However, they are wrong: the potential of these devices is effectively unlimited, therefore, selling them sealed/closed/walled is effectively robbing you of a potentially infinite value.
You don't get it. They don't care. They bought it to do X, Y and Z with the option to safely and painlessly upgrade it with purchased software to do A B C D E F G, etc.
but apple needs them more (safari, gcc, their OS) than they need apple (ie not at all)
lol. this is why apple has ditched GCC (it's shite) and wrote CLANG, re-wrote KHTML and created webkit, which is the basis for basically every open source browser out there now bar Mozilla, and their OS is written in-house. If you think apple is somehow dependent on FOSS, and would be stuck without it, you're mistaken.
Natural to want the best, or is it because there are plenty of closet sociopaths amongst us who don't want to see people get things done with the minimal hassle possible?
Steve didn't invent much at all. But he had the vision to push his employees to invent his vision. Which is just as important as the grunt work doing the inventing - no vision = no direction for the invention.
Woz did the hardware. However according to woz's own biography, if it was purely down to him, he would have never left HP, and never done apple as a serious vocation. And thus the apple I/II would never have sold like they did. Jobs convinced him to quit HP and do apple seriously.
The creation of apple and the hardware they sold would never have happened without BOTH steves being involved.
Actually, spend 99 bucks and you get developer tools and you can see the console logs.
And besides, if my phone is impossible for me to customise/jailbreak, how is malware going to be running on it miraculously when all apps are sandboxed? You can't have it both ways.
It won't happen. Apple posts plenty of source code, from darwin to webkit, to libdispatch, etc. The developer tools are free. Doesn't exactly sound like a developer hostile platform to me. You'll have the OPTION to get all your software from a pre-vetted app store, for safety (like you already can), but the ability to run anything is not going anywhere.
It also streams any media i like out of iTunes, just need to convert it into an iTunes friendly format first. I use it for streaming heaps of stuff, and have only ever rented about 2 movies off iTunes with it.
Steve was a human being, with human interests. Creating a walled garden appealed to both his own financial interests, and the interests of consumers for simpler (eg, "easier to use") devices.
I don't need to point out the deleterious effects of that compromise, as others have already done a fantastic job of pointing that out. What I will point out instead is that jobs's "vision" for the future of mobile and desktop devices is a sterile, gleaming desert, with only one kind of sand, and only approved forms of cactus.
Which is why every mac either ships with a free copy of Xcode, or is available for Free off apple's developer site? Why apple are releasing most of their new core technologies as open source?
The success of small developers getting their shit on everybody's devices via the app store would kinda disagree with your dystopian vision of the future.
Here here. As I see it, at the end of the day, you have a choice - you spend time or money to get things done.
In the case of OS X or Windows, you spend money.
In the case of Free software, you spend time.
I used to have more time than money. Now, this situation is significantly reversed. I started with Linux in 1995. I still run FreeBSD on servers that I need to face the internet. But to get things done in other situations, i use my Mac.
You mean, apart from voluntarily releasing CLANG/LLVM/libdispatch/zeroconf/darwin/objective-C/core foundation/webkit/launchd, they do nothing to contribute to open source. Absolutely nothing.
You seriously think it is in their interests to release the source to the OS X ui?
RMS will never contribute anything of anywhere near as much value to society as Apple has.
He's a zealot and is willing to compromise any level of technological progress for his personal ideals.
Seriously, if RMS had his way, we'll all still be running 80 column green screens with EMACS, no real security, no real hardware driver support for anything more complex than a serial TTY, etc.
News flash, old hippy: people want to use their computers, etc to do tasks. Not for the sake of using/programming the device. The average joe is WILLING TO PAY someone to make it easy to use. Apple capitalised on this idea. As has Microsoft.
The free software world hasn't even managed to get to where windows 98 was 13 years ago, either in terms of user interface, 3d hardware support, hardware plug and play, etc.
And I say this as someone who was waiting for the year of the Linux desktop since 1996. I believe a large part of this not happening is due to the GPL.
Whilst the GNU zealots in the linux camp are rejecting things such as binary drivers, DTRACE, ZFS, CLANG/LLVM, Grand Central, etc, FreeBSD and others are jumping on board.
I suspect that in the next couple of years Linux on the desktop as an idea is going to get left in the dust by everyone else while they remain squabbling over licensing issues and NIH syndrome rather than actually getting things done.
Not required. The aussie government will just lube up and bend over for the rogering they're about to receive via the "free trade" agreement or a revision thereof.
Outlook 2010 can (search through large inboxes). At long last.
If you're still on 2007, but have Vista of win7, then you can more effectively search mail using the start menu search, something like "kind:=email from:bob" for example.
AS per most of the problems listed: too little, too late. The boat for solaris sailed long ago. I'm keen to see whether or not Opensolaris goes anywhere, but unfortunately the free unix market is probably fairly well covered.
