You are confusing users with developers. Very few users are developers. Those who aren't developers aren't interested in what hoops you need to jump through or in how much "freedom" you have as a developer. They want a reliable, easy to use device and they want a lot of easy to use applications that are useful to them, easy to install and easy to use. Apple has accomplished that. Their numbers of users and available applications prove that. I doubt if any of these companies care about what you personally will buy or not buy. You are not the market they are going after.
As for developers, if you give them a few tools and access to millions of potential customers, they will jump through any hoops they have to in order to compete in a lucrative market.
Like it or not most people have to drive. There are skills that we as human beings living in an advanced society have to master. We used to not have to know how to drive. Now we do. We used to not know how to type or use a computer or protect ourselves on the internet and now we do. We used to have to know how to render a pig to make lye for our soap, but now we don't. We used to have to master Latin and/or Greek and quote its literature in order to be considered educated, but now we don't.
I'm not saying there is not room for improvement in how computers and software work. To say that there is would be a vast understatement. Nevertheless, not everything in life is going to be easy.
It amazes me that at work no one except the IT folks think they should know anything about computers or even modeling and analysis. Why is that? They accept that they must know how to drive in most cases in order to get to work. What makes computer knowledge not part of your job? These days its something every educated person should have. Times have changed - again.
Sounds like she's not sophisticated enough to use a computer. Sorry, we all hope that one day computers will be like cars - a few weeks in driving school and then study for a little test and then go try to get your license... oh wait, I don't believe any of that is required to get a computer or access the internet. Dang, I wonder what else there might be that is very complex and potentially dangerous that is available to the unwashed and ill-informed. Perhaps hard drugs would be a good analogy.
You nailed it which is why I find the outrage on this topic so amusing. We (the consumers) have told the market we are not willing to pay for competence. We want the lowest prices possible or free if we can get it. That's why we end up with big box stores and their ignorant minimum wage staff. If a PC retailer did invest in a competent staff (they did for awhile in the 80's) and professional service they found that they were just abused by the consumers. Consumers would go to these places, touch and feel and learn and the buy it mail order from someplace else. Now its the internet.
I was in that business back then for a short while and I remember there were a lot of people that we educated who then went mail order to buy the computer. Then they'd have the nerve to come to us for help when they had problems. We got tired of being nice and started sticking it to them with high support fees.
Consumers did the same things to the audio shops. There used to be a lot of places you could go and learn about and compare audio equipment. However, after doing so the consumers kept ordering from J&R or some such instead of paying extra to the local retailer.
If you've involved your cause in violence than you've lost the battle for public opinion - which is the the whole point of demonstrating. Your so-called "bad bloc" anarchists aren't really defending anyone. There is no "war" or "battle" between protesters and police. It's a battle to convince large numbers of the public on the sidelines to join your cause. That will force the ruling class to modify or change their behavior.
Violence only discredits your cause in the eyes of the public. It's actually better to be passive victims of police violence - if and when it occurs - than to be seen fighting them. Why do you think that on occasion some police agencies use agents provocateurs? Its because violence serves the interests of those you are protesting against, not yours.
There have been cases of undercover police agitators dating back to the 19th century. They don't account for very much of the anarchist and hooligan violence in demonstrations in Europe or the U.S. Do you think that anarchists or hooligans are a police myth? Are you that naive?
In any case the best thing for legitimate demonstrators to do - and they have done this from time to time - is to out the anarchists and don't let them mingle in your ranks. Work with the police to insure that they understand that you are interested in peaceful protest and that you will not aide, abet or tolerate violence within your ranks. Doing so will generally keep the police at bay and in a better mood and, more importantly, impress the public who will then be more likely to take your message seriously.
Are trying to claim that just because you didn't see them in the footage the press decided to broadcast of a particular moment that the weapon was being demonstrated that they don't exist? Who do you think you are fooling. Certainly you can't be that thick. They are there and they are active. There has been plenty of footage of them being active in the Pittsburgh demonstrations. These guys show up at every protest event and ruin it for the legitimate protesters.
