> Finally now I'm an adult and have heard both sides on all of these topics, That's your problem right there -- you're listening to other people, instead of...
No man is an island. You listen to the evidence put forth by others and you weigh it, check it for inconsistencies and flaws where you can, you add your own facts. That's science, it's the best method we have.
> have lived enough to have experience to throw into the mix... coming to conclusions based on experience. Which experiences??
Life, all the facts you pick up along the way, all things you measure and the things you find that you can't. All the things you proved for yourself or have others prove to you and all the bullshit people try to sell you "on faith" that turns out to be worthless.
The only way to truely know god is to experience her/him. How can you even begin to understand god while you are still ignorant of your Higher Self ??
I need evidence, someone else's "revelations" won't do it for me. My own "revelations" wouldn't do it for me, they are useless without evidence. A great example of this sort of baseless, schizophrenia induced religious experience is the writer Philip K. Dick, he "experienced god and got in touch with his higher self." Human beings can convince themselves of the most amazing bullshit: the placebo effect, hysterical blindness, the jerusalem syndrome. All relatively benign unless they start to pull others into their madness. This is what I want, unless you can offer me that I ain't buying.
Actually, no. My mother was quite "into" astrology and other stuff so we had a lot of books and magazines on all kinds of supernatural things around. Being an avid reader I read tons of this nonsense when I was younger (including a lot on Geller, who was quite popular in the 80's.) Then in my teenage years, when X-Files was the popular thing, I read a lot about UFO's. Finally now I'm an adult and have heard both sides on all of these topics, have lived enough to have experience to throw into the mix and have decided that there's no empirical evidence for what you are talking about. One day, if you chose to truly open your mind, you'll come to the same conclusion.
The amazing thing is that Apple did this trick 3 times, reshaping the design of a product in its own image : once for the GUI, second time for the MP3 player and the final time for the smartphone. And you could argue that the, Jobs headed, Pixar did the same thing for animation.
I still think Xerox should get the most credit, their problem being that they developed PARC at a time when hardware was way too expensive to get any penetration.
No they were idiots. Jobs said on several occasions Xerox could have owned the computer business, could have an IBM or a Microsoft. For heaven's sake their lead engineer told her superiors she wouldn't do the presentation to Apple unless they ordered her to, which they did, because she could see they were giving away the crown jewels in exchange for some Apple stock.
I think he planned it this way a couple months back. This touching picture of Jobs and his wife after te last WWDC seems rather apropos. In hindsight that kinda looks like a guy who knows he's climbed on that stage for the last time enjoying the moment.
They really wouldn't. A good example of this is PC vs console gaming. Some people, for a variety of reasons including openness, stay on the PC but the majority have moved to consoles. The PC as we now it will always be around but will be relegated to a niche, there is no more personal computer than an iPad and it allows access to people into computing who otherwise would have stayed on the sidelines by necessity.
Where you see a closing down, others, the ones who have always been excluded by the geekiness, jargon and dependance on obscure technical detail of computing, might see a democratization.
But these programs aren't crapware, which is what we're talking about :
"Shovelware (sometimes also crapware or garbageware) is a derogatory computer jargon term that refers to software noted more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness. The term is also used to refer to software that is ported from one computer platform or storage medium to another with little thought given to adapting it for use on the destination platform or medium, resulting in poor quality. The term is also sometimes used to refer to pre-installed software.[1]"
Safari, iTunes, AppStore these are pillars of the iOS, essential components to the user experience Apple offers and AppStore is really the only one you are forced to use (if you want to install software.) If you are the kind of person who wants to change package managers you do not want an iPhone anyway, the whole philosophy of it is exactly the opposite of that.
You get what you pay for, if you buy a cheapo Android subsidized by your carrier you'll get crapware. Buy a more expensive Android and you might get crapware, buy an expensive iPhone and get no crapware. Everyone can make their own decision on whether it's worth the money or not, to me it is.
I think the point is that evolutionary biologists can't account for the amount of altruism that exists, and religion is one way to try to explain the caring for non-kin that we see all around us. Wikipedia says: 'J.B.S. Haldane famously joked, "Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins".' Why is this a joke? Because we don't make calculations like this, because religion extends the family; thus we see soldiers, for example, laying down their lives to save those unrelated to them. Or lifeguards...
