You're just demonstrating your ignorance. You do realize that even getting to this stage is a feat in engineering, right? Or that playing a musical instrument is a highly complex motor skill, and that you were just shown an artificial intelligence that can do it, right? Your metric is completely unrealistic - have you ever tried playing violin? It's not easy. The metric should be how much *better* it is than an unskilled player, rather than how much *worse* it is than a skilled player.
Expecting them to have something more polished is like saying "Meh, people went to the moon. I expected them to go to Mars."
I would actually lump them in with "this point in history." I'm certainly not saying that this is the first time it's happened, but you don't have to be first to be considered a pioneer.
... and suddenly you miss the whole point of doing it.
Yes. Choirs have been singing together for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Name one other point in history where a whole amateur choir can sing together, from their own homes, without ever being in the same physical space as one another.
This isn't about expediency. It's about exploring a new medium. You might not get that, if you work at the level of switches & cabling, but what we're creating out of these mundane realities is a whole new way of working together. It's like Gutenberg, looking at the printing press and saying "Yay for stamping ink. You could have just gone down to the local monastery and gotten the monks to copy it."
First, the vast majority of recent truly innovative small-form-factor or two-dimensional games are primarily flash games, possibly with ports to mobile platforms like the iPhone. Yes, the best such games are often rewritten for the iPhone, but..
I don't know if you've noticed this, but "the vast majority" of recent, innovative games are on Apple App Store. Show me one recent innovative game in Flash, and I'll show you 5 in the App Store. That number will go up, not down. Apple is now a bigger handheld game platform than Nintendo.
As for the older games, they're either a) outdated and not worth playing at all; b) outdated and worth playing for nostalgia, or c) outdated but still enjoyable. In the first case, you're not missing anything, and I would say that's where the vast majority of the games are. The second and third, you'll likely either get someone making a clone of it (if that's legal) or you'll get the developers to back-port it to monetize a popular game. It's been done for Myst and a few other titles. And you don't need to mess around with emulators.
Finally: What? You're comparing an iPod/iPhone/iPad to a console? We're looking at handheld games. Smallish titles that people play when they're waiting for the bus, or in a doctor's office. Railing on the iThings because they'll never have the graphics capability of a full console is just ridiculous. Of course they won't. It doesn't meant that there isn't a market for those games. In fact, the market for those games is probably much, much larger than that for "strong titles" on a console. These small games are available in the "Entertainment" section of the App Store, which is what Jobs means by "Entertainment Titles."
Apple's track record with Java--from having 1.6 appear years late, to dropping 32 bit support, to insisting on packaging it themselves--seems to strongly indicate that they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to cross-platform compatibility.
First: It was Sun that decided (up until recently) that they wouldn't open-source Java. (I still don't know if all of it is open source...) If they had, then users could compile it themselves, with the options they want.
Second, Apple wanted to make sure that the crappy Swing interfaces in most Java apps at least looked somewhat native.
And finally, when Apple takes away the ability to cross-compile most Linux/UNIX packages, usually with just a few modifications, then you can whine about cross-platform compatibility.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but how would they map the SSID to you? All they know is that in this area, someone somewhere has a router with a SSID of "X." (And, if you're anything like my neighbours, half of those are named "linksys.")
You only need to look up Vioxx to see why your idea is a Very Bad One.
You can't trust drug companies to completely list the side effects. They invest millions of dollars in a drug, and thus have a vested interest to turn it around and make money off it. Your "informed choice" might be a glossy brochure printed by the manufacturer. They might not even know that there are serious side effects, but you can be damn sure that if there are, they'll be left holding the bag and sued every which way to Sunday. And although you might be able to read a full clinical report, many other people cannot. They just know that they're desperate for a cure, and that someone is saying that Drug X "has potential." That's exploitation.
You seem to think that the Government has some sort of malicious intent, slowing down drug approvals. They don't. What they do want to do is make sure that the drug does what the manufacturer says it does. In that way, they function more as an independent verification lab, which is always a good thing. Science relies on repeatability. If the FDA can't show evidence that the drug does what it's supposed to do, it shouldn't make it to the market.
