Office is already being ported to Cocoa. Porting it to Cocoa Touch will not be a difficult task. Apple was able to do this with iWork. When I say "difficult task", I should qualify that with "technologically difficult". The UI will be somewhat more challenging, but if they are porting Office to the Metro side of their tablets, it's pretty much a similar level of difficulty.
As for whether people are insane for the tools they chose to use, your assessment is based on your own subjective experiences. It's arrogant as fuck to tell people they are using the wrong tools when subjectivity is so strongly associated with it. Your objective example of a screw driver instead of a drill (wtf?) does not apply, because there are clear objective reasons one would be wrong that are so important that they overcome all but the most extremely subjective differences.
It is essential that MS put Office on every computing device that is commonly used for Office to maintain is dominant position as strongly as it has in the past. I know plenty of people who ask whether Office is available for the iPad, and when I tell them it isn't, at first they are somewhat concerned. Then I tell them that there are programs that can work with Office files (with some limitations) if they need it, and they are $10 apiece, so if they find they do need it, there's options. That puts them at ease, and many of them never buy Pages or Numbers or Keynote, but they are comforted knowing they are there. And this is critically detrimental to MS, because this comfort is coming from a source other than MS Office. This weakens Office's importance.
If Office were available on the iPad, I suspect it would be a customary purchase for many people. I see this on the Mac all the time. People walk out of the store with a MacBook and the Home & Student edition of Office.
Then they install it, though they never use it. But at least they bought it, and for a little while at least, their notion of it being essential is strengthened. But with the iPad, that notion is weakened right out of the box.
OK, so you have no evidence. Of course, it would be easy enough for Apple to issue a written guarantee that they won't lock down OS X.
Who said that? There's plenty of evidence, just no proof (because, as I stated, proof can only come from the future). There's much more evidence that OS X won't be locked down than there is that it will. Your position is untenable with the current facts.
You are extrapolating into the future based on the assumption that a small change is part of an inexorable trend. By your logic, based on the style changes in jeans from the 50s through the 70s, today pant legs would be 10 feet wide. That's exactly what you are doing here.
You're seeing one drop of rain in the desert, and predicting an unending deluge.
As for a written guarantee, that's one of the dumbest things I've heard. Do you want them to promise not to do every thing you're afraid of? How often do companies do something like that?
MSFT aren't the evil machine they used to be, kids. Move on.....move on......
Your citation is not a logical rebuttal. People realizing they don't need Office does not mean that Office needs to end up selling fewer versions.
What happened is this: Corporations have finally started upgrading everyone to Office 2010 on their new PCs after holding out on upgrading for almost a decade on their old Windows XP PCs.
Also, there's no significant trend of people saying MS is evil in these threads, that's just a straw man you brought up.
They do not want adoption of IOS, but the pocket versions do encourage Windows and Office on desktop computer and kills smaller companies or Apple from getting a foothold in the market which would then threaten Windows.
Too late. The iPhone alone is worth more than all of MS combined. iOS is where the puck is going, Windows is where the puck was ("A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be." --Wayne Gretzky).
Without an iOS version of Office, people lose one of the "big reasons" they thought they needed Windows.
I got modded down here a few times saying I can't leave Office because I can not guarantee that my resume will look the same on someone elses computer running Office if I make it under LibraOffice.
That's what PDF is for.
For that reason it will stay forever in business and MS Office is not going anyway as suppliers and customers will think you are incompentent if you send a document that looks funny on their computer.
That's not a logical conclusion..doc files are going to be supported pretty much forever (just like mp3, gif, and jpg, even if they are all replaced, reading the formats is trivial (though the Office formats are quirky) and will be useful for reading legacy files), and.xls probably as well (but not nearly as important). Office itself is no longer necessary, it's just the easiest way to support those two file formats.
People used to say the exact same thing about WordPerfect.
If Office is not available on the platforms you use (and hundreds of millions of people use iOS, over 40 million of them on the iPad), then it's no longer the easiest way to support those formats. This weakens the network effect you are referring to, and once it drops below a certain threshold, it will completely unravel.
