Walmart doesn't have a near monopoly. I can buy physical DVDs and books at lots of places. I can mail-order them.
Apple does have a near-monopoly: many mobile apps exist only for the iPhone, a lot of content is only available online on iTunes, and a lot of books are only available online on Kindle or iBooks. Just like with Windows, it doesn't matter how badly the platform sucks (and it does), more and more, you don't have a choice.
Fortunately, Android is addressing this and it is starting to get enough traction to become a serious alternative. But we're going to continue to complain and hold Apple's feet to the fire until this situation is fixed, either because Apple becomes irrelevant, or because they change.
Apple's vision for the Internet is that more and more mobile content flows through their app store, preferably exclusively. There are already some web sites that are inconvenient to access on any mobile device other than an iPhone/iPod, and it's going to get worse for a while.
Apple ships Safari because they have to. But if they could, they'd lock you tightly into their own ecosystem, tightly controlled, and far from any porn, any competition, and any controversial thought or speech.
The normal apps on the iPhone and iPad are quite picky about what video formats and encodings they accept. There are some third party players that will play more kinds of video content. But, of course, Apple can at any time just disallow anything other than their own video players plus content that they approve. And as recent decisions by Apple show, they have no qualms about screwing existing developers.
I said use. You are the one trying to change the story to your own interpretation, for things most people do not need to do.
Your debate strategy is to claim other people are wrong and then "prove" something by responding to a point they didn't make.
I'd love to continue to train you
For that you need to understand the thing yourself first, but that seems to elude you. Have you considered switching to an Etch-a-Sketch instead? That would seem to be about the level of technology that you can graps.
The judge provides all the explanation, reasoning, and application of the law that's needed. The jury can only render a verdict within those boundaries.
Think of the jury something that's there in addition to the judge, not something that replaces him.
In any words, you are wrong. It requires a computer to SET UP. As in ONCE.
I didn't say "USE", I said for "maintenance and synchronization". If you don't connect to the desktop, it means limited iTunes access, no music sync or sharing, no backup, no printing from most apps, etc.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the technical philosophy of the device, It's hard because (from a users standpoint) THERE ARE NO FILES. As far as the user is concerned there are no files, only documents in applications.
That philosophy is an old hat and widespread. But whether you show a file dialog in each app or give users a "Finder", they still need consistent ways of renaming, finding, uploading, downloading, printing, sending, and receiving files. Apple screwed it up by not encouraging a standard and by imposing needless restrictions on what users can do with documents.
You just go through the presentation list and hit the exact same icon you use for sharing web pages
But in other apps, there's a sharing icon on the open document, not on the document list. In yet other apps it's a completely separate screen. There's no consistency.
On the phone, and on the iPad, you open the calendar, select a day and hit "+" to schedule a new appointment.
You should be able just to tap on the time slot.
??? I do that all the time today. It's called copy & paste. You copy a word in email, switch to settings, and paste it in the password box. You said you had an iPad?
You left out the part where you need to start up and shut down each application, which means you lose context every time.
Most people don't need to print much anymore... but if you do, there is an app for that.
There is an app that lets you print files you download from somewhere; you can't generally print documents stored on the device.
You could give one to someone set up, and never look back - what would there really be to fail except physical components?
They need to connect for firmware upgrades, backup, flash filling up, watching TV episodes, using the music player fully, using iWorks fully, and using many other apps fully.
I have, and it has a terrible weakness - the combination of reliance on the physical back button, and the number of physical buttons all Android devices must have.
It's wonderful, isn't it? Four standard buttons that invoke standard operations in a standard way. iPad applications have no standard way of invoking any of those functions. Every application does it differently and inconsistently.
it's far better than a netbook exactly because it's not a laptop
So it's not a "whole computer" after all.
Have you thought much about what Android on a tablet means?
