster (after causing the prices to go up for a short while). There is no excuse for a mobile device having a platter based drive anymore.
If you got a normal tablet or computer it'd suck. If I wanted that I could have, and did, buy it a decade ago. If Microsoft locked up the platform it'd be unbearable because the default platform would be so poorly designed, buggy, and lacking of basic functionality. You'd still be able to get a virus but you wouldn't be able to remove it.
The only reason to jailbreak the iPad IMO is to do connection sharing. I'd imagine the restrictions on THAT exist so that AT&T and others are willing to give such cheap data plans.
That's what I'll do. If they want to charge me $14.99 then I better get the hardback thrown int oo.
My PC is more often than not just a thin client. I do most my work on my servers. A mere 4GB of RAM is to wimpy for real work. I'd say I'm out of Wifi coverage maybe an hour or two a day while driving and at the store. I'm almost never out of 3G coverage.
If you need a warranty then you can't handle installing and running random apps. The poor sucker stuck supporting you doesn't want to deal with your mess either.
I've been a registered iPhone developer and I could compile and run whatever I wanted on something like 50 devices. While I agree it'd be nice not to have to pay to be an iPhone developer $100/year is hardly an issue. You spend far more than that trying to purchase the tools and education needed to be a decent Microsoft developer (yes I know they offer some crap free tools). The biggest limitation is truly that you have to own a Mac or at least have access to a Mac. You can buy a Dell Mini for <$300 and install MacOS, which the last version cost $30 or is easy to download from Torrent, though or many other PCs will run MacOS so it's not as bad as it could be. THAT is the most annoying part of being an iPhone developer IMO though.
As I said you don't have to go to Apple to get what you want. You can do whatever you want if you're willing to take full responsibility for your own actions, voiding your warranty, and are smart enough to follow a simple HOWTO guide. May as well blame Apple for selling scissors and trying to get you to put them in a safety case before running with them.
I blame the do-whatever-the-fsck-you-want attitude of the PC market for why consumers have such a bad experience. Example: Most Windows issues ARE the fault of the user or because their cheap ass hardware craps out. Microsoft does nothing to require hardware to be of good quality or to keep users from getting themselves in trouble. Therefore most people think Windows sucks even if they are to lazy/cheap to switch to a Mac or Linux (which both also suck BTW - just less). Windows does suck but the vast majority of it's problems aren't really it's problems. I think requiring a license to access a computer or the Internet would be going to far but a simple safety isn't a bad idea. I like it on my rifle too.
If you don't mind shifting through lots of crap. I think an ideal solution would be to have reviewed, and approved, apps as the default with an option to see everything. Like turning off filtering in Google Image Search.