When I was living in the UK there always seemed to be some kid on TV looking for money to pay for them to fly to America to get treatment which they couldn't get under the rationed socialist NHS.
How strange. When I turn on the television, there always seems to be some American family who lost their house, had to declare bankruptcy and move in with friends or family after their greedy, captialist insurance provider dropped them because of a "pre-existing medical condition."
The reason people don't want a tablet, especially the iPad, is because it doesn't do anything special.
Hm. Ok, I'll buy it. Tablets are usually more expensive laptops, that run full operating systems and are operated by a clumsy UI. You don't gain anything. Well, except the iPad. It's running a special tablet-oriented version of OS X. But you're right... you don't really get more functionality from the iPad than a laptop or even a netbook.
It's pretty much the same "throw existing apps on something without a keyboard and call it a tablet" that everyone else has tried.
Again, I agree... MS Office would be especially painful if all you could use with it is a stylus. But the iPad will specifically *not* be using existing apps. In fact, they made a completely new version of iWork to run on the iPad...
That's not how the iPod and iPhone were successful. It's not how smartphones became successful in general, or even how netbooks became successful. If you want to make a real tablet, you've got to have a focused, tablet-oriented system, and a pervasive tablet UI.
I'm sorry. Do you even know what an iPad is? It pretty much is a "real tablet" with a "focused, tablet-oriented system" and a "pervasive tablet UI". At least, it's the closest thing we've come to in the mainstream market.
You seem to be arguing that the people who don't want a tablet don't want it because it has clunky, non-tablet software. But even tablets that *do* have tablet-oriented software and a tablet-specific UI are doomed to failure because they don't have clunky, non-tablet software. Umm....
You won't get an argument from me - a laptop will definitely do "more."
The iPad isn't built to do more. In fact, it's almost explicitly designed to do less. I predict it will be a big hit for the people that don't need to do more, but rather do the same thing every day with their computer: read their e-mail, check a few webpages, maybe look at some pictures or watch a movie. About the only thing I can think of that the iPad would do better than a laptop is for reading books.
Truth is, most people don't need their computers to do more. They just want it to do the things they understand, which is often a very limited subset of tasks.
Short of FairPlay DRM, which they no longer include on files in the iTunes Music Store, what proprietary audio formats does Apple use? You do know that M4A is MPEG4 audio, a documented ISO standard, right?
And their non-DRM'ed video is always MPEG4 h.264, another ISO standard. In my memory, Apple hasn't pushed a proprietary delivery format for video since Sorenson in the late 90's, and that wasn't even their tech. Granted, yes they have proprietary formats like Apple Lossless and Pixlet, but those are mostly meant for workflow applications and not as an end-user delivery format.
The iPod has always *only* run with iTunes, not just when they gained significant market share. I will give you that they have been more active in ensuring that it's an exclusive iTunes/iPod environment, but they've never really opened it up to third parties. (MusicMatch on Windows is the notable exception.)
Not ignoring, just not caring. There's a difference. You're making an issue out of things that most people don't care about. When they start caring about it, Apple will either a) fix it or b) start losing enough sales to make them fix it.
Here's an equally inane list that contains the features they *do* care about: Easy software installs, multitouch, mail/web/phone/facebook/twitter/music/videos on one device, decent battery life.
There are 140,000 apps, according to Apple. They'll get the most "cool" apps there, 'cause that's where the developers are. There are also a number of browsers in the app store, and there's a browser installed by default, so the porn angle is moot from a user's point of view.
And, to your last point, how do you know what your needs are unless someone else has already made an app for it? In other words, does it matter that Apple won't allow certain apps if users don't know that they want it?
You're seriously saying that just because you chose to buy more of Apple's software than Microsoft's software, it costs you more? You could have not, and your machine could still run 10.2, and you'd only be out "aproximately" (sic) $100. If Microsoft had it's act together, and was releasing updates yearly, you can bet you would be telling a different story.
You bought a computer for $300 in 2002? I don't seem to remember them being that cheap back then...
Do you think that there isn't "tons" of free software that OS X users can't use? I can use more Open Source software on OS X than Windows.
You haven't needed to buy a single piece of software since people provide them as shareware? I think you should look up the definition of shareware.