'Like the curtain finally falling from the Wizard of Oz to find just a small, frail, man pretending to be far more powerful and relevant than he really was,
That actually sounds like someone talking about Apple more than Microsoft.
Truth is they just want MS Office on Apple products because tablets will continue to be irrelevant to a large part of the world unless they have those apps.
Nonsense. iPads are one of the top selling technology devices in the world. Lack of Office is not holding it back, which is the point. MS is missing the boat by not porting Office to the iPad. For most people, Pages, Numbers and Keynote serve them well enough.
You're right that some people will need more powerful tools, but that's a niche. There are orders of magnitude more people for whom MS Office is unnecessary than those for whom it is.
Also, the people trying to use them for business think what's missing is Office, but when they get it, they'll be missing the keyboard too, and probably the mouse.
iPads have keyboards, and support external keyboards. Those aren't missing at all. As for mice, it's really not that important, but if it is for you, then you can always buy a PC. They will never go away.
Most people, however, will do just fine without a mouse or physical keyboard. Few people type enough for it to warrant the inherent downsides.
And coming at it from the other side, would MS let Apple take 30% from every sale?
Why not? They let Best Buy, Office Depot, NewEgg, etc., take commission on every sale (which is probably around 30%). They also said the next version of Office will be available on the Mac App Store.
Some people make way too much out of this 30% thing, like it's a big deal. It's called business, and it's worked fantastically for many thousands of years.
But it's not *only* a media consumption/review device. People who say things like that really just sound arrogant.
Office readers would be great. Office is such a pig for resources otherwise, that compositional tools would be plainly insane to port to iOS.
The iPad runs iWork apps just fine. And there are Office-compatible apps for the iPad. And MS Office ran on significantly inferior platforms for many years just fine. The iPad has more than enough RAM, CPU, and storage for Office. The OS can handle it (it's based on Nextstep).
The question itself if a fishing attempt to find feature interest.
The question has been asked since the day the iPhone was announced. People have wanted Office on all their devices since the Palm Pilot.
Yet MS has, by failing to put Office everywhere, let the cat out of of the bag: you don't really need MS Office. Geeks have been saying this for about two decades now, but iOS has demonstrated this to the average person.
Office is coming to Windows 8 in one form or another, so do they bother to port it to iOS? Same chipset (ARM) same form factor (tablet) same profile of consumer (please, no sandals vs loafers arguments).
Because iOS has been around for half a decade now, and Windows 8 isn't even out yet. Because there are already hundreds of millions of iOS users. Because (as one of the articles points out), this has shown people that they don't actually need office, and by extension, don't need Windows or Microsoft in general.
And besides, didn't you just say it would be insane to port it to iOS? But you're now saying it's inevitable it will come to the ARM version of Windows? WTF?
In fact, it's a highly beneficial behavior, and one that is completely optional (and always will be).
[Citation needed]
Windows and Linux both have had code signing with defaults set to varying levels of requiring user interaction to install unsigned code. Android and iOS also have this. Game consoles have this in an even more extreme way (and have *zero* malware). Google has remotely killed software found to be malware using a similar mechanism. Windows has driver signing which has improved driver quality over time, iOS has code signing which has made malware a non-issue, various Linux distros use signing to ensure software is coming from trusted repositories.
But I really can't see how you really need citations (which are embarrassingly abundant and overt) to see how this is beneficial.
Or do you need citation for the fact that it's completely optional? The Mountain Lion coverage is chock full of it. Or for the fact that it always will be? Um, it's impossible to cite the future. It's just absolutely absurd to think Apple is going to make this mandatory. It would break the Macintosh. What makes you think Apple would be so stupid as to do that?
No one is frustrated with Apple about this. The only people making a stink about it are the anti-Apple fanboys,
I've been a Mac user since 1986, and I currently have two Macs, three iPods, a Time Capsule and an AppleTV in the house.
And having black friends doesn't mean you aren't racist.