We have very good explanations of why humans are social animals. Evolutionary biologists started thinking about this stuff as long back as 1890 with P. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. For a modern point of view check out Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky's lectures, it's fascinating stuff. He even goes into your calculation (don't remember in which of the video's) about how much you would sacrifice to save a brother, cousin, etc. (it CAN be calculated). He also has a nice (older) video on the origin of religion from a biological standpoint.
Ah yes, praying for someone, all the benefits of claiming to help without any of the actual work.
Anyway, the article ignores the fact that there is a tradition in the judeo-christian faiths of seeing disease as either a punishment from god or something you brought on yourself through sin.
Eg:
"Behold, the Lord will strike your people with a serious affliction -- your children, your wives, and all your possessions; and you will become very sick with a disease of your intestines, until your intestines come out by reason of the sickness, day by day" (2 Chronicles 21:14,15).
"For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due" (Romans 1:26,27)
The latter quote being used even today to justify AIDS as a punishment from god. Now you won't find me arguing that christianity in general, to its credit, hasn't been at least charitable to the sick but by defining disease as something to be borne rather than something to combat it certainly did put a break on progress.
That's like complaining your OS comes with a browser and a package manager. It makes no sense, those apps are part of the core use cases for the device.
So that's why people are leaving their Iphone 3GS's for new Android handsets. The fastest selling OS is Android, people are buying it because it's better
Andoid isn't "better" pe sé, but for a lot of people an Android phone is a better fit because: - they need some hardware feature (like a physical keyboard) - they are on a budget, and lots of Android phones are cheaper than an iPhone.
I'd say the iPhone is the best phone in its category, with Android expanding by filling the need for smartphones outside of that category where people are increasingly dumping their dumb phones for app-phones. This is also why there's constant speculation about Apple creating smaller and/or cheaper versions of the iPhone to expand into some of those other market segments.
I stopped reading after this line in the first paragraph :
"...attacked the reputation of psychics and healers such as Israeli-born spoon bender Uri Geller..."
Anyone over the age of 12 who is impressed by Geller's parlor tricks is a braindead idiot. Of course they aren't beyond hope they could redeem themselves if only, oh the irony of it, they would "open their minds" to the existence of a rational explanation.
It'd be OK if he's a Randi or Penn Teller style magician-entertainer, very bad if he's a Uri Gellar type conman. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't have hired the latter kind.
Not to mention they spent that effort duplicating something that has already been done years ago by GimpShop:
"It shares all GIMP's advantages, including the long feature list and customisability, while addressing some common criticisms regarding the program's interface: GIMPshop modifies the menu structure to closely match Photoshop's, adjusts the program's terminology to match Adobe's, and, in the Windows version, uses a plugin called 'Deweirdifier' to combine the application's numerous windows in a similar manner to the MDI system used by most Windows graphics packages."
See, there is a myth that Macs just work, when in fact they are a gigantic pain-- things that work on 10.5 (cisco VPN client) and 10.6 dont work on 10.7;
Lion's not even been out a month! Those complaints should go to software vendors, not Apple. Personally 99% of my applications worked on Lion (there was a single PPC holdout in there) but everyone who owns a mac will tell people to not upgrade yet unless they need the latest for bragging rights or some indispensable feature. Common sense.
and with Lions new "restart my apps" feature that everyone seems to use, the Macs now boot up as slow as can be and are often slower than Vista laptops with 1gb of ram.
You're comparing apples and oranges: boot vs boot + applications launch. Apple wants to move anyone onto SSD's which come as standard or as an option for every mac now, with an SSD this becomes a non-issue. If it bothers you personally you can disable it.
I could go on and on about the issues they have that seem to be brain-dead UI etc decisions, but its not the point.
My theory is that someone has a bogged down, virus-laden laptop, and theyre considering getting a new one when their friend, who has a Mac, says "go apple-- theyre SO much better". So they go and get a new SandyBridge Macbook Air, and it IS better-- its lighter, faster, and the screen is nicer. THeir belief is reinforced, and they go and tell their friends to buy mac.
