Please explain to me why Apple can't take some of its highly innovative people (according to Apple) and have them innovate their way through this, as opposed to picking the brains of former Googlers?
Or is this just Apple recognizing its limitations (not actually innovative) and playing to its strengths (having bags of cash to throw around).
...it achieves this innovation by having the best people. Again, why is this news?
Because it is abundantly apparent that Apple's intention in this case is to copy Google, and not even by original development. That's the news. The company boasting about innovation and complaining about copying, is itself planning to blatantly copy and skip the pesky innovation. See?
Look, I know it's inconvenient for Apple that independent news reporting beyond its control actually exists but that's the way the world works. Fortunately for the rest of us.
...my Droid 2 still works well enough (-ish) that I haven't discarded it. But it continues to run Gingerbread, and will until I run a process which is neither slick, fast, nor easy.
Are there any very popular Android phones that have received an update in the last year or so that had the update adopted that fast?
Did anybody care enough to measure or report it? Seems to me, some iFans are grasping at straws here. Android OTA updates are slick, fast and easy. Just say "yes" to the update prompt and a short time later the device reboots to an even more deco 3D light show.
It's possible Android users don't update as fast because they aren't as desparate. I don't know, I haven't seen any figures, except for these ones that seem basically irrelevant to me. Maybe if it was a security update or something that actually mattered. I don't know. It must be different being an iFan. Maybe they just need something to focus on to distract from that market share thing, which continues to slip, slip, slip away.
You know that Unity supports both iOS and Android, right?
Good point. Because the source code is available, Torque3D can be ported to both iOS and Android. And to any other platform anybody cares about. Thankyou for illustrating the power of open source.
our conclusion then was: Torque3D is already irrelevant due to the success of the Unity engine
Which orifice did you pull that conclusion out of? Unity offers a free-to-use version that is very definitely not open source. There is value in that to be sure, for people who want to work with a state of the art engine, but for many devs the open source aspect just matters a whole hell of a lot more. Look at the vast majory of mobile games, the form factor rapidly dominating the game market. Those 3D engines are, to put it succinctly, pure crap. But a lot of those games are fun and successful, and better yet, production values are within the reach of small teams. I say: open source Torque is worth more to the community than the free Unity engine, without in any way belittling the value of the latter.
The point is well taken: in this context, DNA stays constant while heritable changes to expression take place. Which makes some kind of intuitive sense, like the charge in a memory cell changing while the transistor connections do not. And which seems plausible as a means of encoding heritable memories. Barging on from there: perhaps one day somebody will get a Nobel prize for discovering the "memory code" just as Crick did for the genetic code.
Amazon blundered by locking down the bootloader and hopefully they will come to their senses
I don't think they make a profit on it, and maybe even take a small loss, so the last thing they want is people buying it for reasons other than to buy stuff from Amazon.
Even if not locked down, there would just be a small club of alpha geeks wanting to buy it just to get a cheap Android tablet, and those geeks are going to create positive buzz of a type that is both valuable and very hard for a PHB to understand. Whereas the negative karma of lockdown costs sales in the long run.
It's really just a question of working through PHB fear here to get into the zone where the community actualy helps drive the product. Excellent example: the Linksys WRT54GL, an obsolete wireless router that nonetheless enjoys healthy sales long past what should have been its end of life for no other reason than its geek cred. Oh, and its rock solid reliability, in part due to all the loving it has got from said geeks over the years.
I got the Kindle Fire because it had an unlocked bootloader. Locked bootloader = no-go for me. Nexus 7 all the way!
Agreed. Amazon blundered by locking down the bootloader and hopefully they will come to their senses in the not too distant future. Too much Apple envy maybe.
Libreoffice spreadsheet macros are nearly identical to Excel now. Not to the point where you could expect some gigantic Excel model to just work, but I doubt you get that even between different versions of Microsoft's product. Writing macros from scratch... it just works. All the same functions are there with the exception of a few really bizarre ones. And Openoffice/Libreoffice has a much nicer implementation of cut and paste than Excel, it works more like cut and paste in a word processor as opposed to the wierdo funky scheme they came up with for Excel. That a big deal for me, I don't want to be thinking about cut and paste oddities when I'm thinking about crunching numbers.
