"Dismantles any claim..."? Here's a hint: if any such claim has been made by Apple, I've yet to see it in any docs or presentation.
Yes, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch are a lot alike in language and conventions. I can even get a lot of properly-structured code to work just fine between the two platforms. But at no point have I been deluded into thinking that a simple recompile is all that's needed to go from one to the other.
The rest just sounds like the ranting of a bitter old man who is reminded why programming isn't really for him anymore. (This coming from a fellow bitter old man who oddly still can't stay away from the compiler.)
Right, because previously AdMob was your other option, and using that in an iPhone app was on the level of rocket science or brain surgery. You want to avoid ads? Don't buy ad-supported apps.
I'm amazed that the complaining about iAd primarily consists of "Apple iz putting da ads on our phonez!", instead of "Apple copied AdMob and pretends they invented the idea". The latter is a valid argument, the former just means someone hasn't been paying attention.
If you are too stupid to use Windows Mobile, what the hell are you doing on Slashdot?
Seriously? A "you're too stupid to use it" come back? Look, if your phone's OS requires the user to pass your personal intelligence test, it's broken.
Re:I'll try not to be an Apple basher
on
iPad Review
·
· Score: 1
This, of course, implies robust handwriting recognition
There's a lot of the problem right there. A lot of my work involves handwriting recognition across multiple engines. They all suck. 80-85% recognition rates aren't going to cut it if the user has to go correct every fifth word. Maybe Apple recognized this, maybe they just didn't want to bother, maybe they have haunting nightmares from the Newton days.
My guess is that Apple built what they could make work today without annoying the user with tech that sort of works most of the time. That may mean that you're right in your assertion that it's a product looking for its place in the world. I like mine well enough, but I'll admit that it doesn't solve any particular problem that was previously unsolvable by other means.
Re:Why doesn't it run OSX?
on
iPad Review
·
· Score: 2, Informative
My question to this whole deal is why does the iPad not run true OSX?
Do we seriously need to go through this again? I'll say what countless others have said before: "the iPad isn't for you". "Code and work", like it's a dev machine? With an on-screen keyboard? That's just a cry for help.
I would have bought one the first day if it was a real tablet that ran all of the software i need.
And I would have not bothered with a pre-order and keeping my nose pressed against the living room window waiting for UPS on Saturday morning if it were what you wanted. I've got a Macbook for when I want to run OS X. I've got an iPad for when I'm not trying to write the next great American novel (or more realistically in my case, writing the next great iPhone/iPad/Mac app).
Even if MS is burning money on Bing and their other online products, they're thinking long term.
Microsoft's online division has been burning through money for over ten years. MSN has had a total of one profitable quarter (and I'm not convinced that wasn't just book-juggling), and then went right back to losing money hand over fist.
At no other company could a division burn through tens of billions of dollars over the course of a decade and still exist.
Wow...you're a bit late to the party. I had a bit of discussion about that twelve hours ago here.
Yeah, sorry about that. I spent eight of the past twelve hours sleeping, and otherwise not living up to geek standards by doing nothing but hit "refresh" on the/. home page.
This is a very, very neutered bit of legislation. We have the technology to do far more than this.
CAFE has always been neutered by compromise, nothing new here. You're right, the technology is there, and it's being used. It doesn't make much difference if car makers are cranking out SUVs and light trucks as fast as they can because that's what people are buying.
Short of dealers saying, "sorry, we're out of trucks for the year, care to test drive a Corolla that is far less profitable for us?" I don't know how to do better.
Worse, my 2005 Toyota Corolla gets BETTER gas mileage than this.
Not better enough to offset all the V8 Toyota Tacomas running around. You did remember that it's fleet mileage, not the mileage of individual cars, right?
For some reason my fellow americans are convinced that diesel is the pinko commie devil's juice that makes the baby jesus cry.
It's because your fellow Americans still remember the smokey, noisy, unreliable vehicles that resulted from American manufacturers bolting diesels into the place a V8 gas engine used to be. Despite the logical part of my brain knowing that diesel passenger cars of today are not the abominations of the 80s, a piece of me still hesitates to entertain the thought of owning a diesel.
