No it isn't. Interface matters. And you will see this when Apple catches up a bit on the data side and more applications are taking advantage of the integrated API. Google's maps will be "better" in some data sense for a long time, but maps is likely to be a feature over Android by 2014.
Well, it has been a while since we heard of something new and exciting cooking in the Apple oven.
Well lets take what caused this. Creating a vector mapping geocoding api for all applications. I'd say that's rather new.
MacBook: nothing.
Retina display. Complete ultrabook style. Move to all SSD. Move to 16g ram (i.e. break with OS 10.5 compatibility).
but there's nothing _new_ on the horizon
Core Data / iCloud and complex internet based application data sharing. Essentially what J2EE meant to achieve but across the entire OS? That's rather new.
what is the incentive to buy an Apple product these days over the competition?
Fantastic creative applications that are now quite inexpensive and integrated with their amateur product lines. Quality of manufacture. Unix features with good support for productivity applications
The solution will be a gradual fix and alternative applications appearing on iOS. Maps will be ported likely with turn by turn within 6 months. Waze will get more popular. Garmin... apps will take off.
And Apple will have a mapping solution they own outright they can include in their iOS and OSX api. Which means by 2014 or so Apple will have some cool features. The maps may never be as good as Google's but the ease of use and integration will be much higher.
Adopted? What do you think happened with the OSX 10.0. What do you think the first version of iTunes or Keynote was like? Apple can't do magic, first versions of massive complex applications are buggy.
Are you kidding? Politicians have many agendas that have nothing to do with the interest of the public, like getting reelected, making a name for themselves, securing a nice retirement package, getting their personal ideologies turned into law, etc.
Except for their personal ideologies turned into law none of those are matters of policy, except for policy related to how politicians are treated. On the ideologies, if there was a situation where an overwhelming number of politicians had a "personal ideology", and thus there was no debate on the topic as it moved towards law; then it would be expected that the ideology was also shared broadly by the public. In which case that is the system working.
So in your version of "free speech", people can only speak to large numbers of other people if some media figure invites them? What kind of bullsh*t version of free speech is that?
The kind of free speech that most of the public has. The 99.9% of the people in the USA that can't afford to buy advertising if they want to speak to large numbers of people have to be invited by a media figure. The media is the agency which determines what information is of broad public interest and filters information appropriately. The public chooses between media presentations. That's how free speech works for most people.
By allowing corporations to buy advertising you are allowing them to have free speech rights that the broad public does not possess.
And make no mistake about it: if this is the rule for corporations, it will also be the rule for any other organization: unions, churches, environmental organizations, etc.
I'm not sure it would be. It would be fairly easy to have one set of rules for for profit agencies and another for non profits. But if the people of the USA choose to ban any corporation including non-profits from purchasing political advertising, I can live with that.
And who determines what is "incorrect or biased information"? The government?
I didn't say that anyone has to determine it. You are quoting out of of context. What I said was that people weren't able to filter.
In terms of who presents information, that's the media's job.
but imagine Bush had been able to regulate who can say what about abortion, sexuality, civil liberties, etc.
I never wanted to grant to government the ability to regulate speech. We are talking about regulating advertising.
Metro is meant to facilitate organizing informations somewhat differently. If it turns out applications need to be radically different, that is ubiquitous computing is a bad idea, then it is hard to see how Microsoft avoids clients evolving onto other platforms which are better suited for a wide range of hardware. Consumers are going to have a genuine choice of Apple's philosophy of fitting each piece of hardware, software, OS individually and just having a complex data sharing mechanism at best; or Microsoft's philosophy of being able to seamless pass the same applications between devices.
I think it is great we have choice. I agree with you that the 24" screen needs to display different information and hopefully applications adjust to screen sizes.
Vista is late 2006. So using your example Adobe CS6 supports Microsoft OSes from 2006 onwards (including their updated 2001 OS). Snow Leopard is mid 2009. So I'm not sure how that example doesn't prove my point.
I agree that Apple gets their users to upgrade more quickly. I said that. I think you are misunderstanding what I wrote.
It doesn't work if you aren't using their products. But if your tablet, phone and laptop were all running Windows 8/9 then you could share applications and data across them using Metro.