A choice of decent on-screen keyboards. No need to hook the thing up to a PC, ever. An easier-to-use and more consistent UI. Standard buttons for common operations. A decent software architecture and a choice of programming languages. No ad hoc restrictions on the app store. My choice of online service providers. Among other things.
Actually not really. If you wanted, you could use the device without connecting to a computer (except for the initial connection to iTunes which is required)
So, in different words, I'm right: it does require a desktop or laptop. And you need iTunes to transfer data into many programs, to update the firmware, and to back it up.
Like what? Or are you thinking of something highly technical that no average user would want to do anyway.
Like, oh, editing a file in Keynote and sending it by E-mail. Like printing something. Like finding and deleting files (which is different in every app) when your 16G of storage have filled up. Like switching between E-mail and WiFi settings in order to copy WiFi access keys over from an E-mail. Like navigating through several menus just to schedule an appointment, or clicking half a dozen times to move between mailboxes.
$500 is not that pricey for a whole computer you don't have to maintain.
But it's neither a "whole computer", and it does require maintenance.
they say they don't want to read books on LCD's
I do want to read books on LCDs, which is why I got an iPad. And that's also why I can tell you with the benefit of hands-on experience: the iPad is not a replacement for even the lowliest netbook that costs half as much. It's good hardware, but the software sucks.
In a few months, there will be some high resolution Android tablets out, and they will be a lot easier to use and not require a desktop at all, for anything.
I still think it was a dick move from Gizmodo and feel bad for the guy.
Why? You lie down with dogs, you get up with flees. He chose to work for Apple and he should have known what kind of company they were before he took the job.
This guy was already screwed but Gizmodo decided to utterly destroy his career and reputation -- all for a few more clicks. Total dick move.
At the heart of the problem isn't Gizmodo or the programmer, it's Apple and their idiotic secrecy. There is nothing particularly interesting or compelling about this device. There is no reason to keep it so secret. And if there were, they shouldn't let people take it out of the building.
But, of course, that's where the story doesn't add up. Apple regularly raids their own employees' iPhones and workplaces. Do you believe for a moment that a 27 year old programmer gets to stroll out with a super-secret prototype and nobody notices? The thing has GPS tracking and plenty of other features.
No, the whole thing is just another Apple marketing scam to drum up business and buzz for an otherwise entirely boring device.
Specs and price points get leaked, not actual hardware
Why not? Seems to get them plenty of press coverage.
The iPhone is its big baby
I hope for them the final version is a bit more exciting than this device; the prototype is little more than an enormously overpriced "me too" product.
Yeah, the iPad is good for living room computing. But it is not a simple device: it requires a desktop or laptop for maintenance and synchronization, and aspects of the machine are infuriatingly complex. It's also pretty pricey. Unless you really need the form factor and you need it right now, get a net book or wait a few months.
And just like last time, Apple copied most of the technologies from other companies, is trying to sue them to get exclusive use, and is marketing the device as if they invented it all.
Music shares many of the same attributes: it has rules, it's linear with objectives, and people engaging in it are often quite competitive. Despite that, there are aspects to music that are clearly art. The same is true for architecture, yet some architecture is also art.
So, while blowing away opponents in a FPS may not be art in itself, the architecture, characters, story, and other artworks (hence the name) may well be art.
(I really think Ebert should stick to movie critiques for old folks; that seems to be his forte.)
I think a lot of government, contractual, and patent issues could be helped if people were required to provide executable code that illustrates some function and computes some binding result.
However, Python is probably the wrong language for that: it doesn't have an official standard, it doesn't have a compatibility test suite or fully compatible third party implementations, it has some implementation dependencies, and it has standard libraries with huge and complex third party dependencies.
A language for legal contexts should be small, standardized, safe, self-contained, have multiple implementations, and be fairly stable. It doesn't need to be nice or convenient to program it. Scheme and JavaScript might fit the bill. Ada, Fortran, and C share some of the necessary attributes.