If I might flip the usual analogy on its head, imagine not buying a Mac today because you once owned an overpriced POS running System 7.5.
Maybe for sufficiently small values of "works". It mostly works, but the javascript kills page load perf. On my machine, expanding a message by clicking the title is a crap shoot. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's as if there is no link. Could be a bug in Mobile Safari, I don't know. Works enough that I don't care to investigate, I guess. Also works poorly enough that I avoid loading/. on my phone if I can.
On top of the fact that Hotmail must have some deal where a spammer pays enough money, and no amount of marking as spam will keep their mail out of your inbox. I gave The Ladders my "oh, you need an email address, do you?" Hotmail address. Saw what a scam that was, and started marking their mail as spam. Months went by, kept marking, and their stuff still made its way into my inbox. I'd blow it off as a broken feature if it didn't work for other domains.
I guess The Ladders didn't pay their bill, as I notice in the past week that their stuff in the Junk folder now.
Programs run just fine, or so some hope, with compiler warnings. Despite that, parent says his shop considers them to be bugs.
Oh to work in such a shop, where I don't have to sift through 74 warnings every build because someone decides that catch (Exception e) is fine even if you never take so much as a passing glance at what got put into variable e. Hey, dev manager, how about you just turn the fsckin' things off if no one cares?
A $2600 Mac Pro? That's your answer to the question, "...best way to get web content..."?:-)
My Mac Mini does a great job for video content. Maybe it's our ancient 720p Panny plasma, but it blows for any real computer work. The resolution (and overscan I can't completely correct, to some extent) just doesn't cut it for more than brief web surfing.
You're being contrarian for the sake of doing so. Why should anyone have to parse your made-up terms? We already have words for the UI elements, no need to make up new ones.
We'll ignore the fact that none of the Windows (US-EN) machines I'm running have the word "Start" anywhere in the desktop shell.
I'm the test manager for a company that creates products for people to write on paper and have that writing turned into digital ink, and ultimately recognized as useful information once it gets back into the software (integrates with Excel, PDF, ESRI, and the like). I'll bet the test team alone goes through a couple of boxes of paper a week. I can't remember the last time I bought paper for home.
If the paperless office stood any chance of happening any time soon, our company would be doomed. But, for whatever reasons, the reality is that there exist situations where people need to print paper and write on it. Fire fighters in wildfire situations printing A0 or bigger maps, and scribbling plans on them. Court documents, military scenarios where even a Toughbook isn't going to cut it ("a computer with a bullet hole in it is a brick, a map with a hole is still a map").
Now you people printing your email, or copies of a PowerPoint slide deck for a meeting, just cut it the hell out.
The vast majority of these people who "can't pay for insurance" still manage to pay for an iPod or a Cell Phone or a form of reliable transportation (read: new car in most cases
I'd put something cutesy in my response like "[citation needed]", but let's run with your post for a moment. Even an iPod, cell phone, or a new car pales in comparison to private insurance. For a family of four, the payment on a new Jaguar (having just looked at such things myself) runs less than most private insurance plans I've seen.
So it isn't necessarily a matter of choice between the new car and the insurance. They weren't getting the insurance regardless, just like they probably aren't buying a Jaguar (even though it might cost less). But they can scrape together enough for a US$15K Scion.
Since MS employees are highly likely to get a discount on MS products it is extremely telling that it can't even sell its own dog food to its own employees.
Of what few discounts there are, one would do better buying elsewhere. Used to work there years ago, and of the friends I know that still work there I'm hard pressed to think of one that doesn't have an iPhone.
It just doesn't send the right message. You wouldn't think it normal if the vast majority of MS employees used Mac's would you?
Ironically, MSFT employees can get a decent discount on Macs through the internal discount program.
Your understanding from personal experience, from Apple's official stance, or from what you hear from a few developers?