. If anything breaking backwards compatibility (such as the new OS not running on old hardware) means FEWER people should (or can) upgrade
Not at all. You are thinking about this too statically. Developers on Windows can target a wide range of systems. On OSX they can't. The effect is that developers pair versions of their software to versions of the OS. Developers that want to support a smaller number of systems drop support more quickly for legacy OSes. The consumer gets used to a pattern of rapid upgrades and the developers follow suit. The result is a whole eco system driven by rapid upgrades of hardware and software.
You've completely ignored Linux.
Yes. I don't think Linux as a consumer OS has a pattern since the usage isn't big enough. As a server OS the distributions have an expert installer policy.
How do you design Win32 applications to support vastly different PPI? How do you design Win32 applications to support vastly different scalings? How do you design Win32 applications to support menus that change size and style based on device?
etc...
There was no way to keep everyone happy. They had to make choices.
Apple tends to very aggressively push their entire platform. They break legacy and obsolete hardware and software. Microsoft had a legacy of long term compatibility nothing like VMS or MVS with time frames measured in decades but excellent long term support. (And please: readers don't respond with a cite of an anecdotes about program X you didn't get long support on, I understand and agree there were exceptions).
Microsoft by allowing software to mature slowly allowed themselves to have a user base that doesn't turn over the code and systems regularly. This was good for them for a while but now is becoming a problem.
The real test is Windows 8 vs. Windows 7 once hardware is taking advantage of Metro and applications are taking advantage of that hardware. This is to my mind a lot like the graphics work Apple did OSX 10.2-10.4 in allowing for the animated interfaces we see today on iPhone.
Apple doesn't want customers that won't spend extra. If they are cheap on that they are cheap everywhere. Which means cheap accessories, cheap external hardware, cheap software....
Apple has to be very cautious when moving down market.
It isn't a horrible OS, but it is worse than it should be, all on account of them wanting to try and use their desktop and server OS to push tablet sales.
No they don't want their to be a desktop and server OS vs. a tablet OS they want one OS. And they want that one OS to support all sorts of hardware. Its better for what it is intended for, which isn't traditional input.
Metro applications. The ability to use the same applications / data / session on your desktop, laptop, tablet and phone. That sessions will move from place to place seamlessly integrating with your environment and creating a UI appropriate to the physical limitations.
The thing that strikes me as somewhat insane about MS' Windows 8 push is not so much that it is on an aggressive timescale, they haven't released an OS that was properly baked out of the box in a significant number of versions; but that they seem to be pushing out Windows 8 more or less solely for the sake of 'metro' which really only makes sense on tablets and any other touch-focused quasi-PC oddities.
Well yes, that's is exactly the point, Metro or ubiquitous computing. Microsoft is starting a transition away from x86, keyboard / mouse based system. They need to support a much more diverse range of hardware. In the consumer marketplace Microsoft is getting their head handed to them. They know that Windows 7 will not hold up against Android / iOS by 2017 and so they need to pull ahead fast.
Because they don't need enthusiasm right now. They need to create a platform for application developers and hardware OEMs to transition to Metro. The goal is not for Windows 8 to be loved but to start moving the eco system over.
If media companies are the only companies who can engage in that kind of speech, Washington will focus on them to have them say and do whatever is most useful for Washington politicians.
We live in a democracy. Politicians as far as policy goes, with possible minor exceptions like being able to move to lobbying, don't have separate policy agendas.
." That means "making contributions", "producing content", and "purchasing advertising". All three are necessary in order to speak to the public during an election.
No they aren't. Plenty of people speak without purchasing advertising or contributing. Corporations when they used to be prohibited from buying advertising were perfectly able to speak by going on public interest shows and discussing their ideas in open forums.
Restricting the ability of these companies and organizations to "purchase advertising" only makes sense if you view the voter as some dumb robot, incapable of figuring out which information is good and which information is bad, and pressing the buttons he is told. If that's what voters are, then we might as well give up on democracy altogether.
You can have a moderate positions that voters can parse information but not perfectly and are influenced by incorrect or biased information. That advertising works, particularly in edge cases but not perfectly. And thus influencing policy by advertising is a problem without it being an unstoppable force.
Slashdot Mirror
No it isn't. Interface matters. And you will see this when Apple catches up a bit on the data side and more applications are taking advantage of the integrated API. Google's maps will be "better" in some data sense for a long time, but maps is likely to be a feature over Android by 2014.
Well, it has been a while since we heard of something new and exciting cooking in the Apple oven.
Well lets take what caused this. Creating a vector mapping geocoding api for all applications. I'd say that's rather new.
MacBook: nothing.