In this case, you're imagining something that isn't real, isn't on the way to being real, and has zero chance of ever becoming real. You're upset about a beneficial feature, for fear of something that IS NOT real, and there's no reason to think that ever will become real, other than paranoid fantasy.
And I'm upset about the gradual frog-boiling march to locked down OS X.
You are jumping at shadows. You are imaging some Grand Scheme that doesn't exist. Apple has in no way ever implied that they intend to lock down OS X like iOS. They *could* do this, but they *aren't* and *haven't* done this. If they ever do, just switch to Linux, problem solved. But if you do like Apple hardware and software over generic PC hardware and Linux (presumably based on your "I have black friends" disclaimer, this is the case), then why switch before it's even remotely true? And why worry about something that is not *actually* happening and which even if it were, you have absolutely no way to stop, and is completely voluntary that you can easily escape with the download of a single ISO?
Where does it state, imply, or even hint, that this feature has never been used anywhere else?
It's new to OS X. That's all it says. And in fact it's already in Lion, just not enabled by default, and hidden behind a command line utility. Somehow that doesn't scream "hyperbole".
It's a new feature that differentiates Mountain Lion from Lion. That is all.
What's "media consumption device" got to do with anything? It's just a bullshit term used by arrogant nerds to put down other people's computers. It's just a variation on "toy computer". It's pure snobbery nonsense.
Most people's PCs are "media consumption devices". And good for them! Who are you to put down someone for how they want to use their computer? It's theirs, not yours. Why the silly tribalism?
As for:
However, that leaves a lot of us out in the cold.
Or you can just change the setting globally. Or you could use the feature to your benenfit, while still allowing unsigned apps in a cas-by-case basis.
Or you could just bitch and moan like an angry old man about something that is completely silly and has absolutely no impact on you whatsoever.
I'm confused by your response. Besides the fact that Android runs on phones and OS X runs on computers - which I do think is a salient difference - I also don't understand explaining away one company's bad behavior by pointing towards another company that's doing the same thing.
He's pointing out that it's not a bad behavior. In fact, it's a highly beneficial behavior, and one that is completely optional (and always will be).
I don't see what Android does as being at all relevant to people's frustration with Apple and their move towards rigid control of their platforms.
No one is frustrated with Apple about this. The only people making a stink about it are the anti-Apple fanboys, and bringing up Android serves to perfectly illustrate their irrational fanboyism through hypocrisy.
One step closer to all apps needing to come from the app store.
This will never, ever, happen. It's just silly FUD, right up there with using Linux means you will be sued by MS, or that Google is going to close source Android.
Not really. Nobody really wants to run Windows on their tablet or phone, and you won't be able to run Windows programs anyway (what have you been smoking?), so the one short-term benefit of being able to run the same software is meaningless.
As for running the same software, that hasn't been a problem for iOS or Android. Porting software is no problem, and for the software that doesn't get ported, it will just be reimplemented by someone else.
Regardless, this is definitely not MS copying Apple.
As for.Net, you don't have to make it Windows to support it. MS is trying to leverage something that is exceptionally valuable on the PC in a market where it's not only valueless, it's a liability.
Knowing how to phrase the question is often the most important part of determining the solution.
"How much exercise do we need?" tends to make you look for large and or frequent work out schedules. "How little?" has you looking for the most efficient exercise routine.
They both are looking to solve the same general health question, but they are clearly different enough to lead to different results.
Exercise has almost nothing to do with weight/fat. If you exercise, you work up an appetite and eat more. Study after study has shown that adding exercise rarely results in any significant amount of weight loss unless food intake is also addressed.
Exercise is for fitness, diet is for fat loss.
If you want to slim down, cut the sugars and starches. If you want strong and efficient muscles, exercise intensely once or twice a week. As long as you are getting sufficient protein, plenty of calories (from fat), and vitamins and minerals (from meats and vegetables), you'll do fine.
Just compare that with the average American diet. Loads of sugar and useless carbs like bread, pasta, and potatoes. Tasty as fuck, but horrible for your health.