Sounds like a success story to me.
But the thing is, for much less they could have gotten a very nice HP Envy, or a high end Sony, or a solid Lenovo, and been just as happy, for less-- but because of the stigma of "PCs are slow", they dont consider it if its price start to approach the Mac. So they make the purchase that costs considerably more, and of course that comes with some nice perks, and of course OSX IS a good OS (though I have scores of issues with it and think Win7 is better in the corporate world by far).
So I basically break it down for my friends like this: You can get a MacBook pro with Thunderbolt, 4gb of ram, and an i3 processor for $1600; or you can get the EXACT same laptop from HP (probook 4530s) sans the thunderbolt port and with a different case (and slightly worse multitouch) for about $450. That is, every year for the next 4 years, you can buy a new probook, and throw the old one in the trash, and youll still come out about where you would have been if youd bought the mac.
First off if you need a laptop that'll be for corporate use exclusively just get a Thinkpad and be done with it, those things are everywhere. Secondly, all current Apple laptops come with at least an i5, not an i3 like you say. When you compare the i5 HP 4530's they perform worse in nearly every benchmark, compareyourself. Then there's stuff like an aluminum enclosure, a lower profile, much better battery life. I'm not saying you have to like the Macbook they're not for everyone, but there's genuine value there for your extra bucks.
Petty might be a better word. I havent seen any complaints about how awful their UI automation is compared with, say, AutoIt, or how trying to enforce system settings with "defaults" is a bear compared with working with the registry (look up "how do i do XX on windows registry", and then compare with a similar search for apple's defaults), or how it seems to be more UI centric than even windows (with a number of System preferences being simply un-administratable from the shell). Instead, I see a number of people talk about how its enterprise ready when it very clearly is not.
The lesson here is not about solid engineering, eye-catching design, or pricing.
Yes it is. The iPad is a solid products and has become the touchstone. If you want to compete with something that's perceived as the tablet you have be either: - significantly better and the same price - at least as good at a lower price
Sadly the TouchPad was neither. To bad too, I'd have liked Palm's progeny to at least survive.
Most people who bought an iPad don't even know the specs..
The vast majority of people don't know the specs of their PC's either. The great thing is that with tablets they don't have to. Tablets are bought on the following considerations: "Can I run the popular apps?", "Does it feel responsive?", "Does the battery last me at least a whole day of use?" The iPad kills on all 3 of these criteria. And what were the most often heard complaints against the Touchpad ? That it "felt slow" and there were no apps. No one except uber geeks cares about tablet specs.
Apple has gotten to the point where people just buy their products because everybody chants how great they are.
That's a myth. Apple users are some of the most critical around. That's why you keep hearing very vocal complaints about problems with Apple systems that impact a small minority of its users. And a lot of the new iPad/iPhone users who aren't traditional Apple fans would leave at the drop of a hat if something better came along. These are just regular consumers, not geeks, they go with what works.
Wow, if they had been willing to eat the cost and sell them at this price in the first place they might have been a contender.
Re:Video is ten times bigger than vector animation
on
A Decade of Haiku OS
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· Score: 1
Yes but I'd rather spend the bandwidth, which is relatively cheap, than rely on an interpreter of often dubious quality. I mean the current version of Flash on the mac is ok but earlier versions really, really stunk. And I remember that back when Homestar Runner was newly popular Flash was pretty craptacular on Linux too, and forget putting on some even less popular platform like FreeBSD. No, been there done that can't wait for it to finally expire.
I haven't been to Homestar Runner in years, are they still releasing new stuff. All those comics could just as easily be streamed in h264, they are already released as DVD's so they must have them in some video format or other. The migration to HTML5 is already under way I think. I mean who in his right mind would release a new site with a flash interface these days ? These things happen very fast, one day you're on top the next you're on the rubbish heap of history next to Real Player.
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> Finally now I'm an adult and have heard both sides on all of these topics, ...
That's your problem right there -- you're listening to other people, instead of
No man is an island. You listen to the evidence put forth by others and you weigh it, check it for inconsistencies and flaws where you can, you add your own facts. That's science, it's the best method we have.