Retina display. Complete ultrabook style. Move to all SSD. Move to 16g ram (i.e. break with OS 10.5 compatibility).
but there's nothing _new_ on the horizon
Core Data / iCloud and complex internet based application data sharing. Essentially what J2EE meant to achieve but across the entire OS? That's rather new.
what is the incentive to buy an Apple product these days over the competition?
Fantastic creative applications that are now quite inexpensive and integrated with their amateur product lines.
Quality of manufacture.
Unix features with good support for productivity applications
etc...
Not to mention, if you want a public beta of your product, it should be *ready* for public beta - not barely capable of alpha
alpha = major features missing.
beta = mostly feature complete but buggy
It was beta.
As for the rest. Yeah it is going to require the creation of a permanent mapping group within Apple. Say $100m per year in ongoing expenses forever.
but one reason why Apple has been so popular with users is that they've avoided doing this – up until now.
You are not an Apple customer. Apple most certainly has done this many times./
The solution will be a gradual fix and alternative applications appearing on iOS. Maps will be ported likely with turn by turn within 6 months. Waze will get more popular. Garmin... apps will take off.
And Apple will have a mapping solution they own outright they can include in their iOS and OSX api. Which means by 2014 or so Apple will have some cool features. The maps may never be as good as Google's but the ease of use and integration will be much higher.
There are a huge number of apps for dedicated mapping, navigation. There were in OS5 and there are in OS6.
Adopted? What do you think happened with the OSX 10.0. What do you think the first version of iTunes or Keynote was like? Apple can't do magic, first versions of massive complex applications are buggy.
Yes. They bought the full rights to TomTom's maps along with about 20 other mapping company's data.
Are you kidding? Politicians have many agendas that have nothing to do with the interest of the public, like getting reelected, making a name for themselves, securing a nice retirement package, getting their personal ideologies turned into law, etc.
Except for their personal ideologies turned into law none of those are matters of policy, except for policy related to how politicians are treated. On the ideologies, if there was a situation where an overwhelming number of politicians had a "personal ideology", and thus there was no debate on the topic as it moved towards law; then it would be expected that the ideology was also shared broadly by the public. In which case that is the system working.
So in your version of "free speech", people can only speak to large numbers of other people if some media figure invites them? What kind of bullsh*t version of free speech is that?
The kind of free speech that most of the public has. The 99.9% of the people in the USA that can't afford to buy advertising if they want to speak to large numbers of people have to be invited by a media figure. The media is the agency which determines what information is of broad public interest and filters information appropriately. The public chooses between media presentations. That's how free speech works for most people.
By allowing corporations to buy advertising you are allowing them to have free speech rights that the broad public does not possess.
And make no mistake about it: if this is the rule for corporations, it will also be the rule for any other organization: unions, churches, environmental organizations, etc.
I'm not sure it would be. It would be fairly easy to have one set of rules for for profit agencies and another for non profits. But if the people of the USA choose to ban any corporation including non-profits from purchasing political advertising, I can live with that.
And who determines what is "incorrect or biased information"? The government?
I didn't say that anyone has to determine it. You are quoting out of of context. What I said was that people weren't able to filter.
In terms of who presents information, that's the media's job.
but imagine Bush had been able to regulate who can say what about abortion, sexuality, civil liberties, etc.
I never wanted to grant to government the ability to regulate speech. We are talking about regulating advertising.
Metro is meant to facilitate organizing informations somewhat differently. If it turns out applications need to be radically different, that is ubiquitous computing is a bad idea, then it is hard to see how Microsoft avoids clients evolving onto other platforms which are better suited for a wide range of hardware. Consumers are going to have a genuine choice of Apple's philosophy of fitting each piece of hardware, software, OS individually and just having a complex data sharing mechanism at best; or Microsoft's philosophy of being able to seamless pass the same applications between devices.
I think it is great we have choice. I agree with you that the 24" screen needs to display different information and hopefully applications adjust to screen sizes.
Vista is late 2006. So using your example Adobe CS6 supports Microsoft OSes from 2006 onwards (including their updated 2001 OS). Snow Leopard is mid 2009. So I'm not sure how that example doesn't prove my point.
I agree that Apple gets their users to upgrade more quickly. I said that. I think you are misunderstanding what I wrote.
It doesn't work if you aren't using their products. But if your tablet, phone and laptop were all running Windows 8/9 then you could share applications and data across them using Metro.