And at that time, webmasters will be free to move to a royalty-free codec. The internet has a great amount of momentum on 'free,' and being forced to pay for something will always be a huge impetus to move away from it.
Not to mention the fact that h.264 and Theora will be out-of-date in a few years, and we'll be on something new. This battle is lost - start preparing for the next one and maybe you'll win it.
Slashdot Mirror
You're just demonstrating your ignorance. You do realize that even getting to this stage is a feat in engineering, right? Or that playing a musical instrument is a highly complex motor skill, and that you were just shown an artificial intelligence that can do it, right? Your metric is completely unrealistic - have you ever tried playing violin? It's not easy. The metric should be how much *better* it is than an unskilled player, rather than how much *worse* it is than a skilled player.
Expecting them to have something more polished is like saying "Meh, people went to the moon. I expected them to go to Mars."
I would actually lump them in with "this point in history." I'm certainly not saying that this is the first time it's happened, but you don't have to be first to be considered a pioneer.
... and suddenly you miss the whole point of doing it.
Yes. Choirs have been singing together for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Name one other point in history where a whole amateur choir can sing together, from their own homes, without ever being in the same physical space as one another.
This isn't about expediency. It's about exploring a new medium. You might not get that, if you work at the level of switches & cabling, but what we're creating out of these mundane realities is a whole new way of working together. It's like Gutenberg, looking at the printing press and saying "Yay for stamping ink. You could have just gone down to the local monastery and gotten the monks to copy it."
I don't know if you've noticed this, but "the vast majority" of recent, innovative games are on Apple App Store. Show me one recent innovative game in Flash, and I'll show you 5 in the App Store. That number will go up, not down. Apple is now a bigger handheld game platform than Nintendo.
As for the older games, they're either a) outdated and not worth playing at all; b) outdated and worth playing for nostalgia, or c) outdated but still enjoyable. In the first case, you're not missing anything, and I would say that's where the vast majority of the games are. The second and third, you'll likely either get someone making a clone of it (if that's legal) or you'll get the developers to back-port it to monetize a popular game. It's been done for Myst and a few other titles. And you don't need to mess around with emulators.
Finally: What? You're comparing an iPod/iPhone/iPad to a console? We're looking at handheld games. Smallish titles that people play when they're waiting for the bus, or in a doctor's office. Railing on the iThings because they'll never have the graphics capability of a full console is just ridiculous. Of course they won't. It doesn't meant that there isn't a market for those games. In fact, the market for those games is probably much, much larger than that for "strong titles" on a console. These small games are available in the "Entertainment" section of the App Store, which is what Jobs means by "Entertainment Titles."
First: It was Sun that decided (up until recently) that they wouldn't open-source Java. (I still don't know if all of it is open source...) If they had, then users could compile it themselves, with the options they want.
Second, Apple wanted to make sure that the crappy Swing interfaces in most Java apps at least looked somewhat native.
And finally, when Apple takes away the ability to cross-compile most Linux/UNIX packages, usually with just a few modifications, then you can whine about cross-platform compatibility.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but how would they map the SSID to you? All they know is that in this area, someone somewhere has a router with a SSID of "X." (And, if you're anything like my neighbours, half of those are named "linksys.")
You only need to look up Vioxx to see why your idea is a Very Bad One.
You can't trust drug companies to completely list the side effects. They invest millions of dollars in a drug, and thus have a vested interest to turn it around and make money off it. Your "informed choice" might be a glossy brochure printed by the manufacturer. They might not even know that there are serious side effects, but you can be damn sure that if there are, they'll be left holding the bag and sued every which way to Sunday. And although you might be able to read a full clinical report, many other people cannot. They just know that they're desperate for a cure, and that someone is saying that Drug X "has potential." That's exploitation.
You seem to think that the Government has some sort of malicious intent, slowing down drug approvals. They don't. What they do want to do is make sure that the drug does what the manufacturer says it does. In that way, they function more as an independent verification lab, which is always a good thing. Science relies on repeatability. If the FDA can't show evidence that the drug does what it's supposed to do, it shouldn't make it to the market.
Mod this up. The Macbook & Air have *not* been updated. The story is incorrect.