Not really. I still need to sort through a heap of copies of the same thing to find a decent one, and then i need to wait for it to download before i can watch it. Instead of simply doing a quick search and hitting rent and then "play".
Plus, i don't need to use any space to store it. Or waste any time backing it up, etc.
Sure, compared to physical media, or purchasing a digital download copy, i don't "own" it, but you don't own media in the traditional sense these days in any case - you merely have a license to play it. Paying per play, rather than eternal rights to play an unlimited number of times is generally cheaper for the number of plays I'm likely to play.
Yes, the amount of content in streaming form is not quite there yet, there is more available via bit torrent. But that is a problem that is relatively easy to fix and for me the convenience of the delivery method is worth paying some money for.
I think if the media is easily accessible in high quality format, many won't bother to pirate. When dealing with torrents, there is no quality guarantee, and often the encoding is shit. To find exactly what i want takes time. If its a case of spending 20 minutes looking for a decent rip, running the risk of legal prosecution AND having to wait for a torrent to download, spending a couple of dollars to just stream it instantly is fairly attractive to me.
True, but i think "buying" content is on the way out. or it is for me in any case. I can count the number of times i have re-watched movies purchased as of late on 1 hand. You get 48hrs of replays on appleTV for free. if i want to watch it again outside of that time-frame, then so be it, i'll just rent it again.
Its not like a traditional rental where i need to go to the video library and re-rent it, return it, etc. A couple of bucks is cheap enough to just re-rent IF and when i need it again. Even if i re-rent 2-3 times, i'm still coming out cheaper than having purchased the movie.
This. My time is too short to go looking for dodgy rips or cinema cams of something on bit-torrent. A couple of bucks per movie to stream and i'll gladly pay for it.
I don't want to have to store hundreds of DVDs or spend terabytes of disk to maintain a media library.
Agreed 100%. Its a sad state of affairs when you can watch something for free, and feel unjustly deprived of your time by watching it. #firstworldproblem
To be fair, I personally am willing to pay a reasonable fee to locate content quickly and easily and in high-def format.
Torrents are OK, but the quality varies massively. I can't stand rips with out-of-synch audio, people walking through the cinema, etc. By the time i sift through the 100 or so different versions of something, find one that is encoded in a format i want, actually of decent quality, its not worth my time (i work long hours). I'd rather just pay a few dollars and stream it or purchase it.
As the computer-literate customer base grows older and attains more disposable income at the expense of having plenty of free time, i suspect this trend is only going to grow.
You don't get it. They don't care. They bought it to do X, Y and Z with the option to safely and painlessly upgrade it with purchased software to do A B C D E F G, etc.
lol. this is why apple has ditched GCC (it's shite) and wrote CLANG, re-wrote KHTML and created webkit, which is the basis for basically every open source browser out there now bar Mozilla, and their OS is written in-house. If you think apple is somehow dependent on FOSS, and would be stuck without it, you're mistaken.
Natural to want the best, or is it because there are plenty of closet sociopaths amongst us who don't want to see people get things done with the minimal hassle possible?
Steve didn't invent much at all. But he had the vision to push his employees to invent his vision. Which is just as important as the grunt work doing the inventing - no vision = no direction for the invention.
Woz did the hardware. However according to woz's own biography, if it was purely down to him, he would have never left HP, and never done apple as a serious vocation. And thus the apple I/II would never have sold like they did. Jobs convinced him to quit HP and do apple seriously.
The creation of apple and the hardware they sold would never have happened without BOTH steves being involved.
And besides, if my phone is impossible for me to customise/jailbreak, how is malware going to be running on it miraculously when all apps are sandboxed? You can't have it both ways.
It won't happen. Apple posts plenty of source code, from darwin to webkit, to libdispatch, etc. The developer tools are free. Doesn't exactly sound like a developer hostile platform to me. You'll have the OPTION to get all your software from a pre-vetted app store, for safety (like you already can), but the ability to run anything is not going anywhere.
It also streams any media i like out of iTunes, just need to convert it into an iTunes friendly format first. I use it for streaming heaps of stuff, and have only ever rented about 2 movies off iTunes with it.
And if you do run into a wall, Xcode is free and the kernel source is available.
Which is why every mac either ships with a free copy of Xcode, or is available for Free off apple's developer site? Why apple are releasing most of their new core technologies as open source?
The success of small developers getting their shit on everybody's devices via the app store would kinda disagree with your dystopian vision of the future.
Can you please point me to somewhere that references Steve Jobs being pissed at people jail breaking their iPhone?
In the case of OS X or Windows, you spend money.
In the case of Free software, you spend time.
I used to have more time than money. Now, this situation is significantly reversed. I started with Linux in 1995. I still run FreeBSD on servers that I need to face the internet. But to get things done in other situations, i use my Mac.