Used to be a time when everybody knew this. If you wanted more weight, you ate pasta and bread. Now we eat that shit way too much, and now we all wonder how to slim down, because the normal meal for, a fat guy from the 1950s is a normal meal for everyone today.
Exercise is important, but it will never make you slim.
Here we see MSFT vainly believe if they Ape the Apple philosophy they can get Apple iMoney, but its so full of fail its unreal.
If MS were to really ape Apple, they'd drop the Windows UI from the tablet version of Windows, and not put the whole tablet UI into the desktop version of Windows. MS is too insecure about leaving behind their highly successful Windows product when it comes to devices for which Windows itself makes no damned sense.
They are afraid that if they leave behind traditional Windows, they won't be able to compete against Apple and Google. They're probably right, but we'll never know. They are heading down the path to irrelevancy.
A parallel in the Open Source world is Ubuntu. They receive a lot of flak from traditionalists for trying new things, but how else are they supposed to gain market share and promote innovation? By doing what all the other distros have been doing, which is just making their desktop a little shinier and rearranging the buttons? That hasn't worked for the past 20 years, why expect it to work now?
If the iPad was just a tablet Mac, like many Slashdotters wished it had been, it would not be as successful as it is. *That's* the lesson MS should take from this, but they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want to start with something new, designed for the form factor and usage patterns (which is the correct thing to do), but also trying to leverage Windows, where absolutely none of the strengths of Windows brings anything of value!
chalk another victory for Apple's superior product and unmatched level customer satisfaction. Businesses are just as gaga over the iPhone as individuals -- even archconservative firms such as Halliburton have made the switch.
OK, you like Apple. Next time don't put so much sugar in the Kool-Aid.
What "Kool Aid"? People are buying iPhones! Businesses are buying iPhones! Reporting on the facts doesn't make one a fanatic. Railing against reality does, though.
Basically, he's just wishing that the wireless carriers would just be dumb pipes and let Apple's Goodness permeate the eather unimpaired.
As I said, too much sugar.
And that's exactly what everyone here on slashdot wants, except that since we are supposed to hate Apple (unlike everyone else, because we're soooo much smarter!), we only want that when it's Android phones, and not whatever phone people happen to buy.
Fandroids need to learn to live with the iPhone. It doesn't suck, it's not going away. Android isn't taking over the world. And the reverse isn't true either. Both will coexist for a long time to come.
Buy what you prefer, and be happy that there's a phone out there that you prefer, just like the other way round. And don't get your panties up in a wad because someone buys the phone that you don't like. It just makes you 100x worse than the purported "Kool Aid" drinkers that you imagine others to be.
This is one of the strangest ironies in geek circles, such as Slashdot. There's a whole subcategory of geek who decries things that "you don't need". What *do* you really need? It's not like there's some objective line, past which you don't need something, therefore you shouldn't buy it.
The truth is, those that go off on these tangents are really saying they don't *want* it enough to justify the cost *to them*. That's all well and good, but they then seem intent on telling everyone else that they are wrong for holding a different opinion.
Yes, that's a niche market, and one that the big PC makers are running away from in droves. They are now trying to court it with the "ultrabook", which demonstrates that people don't want a shit notebook.
Or it demonstrates that there is a greater profit margin in selling more expensive computers. My anecdote suggests that a lot of people were happy with netbooks despite being able to buy the faster and equally light Toshiba Portété line for over decade.
I'm waiting for the part where people who need to travel with their computer for work isn't a niche market. I'm also waiting for the part where people wouldn't prefer an "ultrabook" (read: MacBook Air) over a netbook for that role.
I never said there aren't a lot of people who are happy with netbooks. In fact, I'm quite certain there are a lot of people happy with netbooks. That doesn't change their niche status, niche appeal, and inherent inferiority to proper computers better suited for use on the road.
Wow, a world where sometimes things are misunderstood? How horrible!!!
Natural language may have its limits, but it's the best we've got, and billions of people seem to do just fine with it.
