This is the mentality that I don't understand. Apple doesn't support some old lame technology you have laying around and they have "limited vision"? The mac mini is the same volume as 5 jewel cases stacked on one another - and it's a pretty good computer. USB ( thanks to Apple's limited vision of making the iMac use only USB ) was ubiquitous when the Mac Mini was announced. Should they have included SCSI and Parallels ports as well - in case you had some of those peripherals laying around? If Apple didn't have "limited vision" their products would be the bloated, backward crap the rest of the industry spews out.
"while you and a few others will decide the pen is too small someone else will come along and call you barbaric for what you accept"
Wow, you are so right. We should abandon any efforts to treat animals more humanely because there will always be someone who wants them to be treated better. We should cut off their legs and reduce the pen size even further cause, hell, you can't please everyone.
"No farmer wants animals harmed or raised in unsafe manners, it is not cost effective."
Bullshit. There are farmers that have their hearts and production methods in the right place and there are farmers that abuse animals to maximize profits. You are either being naive or dishonest.
"We seem to put more care into the well being of animals than ourselves."
This is a false dichotomy. We need to treat all living creatures with respect. It is a closed system. I'm not saying to not eat them, I am saying we need to make sure they live healthy lives - for their sakes and ours. The current state of meat production is abysmal. The only reason cows eat corn is because it's an artificially cheap commodity because of government subsidies. This is also the reason most of our processed food is made out of corn. Cows aren't meant to eat corn - they have spent millions of years evolving a stomach to eat grass. You can feed them corn, but then you have to take all kinds of measures to keep them healthy. The only sustainable and sane way to raise cattle is to let them walk under the sky and eat grass. I urge everyone to read Michael Pollen's book, "the Omnivore's dilemma". It will really open your eyes to the consequences of a food economy based on cheap corn. I try to eat grass-fed beef whenever I can afford it.
"And, obviously, such a meta-platform would be out of Apple's control. Consider a world where some other company's cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company's toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it's the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features."
Because the language may be Objective C in syntax, but that doesn't mean it's not just a C program. Objective C is a superset of C. What Apple wants, I think, is for people to use Cocoa - not just lowest common denominator C code. Apple doesn't make money off of it's Dev tools. They make it off exceeding a user's expectations. I think they are trying to continue to do that and not just be pricks for no reason.
I just blew coffee out of my nose when you said Jobs is shit-scared of Android. First of all, I don't think Jobs is shit-scared of anything. Secondly, Android will never have more than 30% of the market, it's just going to be too fragmented of an offering with too many different hardware specs and too much control ceded to the carriers over os updates and app stores.
But the main point is that Apple does not want to fill their platform up with mediocre apps written to support the lowest common denominator feature set and UI conventions. Apple users have put up with shit software for years from the likes of Adobe and other vendors who wished the Mac would just go away while they concentrated on Windows. Jobs is demanding excellent software for an excellent device - one that is programmed and compiled in a way that utilizes the OS frameworks to their fullest.
And, more importantly, while the author's facts are wrong, the idea of the post is correct. If jobs allows another company to control the development trajectories of, say, even 10% of the apps on the store, Apple can no longer plan their product change and enhancement cycles around their own timeline - they will have to wait until companies like Adobe are ready to change their tools - and, history has proven that it can be a very long wait.
I think you are right, but I know plenty of geeks who are excited about programming for touch devices with all kinds of whiz bang sensors and core technologies all connected to a worldwide network - not to mention hundred million affluent users who have already entered in their credit card numbers. It's a geek's dream! - if they could stop whining.
I'm not sure I understand you. Yes, the menuing system on the top of the screen is a feature that Mac users love. And there are a million more just like that one. WIndows is just not a good place to me for creatives - or for anyone for that matter - but that is a question of personal taste.
That's what I find interesting. Not too long ago, the average Slashdot user felt something between mild disdain and disgust for Flash. Now it's like Flash is the poster child for the open Internet.