Fortunately Pittsburgh is not as easy to get around as some larger cities on flatter ground and with fewer rivers. That and the fact the U.S. cops have less tolerance for these creeps helps keep their numbers down U.S. demonstrations outside a few select cities like Seattle.
We don't need anarchists in ski masks committing acts of violence and vandalism.
What is sad is that the thoughtful arguments against much of what goes on in the G20 conferences are completely obscured by these cretins. It also does not help that all these other peripheral (not G20/economic order related) issues are added to the fray to further muddle a message that is worthy of being heard and directly relevant to the event being protested. Anarchists and hooligans do not positively contribute to any serious debate and they merely insure that large numbers of the potential audience turn away dismiss the whole thing. Their reputation (which stains all protesters) incite the politicians and police act more forcefully more quickly against any perceived threat.
You have to pick your friends wisely and be quick to denounce the lunatic fringe trying to appear to be on your side. That said, I'd rather have police use water cannon and sound guns than guns or batons when they can.
but does he understand what the problem is? I can think of two big problems with Windows Mobile
1) Microsoft wants to sell it when their competitor O/Ss are free.
2) Window's Mobile has earned itself a bad reputation both in terms of ease of use and reliability. There were 7 WM users in my work unit a 18 months ago. Today there are zero. Five went to iPhone, 1 to Pre and one to RIM. The Pre guy has iPhone envy because using the keyboard is not what he hoped and because the Pre software being 18 months younger than iPhone's is also noticeably slower despite similar hardware. (He'll probably get over it when the upgrades arrive.) Of these 7, 5 of them were Microsoft fanboi's but even they were fed up with the bugs and the clumsy interface.
(None of these guys develop for these devices so they don't' care about any of those issues.)
So what makes him think Microsoft has time to recover from this especially if they expect to continue to charge for the O/S? What is the value proposition for the device manufacturers especially 9 months to a year from now when the free O/Ss and their tools will have had even more time to evolve and mature?
And I'm suprised to say this but compared to Apple's tablet this will probably be more open (in the not-restricted-to-apples-store way) and have a Windows platform. I hope they reveal more details soon.
What an interesting conclusion especially since it is completely contrary to the current state. In the hand held computer market Apple encourages anyone and everyone to write applications for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Their only restrictions are related to digital signing (a reasonable restriction) and the use of the App store (a less reasonable restriction). By contrast Microsoft won't allow any 3rd party applications for their new Zune (their iPod Touch competitor) except from a few select partners.
In the personal computer market both Apple and Microsoft encourage any and all developers to write applications for their respective platforms. Apple's platform includes far more open source pieces than Microsoft's. For example, Mac OS X is built on BSD and Safari on Webkit and Apple makes considerable contributions to the open source community. Microsoft, not so much.
The Most recent survey of product reliability I saw put mac's in third place. I see many more faulty macs than I do quality pc machines.
anecdotal evidence is not worth the bits it is written on.
Your second point is the same one I was making. My personal experience is that Macs are very reliable relative to all PCs so his assertion that they were unreliable based solely on his personal perception was a troll. He should have backed it up.
Macs are a great consumer and niche machine. I think the valid knocks against them in the enterprise relate to their manageability in large scale deployments. I was hoping to see whether or not any of that has changed. Even if the tools have improved, I wonder about Apple's willingness to support the kind of slow changing dull uniformity in hardware that the managers of corporate PCs like to see.
As for your first point, please cIte your sources. Some I found are:
I know you will get modded to hell but you're right. Especially about the reliability. Every single piece of Apple hardware I or anyone I know has owned, has broken at one point or another. Every single one
Every single bit of electronic hardware from any manufacturer will eventually break. What's your point? Industry and consumer surveys of thousands of consumers show Apple hardware to be superior to other brands like Dell, Lenovo and HP in terms of reliability and customer satisfaction. Those are hard numbers, not personal anecdotes.