Other than the middle choice of discounting Apple propaganda, does it make a difference? I submitted an app Sunday night, the approval mail just popped into my inbox minutes ago.
Or was that your lead-in to tell your tale of woe? Yes, Apple has been shown to approve apps in less than 48 hours, you have an anecdotal story to back that up. Your mileage may vary, and it obviously does.
With my whopping seven digit UID, I still get the option to disable ads (even though I choose not to as a token show of support). I don't post all that much, but typically use all of my mod points. I don't know the criteria, but low ID # probably isn't it.
Apple doesn't get to see your source code. To figure out that you are using an API, they have to, to some extent, reverse-engineer your application.
They have static analysis tools. They nailed one of my apps for subclassing when I shouldn't have. Not a private API, just subclassing something that the docs clearly state (had I read them) shouldn't be subclassed. No way one is going to see that just looking at the app. Used a category instead (which is what I should have done in the first place), and there was no external change to the app. App went through just fine.
It could be argued that Apple is trying to maintain their developer relationship. I have an app idea, and I know I can't write it without using a private framework or API. So I stick my idea back on the shelf and go work on something else. But then I see other apps with similar functionality, and I know they didn't do it while playing by the rules. At that point I'm a little irked at Apple when the rules apparently don't apply evenly.
That's not hypothetical, it's happened to me. The Red Laser app used the exact API I needed to use. They get to submit something that becomes best-selling, I didn't bother even creating a new project file. Later, instead of yanking Red Laser, Apple changes their mind and says, "umm, okay, go ahead and use the API". In the end, it's the better thing for Apple to do. Doesn't make me feel better about losing lead time.
No, AC is saying the game requires a "crysis ready" machine, which a P4 is most certainly not. Not that I agree with AC, I think the game just requires something better than a CPU that wasn't one of Intel's shining moments.
But the question was "in 1960", and that movie was made in 1968. So PC World got it wrong, it's only over the last 40 years (first in 1968, last was 2008).
Slashdot Mirror
"Dismantles any claim..."? Here's a hint: if any such claim has been made by Apple, I've yet to see it in any docs or presentation.
Yes, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch are a lot alike in language and conventions. I can even get a lot of properly-structured code to work just fine between the two platforms. But at no point have I been deluded into thinking that a simple recompile is all that's needed to go from one to the other.
The rest just sounds like the ranting of a bitter old man who is reminded why programming isn't really for him anymore. (This coming from a fellow bitter old man who oddly still can't stay away from the compiler.)
Perhaps you meant to say, "In my opinion ... "?
Or perhaps, Captain Pedantic, it was implied because it was so obvious?
Yes, and now that they have made it easy
Right, because previously AdMob was your other option, and using that in an iPhone app was on the level of rocket science or brain surgery. You want to avoid ads? Don't buy ad-supported apps.
I'm amazed that the complaining about iAd primarily consists of "Apple iz putting da ads on our phonez!", instead of "Apple copied AdMob and pretends they invented the idea". The latter is a valid argument, the former just means someone hasn't been paying attention.
If you are too stupid to use Windows Mobile, what the hell are you doing on Slashdot?
Seriously? A "you're too stupid to use it" come back? Look, if your phone's OS requires the user to pass your personal intelligence test, it's broken.
This, of course, implies robust handwriting recognition
There's a lot of the problem right there. A lot of my work involves handwriting recognition across multiple engines. They all suck. 80-85% recognition rates aren't going to cut it if the user has to go correct every fifth word. Maybe Apple recognized this, maybe they just didn't want to bother, maybe they have haunting nightmares from the Newton days.
My guess is that Apple built what they could make work today without annoying the user with tech that sort of works most of the time. That may mean that you're right in your assertion that it's a product looking for its place in the world. I like mine well enough, but I'll admit that it doesn't solve any particular problem that was previously unsolvable by other means.
My question to this whole deal is why does the iPad not run true OSX?
Do we seriously need to go through this again? I'll say what countless others have said before: "the iPad isn't for you". "Code and work", like it's a dev machine? With an on-screen keyboard? That's just a cry for help.
