Wow, I'm surprised at the driveby downmods in this thread. I mean, I held this image of Java developers as open minded individuals, but maybe there is a significant minority that just aren't. Guys: it is a fact. If you need your program to go fast, plus be OOP, then you should write it in C++. GCC will hand you somewhere between 10% and 200% speedup "for free" on real life algorithms, plus startup time normally faster by a multiple, and a fraction of the memory footprint. And small binaries, and runtime support always installed by default.
Java has its uses. It is generally faster to develop in and less tricky for the naive programmer. You can effectively build a project faster with less skilled and less expensive, more freely available developers. That is a big deal, not to be underestimated. But if your functional requirements include fast and tight, Java is not the right choice. Well, it's faster than Python or Bash. And sometimes not even that if you include JIT time.
It's far more likely that the Occam's Razor solution is the likely one - that they really do run it at just-about break even.
Sorry, I do not find that credible, no matter how strong the reality distortion field. Apple has consistently demonstrated less than stellar corporate morality and there is no reason for me to rule out the possibility that they may indulge in a little book cooking from time to time. People under pressure to earn their bonuses do some remarkable things, look at Enron. Why should Apple stop at patent troll lawsuits and lying about the antenna when there is even more money to be made by even less ethical practices? And in fact the stronger the protestations I hear to the contrary, the more interesting it gets.
128 test computers, 20,000 tests per day, over 850 metrics analyzed, 480GB of runtime data per day, and a granularity of just 100 nanoseconds.
What is supposed to be impressive about this? 128 is not many computers, 20,000 tests is dog slow, 480 GB of data is just feeble, and I would be embarrassed to admit ever timing to a granularity as crude as 100 ns. 1/3 ns is more like it.
This is a puff piece and just serves to reinforce my impression that Microsoft's engineering culture died long ago. It fell down and can't get up.
As for the chance of Microsoft coming up with the world's fastest browser, it isn't going to happen, sorry, You actually need a lot of skilled, dedicated software artists working tirelessly to make that happen. In the lower galleys at Microsoft, mercilessly whipped by HR and beancounters, sneered at by legions of fat and happy partners, always waiting for that dread U10, Microserfs just don't have the right stuff. Not now, or ever again.
what benefit do they really get by claiming that the store is running near break even for them?
They would get to shift the money over to puff up hardware profits and mask short term weakness in hardware sales, which otherwise would be a deadly blow to Apple's stock price. I am not saying Apple is actually doing this, I am saying they could. And claiming that no money is being made in the online store in spite of a 30% cut of sales just makes me think like that. It's too ridiculous a proposition to be believed.
Even at the implied reduced growth rate, they're still the fastest growing Mobile OS out there.
So? It is still suboptimal and increases the risk that the tide could turn the other way. And who needs increased risk? Not shareholders. Not you or me. Worse: risk without reward. Only a stupid person would want that.
If you start to manage lots of data ( and I think some people enter into this category for their email ), it make sense to use a DB.
It makes sense on paper. It has yet to be proved that it makes sense for email, and in fact, so far kmail 7.2+ is pretty good evidence for the contrary. I am afraid you will have a difficult time finding anyone who has stayed with Kmail through its recent convulsions and has in fact forgotten about the performance issue. Just do a quick search on "kmail 7.3 slow" to convince yourself.
Now HP comes back and says great things about WebOS after it already killed it off in more ways than one.
To tell the truth, the fallout discussion has had the side effect of getting me interested enough to try out some experimental coding for a WebOS device. Is there anything practical to pick up that would not just be a doorstop 6 months from now?
Linux is the only piece that's GPL licensed, the rest is Apache licensed - not to mention fully written by Google so they're copyright holders and can relicense at will.