I do have some locked devices because I need them professionally and many of them suck because of their restrictions. I get rid of them when I can and when people ask me about it, I tell them that I'm stuck with them but not to get their own if they can help it. How's that for guerilla marketing?
I'm not going to help the companies that produce this kind of junk by working around their own restrictions or doing free advertising for them.
Do you seriously believe anybody would go through the trouble of making a fake Apple device and dropping it on the floor in some Redwood City bar?
Many of these leaks and blurry photos are likely deliberate Apple marketing to generate buzz for their next phone. It makes it appear as if it's a must-have device and gets them tons of press coverage everywhere for free.
It's not a question of numbers. If Solaris provides important functionality that other systems don't, then companies will invest in maintaining a FOSS fork. If ZFS, dtrace, and all that are all a bunch of hot air and nobody cares, then it will die.
The nice thing about FOSS is that, unlike corporate decision making, it's democratic and market-oriented.
Well, if nobody else is really contributing, it tells you that people don't really care, in which case it doesn't matter.
I certainly don't care about Solaris. I still care a little about Java, but I believe IBM and other groups will continue to develop that under FOSS licenses.
Are you really so unfamiliar with computers that you need a citation for that? Go through the list of Apple products, look at the equivalent open source packages, and you will find that the majority of them are sponsored or paid for by someone, or are done by people as part of their job.
I know it's true for the Linux kernel and probably some other server software, but there's huge amounts of open source that I would be very surprised if someone was getting paid for.
There's also huge amounts of closed source software that people write in their spare time: shareware, utilities, most of the iPhone apps. Obviously, we're not talking about the long tail of crappy little apps here that have no user community.
Though I'm sure it's an oversimplification, but if Steve Jobs decides then Apple jumps
And if Google or IBM wants a new compiler, a new browser, a new GUI, or a new OS, they create it and make it open source, hence Go, Chrome, Android, etc.
Just to pick one example, look at the implementation of >8 bit color/channel support in GIMP. It's been a work in progress for many, many years and is still not done in 2.8. Obviously it's a lot of work and touches very many areas of code, including many people that don't care about it though everyone agree it'd be a good feature to have.
It's been done, but the Gimp project didn't accept the patches. And on the long list of things that normal Gimp users want, this is fairly low priority.
Photoshop actually got this feature long after other packages as well.
And there are many idiotic restrictions and bugs in Apple's software that still haven't gotten fixed. For example, iWorks lacks ODF compatibility, Apple X11 has been in a death spiral, OS X still doesn't have any decent package management, and iPhone mail doesn't have a unified inbox. How many years has that been now?
If there was a cathedral, it'd be done long ago
Or maybe not if the company is abusing its control over the software to stifle competition, or if the guy running the cathedral is simply dumb when it comes to technology. Both of those apply to Apple.
but who'll be the ones making OpenOffice 4.0 or the next major version of java?
Oh, I'm sure people will be working on fixing and improving it as part of their job for decades to come. But I also don't think it's going to change too much anyway.
Now, who is making the next version of MacOS? Of AppleWorks? If I wanted to continue to use those, I'd be screwed.
Of course, OpenOffice, iWorks, Java, Objective-C, etc. are all obsolete anyway. Office suites are moving to the browser (and there are open source projects already there), and there are far better and more modern programming languages.
Spare time? Most open source programmers get paid for their work, and quite well. Companies pay programmers to contribute to open-source enterprise-scale operating systems because they don't want to be dependent on the likes of Microsoft, Sun, or Oracle. And it works out economically because those companies have been overcharging tremendously.
Slashdot Mirror
The American South isn't actually Christian, it just calls itself Christian.
Walmart doesn't have a near monopoly. I can buy physical DVDs and books at lots of places. I can mail-order them.
Apple does have a near-monopoly: many mobile apps exist only for the iPhone, a lot of content is only available online on iTunes, and a lot of books are only available online on Kindle or iBooks. Just like with Windows, it doesn't matter how badly the platform sucks (and it does), more and more, you don't have a choice.