I would have bought one the first day if it was a real tablet that ran all of the software i need.
And I would have not bothered with a pre-order and keeping my nose pressed against the living room window waiting for UPS on Saturday morning if it were what you wanted. I've got a Macbook for when I want to run OS X. I've got an iPad for when I'm not trying to write the next great American novel (or more realistically in my case, writing the next great iPhone/iPad/Mac app).
Even if MS is burning money on Bing and their other online products, they're thinking long term.
Microsoft's online division has been burning through money for over ten years. MSN has had a total of one profitable quarter (and I'm not convinced that wasn't just book-juggling), and then went right back to losing money hand over fist.
At no other company could a division burn through tens of billions of dollars over the course of a decade and still exist.
Wow...you're a bit late to the party. I had a bit of discussion about that twelve hours ago here.
Yeah, sorry about that. I spent eight of the past twelve hours sleeping, and otherwise not living up to geek standards by doing nothing but hit "refresh" on the /. home page.
This is a very, very neutered bit of legislation. We have the technology to do far more than this.
CAFE has always been neutered by compromise, nothing new here. You're right, the technology is there, and it's being used. It doesn't make much difference if car makers are cranking out SUVs and light trucks as fast as they can because that's what people are buying.
Short of dealers saying, "sorry, we're out of trucks for the year, care to test drive a Corolla that is far less profitable for us?" I don't know how to do better.
Worse, my 2005 Toyota Corolla gets BETTER gas mileage than this.
Not better enough to offset all the V8 Toyota Tacomas running around. You did remember that it's fleet mileage, not the mileage of individual cars, right?
For some reason my fellow americans are convinced that diesel is the pinko commie devil's juice that makes the baby jesus cry.
It's because your fellow Americans still remember the smokey, noisy, unreliable vehicles that resulted from American manufacturers bolting diesels into the place a V8 gas engine used to be. Despite the logical part of my brain knowing that diesel passenger cars of today are not the abominations of the 80s, a piece of me still hesitates to entertain the thought of owning a diesel.
If I might flip the usual analogy on its head, imagine not buying a Mac today because you once owned an overpriced POS running System 7.5.
Maybe for sufficiently small values of "works". It mostly works, but the javascript kills page load perf. On my machine, expanding a message by clicking the title is a crap shoot. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's as if there is no link. Could be a bug in Mobile Safari, I don't know. Works enough that I don't care to investigate, I guess. Also works poorly enough that I avoid loading /. on my phone if I can.
On top of the fact that Hotmail must have some deal where a spammer pays enough money, and no amount of marking as spam will keep their mail out of your inbox. I gave The Ladders my "oh, you need an email address, do you?" Hotmail address. Saw what a scam that was, and started marking their mail as spam. Months went by, kept marking, and their stuff still made its way into my inbox. I'd blow it off as a broken feature if it didn't work for other domains.
I guess The Ladders didn't pay their bill, as I notice in the past week that their stuff in the Junk folder now.
Programs run just fine, or so some hope, with compiler warnings. Despite that, parent says his shop considers them to be bugs.
Oh to work in such a shop, where I don't have to sift through 74 warnings every build because someone decides that catch (Exception e) is fine even if you never take so much as a passing glance at what got put into variable e. Hey, dev manager, how about you just turn the fsckin' things off if no one cares?
A $2600 Mac Pro? That's your answer to the question, "...best way to get web content..."? :-)
My Mac Mini does a great job for video content. Maybe it's our ancient 720p Panny plasma, but it blows for any real computer work. The resolution (and overscan I can't completely correct, to some extent) just doesn't cut it for more than brief web surfing.
Audio bandwidth? For web content? Sure, wouldn't want to miss out on that 7.1 coming from Hulu.
You're being contrarian for the sake of doing so. Why should anyone have to parse your made-up terms? We already have words for the UI elements, no need to make up new ones.