. If anything breaking backwards compatibility (such as the new OS not running on old hardware) means FEWER people should (or can) upgrade
Not at all. You are thinking about this too statically. Developers on Windows can target a wide range of systems. On OSX they can't. The effect is that developers pair versions of their software to versions of the OS. Developers that want to support a smaller number of systems drop support more quickly for legacy OSes. The consumer gets used to a pattern of rapid upgrades and the developers follow suit. The result is a whole eco system driven by rapid upgrades of hardware and software.
You've completely ignored Linux.
Yes. I don't think Linux as a consumer OS has a pattern since the usage isn't big enough. As a server OS the distributions have an expert installer policy.
How do you design Win32 applications to support vastly different PPI?
How do you design Win32 applications to support vastly different scalings?
How do you design Win32 applications to support menus that change size and style based on device?
etc...
There was no way to keep everyone happy. They had to make choices.
Apple tends to very aggressively push their entire platform. They break legacy and obsolete hardware and software. Microsoft had a legacy of long term compatibility nothing like VMS or MVS with time frames measured in decades but excellent long term support. (And please: readers don't respond with a cite of an anecdotes about program X you didn't get long support on, I understand and agree there were exceptions).
Microsoft by allowing software to mature slowly allowed themselves to have a user base that doesn't turn over the code and systems regularly. This was good for them for a while but now is becoming a problem.
The real test is Windows 8 vs. Windows 7 once hardware is taking advantage of Metro and applications are taking advantage of that hardware. This is to my mind a lot like the graphics work Apple did OSX 10.2-10.4 in allowing for the animated interfaces we see today on iPhone.
Awesome in the long run. Not so great for today's hardware but when people start having more fluid hardware it will be fantastic.
Apple doesn't want customers that won't spend extra. If they are cheap on that they are cheap everywhere. Which means cheap accessories, cheap external hardware, cheap software....
Apple has to be very cautious when moving down market.
It isn't a horrible OS, but it is worse than it should be, all on account of them wanting to try and use their desktop and server OS to push tablet sales.
No they don't want their to be a desktop and server OS vs. a tablet OS they want one OS. And they want that one OS to support all sorts of hardware. Its better for what it is intended for, which isn't traditional input.
How the hell can a grandma figure it out if we are experts and almost all of us had to google on how to shut it down?
By say 2014 Grandma has only Metro apps and never gets into desktop mode at all.
Microsoft customers hang back plenty. That's part fo the problem. They need to get their user base to move faster.
What exactly is the plus side of Windows 8?
Metro applications. The ability to use the same applications / data / session on your desktop, laptop, tablet and phone. That sessions will move from place to place seamlessly integrating with your environment and creating a UI appropriate to the physical limitations.
This is where they are trying to get: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0
The thing that strikes me as somewhat insane about MS' Windows 8 push is not so much that it is on an aggressive timescale, they haven't released an OS that was properly baked out of the box in a significant number of versions; but that they seem to be pushing out Windows 8 more or less solely for the sake of 'metro' which really only makes sense on tablets and any other touch-focused quasi-PC oddities.
Well yes, that's is exactly the point, Metro or ubiquitous computing. Microsoft is starting a transition away from x86, keyboard / mouse based system. They need to support a much more diverse range of hardware. In the consumer marketplace Microsoft is getting their head handed to them. They know that Windows 7 will not hold up against Android / iOS by 2017 and so they need to pull ahead fast.
Because they don't need enthusiasm right now. They need to create a platform for application developers and hardware OEMs to transition to Metro. The goal is not for Windows 8 to be loved but to start moving the eco system over.
If media companies are the only companies who can engage in that kind of speech, Washington will focus on them to have them say and do whatever is most useful for Washington politicians.
We live in a democracy. Politicians as far as policy goes, with possible minor exceptions like being able to move to lobbying, don't have separate policy agendas.
No they aren't. Plenty of people speak without purchasing advertising or contributing. Corporations when they used to be prohibited from buying advertising were perfectly able to speak by going on public interest shows and discussing their ideas in open forums.
Restricting the ability of these companies and organizations to "purchase advertising" only makes sense if you view the voter as some dumb robot, incapable of figuring out which information is good and which information is bad, and pressing the buttons he is told. If that's what voters are, then we might as well give up on democracy altogether.
You can have a moderate positions that voters can parse information but not perfectly and are influenced by incorrect or biased information. That advertising works, particularly in edge cases but not perfectly. And thus influencing policy by advertising is a problem without it being an unstoppable force.