My personal anecdotes are can be summarized as: Apple is the only computer I've owned or used over the last 30 years that did not experience a hardware failure. The others Dell, Gateway, IBM, Lenovo, HP, Televideo, Corona, IMSAI, Vector Graphics, SOL and some white boxes all had one or more failures. Often they occurred within the first year- power supplies and hard drives mostly. Does that prove anything? Maybe it's because I don't keep a computer more than 5 years. Who knows? Come to think of it no one I know who owns an Apple has experienced one failing - except a bluetooth keyboard. Maybe they're hiding their Apple nightmares from me to spare my feelings.
The wording is misleading. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that 75% of business computing by value depends on COBOL. I've worked at a number of places in the financial services industry and have a lot of friends who do as well. All of our core business functions are still in COBOL. A lot of the data is still in VSAM, IMS and Model 204 legacy stores. A lot of what is in DB2, an RDBMS, is VSAM files converted directly to tables instead of truly relational databases.
The fun stuff (Java,.NET, Web) runs the outward facing services and peripheral functions, but claims processing, credit card reconciliation, billing, accounting, etc. is still in COBOL. The computer industry press spends a lot of time admiring the new chrome and fins and that new built-in radio with FM, but business is still powered by the COBOL drive train running on mainframes.
Even the clued in managers want to get off of it and onto more flexible systems and more productive languages, but it's too scary (risky) because they are afraid to break something. No one knows what the business rules are because they are embedded hither and yon in COBOL programs.
I have a Mac and I've found that whenever I download an MP3 or AAC file from any source it goes to my iTunes library because that is the setting I have - the default setting. So there is nothing about iTunes or iPods that restrict you or in anyway impedes you from acquiring music from other sources than Apple.
What you aren't getting is that iPhone O/S does multi-task. Apple just won't allow applications to use its multi-tasking. So, if you want to install a VM or an application that requires use of the O/S multi-tasking, they won't let you do so.
And may I complement you on your people skills and your ability to impress others with your knowledge? I bet you have lot's of friends just like you.
Do we really want to encourage the idea that people can inflict injury or pain on animals without shame? Not all animals would be engineered in this way. Some of those will be your pets others will be in the wild. Can people who get used to the guilt free abuse of animals really be expected to turn that behavior off when they are around your pets or children or, for that matter other adults? I doubt it. They will be completely desensitized. Frightening.
BTW I am an omnivore. I just think that cruelty is always wrong and that we shouldn't encourage people to lose their inhibitions against such behavior. By the same reasoning though I concede that some people may "deserve" torture for their crimes, I don't want to turn any of the "good" guys into monsters by letting them inflict torture.
I don't know if more vendors for iPhone will improve things in the short to medium term.
I live in Chicago and 3G here is very spotty. If's crappy frankly. I just came back from a trip to Morgantown WV and low and behold from Pittsburgh and throughout the Morgantown area the coverage as excellent.
Several collegues here (Chicago) are using Verizon 3G cards with their computers and their reception isn't any better than what the rest of us get from AT&T. (One has an iPhone and has done some direct comparison. He finds them equally spotty.)
I think the U.S just has crappy cell coverage resulting from crappy cell infrastructure. As long as we have competing incompatible technologies and local monopolies, I don't see things improving.
It's not in the FCC's interest. It doesn't have an interest in that respect. People know if they are getting fast and affordable internet access or not and that is what make's the FCC's folks look good to the people. The question is how interested are the FCC commissioners in looking good to "the people" versus those who can help them personally.
It is in the interests of some ISPs the ones who can't or don't want to compete on bandwidth. They may make it in the interest of certain elected representatives to support them via campaign contributions. Those representatives might try to make it in the interests of certain FCC members via future career enticements or rewards or they may play with the FCC's budget or charter. ISPs might even attempt to offer inducements like a lucrative career in lobbying or PR for the compliant commissioner.
So as a member of "the people" we have to do what we can to make it in the interests of our elected representatives to see that we get world class internet access at affordable prices. Also, let us not forget that there are a lot of businesses that benefit from ubiquitous high speed internet access. They should do some lobbying too. We have a convergence of interests.