"A competitor that basically kept their Mac platform alive with their creative tools. "
You must not have been a Mac user during the last 10 years. Adobe has done everything they could do get people to move to Windows - almost killing the platform. It was the Mac OS that kept creative professionals coming back to the Mac. We could have bought the same Adobe tools on Windows, but realized that you need an ecosystem to work in - not just a cheap, commodity platform created by people who have no taste or creativity. The platform thrived despite Adobe's negligence - not because of it. Rather than design products that played to OS X's strengths, Adobe continues to put out substandard trash and they have the gall to charge us ungodly upgrade fees. I for one am ready to see Adobe fold and get some fresh blood in the creative space.
"So what if an app doesn't "fully use iPhone features", as long as it provides adequate functionality"
Shooting for adequate functionality is why Adobe is in this position.
"where competition drives innovation rather than hostility."
Oh come off it. There was no iPhone not long ago. They competed their way to where they are now. Because they insist on "insanely great" products instead of "adequate", the public has rewarded them. Adobe is becoming more and more like a parasite every day. Screw em.
"who is Apple to determine what its users will be happy with"
Um, the maker of the device, the app store, and the entire eco system they have created. They are uniquely qualified to judge what constitutes quality - that's why they have 48 billion in the bank.
Agreed. Apple's tired of sloppy seconds. They don't have to be the bitch anymore. They have the talent, the vision, the capital and they are making cool shit while the rest of the industry sits on its collective ass. They have busted their asses and are reaping the awards. Others are free to do the same.
Every time Apple releases an update, a patch, or a new feature, there is a potential for cross-compiled apps to not work properly and give the user a bad experience. How long would it take Adobe to update their code and for all the cross-compiled? A week, 3 months? Maybe there will be functionality to complicated or too costly to reproduce since it won't be able to hook into a certain core service? Then the answer is never.
Sorry, Apple has a right to ensure a good user experience. as a matter of fact, it is what has made them.
Mac users had to settle for being locked out, shit on, and ignored for many, many years. Suddenly the servant is the master and everyone's whining about how Adobe isn't allowed to continue to foist their buggy plug in and dev tools on us anymore. Grow up. Compete. Make a decent HTML 5 animation editor that doesn't suck like all the other Mac software you've put out in the last 10 years.
I agree with your comments about being pragmatic and developing viable alternatives, but I disagree that the chief obstacle is "greenie eco-nuts". It takes a lot of capital to fund major changes in energy infrastructure and, despite such successes as the highway system, the Internet, the GI Bill, etc., government spending is vilified as wasteful and arrogant - never mind that it's OK to waste a trillion in Iraq and several hundred billion on tax cuts for the oppressed wealthy. If it weren't for the pressure from entrenched corporate interests like Exxon and their lackeys in government and the vilification of any meaningful investment in clean energy from the government to get things rolling, we would be creating these technologies. Many of us "greenie eco-nuts" feel that a more energy-efficient economy is possible without lowering the standard of living - indeed, we feel that it could only boost the economy. ( having said that, I don't think reducing the amount of salad shooters and talking bass we purchase reduces our standard of living ). I wish the Democrats had some balls and had come into office with a martial plan for energy independence and had rammed it through congress.
Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, says, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Is he evil and stupid, or just plain stupid?
This Slashdot crowd is way too jaded. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. I thought the CG was amazing and groundbreaking, the use of 3D was subtle and deep, the plot was extremely relevant to what's going on in Nigeria and to Iraq - and, of course, to our treatment of Native Americans. I also thought the alien chick was hot.
The iPod was new, and not yet ubiquitous. Also, they were fighting against Intel rather than with them. With Macs, iPhones, iPods, iTablets, and Intel, they can start a new standard overnight. BTW, when they switched to USB, I understood, but it was soooo much slower than Firewire.
I read somewhere - sorry, no link - that Snow Leopard upgrades will actually gain you several Gigabytes. Seems hard to believe, but I am eager to try it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the mentality that I don't understand. Apple doesn't support some old lame technology you have laying around and they have "limited vision"? The mac mini is the same volume as 5 jewel cases stacked on one another - and it's a pretty good computer. USB ( thanks to Apple's limited vision of making the iMac use only USB ) was ubiquitous when the Mac Mini was announced. Should they have included SCSI and Parallels ports as well - in case you had some of those peripherals laying around? If Apple didn't have "limited vision" their products would be the bloated, backward crap the rest of the industry spews out.