> have lived enough to have experience to throw into the mix ... coming to conclusions based on experience. Which experiences??
Life, all the facts you pick up along the way, all things you measure and the things you find that you can't. All the things you proved for yourself or have others prove to you and all the bullshit people try to sell you "on faith" that turns out to be worthless.
The only way to truely know god is to experience her/him. How can you even begin to understand god while you are still ignorant of your Higher Self ??
I need evidence, someone else's "revelations" won't do it for me. My own "revelations" wouldn't do it for me, they are useless without evidence. A great example of this sort of baseless, schizophrenia induced religious experience is the writer Philip K. Dick, he "experienced god and got in touch with his higher self." Human beings can convince themselves of the most amazing bullshit: the placebo effect, hysterical blindness, the jerusalem syndrome. All relatively benign unless they start to pull others into their madness. This is what I want, unless you can offer me that I ain't buying.
Actually, no. My mother was quite "into" astrology and other stuff so we had a lot of books and magazines on all kinds of supernatural things around. Being an avid reader I read tons of this nonsense when I was younger (including a lot on Geller, who was quite popular in the 80's.) Then in my teenage years, when X-Files was the popular thing, I read a lot about UFO's. Finally now I'm an adult and have heard both sides on all of these topics, have lived enough to have experience to throw into the mix and have decided that there's no empirical evidence for what you are talking about. One day, if you chose to truly open your mind, you'll come to the same conclusion.
The amazing thing is that Apple did this trick 3 times, reshaping the design of a product in its own image : once for the GUI, second time for the MP3 player and the final time for the smartphone. And you could argue that the, Jobs headed, Pixar did the same thing for animation.
I still think Xerox should get the most credit, their problem being that they developed PARC at a time when hardware was way too expensive to get any penetration.
No they were idiots. Jobs said on several occasions Xerox could have owned the computer business, could have an IBM or a Microsoft. For heaven's sake their lead engineer told her superiors she wouldn't do the presentation to Apple unless they ordered her to, which they did, because she could see they were giving away the crown jewels in exchange for some Apple stock.
Great, something that I have to unmount before I can ask it to eject.
That's what she said.
I think he planned it this way a couple months back. This touching picture of Jobs and his wife after te last WWDC seems rather apropos. In hindsight that kinda looks like a guy who knows he's climbed on that stage for the last time enjoying the moment.
They really wouldn't. A good example of this is PC vs console gaming. Some people, for a variety of reasons including openness, stay on the PC but the majority have moved to consoles. The PC as we now it will always be around but will be relegated to a niche, there is no more personal computer than an iPad and it allows access to people into computing who otherwise would have stayed on the sidelines by necessity.
Where you see a closing down, others, the ones who have always been excluded by the geekiness, jargon and dependance on obscure technical detail of computing, might see a democratization.
But these programs aren't crapware, which is what we're talking about :
"Shovelware (sometimes also crapware or garbageware) is a derogatory computer jargon term that refers to software noted more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness. The term is also used to refer to software that is ported from one computer platform or storage medium to another with little thought given to adapting it for use on the destination platform or medium, resulting in poor quality. The term is also sometimes used to refer to pre-installed software.[1]"
Safari, iTunes, AppStore these are pillars of the iOS, essential components to the user experience Apple offers and AppStore is really the only one you are forced to use (if you want to install software.) If you are the kind of person who wants to change package managers you do not want an iPhone anyway, the whole philosophy of it is exactly the opposite of that.
You get what you pay for, if you buy a cheapo Android subsidized by your carrier you'll get crapware. Buy a more expensive Android and you might get crapware, buy an expensive iPhone and get no crapware. Everyone can make their own decision on whether it's worth the money or not, to me it is.
I think the point is that evolutionary biologists can't account for the amount of altruism that exists, and religion is one way to try to explain the caring for non-kin that we see all around us. Wikipedia says: 'J.B.S. Haldane famously joked, "Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins".' Why is this a joke? Because we don't make calculations like this, because religion extends the family; thus we see soldiers, for example, laying down their lives to save those unrelated to them. Or lifeguards...