Which he apparently has. What government contractor wouldn't jump at the chance to hire a guy with a track record of failed projects and yet who seemed to survive and prosper despite that? Clearly he knew how to "get along" in the system and cultivate important friendships. That's an invaluable skill for a government contractor.
Slashdot Mirror
Enjoying an application is not a compelling reason to buy a device.
You are confusing users with developers. Very few users are developers. Those who aren't developers aren't interested in what hoops you need to jump through or in how much "freedom" you have as a developer. They want a reliable, easy to use device and they want a lot of easy to use applications that are useful to them, easy to install and easy to use. Apple has accomplished that. Their numbers of users and available applications prove that. I doubt if any of these companies care about what you personally will buy or not buy. You are not the market they are going after.
As for developers, if you give them a few tools and access to millions of potential customers, they will jump through any hoops they have to in order to compete in a lucrative market.
I'm not saying there is not room for improvement in how computers and software work. To say that there is would be a vast understatement. Nevertheless, not everything in life is going to be easy.
It amazes me that at work no one except the IT folks think they should know anything about computers or even modeling and analysis. Why is that? They accept that they must know how to drive in most cases in order to get to work. What makes computer knowledge not part of your job? These days its something every educated person should have. Times have changed - again.
Sounds like she's not sophisticated enough to use a computer. Sorry, we all hope that one day computers will be like cars - a few weeks in driving school and then study for a little test and then go try to get your license ... oh wait, I don't believe any of that is required to get a computer or access the internet. Dang, I wonder what else there might be that is very complex and potentially dangerous that is available to the unwashed and ill-informed. Perhaps hard drugs would be a good analogy.
I was in that business back then for a short while and I remember there were a lot of people that we educated who then went mail order to buy the computer. Then they'd have the nerve to come to us for help when they had problems. We got tired of being nice and started sticking it to them with high support fees.
Consumers did the same things to the audio shops. There used to be a lot of places you could go and learn about and compare audio equipment. However, after doing so the consumers kept ordering from J&R or some such instead of paying extra to the local retailer.
Violence only discredits your cause in the eyes of the public. It's actually better to be passive victims of police violence - if and when it occurs - than to be seen fighting them. Why do you think that on occasion some police agencies use agents provocateurs? Its because violence serves the interests of those you are protesting against, not yours.
There have been cases of undercover police agitators dating back to the 19th century. They don't account for very much of the anarchist and hooligan violence in demonstrations in Europe or the U.S. Do you think that anarchists or hooligans are a police myth? Are you that naive?
In any case the best thing for legitimate demonstrators to do - and they have done this from time to time - is to out the anarchists and don't let them mingle in your ranks. Work with the police to insure that they understand that you are interested in peaceful protest and that you will not aide, abet or tolerate violence within your ranks. Doing so will generally keep the police at bay and in a better mood and, more importantly, impress the public who will then be more likely to take your message seriously.
Are trying to claim that just because you didn't see them in the footage the press decided to broadcast of a particular moment that the weapon was being demonstrated that they don't exist? Who do you think you are fooling. Certainly you can't be that thick. They are there and they are active. There has been plenty of footage of them being active in the Pittsburgh demonstrations. These guys show up at every protest event and ruin it for the legitimate protesters.
Fortunately Pittsburgh is not as easy to get around as some larger cities on flatter ground and with fewer rivers. That and the fact the U.S. cops have less tolerance for these creeps helps keep their numbers down U.S. demonstrations outside a few select cities like Seattle.
We don't need anarchists in ski masks committing acts of violence and vandalism.
What is sad is that the thoughtful arguments against much of what goes on in the G20 conferences are completely obscured by these cretins. It also does not help that all these other peripheral (not G20/economic order related) issues are added to the fray to further muddle a message that is worthy of being heard and directly relevant to the event being protested. Anarchists and hooligans do not positively contribute to any serious debate and they merely insure that large numbers of the potential audience turn away dismiss the whole thing. Their reputation (which stains all protesters) incite the politicians and police act more forcefully more quickly against any perceived threat.