You knew this was going to happen. Think you bought your software? Microsoft disagrees, and by the way, Microsoft doesn't think you should own your computer either. Anybody so weak kneed as to be afraid to act in their own interest and move to the free and open option gets no sympathy from me.
Whoa, a little aggressive there. (Did Crick actually have it right when he called it dogma?) As noted below, according to epigenetics, "Conclusive evidence supporting epigenetics show that these mechanisms can enable the effects of parents' experiences to be passed down to subsequent generations." So I erred in speculating about DNA transcription, but otherwise the idea already seems partially validated. According to Wikipedia[tm].
Taks transcribed to DNA. Hmm. This doesn't sound all that far from a mechanism that could transcribe thoughts... primitive or otherwise... back into DNA to be passed to offspring. Much like the concept of inherited behaviors actually, which clearly exist. We could explain inherited behavior by random selection... higher mortality of individuals not exhibiting the behavior... but that would be awfully slow compared to a mechanism that could pass learned behaviors to offspring. And such a mechanism would give the species possessing it a huge advantage, therefore by the law of evolution it almost has to exist.
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Please explain to me why Apple can't take some of its highly innovative people (according to Apple) and have them innovate their way through this, as opposed to picking the brains of former Googlers?
Or is this just Apple recognizing its limitations (not actually innovative) and playing to its strengths (having bags of cash to throw around).
Right, that's your best strategy. Now that Apple is caught red handed in the act, try to sow some doubt.
...it achieves this innovation by having the best people. Again, why is this news?
Because it is abundantly apparent that Apple's intention in this case is to copy Google, and not even by original development. That's the news. The company boasting about innovation and complaining about copying, is itself planning to blatantly copy and skip the pesky innovation. See?
Look, I know it's inconvenient for Apple that independent news reporting beyond its control actually exists but that's the way the world works. Fortunately for the rest of us.
it makes completely sense to try and lure away experienced professionals away from another company on a similar project.
The story is that a company known for boasting about its innovation prowess and suing the rest of the industry over imitation is doing this.
the Windows part makes sense even ignoring Gate's connection to the company
Indeed, it would make sense if you assume that this is just business as usual for the cynical old monopolist.
Most Android devices do not get OTA updates.
Care to substantiate that?
...my Droid 2 still works well enough (-ish) that I haven't discarded it. But it continues to run Gingerbread, and will until I run a process which is neither slick, fast, nor easy.
Eh, what's this about then?
This is a clear-cut case of blatant copying of a design, Apple should just admit it, pay up and move on.
Move on to what? More litigation and cheating?
Like Microsoft before it, Apple's corporate DNA is built around a culture of cheating.
Is it really your position that only some kind of obsessed fanboy would update their software?
No, it's my position that a lot of people accepting an update is not news.
Are there any very popular Android phones that have received an update in the last year or so that had the update adopted that fast?
Did anybody care enough to measure or report it? Seems to me, some iFans are grasping at straws here. Android OTA updates are slick, fast and easy. Just say "yes" to the update prompt and a short time later the device reboots to an even more deco 3D light show.
It's possible Android users don't update as fast because they aren't as desparate. I don't know, I haven't seen any figures, except for these ones that seem basically irrelevant to me. Maybe if it was a security update or something that actually mattered. I don't know. It must be different being an iFan. Maybe they just need something to focus on to distract from that market share thing, which continues to slip, slip, slip away.
You know that Unity supports both iOS and Android, right?
Good point. Because the source code is available, Torque3D can be ported to both iOS and Android. And to any other platform anybody cares about. Thankyou for illustrating the power of open source.
Everyone seems to forget that we aren't the customers, we're the product.