We have very good explanations of why humans are social animals. Evolutionary biologists started thinking about this stuff as long back as 1890 with P. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. For a modern point of view check out Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky's lectures, it's fascinating stuff. He even goes into your calculation (don't remember in which of the video's) about how much you would sacrifice to save a brother, cousin, etc. (it CAN be calculated). He also has a nice (older) video on the origin of religion from a biological standpoint.
Ah yes, praying for someone, all the benefits of claiming to help without any of the actual work.
Anyway, the article ignores the fact that there is a tradition in the judeo-christian faiths of seeing disease as either a punishment from god or something you brought on yourself through sin.
Eg:
"Behold, the Lord will strike your people with a serious affliction -- your children, your wives, and all your possessions; and you will become very sick with a disease of your intestines, until your intestines come out by reason of the sickness, day by day" (2 Chronicles 21:14,15).
"For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due" (Romans 1:26,27)
The latter quote being used even today to justify AIDS as a punishment from god. Now you won't find me arguing that christianity in general, to its credit, hasn't been at least charitable to the sick but by defining disease as something to be borne rather than something to combat it certainly did put a break on progress.
That's like complaining your OS comes with a browser and a package manager. It makes no sense, those apps are part of the core use cases for the device.
But they are all the carriers bitches, that was why the smartphone market was stagnant until Apple arrived on the scene in the first place.
So that's why people are leaving their Iphone 3GS's for new Android handsets. The fastest selling OS is Android, people are buying it because it's better
Andoid isn't "better" pe sé, but for a lot of people an Android phone is a better fit because:
- they need some hardware feature (like a physical keyboard)
- they are on a budget, and lots of Android phones are cheaper than an iPhone.
I'd say the iPhone is the best phone in its category, with Android expanding by filling the need for smartphones outside of that category where people are increasingly dumping their dumb phones for app-phones. This is also why there's constant speculation about Apple creating smaller and/or cheaper versions of the iPhone to expand into some of those other market segments.
Actually the solution is in the last line of TFA :
"after all, this sort of thing doesn’t happen on iOS."
I stopped reading after this line in the first paragraph :
"...attacked the reputation of psychics and healers such as Israeli-born spoon bender Uri Geller..."
Anyone over the age of 12 who is impressed by Geller's parlor tricks is a braindead idiot. Of course they aren't beyond hope they could redeem themselves if only, oh the irony of it, they would "open their minds" to the existence of a rational explanation.
It'd be OK if he's a Randi or Penn Teller style magician-entertainer, very bad if he's a Uri Gellar type conman. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't have hired the latter kind.
Not to mention they spent that effort duplicating something that has already been done years ago by GimpShop:
"It shares all GIMP's advantages, including the long feature list and customisability, while addressing some common criticisms regarding the program's interface: GIMPshop modifies the menu structure to closely match Photoshop's, adjusts the program's terminology to match Adobe's, and, in the Windows version, uses a plugin called 'Deweirdifier' to combine the application's numerous windows in a similar manner to the MDI system used by most Windows graphics packages."
See, there is a myth that Macs just work, when in fact they are a gigantic pain-- things that work on 10.5 (cisco VPN client) and 10.6 dont work on 10.7;
Lion's not even been out a month! Those complaints should go to software vendors, not Apple. Personally 99% of my applications worked on Lion (there was a single PPC holdout in there) but everyone who owns a mac will tell people to not upgrade yet unless they need the latest for bragging rights or some indispensable feature. Common sense.
and with Lions new "restart my apps" feature that everyone seems to use, the Macs now boot up as slow as can be and are often slower than Vista laptops with 1gb of ram.
You're comparing apples and oranges: boot vs boot + applications launch. Apple wants to move anyone onto SSD's which come as standard or as an option for every mac now, with an SSD this becomes a non-issue. If it bothers you personally you can disable it.
I could go on and on about the issues they have that seem to be brain-dead UI etc decisions, but its not the point.
"Natural" scrolling, enough said. Nobody's perfect, eh.