Kubuntu did a nasty on me with a surprise, non-optional upgrade to kmail 4.7.2, which is just an unfinished work, to put it mildly. As a confirm glutton for punishment, I decided to make it work no matter what the coast. Anyway, it came with a MySQL backend that was sort-of working, but one day it just fell down and couldn't get up. So I replaced it with the experimental, unsupported PostgresQL backend, and after a little bit of pain learning how to administrate the server, it came up and so far has worked considerably better than the MySQL backend. I had to tell to use less mmapped memory, which is something no user should ever have to be expected to deal with, and it is beyond me why PostgreSQL couldn't figure that one out itself. Well, I suppose if I care enough I will send a patch, but the point is: if that is the biggest issue I had with it, that is damned sweet. So color me impressed with PostgreSQL, and actually, I will stand up and thank the nutsoid KDE dev who pulled this stunt because I finally have an excuse to get to know the free database I should have used a lot more all these years. And by the way, I am kind of curious whether having a full blown relational database sitting under my email client will actually result in smarter email handling some day. So far, not visibly smarter, just slower, fails to filter my spam and sometimes has races and needs to be told how to resolve them. I'll give it a while and see if some actual power shows up.
Apple has repeated stated year, on year, that the App Store is not much better than break even for them as a standalone product - the real money makers on the store are the third party developers. Yes, much is made of the "massive" 30% cut they take for handling payment processing, store front, advertising, servers, bandwidth etc that go into running the store.
There is no way Apple is making anything other than a massive profit with a 30% cut of something that just basically costs electrical power and depreciation and a minor amount of manpower. If Apple says otherwise then methinks somebody cooketh the books. And probably ought to mediate a while on where that ends...
I will risk saying this without the Anonumous box checked, what the fuck is going on with the mass histeria? As if we are curing cancer several times per year now! It is a damn gadget, and a nice looking one to be honest, but a gadget it remains. There is always rumors about a new iOS, or a new iPad or a new iPhone and somehow people get are juiced about them, in the end I just can't reconcile this enthusiams the people are having with the immorality of how these things are created. So Fuck you!
The biggest threat is if google gets into the hardware business themselves and the other handset makers see this action as a threat.
Google already tried it. It was a commercial flop and they learned their lesson. Just in case anybody does not know what the lesson is, here is a short recap: "stick to your competency".
Google is a massive company and if they wanted to make their own phones with their own closed OS, they'd have done it by now.
True. Actually, Google wants to have their cake and eat it too by having an open source OS (skin) with a closed source development cycle. Conclusive proof that at least some Googlers are a little numb in the skull.
As far as I'm concerned, OS2 Warp is still light years ahead of both Mac and Windows in terms of UI ease-of-use As far as I'm concerned, beOS is still light years ahead of both Mac and Windows and OS2 Warp in terms of UI ease-of-use
Neither of those is open source or likely ever will be. Chalk it up the "so nearly great but" effect. And don't forget GeoOS from Geoworks while you're at it.
Linux has a very, very, VERY good kernel. It's about time that it had a really, really revolutionary desktop, one that doesn't copy anything else, or try to be anything else, but one that simply revolutionizes how we work on these bloomin' little thingies called "pee cees."
What you are overlooked: the Linux kernel is good exactly because it is a very nice clone of a tried and true operating system called Unix. (Just ask Linus and he will tell you that "Linux" does not stand for "Linux Is Not UniX".) So to extend your analogy, a VERY good desktop would be a VERY good clone of a tried and true one. Oh wait, isn't that exactly what KDE is?
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(Object-oriented C, as far as it makes sense.)
It never does, trust me. If what you need is object-oriented C, use C++.
Wow, I'm surprised at the driveby downmods in this thread. I mean, I held this image of Java developers as open minded individuals, but maybe there is a significant minority that just aren't. Guys: it is a fact. If you need your program to go fast, plus be OOP, then you should write it in C++. GCC will hand you somewhere between 10% and 200% speedup "for free" on real life algorithms, plus startup time normally faster by a multiple, and a fraction of the memory footprint. And small binaries, and runtime support always installed by default.