Fortunately, Android is addressing this and it is starting to get enough traction to become a serious alternative. But we're going to continue to complain and hold Apple's feet to the fire until this situation is fixed, either because Apple becomes irrelevant, or because they change.
Apple's vision for the Internet is that more and more mobile content flows through their app store, preferably exclusively. There are already some web sites that are inconvenient to access on any mobile device other than an iPhone/iPod, and it's going to get worse for a while.
Apple ships Safari because they have to. But if they could, they'd lock you tightly into their own ecosystem, tightly controlled, and far from any porn, any competition, and any controversial thought or speech.
The normal apps on the iPhone and iPad are quite picky about what video formats and encodings they accept. There are some third party players that will play more kinds of video content. But, of course, Apple can at any time just disallow anything other than their own video players plus content that they approve. And as recent decisions by Apple show, they have no qualms about screwing existing developers.
I said use. You are the one trying to change the story to your own interpretation, for things most people do not need to do.
Your debate strategy is to claim other people are wrong and then "prove" something by responding to a point they didn't make.
I'd love to continue to train you
For that you need to understand the thing yourself first, but that seems to elude you. Have you considered switching to an Etch-a-Sketch instead? That would seem to be about the level of technology that you can graps.
The judge provides all the explanation, reasoning, and application of the law that's needed. The jury can only render a verdict within those boundaries.
Think of the jury something that's there in addition to the judge, not something that replaces him.
I find the European legal systems, including the Dutch one, to be inferior to the US legal system. What makes you think they are better?
And other companies tend to already have announced their phones by the time engineers get drunk while carrying them around.
What's so striking here is the contrast between Apple's secretiveness and how boring the device actually is.
In any words, you are wrong. It requires a computer to SET UP. As in ONCE.
I didn't say "USE", I said for "maintenance and synchronization". If you don't connect to the desktop, it means limited iTunes access, no music sync or sharing, no backup, no printing from most apps, etc.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the technical philosophy of the device, It's hard because (from a users standpoint) THERE ARE NO FILES. As far as the user is concerned there are no files, only documents in applications.
That philosophy is an old hat and widespread. But whether you show a file dialog in each app or give users a "Finder", they still need consistent ways of renaming, finding, uploading, downloading, printing, sending, and receiving files. Apple screwed it up by not encouraging a standard and by imposing needless restrictions on what users can do with documents.
You just go through the presentation list and hit the exact same icon you use for sharing web pages
But in other apps, there's a sharing icon on the open document, not on the document list. In yet other apps it's a completely separate screen. There's no consistency.
On the phone, and on the iPad, you open the calendar, select a day and hit "+" to schedule a new appointment.
You should be able just to tap on the time slot.
??? I do that all the time today. It's called copy & paste. You copy a word in email, switch to settings, and paste it in the password box. You said you had an iPad?
You left out the part where you need to start up and shut down each application, which means you lose context every time.
Most people don't need to print much anymore... but if you do, there is an app for that.
There is an app that lets you print files you download from somewhere; you can't generally print documents stored on the device.
You could give one to someone set up, and never look back - what would there really be to fail except physical components?
They need to connect for firmware upgrades, backup, flash filling up, watching TV episodes, using the music player fully, using iWorks fully, and using many other apps fully.
I have, and it has a terrible weakness - the combination of reliance on the physical back button, and the number of physical buttons all Android devices must have.
It's wonderful, isn't it? Four standard buttons that invoke standard operations in a standard way. iPad applications have no standard way of invoking any of those functions. Every application does it differently and inconsistently.
it's far better than a netbook exactly because it's not a laptop
So it's not a "whole computer" after all.
Have you thought much about what Android on a tablet means?
A choice of decent on-screen keyboards. No need to hook the thing up to a PC, ever. An easier-to-use and more consistent UI. Standard buttons for common operations. A decent software architecture and a choice of programming languages. No ad hoc restrictions on the app store. My choice of online service providers. Among other things.