We'll ignore the fact that none of the Windows (US-EN) machines I'm running have the word "Start" anywhere in the desktop shell.
I'm the test manager for a company that creates products for people to write on paper and have that writing turned into digital ink, and ultimately recognized as useful information once it gets back into the software (integrates with Excel, PDF, ESRI, and the like). I'll bet the test team alone goes through a couple of boxes of paper a week. I can't remember the last time I bought paper for home.
If the paperless office stood any chance of happening any time soon, our company would be doomed. But, for whatever reasons, the reality is that there exist situations where people need to print paper and write on it. Fire fighters in wildfire situations printing A0 or bigger maps, and scribbling plans on them. Court documents, military scenarios where even a Toughbook isn't going to cut it ("a computer with a bullet hole in it is a brick, a map with a hole is still a map").
Now you people printing your email, or copies of a PowerPoint slide deck for a meeting, just cut it the hell out.
The vast majority of these people who "can't pay for insurance" still manage to pay for an iPod or a Cell Phone or a form of reliable transportation (read: new car in most cases
I'd put something cutesy in my response like "[citation needed]", but let's run with your post for a moment. Even an iPod, cell phone, or a new car pales in comparison to private insurance. For a family of four, the payment on a new Jaguar (having just looked at such things myself) runs less than most private insurance plans I've seen.
So it isn't necessarily a matter of choice between the new car and the insurance. They weren't getting the insurance regardless, just like they probably aren't buying a Jaguar (even though it might cost less). But they can scrape together enough for a US$15K Scion.
Since MS employees are highly likely to get a discount on MS products it is extremely telling that it can't even sell its own dog food to its own employees.
Of what few discounts there are, one would do better buying elsewhere. Used to work there years ago, and of the friends I know that still work there I'm hard pressed to think of one that doesn't have an iPhone.
It just doesn't send the right message. You wouldn't think it normal if the vast majority of MS employees used Mac's would you?
Ironically, MSFT employees can get a decent discount on Macs through the internal discount program.
Your understanding from personal experience, from Apple's official stance, or from what you hear from a few developers?
Other than the middle choice of discounting Apple propaganda, does it make a difference? I submitted an app Sunday night, the approval mail just popped into my inbox minutes ago.
Or was that your lead-in to tell your tale of woe? Yes, Apple has been shown to approve apps in less than 48 hours, you have an anecdotal story to back that up. Your mileage may vary, and it obviously does.
With my whopping seven digit UID, I still get the option to disable ads (even though I choose not to as a token show of support). I don't post all that much, but typically use all of my mod points. I don't know the criteria, but low ID # probably isn't it.
Apple doesn't get to see your source code. To figure out that you are using an API, they have to, to some extent, reverse-engineer your application.
They have static analysis tools. They nailed one of my apps for subclassing when I shouldn't have. Not a private API, just subclassing something that the docs clearly state (had I read them) shouldn't be subclassed. No way one is going to see that just looking at the app. Used a category instead (which is what I should have done in the first place), and there was no external change to the app. App went through just fine.
It could be argued that Apple is trying to maintain their developer relationship. I have an app idea, and I know I can't write it without using a private framework or API. So I stick my idea back on the shelf and go work on something else. But then I see other apps with similar functionality, and I know they didn't do it while playing by the rules. At that point I'm a little irked at Apple when the rules apparently don't apply evenly.
That's not hypothetical, it's happened to me. The Red Laser app used the exact API I needed to use. They get to submit something that becomes best-selling, I didn't bother even creating a new project file. Later, instead of yanking Red Laser, Apple changes their mind and says, "umm, okay, go ahead and use the API". In the end, it's the better thing for Apple to do. Doesn't make me feel better about losing lead time.
No, AC is saying the game requires a "crysis ready" machine, which a P4 is most certainly not. Not that I agree with AC, I think the game just requires something better than a CPU that wasn't one of Intel's shining moments.
But the question was "in 1960", and that movie was made in 1968. So PC World got it wrong, it's only over the last 40 years (first in 1968, last was 2008).