My theory is that someone has a bogged down, virus-laden laptop, and theyre considering getting a new one when their friend, who has a Mac, says "go apple-- theyre SO much better". So they go and get a new SandyBridge Macbook Air, and it IS better-- its lighter, faster, and the screen is nicer. THeir belief is reinforced, and they go and tell their friends to buy mac.
Sounds like a success story to me.
But the thing is, for much less they could have gotten a very nice HP Envy, or a high end Sony, or a solid Lenovo, and been just as happy, for less-- but because of the stigma of "PCs are slow", they dont consider it if its price start to approach the Mac. So they make the purchase that costs considerably more, and of course that comes with some nice perks, and of course OSX IS a good OS (though I have scores of issues with it and think Win7 is better in the corporate world by far).
So I basically break it down for my friends like this: You can get a MacBook pro with Thunderbolt, 4gb of ram, and an i3 processor for $1600; or you can get the EXACT same laptop from HP (probook 4530s) sans the thunderbolt port and with a different case (and slightly worse multitouch) for about $450. That is, every year for the next 4 years, you can buy a new probook, and throw the old one in the trash, and youll still come out about where you would have been if youd bought the mac.
First off if you need a laptop that'll be for corporate use exclusively just get a Thinkpad and be done with it, those things are everywhere.
Secondly, all current Apple laptops come with at least an i5, not an i3 like you say. When you compare the i5 HP 4530's they perform worse in nearly every benchmark, compare yourself. Then there's stuff like an aluminum enclosure, a lower profile, much better battery life. I'm not saying you have to like the Macbook they're not for everyone, but there's genuine value there for your extra bucks.
Petty might be a better word. I havent seen any complaints about how awful their UI automation is compared with, say, AutoIt, or how trying to enforce system settings with "defaults" is a bear compared with working with the registry (look up "how do i do XX on windows registry", and then compare with a similar search for apple's defaults), or how it seems to be more UI centric than even windows (with a number of System preferences being simply un-administratable from the shell). Instead, I see a number of people talk about how its enterprise ready when it very clearly is not.
The lesson here is not about solid engineering, eye-catching design, or pricing.
Yes it is. The iPad is a solid products and has become the touchstone. If you want to compete with something that's perceived as the tablet you have be either:
- significantly better and the same price
- at least as good at a lower price
Sadly the TouchPad was neither. To bad too, I'd have liked Palm's progeny to at least survive.
Most people who bought an iPad don't even know the specs..
The vast majority of people don't know the specs of their PC's either. The great thing is that with tablets they don't have to. Tablets are bought on the following considerations: "Can I run the popular apps?", "Does it feel responsive?", "Does the battery last me at least a whole day of use?" The iPad kills on all 3 of these criteria. And what were the most often heard complaints against the Touchpad ? That it "felt slow" and there were no apps. No one except uber geeks cares about tablet specs.
Apple has gotten to the point where people just buy their products because everybody chants how great they are.
That's a myth. Apple users are some of the most critical around. That's why you keep hearing very vocal complaints about problems with Apple systems that impact a small minority of its users. And a lot of the new iPad/iPhone users who aren't traditional Apple fans would leave at the drop of a hat if something better came along. These are just regular consumers, not geeks, they go with what works.
HP's Eric Cador said, "In the tablet world, we're going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus."
From "number one plus", to "number two, flush" in three months.
Wow, if they had been willing to eat the cost and sell them at this price in the first place they might have been a contender.
Yes but I'd rather spend the bandwidth, which is relatively cheap, than rely on an interpreter of often dubious quality. I mean the current version of Flash on the mac is ok but earlier versions really, really stunk. And I remember that back when Homestar Runner was newly popular Flash was pretty craptacular on Linux too, and forget putting on some even less popular platform like FreeBSD. No, been there done that can't wait for it to finally expire.
I haven't been to Homestar Runner in years, are they still releasing new stuff. All those comics could just as easily be streamed in h264, they are already released as DVD's so they must have them in some video format or other. The migration to HTML5 is already under way I think. I mean who in his right mind would release a new site with a flash interface these days ? These things happen very fast, one day you're on top the next you're on the rubbish heap of history next to Real Player.