You have to pick your friends wisely and be quick to denounce the lunatic fringe trying to appear to be on your side. That said, I'd rather have police use water cannon and sound guns than guns or batons when they can.
Just askin'
1) Microsoft wants to sell it when their competitor O/Ss are free.
2) Window's Mobile has earned itself a bad reputation both in terms of ease of use and reliability. There were 7 WM users in my work unit a 18 months ago. Today there are zero. Five went to iPhone, 1 to Pre and one to RIM. The Pre guy has iPhone envy because using the keyboard is not what he hoped and because the Pre software being 18 months younger than iPhone's is also noticeably slower despite similar hardware. (He'll probably get over it when the upgrades arrive.) Of these 7, 5 of them were Microsoft fanboi's but even they were fed up with the bugs and the clumsy interface.
(None of these guys develop for these devices so they don't' care about any of those issues.)
So what makes him think Microsoft has time to recover from this especially if they expect to continue to charge for the O/S? What is the value proposition for the device manufacturers especially 9 months to a year from now when the free O/Ss and their tools will have had even more time to evolve and mature?
Who uses Windows mobile phones anymore?
And I'm suprised to say this but compared to Apple's tablet this will probably be more open (in the not-restricted-to-apples-store way) and have a Windows platform. I hope they reveal more details soon.
What an interesting conclusion especially since it is completely contrary to the current state. In the hand held computer market Apple encourages anyone and everyone to write applications for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Their only restrictions are related to digital signing (a reasonable restriction) and the use of the App store (a less reasonable restriction). By contrast Microsoft won't allow any 3rd party applications for their new Zune (their iPod Touch competitor) except from a few select partners.
In the personal computer market both Apple and Microsoft encourage any and all developers to write applications for their respective platforms. Apple's platform includes far more open source pieces than Microsoft's. For example, Mac OS X is built on BSD and Safari on Webkit and Apple makes considerable contributions to the open source community. Microsoft, not so much.
So what evidence led you to your conclusion?
The Most recent survey of product reliability I saw put mac's in third place. I see many more faulty macs than I do quality pc machines.
anecdotal evidence is not worth the bits it is written on.
Your second point is the same one I was making. My personal experience is that Macs are very reliable relative to all PCs so his assertion that they were unreliable based solely on his personal perception was a troll. He should have backed it up.
Macs are a great consumer and niche machine. I think the valid knocks against them in the enterprise relate to their manageability in large scale deployments. I was hoping to see whether or not any of that has changed. Even if the tools have improved, I wonder about Apple's willingness to support the kind of slow changing dull uniformity in hardware that the managers of corporate PCs like to see.
As for your first point, please cIte your sources. Some I found are:
Apple # 1 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352798,00.asp Apple # 2 http://www.rescuecom.com/RESCUECOM269.html Apple # 2 (tied) in reliability and # 1 in satisfaction http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/computers-internet/computers/laptop-ratings/brand-reliability.htm
I know you will get modded to hell but you're right. Especially about the reliability. Every single piece of Apple hardware I or anyone I know has owned, has broken at one point or another. Every single one
Every single bit of electronic hardware from any manufacturer will eventually break. What's your point? Industry and consumer surveys of thousands of consumers show Apple hardware to be superior to other brands like Dell, Lenovo and HP in terms of reliability and customer satisfaction. Those are hard numbers, not personal anecdotes.
My personal anecdotes are can be summarized as: Apple is the only computer I've owned or used over the last 30 years that did not experience a hardware failure. The others Dell, Gateway, IBM, Lenovo, HP, Televideo, Corona, IMSAI, Vector Graphics, SOL and some white boxes all had one or more failures. Often they occurred within the first year- power supplies and hard drives mostly. Does that prove anything? Maybe it's because I don't keep a computer more than 5 years. Who knows? Come to think of it no one I know who owns an Apple has experienced one failing - except a bluetooth keyboard. Maybe they're hiding their Apple nightmares from me to spare my feelings.