And no, I wrote exactly what I think it means. I'll save some time and quote the message you apparently didn't bother to read before replying to:
"I don't want it to know that 'show me driving directions to X' is the same request as 'take me to X', 'how do I get to X from here', 'what's the way to X', and instead require me to learn the one, and only one, magical phrase to get the results I want."
You completely missed the entire point of my reply. Natural language is imprecise. Big fucking deal. Better to have something that is likely to know what I mean, then something that will simply error out unless you use some specific syntax. That's why Siri is so successful where most every other such system has been little more than a gimmick.
Slashdot Mirror
Or all the old Linux guys care less about consuming content than making something.
That's not the cause of poor multimedia support in Linux, it's an effect.
The cause is driver support, which is due to lack of documented interfaces.
Office is already being ported to Cocoa. Porting it to Cocoa Touch will not be a difficult task. Apple was able to do this with iWork. When I say "difficult task", I should qualify that with "technologically difficult". The UI will be somewhat more challenging, but if they are porting Office to the Metro side of their tablets, it's pretty much a similar level of difficulty.
As for whether people are insane for the tools they chose to use, your assessment is based on your own subjective experiences. It's arrogant as fuck to tell people they are using the wrong tools when subjectivity is so strongly associated with it. Your objective example of a screw driver instead of a drill (wtf?) does not apply, because there are clear objective reasons one would be wrong that are so important that they overcome all but the most extremely subjective differences.
It is essential that MS put Office on every computing device that is commonly used for Office to maintain is dominant position as strongly as it has in the past. I know plenty of people who ask whether Office is available for the iPad, and when I tell them it isn't, at first they are somewhat concerned. Then I tell them that there are programs that can work with Office files (with some limitations) if they need it, and they are $10 apiece, so if they find they do need it, there's options. That puts them at ease, and many of them never buy Pages or Numbers or Keynote, but they are comforted knowing they are there. And this is critically detrimental to MS, because this comfort is coming from a source other than MS Office. This weakens Office's importance.
If Office were available on the iPad, I suspect it would be a customary purchase for many people. I see this on the Mac all the time. People walk out of the store with a MacBook and the Home & Student edition of Office.
Then they install it, though they never use it. But at least they bought it, and for a little while at least, their notion of it being essential is strengthened. But with the iPad, that notion is weakened right out of the box.
OK, so you have no evidence. Of course, it would be easy enough for Apple to issue a written guarantee that they won't lock down OS X.
Who said that? There's plenty of evidence, just no proof (because, as I stated, proof can only come from the future). There's much more evidence that OS X won't be locked down than there is that it will. Your position is untenable with the current facts.
You are extrapolating into the future based on the assumption that a small change is part of an inexorable trend. By your logic, based on the style changes in jeans from the 50s through the 70s, today pant legs would be 10 feet wide. That's exactly what you are doing here.
You're seeing one drop of rain in the desert, and predicting an unending deluge.
As for a written guarantee, that's one of the dumbest things I've heard. Do you want them to promise not to do every thing you're afraid of? How often do companies do something like that?
'Microsoft's biggest miss was allowing the world to finally see the truth behind the big lie — they were not needed to get real work done.
Only on slashdot is Microsoft Office dying or not needed any more. Back in the real world; the place many here I'm sure must forget exists or something, Office 2010 is selling better than any other MS Office suite before - http://www.techspot.com/news/44268-microsoft-office-2010-turns-one-is-the-fastest-selling-version-ever.html.
MSFT aren't the evil machine they used to be, kids. Move on.....move on......
Your citation is not a logical rebuttal. People realizing they don't need Office does not mean that Office needs to end up selling fewer versions.
What happened is this: Corporations have finally started upgrading everyone to Office 2010 on their new PCs after holding out on upgrading for almost a decade on their old Windows XP PCs.
Also, there's no significant trend of people saying MS is evil in these threads, that's just a straw man you brought up.
They do not want adoption of IOS, but the pocket versions do encourage Windows and Office on desktop computer and kills smaller companies or Apple from getting a foothold in the market which would then threaten Windows.
Too late. The iPhone alone is worth more than all of MS combined. iOS is where the puck is going, Windows is where the puck was ("A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."