This is a compelling vision and would spur lots of entrepreneurial activity and jobs around increasing efficiencies.
Yeah, because there is no money budgeted for maintenance, I'm sure. They just stuck them up there and are hoping for the best.
I can tell it's going to suck because it's a "center of excellence". Sounds like something from Office Space.
"while you and a few others will decide the pen is too small someone else will come along and call you barbaric for what you accept"
Wow, you are so right. We should abandon any efforts to treat animals more humanely because there will always be someone who wants them to be treated better. We should cut off their legs and reduce the pen size even further cause, hell, you can't please everyone.
"No farmer wants animals harmed or raised in unsafe manners, it is not cost effective."
Bullshit. There are farmers that have their hearts and production methods in the right place and there are farmers that abuse animals to maximize profits. You are either being naive or dishonest.
"We seem to put more care into the well being of animals than ourselves."
This is a false dichotomy. We need to treat all living creatures with respect. It is a closed system. I'm not saying to not eat them, I am saying we need to make sure they live healthy lives - for their sakes and ours. The current state of meat production is abysmal. The only reason cows eat corn is because it's an artificially cheap commodity because of government subsidies. This is also the reason most of our processed food is made out of corn. Cows aren't meant to eat corn - they have spent millions of years evolving a stomach to eat grass. You can feed them corn, but then you have to take all kinds of measures to keep them healthy. The only sustainable and sane way to raise cattle is to let them walk under the sky and eat grass. I urge everyone to read Michael Pollen's book, "the Omnivore's dilemma". It will really open your eyes to the consequences of a food economy based on cheap corn. I try to eat grass-fed beef whenever I can afford it.
http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/1606861670/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271700304&sr=8-1
No, Jobs endorses this ( from the article):
"And, obviously, such a meta-platform would be out of Apple's control. Consider a world where some other company's cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company's toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it's the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features."
"No, Apple has been doing what they are doing because they want to restrict competition and screw their customers, plain and simple."
That's why they have 48 billion in the bank and the highest satisfaction surveys. People just love being screwed by Apple.
Because the language may be Objective C in syntax, but that doesn't mean it's not just a C program. Objective C is a superset of C. What Apple wants, I think, is for people to use Cocoa - not just lowest common denominator C code. Apple doesn't make money off of it's Dev tools. They make it off exceeding a user's expectations. I think they are trying to continue to do that and not just be pricks for no reason.
I just blew coffee out of my nose when you said Jobs is shit-scared of Android. First of all, I don't think Jobs is shit-scared of anything. Secondly, Android will never have more than 30% of the market, it's just going to be too fragmented of an offering with too many different hardware specs and too much control ceded to the carriers over os updates and app stores.
But the main point is that Apple does not want to fill their platform up with mediocre apps written to support the lowest common denominator feature set and UI conventions. Apple users have put up with shit software for years from the likes of Adobe and other vendors who wished the Mac would just go away while they concentrated on Windows. Jobs is demanding excellent software for an excellent device - one that is programmed and compiled in a way that utilizes the OS frameworks to their fullest.
And, more importantly, while the author's facts are wrong, the idea of the post is correct. If jobs allows another company to control the development trajectories of, say, even 10% of the apps on the store, Apple can no longer plan their product change and enhancement cycles around their own timeline - they will have to wait until companies like Adobe are ready to change their tools - and, history has proven that it can be a very long wait.
Dude - the iPad has 256 MB of RAM. It'[s not just about the processor.
I think you are right, but I know plenty of geeks who are excited about programming for touch devices with all kinds of whiz bang sensors and core technologies all connected to a worldwide network - not to mention hundred million affluent users who have already entered in their credit card numbers. It's a geek's dream! - if they could stop whining.
I'm not sure I understand you. Yes, the menuing system on the top of the screen is a feature that Mac users love. And there are a million more just like that one. WIndows is just not a good place to me for creatives - or for anyone for that matter - but that is a question of personal taste.
That's what I find interesting. Not too long ago, the average Slashdot user felt something between mild disdain and disgust for Flash. Now it's like Flash is the poster child for the open Internet.