The heard that when they were hired.
The wording is misleading. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that 75% of business computing by value depends on COBOL. I've worked at a number of places in the financial services industry and have a lot of friends who do as well. All of our core business functions are still in COBOL. A lot of the data is still in VSAM, IMS and Model 204 legacy stores. A lot of what is in DB2, an RDBMS, is VSAM files converted directly to tables instead of truly relational databases.
The fun stuff (Java, .NET, Web) runs the outward facing services and peripheral functions, but claims processing, credit card reconciliation, billing, accounting, etc. is still in COBOL. The computer industry press spends a lot of time admiring the new chrome and fins and that new built-in radio with FM, but business is still powered by the COBOL drive train running on mainframes.
Even the clued in managers want to get off of it and onto more flexible systems and more productive languages, but it's too scary (risky) because they are afraid to break something. No one knows what the business rules are because they are embedded hither and yon in COBOL programs.
I have a Mac and I've found that whenever I download an MP3 or AAC file from any source it goes to my iTunes library because that is the setting I have - the default setting. So there is nothing about iTunes or iPods that restrict you or in anyway impedes you from acquiring music from other sources than Apple.
What you aren't getting is that iPhone O/S does multi-task. Apple just won't allow applications to use its multi-tasking. So, if you want to install a VM or an application that requires use of the O/S multi-tasking, they won't let you do so.
And may I complement you on your people skills and your ability to impress others with your knowledge? I bet you have lot's of friends just like you.
Doof? CLR and JVM are not frameworks. They are virtual machines that run on a host O/S.
Anyone know why Apple would allow one and not the other? Does Mono not multitask or something?
Do we really want to encourage the idea that people can inflict injury or pain on animals without shame? Not all animals would be engineered in this way. Some of those will be your pets others will be in the wild. Can people who get used to the guilt free abuse of animals really be expected to turn that behavior off when they are around your pets or children or, for that matter other adults? I doubt it. They will be completely desensitized. Frightening.
BTW I am an omnivore. I just think that cruelty is always wrong and that we shouldn't encourage people to lose their inhibitions against such behavior. By the same reasoning though I concede that some people may "deserve" torture for their crimes, I don't want to turn any of the "good" guys into monsters by letting them inflict torture.
I don't know if more vendors for iPhone will improve things in the short to medium term. I live in Chicago and 3G here is very spotty. If's crappy frankly. I just came back from a trip to Morgantown WV and low and behold from Pittsburgh and throughout the Morgantown area the coverage as excellent. Several collegues here (Chicago) are using Verizon 3G cards with their computers and their reception isn't any better than what the rest of us get from AT&T. (One has an iPhone and has done some direct comparison. He finds them equally spotty.) I think the U.S just has crappy cell coverage resulting from crappy cell infrastructure. As long as we have competing incompatible technologies and local monopolies, I don't see things improving.
It's not in the FCC's interest. It doesn't have an interest in that respect. People know if they are getting fast and affordable internet access or not and that is what make's the FCC's folks look good to the people. The question is how interested are the FCC commissioners in looking good to "the people" versus those who can help them personally.
It is in the interests of some ISPs the ones who can't or don't want to compete on bandwidth. They may make it in the interest of certain elected representatives to support them via campaign contributions. Those representatives might try to make it in the interests of certain FCC members via future career enticements or rewards or they may play with the FCC's budget or charter. ISPs might even attempt to offer inducements like a lucrative career in lobbying or PR for the compliant commissioner.
So as a member of "the people" we have to do what we can to make it in the interests of our elected representatives to see that we get world class internet access at affordable prices. Also, let us not forget that there are a lot of businesses that benefit from ubiquitous high speed internet access. They should do some lobbying too. We have a convergence of interests.
Either that or he got a good job offer.
Which he apparently has. What government contractor wouldn't jump at the chance to hire a guy with a track record of failed projects and yet who seemed to survive and prosper despite that? Clearly he knew how to "get along" in the system and cultivate important friendships. That's an invaluable skill for a government contractor.