Java has its uses. It is generally faster to develop in and less tricky for the naive programmer. You can effectively build a project faster with less skilled and less expensive, more freely available developers. That is a big deal, not to be underestimated. But if your functional requirements include fast and tight, Java is not the right choice. Well, it's faster than Python or Bash. And sometimes not even that if you include JIT time.
It's far more likely that the Occam's Razor solution is the likely one - that they really do run it at just-about break even.
Sorry, I do not find that credible, no matter how strong the reality distortion field. Apple has consistently demonstrated less than stellar corporate morality and there is no reason for me to rule out the possibility that they may indulge in a little book cooking from time to time. People under pressure to earn their bonuses do some remarkable things, look at Enron. Why should Apple stop at patent troll lawsuits and lying about the antenna when there is even more money to be made by even less ethical practices? And in fact the stronger the protestations I hear to the contrary, the more interesting it gets.
128 test computers, 20,000 tests per day, over 850 metrics analyzed, 480GB of runtime data per day, and a granularity of just 100 nanoseconds.
What is supposed to be impressive about this? 128 is not many computers, 20,000 tests is dog slow, 480 GB of data is just feeble, and I would be embarrassed to admit ever timing to a granularity as crude as 100 ns. 1/3 ns is more like it.
This is a puff piece and just serves to reinforce my impression that Microsoft's engineering culture died long ago. It fell down and can't get up.
As for the chance of Microsoft coming up with the world's fastest browser, it isn't going to happen, sorry, You actually need a lot of skilled, dedicated software artists working tirelessly to make that happen. In the lower galleys at Microsoft, mercilessly whipped by HR and beancounters, sneered at by legions of fat and happy partners, always waiting for that dread U10, Microserfs just don't have the right stuff. Not now, or ever again.
what benefit do they really get by claiming that the store is running near break even for them?
They would get to shift the money over to puff up hardware profits and mask short term weakness in hardware sales, which otherwise would be a deadly blow to Apple's stock price. I am not saying Apple is actually doing this, I am saying they could. And claiming that no money is being made in the online store in spite of a 30% cut of sales just makes me think like that. It's too ridiculous a proposition to be believed.
Even at the implied reduced growth rate, they're still the fastest growing Mobile OS out there.
So? It is still suboptimal and increases the risk that the tide could turn the other way. And who needs increased risk? Not shareholders. Not you or me. Worse: risk without reward. Only a stupid person would want that.
If you start to manage lots of data ( and I think some people enter into this category for their email ), it make sense to use a DB.
It makes sense on paper. It has yet to be proved that it makes sense for email, and in fact, so far kmail 7.2+ is pretty good evidence for the contrary. I am afraid you will have a difficult time finding anyone who has stayed with Kmail through its recent convulsions and has in fact forgotten about the performance issue. Just do a quick search on "kmail 7.3 slow" to convince yourself.
Now HP comes back and says great things about WebOS after it already killed it off in more ways than one.
To tell the truth, the fallout discussion has had the side effect of getting me interested enough to try out some experimental coding for a WebOS device. Is there anything practical to pick up that would not just be a doorstop 6 months from now?
Google is the copyright holder of all the Android code, so they can pick any license they want.
I think you have a wildly wrong idea about how much of the shipping OS is "Android code".
Linux is the only piece that's GPL licensed, the rest is Apache licensed - not to mention fully written by Google so they're copyright holders and can relicense at will.
I guess that's a fairly massive exaggeration.