Actually not really. If you wanted, you could use the device without connecting to a computer (except for the initial connection to iTunes which is required)
So, in different words, I'm right: it does require a desktop or laptop. And you need iTunes to transfer data into many programs, to update the firmware, and to back it up.
Like what? Or are you thinking of something highly technical that no average user would want to do anyway.
Like, oh, editing a file in Keynote and sending it by E-mail. Like printing something. Like finding and deleting files (which is different in every app) when your 16G of storage have filled up. Like switching between E-mail and WiFi settings in order to copy WiFi access keys over from an E-mail. Like navigating through several menus just to schedule an appointment, or clicking half a dozen times to move between mailboxes.
$500 is not that pricey for a whole computer you don't have to maintain.
But it's neither a "whole computer", and it does require maintenance.
they say they don't want to read books on LCD's
I do want to read books on LCDs, which is why I got an iPad. And that's also why I can tell you with the benefit of hands-on experience: the iPad is not a replacement for even the lowliest netbook that costs half as much. It's good hardware, but the software sucks.
In a few months, there will be some high resolution Android tablets out, and they will be a lot easier to use and not require a desktop at all, for anything.
As far as I know, Apple is one of the best companies when it comes to creating demand for their next products.
Yeah, and you just experienced how they do it.
Thing is: if this is the iPhone 4G, it's a really boring device.
I still think it was a dick move from Gizmodo and feel bad for the guy.
Why? You lie down with dogs, you get up with flees. He chose to work for Apple and he should have known what kind of company they were before he took the job.
What purpose does that serve? The guy's obviously had a rough week; why pile on and make it worse?
Why not? He chose to work for Apple, he knew how the company operates.
It's likely that he's going to be terminated
Well, if he isn't, it confirms what many have suspected all along: that the whole thing is a marketing ploy.
This guy was already screwed but Gizmodo decided to utterly destroy his career and reputation -- all for a few more clicks. Total dick move.
At the heart of the problem isn't Gizmodo or the programmer, it's Apple and their idiotic secrecy. There is nothing particularly interesting or compelling about this device. There is no reason to keep it so secret. And if there were, they shouldn't let people take it out of the building.
But, of course, that's where the story doesn't add up. Apple regularly raids their own employees' iPhones and workplaces. Do you believe for a moment that a 27 year old programmer gets to stroll out with a super-secret prototype and nobody notices? The thing has GPS tracking and plenty of other features.
No, the whole thing is just another Apple marketing scam to drum up business and buzz for an otherwise entirely boring device.
Specs and price points get leaked, not actual hardware
Why not? Seems to get them plenty of press coverage.
The iPhone is its big baby
I hope for them the final version is a bit more exciting than this device; the prototype is little more than an enormously overpriced "me too" product.
Yeah, the iPad is good for living room computing. But it is not a simple device: it requires a desktop or laptop for maintenance and synchronization, and aspects of the machine are infuriatingly complex. It's also pretty pricey. Unless you really need the form factor and you need it right now, get a net book or wait a few months.
And just like last time, Apple copied most of the technologies from other companies, is trying to sue them to get exclusive use, and is marketing the device as if they invented it all.
Music shares many of the same attributes: it has rules, it's linear with objectives, and people engaging in it are often quite competitive. Despite that, there are aspects to music that are clearly art. The same is true for architecture, yet some architecture is also art.
So, while blowing away opponents in a FPS may not be art in itself, the architecture, characters, story, and other artworks (hence the name) may well be art.
(I really think Ebert should stick to movie critiques for old folks; that seems to be his forte.)
I think a lot of government, contractual, and patent issues could be helped if people were required to provide executable code that illustrates some function and computes some binding result.
However, Python is probably the wrong language for that: it doesn't have an official standard, it doesn't have a compatibility test suite or fully compatible third party implementations, it has some implementation dependencies, and it has standard libraries with huge and complex third party dependencies.