You mean, apart from voluntarily releasing CLANG/LLVM/libdispatch/zeroconf/darwin/objective-C/core foundation/webkit/launchd, they do nothing to contribute to open source. Absolutely nothing.
You seriously think it is in their interests to release the source to the OS X ui?
RMS will never contribute anything of anywhere near as much value to society as Apple has.
He's a zealot and is willing to compromise any level of technological progress for his personal ideals.
Seriously, if RMS had his way, we'll all still be running 80 column green screens with EMACS, no real security, no real hardware driver support for anything more complex than a serial TTY, etc.
News flash, old hippy: people want to use their computers, etc to do tasks. Not for the sake of using/programming the device. The average joe is WILLING TO PAY someone to make it easy to use. Apple capitalised on this idea. As has Microsoft.
The free software world hasn't even managed to get to where windows 98 was 13 years ago, either in terms of user interface, 3d hardware support, hardware plug and play, etc.
And I say this as someone who was waiting for the year of the Linux desktop since 1996. I believe a large part of this not happening is due to the GPL.
Whilst the GNU zealots in the linux camp are rejecting things such as binary drivers, DTRACE, ZFS, CLANG/LLVM, Grand Central, etc, FreeBSD and others are jumping on board.
I suspect that in the next couple of years Linux on the desktop as an idea is going to get left in the dust by everyone else while they remain squabbling over licensing issues and NIH syndrome rather than actually getting things done.
Not required. The aussie government will just lube up and bend over for the rogering they're about to receive via the "free trade" agreement or a revision thereof.
Ahh, but is the minimal current usage due to lack of supply, rather than lack of potential use, given appropriate quantities?
Outlook 2010 can (search through large inboxes). At long last.
If you're still on 2007, but have Vista of win7, then you can more effectively search mail using the start menu search, something like "kind:=email from:bob" for example.
Systemtap is crap, and doesn't have the functionality of DTrace?
End user perspective: the GPL, and many of the zealots involved are unwilling to support a port of it. Also, NIH syndrome, which is endemic in linux.
AS per most of the problems listed: too little, too late. The boat for solaris sailed long ago. I'm keen to see whether or not Opensolaris goes anywhere, but unfortunately the free unix market is probably fairly well covered.
Not really. I still need to sort through a heap of copies of the same thing to find a decent one, and then i need to wait for it to download before i can watch it. Instead of simply doing a quick search and hitting rent and then "play".
Plus, i don't need to use any space to store it. Or waste any time backing it up, etc.
Sure, compared to physical media, or purchasing a digital download copy, i don't "own" it, but you don't own media in the traditional sense these days in any case - you merely have a license to play it. Paying per play, rather than eternal rights to play an unlimited number of times is generally cheaper for the number of plays I'm likely to play.
Yes, the amount of content in streaming form is not quite there yet, there is more available via bit torrent. But that is a problem that is relatively easy to fix and for me the convenience of the delivery method is worth paying some money for.
I think if the media is easily accessible in high quality format, many won't bother to pirate. When dealing with torrents, there is no quality guarantee, and often the encoding is shit. To find exactly what i want takes time. If its a case of spending 20 minutes looking for a decent rip, running the risk of legal prosecution AND having to wait for a torrent to download, spending a couple of dollars to just stream it instantly is fairly attractive to me.
True, but i think "buying" content is on the way out. or it is for me in any case. I can count the number of times i have re-watched movies purchased as of late on 1 hand. You get 48hrs of replays on appleTV for free. if i want to watch it again outside of that time-frame, then so be it, i'll just rent it again.
Its not like a traditional rental where i need to go to the video library and re-rent it, return it, etc. A couple of bucks is cheap enough to just re-rent IF and when i need it again. Even if i re-rent 2-3 times, i'm still coming out cheaper than having purchased the movie.
So... for me, why purchase at all?
This. My time is too short to go looking for dodgy rips or cinema cams of something on bit-torrent. A couple of bucks per movie to stream and i'll gladly pay for it.
I don't want to have to store hundreds of DVDs or spend terabytes of disk to maintain a media library.
Agreed 100%. Its a sad state of affairs when you can watch something for free, and feel unjustly deprived of your time by watching it. #firstworldproblem
To be fair, I personally am willing to pay a reasonable fee to locate content quickly and easily and in high-def format.
Torrents are OK, but the quality varies massively. I can't stand rips with out-of-synch audio, people walking through the cinema, etc. By the time i sift through the 100 or so different versions of something, find one that is encoded in a format i want, actually of decent quality, its not worth my time (i work long hours). I'd rather just pay a few dollars and stream it or purchase it.
As the computer-literate customer base grows older and attains more disposable income at the expense of having plenty of free time, i suspect this trend is only going to grow.