Nobody ever won a war with their product.
our conclusion then was: Torque3D is already irrelevant due to the success of the Unity engine
Which orifice did you pull that conclusion out of? Unity offers a free-to-use version that is very definitely not open source. There is value in that to be sure, for people who want to work with a state of the art engine, but for many devs the open source aspect just matters a whole hell of a lot more. Look at the vast majory of mobile games, the form factor rapidly dominating the game market. Those 3D engines are, to put it succinctly, pure crap. But a lot of those games are fun and successful, and better yet, production values are within the reach of small teams. I say: open source Torque is worth more to the community than the free Unity engine, without in any way belittling the value of the latter.
After all, Microsoft is the one technology company that has demonstrated a consistently superior level of trustworthiness and sound ethics. Right?
Why should Apple allow the US government to own a monopoly on creepiness?
The point is well taken: in this context, DNA stays constant while heritable changes to expression take place. Which makes some kind of intuitive sense, like the charge in a memory cell changing while the transistor connections do not. And which seems plausible as a means of encoding heritable memories. Barging on from there: perhaps one day somebody will get a Nobel prize for discovering the "memory code" just as Crick did for the genetic code.
I don't think they make a profit on it, and maybe even take a small loss, so the last thing they want is people buying it for reasons other than to buy stuff from Amazon.
Even if not locked down, there would just be a small club of alpha geeks wanting to buy it just to get a cheap Android tablet, and those geeks are going to create positive buzz of a type that is both valuable and very hard for a PHB to understand. Whereas the negative karma of lockdown costs sales in the long run.
It's really just a question of working through PHB fear here to get into the zone where the community actualy helps drive the product. Excellent example: the Linksys WRT54GL, an obsolete wireless router that nonetheless enjoys healthy sales long past what should have been its end of life for no other reason than its geek cred. Oh, and its rock solid reliability, in part due to all the loving it has got from said geeks over the years.
I got the Kindle Fire because it had an unlocked bootloader. Locked bootloader = no-go for me. Nexus 7 all the way!
Agreed. Amazon blundered by locking down the bootloader and hopefully they will come to their senses in the not too distant future. Too much Apple envy maybe.
Excel 2010 is pretty amazing and you'll see how awesome it's clipboard system rocks.
Libreoffice's clipboard system rocks, it just rocks in an intuitive way, unlike Excel.
Libreoffice spreadsheet macros are nearly identical to Excel now. Not to the point where you could expect some gigantic Excel model to just work, but I doubt you get that even between different versions of Microsoft's product. Writing macros from scratch... it just works. All the same functions are there with the exception of a few really bizarre ones. And Openoffice/Libreoffice has a much nicer implementation of cut and paste than Excel, it works more like cut and paste in a word processor as opposed to the wierdo funky scheme they came up with for Excel. That a big deal for me, I don't want to be thinking about cut and paste oddities when I'm thinking about crunching numbers.
You knew this was going to happen. Think you bought your software? Microsoft disagrees, and by the way, Microsoft doesn't think you should own your computer either. Anybody so weak kneed as to be afraid to act in their own interest and move to the free and open option gets no sympathy from me.
"Survival of the fittest"
Whoa, a little aggressive there. (Did Crick actually have it right when he called it dogma?) As noted below, according to epigenetics, "Conclusive evidence supporting epigenetics show that these mechanisms can enable the effects of parents' experiences to be passed down to subsequent generations." So I erred in speculating about DNA transcription, but otherwise the idea already seems partially validated. According to Wikipedia[tm].
Taks transcribed to DNA. Hmm. This doesn't sound all that far from a mechanism that could transcribe thoughts... primitive or otherwise... back into DNA to be passed to offspring. Much like the concept of inherited behaviors actually, which clearly exist. We could explain inherited behavior by random selection... higher mortality of individuals not exhibiting the behavior... but that would be awfully slow compared to a mechanism that could pass learned behaviors to offspring. And such a mechanism would give the species possessing it a huge advantage, therefore by the law of evolution it almost has to exist.