A language for legal contexts should be small, standardized, safe, self-contained, have multiple implementations, and be fairly stable. It doesn't need to be nice or convenient to program it. Scheme and JavaScript might fit the bill. Ada, Fortran, and C share some of the necessary attributes.
I do have some locked devices because I need them professionally and many of them suck because of their restrictions. I get rid of them when I can and when people ask me about it, I tell them that I'm stuck with them but not to get their own if they can help it. How's that for guerilla marketing?
I'm not going to help the companies that produce this kind of junk by working around their own restrictions or doing free advertising for them.
Do you seriously believe anybody would go through the trouble of making a fake Apple device and dropping it on the floor in some Redwood City bar?
Many of these leaks and blurry photos are likely deliberate Apple marketing to generate buzz for their next phone. It makes it appear as if it's a must-have device and gets them tons of press coverage everywhere for free.
And you suckers fall for it every time.
It's not a question of numbers. If Solaris provides important functionality that other systems don't, then companies will invest in maintaining a FOSS fork. If ZFS, dtrace, and all that are all a bunch of hot air and nobody cares, then it will die.
The nice thing about FOSS is that, unlike corporate decision making, it's democratic and market-oriented.
Well, if nobody else is really contributing, it tells you that people don't really care, in which case it doesn't matter.
I certainly don't care about Solaris. I still care a little about Java, but I believe IBM and other groups will continue to develop that under FOSS licenses.
[citation needed]
Are you really so unfamiliar with computers that you need a citation for that? Go through the list of Apple products, look at the equivalent open source packages, and you will find that the majority of them are sponsored or paid for by someone, or are done by people as part of their job.
I know it's true for the Linux kernel and probably some other server software, but there's huge amounts of open source that I would be very surprised if someone was getting paid for.
There's also huge amounts of closed source software that people write in their spare time: shareware, utilities, most of the iPhone apps. Obviously, we're not talking about the long tail of crappy little apps here that have no user community.
Though I'm sure it's an oversimplification, but if Steve Jobs decides then Apple jumps
And if Google or IBM wants a new compiler, a new browser, a new GUI, or a new OS, they create it and make it open source, hence Go, Chrome, Android, etc.
Just to pick one example, look at the implementation of >8 bit color/channel support in GIMP. It's been a work in progress for many, many years and is still not done in 2.8. Obviously it's a lot of work and touches very many areas of code, including many people that don't care about it though everyone agree it'd be a good feature to have.
It's been done, but the Gimp project didn't accept the patches. And on the long list of things that normal Gimp users want, this is fairly low priority.
Photoshop actually got this feature long after other packages as well.
And there are many idiotic restrictions and bugs in Apple's software that still haven't gotten fixed. For example, iWorks lacks ODF compatibility, Apple X11 has been in a death spiral, OS X still doesn't have any decent package management, and iPhone mail doesn't have a unified inbox. How many years has that been now?
If there was a cathedral, it'd be done long ago
Or maybe not if the company is abusing its control over the software to stifle competition, or if the guy running the cathedral is simply dumb when it comes to technology. Both of those apply to Apple.
but who'll be the ones making OpenOffice 4.0 or the next major version of java?
Oh, I'm sure people will be working on fixing and improving it as part of their job for decades to come. But I also don't think it's going to change too much anyway.
Now, who is making the next version of MacOS? Of AppleWorks? If I wanted to continue to use those, I'd be screwed.
Of course, OpenOffice, iWorks, Java, Objective-C, etc. are all obsolete anyway. Office suites are moving to the browser (and there are open source projects already there), and there are far better and more modern programming languages.
Spare time? Most open source programmers get paid for their work, and quite well. Companies pay programmers to contribute to open-source enterprise-scale operating systems because they don't want to be dependent on the likes of Microsoft, Sun, or Oracle. And it works out economically because those companies have been overcharging tremendously.