"A competitor that basically kept their Mac platform alive with their creative tools. "
You must not have been a Mac user during the last 10 years. Adobe has done everything they could do get people to move to Windows - almost killing the platform. It was the Mac OS that kept creative professionals coming back to the Mac. We could have bought the same Adobe tools on Windows, but realized that you need an ecosystem to work in - not just a cheap, commodity platform created by people who have no taste or creativity. The platform thrived despite Adobe's negligence - not because of it. Rather than design products that played to OS X's strengths, Adobe continues to put out substandard trash and they have the gall to charge us ungodly upgrade fees. I for one am ready to see Adobe fold and get some fresh blood in the creative space.
"So what if an app doesn't "fully use iPhone features", as long as it provides adequate functionality"
Shooting for adequate functionality is why Adobe is in this position.
"where competition drives innovation rather than hostility."
Oh come off it. There was no iPhone not long ago. They competed their way to where they are now. Because they insist on "insanely great" products instead of "adequate", the public has rewarded them. Adobe is becoming more and more like a parasite every day. Screw em.
"who is Apple to determine what its users will be happy with"
Um, the maker of the device, the app store, and the entire eco system they have created. They are uniquely qualified to judge what constitutes quality - that's why they have 48 billion in the bank.
Agreed. Apple's tired of sloppy seconds. They don't have to be the bitch anymore. They have the talent, the vision, the capital and they are making cool shit while the rest of the industry sits on its collective ass. They have busted their asses and are reaping the awards. Others are free to do the same.
It' not illegal to try and boost your sales at the expense of your competitors.
As long as it works is the key here.
Every time Apple releases an update, a patch, or a new feature, there is a potential for cross-compiled apps to not work properly and give the user a bad experience. How long would it take Adobe to update their code and for all the cross-compiled? A week, 3 months? Maybe there will be functionality to complicated or too costly to reproduce since it won't be able to hook into a certain core service? Then the answer is never.
Sorry, Apple has a right to ensure a good user experience. as a matter of fact, it is what has made them.
Mac users had to settle for being locked out, shit on, and ignored for many, many years. Suddenly the servant is the master and everyone's whining about how Adobe isn't allowed to continue to foist their buggy plug in and dev tools on us anymore. Grow up. Compete. Make a decent HTML 5 animation editor that doesn't suck like all the other Mac software you've put out in the last 10 years.
I agree with your comments about being pragmatic and developing viable alternatives, but I disagree that the chief obstacle is "greenie eco-nuts". It takes a lot of capital to fund major changes in energy infrastructure and, despite such successes as the highway system, the Internet, the GI Bill, etc., government spending is vilified as wasteful and arrogant - never mind that it's OK to waste a trillion in Iraq and several hundred billion on tax cuts for the oppressed wealthy. If it weren't for the pressure from entrenched corporate interests like Exxon and their lackeys in government and the vilification of any meaningful investment in clean energy from the government to get things rolling, we would be creating these technologies. Many of us "greenie eco-nuts" feel that a more energy-efficient economy is possible without lowering the standard of living - indeed, we feel that it could only boost the economy. ( having said that, I don't think reducing the amount of salad shooters and talking bass we purchase reduces our standard of living ). I wish the Democrats had some balls and had come into office with a martial plan for energy independence and had rammed it through congress.
Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, says, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Is he evil and stupid, or just plain stupid?
This Slashdot crowd is way too jaded. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. I thought the CG was amazing and groundbreaking, the use of 3D was subtle and deep, the plot was extremely relevant to what's going on in Nigeria and to Iraq - and, of course, to our treatment of Native Americans. I also thought the alien chick was hot.
The iPod was new, and not yet ubiquitous. Also, they were fighting against Intel rather than with them. With Macs, iPhones, iPods, iTablets, and Intel, they can start a new standard overnight. BTW, when they switched to USB, I understood, but it was soooo much slower than Firewire.
I read somewhere - sorry, no link - that Snow Leopard upgrades will actually gain you several Gigabytes. Seems hard to believe, but I am eager to try it.
TFA discusses the opening of the route to COMMERCIAL traffic - not specially-suited vehicles.