Kubuntu did a nasty on me with a surprise, non-optional upgrade to kmail 4.7.2, which is just an unfinished work, to put it mildly. As a confirm glutton for punishment, I decided to make it work no matter what the coast. Anyway, it came with a MySQL backend that was sort-of working, but one day it just fell down and couldn't get up. So I replaced it with the experimental, unsupported PostgresQL backend, and after a little bit of pain learning how to administrate the server, it came up and so far has worked considerably better than the MySQL backend. I had to tell to use less mmapped memory, which is something no user should ever have to be expected to deal with, and it is beyond me why PostgreSQL couldn't figure that one out itself. Well, I suppose if I care enough I will send a patch, but the point is: if that is the biggest issue I had with it, that is damned sweet. So color me impressed with PostgreSQL, and actually, I will stand up and thank the nutsoid KDE dev who pulled this stunt because I finally have an excuse to get to know the free database I should have used a lot more all these years. And by the way, I am kind of curious whether having a full blown relational database sitting under my email client will actually result in smarter email handling some day. So far, not visibly smarter, just slower, fails to filter my spam and sometimes has races and needs to be told how to resolve them. I'll give it a while and see if some actual power shows up.
Get away with it, yes, but grow as fast as possible, no.
I'd like that. It would hasten the fadeout of iStuff.
Apple has repeated stated year, on year, that the App Store is not much better than break even for them as a standalone product - the real money makers on the store are the third party developers. Yes, much is made of the "massive" 30% cut they take for handling payment processing, store front, advertising, servers, bandwidth etc that go into running the store.
There is no way Apple is making anything other than a massive profit with a 30% cut of something that just basically costs electrical power and depreciation and a minor amount of manpower. If Apple says otherwise then methinks somebody cooketh the books. And probably ought to mediate a while on where that ends...
I will risk saying this without the Anonumous box checked, what the fuck is going on with the mass histeria? As if we are curing cancer several times per year now! It is a damn gadget, and a nice looking one to be honest, but a gadget it remains. There is always rumors about a new iOS, or a new iPad or a new iPhone and somehow people get are juiced about them, in the end I just can't reconcile this enthusiams the people are having with the immorality of how these things are created. So Fuck you!
You said it straight and deserve to be modded up.
The biggest threat is if google gets into the hardware business themselves and the other handset makers see this action as a threat.
Google already tried it. It was a commercial flop and they learned their lesson. Just in case anybody does not know what the lesson is, here is a short recap: "stick to your competency".
Google is a massive company and if they wanted to make their own phones with their own closed OS, they'd have done it by now.
True. Actually, Google wants to have their cake and eat it too by having an open source OS (skin) with a closed source development cycle. Conclusive proof that at least some Googlers are a little numb in the skull.
"Cheat to beat".
As far as I'm concerned, OS2 Warp is still light years ahead of both Mac and Windows in terms of UI ease-of-use
As far as I'm concerned, beOS is still light years ahead of both Mac and Windows and OS2 Warp in terms of UI ease-of-use
Neither of those is open source or likely ever will be. Chalk it up the "so nearly great but" effect. And don't forget GeoOS from Geoworks while you're at it.
Linux has a very, very, VERY good kernel. It's about time that it had a really, really revolutionary desktop, one that doesn't copy anything else, or try to be anything else, but one that simply revolutionizes how we work on these bloomin' little thingies called "pee cees."
What you are overlooked: the Linux kernel is good exactly because it is a very nice clone of a tried and true operating system called Unix. (Just ask Linus and he will tell you that "Linux" does not stand for "Linux Is Not UniX".) So to extend your analogy, a VERY good desktop would be a VERY good clone of a tried and true one. Oh wait, isn't that exactly what KDE is?
So use KDE? It's pretty dev friendly.
True.
I just recently installed Ubuntu 11.10, and GNOME 3 on top of it. I couldn't be happier with it.
Wow, how lonely is it over there on your planet?
I wait with baited breath for a hopefully usable system...
"Bated". Unless you meant to imply that your breath smells like fish :-)
It's strange to see Gnome returning to the "one activity at a time" methodology that we had with simple DOS programs...
Strange... yes... but it's all just part of Miguel's grand plan to make Linux suck more than Windows.
And have you tried to configure anything in Gnome, like for example, turning off its braindamaged window maximizing at hot edges?