Either you're behind the times, or I'm falling for a troll...
Google Stops Censoring China's Search Services
Could be better, but there are some interesting developments happening.
You do realize the alternative to Flash they're proposing is HTML5 / h.264, right? Both open standards that anyone can use and write on any platform.
Oklahoma does not send Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris stares at Oklahoma, and it moves to China to cover the landfill.
How strange. When I turn on the television, there always seems to be some American family who lost their house, had to declare bankruptcy and move in with friends or family after their greedy, captialist insurance provider dropped them because of a "pre-existing medical condition."
No, you don't have your own continent, and we have a Queen you may have heard of.
Signed,
Canada
Lemme see if I follow your argument:
Hm. Ok, I'll buy it. Tablets are usually more expensive laptops, that run full operating systems and are operated by a clumsy UI. You don't gain anything. Well, except the iPad. It's running a special tablet-oriented version of OS X. But you're right... you don't really get more functionality from the iPad than a laptop or even a netbook.
Again, I agree... MS Office would be especially painful if all you could use with it is a stylus. But the iPad will specifically *not* be using existing apps. In fact, they made a completely new version of iWork to run on the iPad...
I'm sorry. Do you even know what an iPad is? It pretty much is a "real tablet" with a "focused, tablet-oriented system" and a "pervasive tablet UI". At least, it's the closest thing we've come to in the mainstream market.
You seem to be arguing that the people who don't want a tablet don't want it because it has clunky, non-tablet software. But even tablets that *do* have tablet-oriented software and a tablet-specific UI are doomed to failure because they don't have clunky, non-tablet software. Umm....
You won't get an argument from me - a laptop will definitely do "more."
The iPad isn't built to do more. In fact, it's almost explicitly designed to do less. I predict it will be a big hit for the people that don't need to do more, but rather do the same thing every day with their computer: read their e-mail, check a few webpages, maybe look at some pictures or watch a movie. About the only thing I can think of that the iPad would do better than a laptop is for reading books.
Truth is, most people don't need their computers to do more. They just want it to do the things they understand, which is often a very limited subset of tasks.
Canada's not doing too bad, financially or medically.
Short of FairPlay DRM, which they no longer include on files in the iTunes Music Store, what proprietary audio formats does Apple use? You do know that M4A is MPEG4 audio, a documented ISO standard, right?
And their non-DRM'ed video is always MPEG4 h.264, another ISO standard. In my memory, Apple hasn't pushed a proprietary delivery format for video since Sorenson in the late 90's, and that wasn't even their tech. Granted, yes they have proprietary formats like Apple Lossless and Pixlet, but those are mostly meant for workflow applications and not as an end-user delivery format.
The iPod has always *only* run with iTunes, not just when they gained significant market share. I will give you that they have been more active in ensuring that it's an exclusive iTunes/iPod environment, but they've never really opened it up to third parties. (MusicMatch on Windows is the notable exception.)
Not ignoring, just not caring. There's a difference. You're making an issue out of things that most people don't care about. When they start caring about it, Apple will either a) fix it or b) start losing enough sales to make them fix it.
Here's an equally inane list that contains the features they *do* care about: Easy software installs, multitouch, mail/web/phone/facebook/twitter/music/videos on one device, decent battery life.
There are 140,000 apps, according to Apple. They'll get the most "cool" apps there, 'cause that's where the developers are. There are also a number of browsers in the app store, and there's a browser installed by default, so the porn angle is moot from a user's point of view.
And, to your last point, how do you know what your needs are unless someone else has already made an app for it? In other words, does it matter that Apple won't allow certain apps if users don't know that they want it?
I can think of a few reasons that matter to me. I'm sure some people can think of a few other reasons.
Lemme guess - you're fanatically obsessed with both?
And at that time, webmasters will be free to move to a royalty-free codec. The internet has a great amount of momentum on 'free,' and being forced to pay for something will always be a huge impetus to move away from it. Not to mention the fact that h.264 and Theora will be out-of-date in a few years, and we'll be on something new. This battle is lost - start preparing for the next one and maybe you'll win it.
Want an app that mentions Android? There's an app for.... oh, wait. Scratch that.