--Wayne Gretzky).
Without an iOS version of Office, people lose one of the "big reasons" they thought they needed Windows.
I got modded down here a few times saying I can't leave Office because I can not guarantee that my resume will look the same on someone elses computer running Office if I make it under LibraOffice.
That's what PDF is for.
For that reason it will stay forever in business and MS Office is not going anyway as suppliers and customers will think you are incompentent if you send a document that looks funny on their computer.
That's not a logical conclusion. .doc files are going to be supported pretty much forever (just like mp3, gif, and jpg, even if they are all replaced, reading the formats is trivial (though the Office formats are quirky) and will be useful for reading legacy files), and .xls probably as well (but not nearly as important). Office itself is no longer necessary, it's just the easiest way to support those two file formats.
People used to say the exact same thing about WordPerfect.
If Office is not available on the platforms you use (and hundreds of millions of people use iOS, over 40 million of them on the iPad), then it's no longer the easiest way to support those formats. This weakens the network effect you are referring to, and once it drops below a certain threshold, it will completely unravel.
That actually sounds like someone talking about Apple more than Microsoft.
Truth is they just want MS Office on Apple products because tablets will continue to be irrelevant to a large part of the world unless they have those apps.
Nonsense. iPads are one of the top selling technology devices in the world. Lack of Office is not holding it back, which is the point. MS is missing the boat by not porting Office to the iPad. For most people, Pages, Numbers and Keynote serve them well enough.
You're right that some people will need more powerful tools, but that's a niche. There are orders of magnitude more people for whom MS Office is unnecessary than those for whom it is.
Also, the people trying to use them for business think what's missing is Office, but when they get it, they'll be missing the keyboard too, and probably the mouse.
iPads have keyboards, and support external keyboards. Those aren't missing at all. As for mice, it's really not that important, but if it is for you, then you can always buy a PC. They will never go away.
Most people, however, will do just fine without a mouse or physical keyboard. Few people type enough for it to warrant the inherent downsides.
And coming at it from the other side, would MS let Apple take 30% from every sale?
Why not? They let Best Buy, Office Depot, NewEgg, etc., take commission on every sale (which is probably around 30%). They also said the next version of Office will be available on the Mac App Store.
Some people make way too much out of this 30% thing, like it's a big deal. It's called business, and it's worked fantastically for many thousands of years.
It's a media consumption/review device.
But it's not *only* a media consumption/review device. People who say things like that really just sound arrogant.
Office readers would be great. Office is such a pig for resources otherwise, that compositional tools would be plainly insane to port to iOS.
The iPad runs iWork apps just fine. And there are Office-compatible apps for the iPad. And MS Office ran on significantly inferior platforms for many years just fine. The iPad has more than enough RAM, CPU, and storage for Office. The OS can handle it (it's based on Nextstep).
The question itself if a fishing attempt to find feature interest.
The question has been asked since the day the iPhone was announced. People have wanted Office on all their devices since the Palm Pilot.
Yet MS has, by failing to put Office everywhere, let the cat out of of the bag: you don't really need MS Office. Geeks have been saying this for about two decades now, but iOS has demonstrated this to the average person.
Office is coming to Windows 8 in one form or another, so do they bother to port it to iOS? Same chipset (ARM) same form factor (tablet) same profile of consumer (please, no sandals vs loafers arguments).
Because iOS has been around for half a decade now, and Windows 8 isn't even out yet. Because there are already hundreds of millions of iOS users. Because (as one of the articles points out), this has shown people that they don't actually need office, and by extension, don't need Windows or Microsoft in general.
And besides, didn't you just say it would be insane to port it to iOS? But you're now saying it's inevitable it will come to the ARM version of Windows? WTF?
In fact, it's a highly beneficial behavior, and one that is completely optional (and always will be).
[Citation needed]
Windows and Linux both have had code signing with defaults set to varying levels of requiring user interaction to install unsigned code. Android and iOS also have this. Game consoles have this in an even more extreme way (and have *zero* malware). Google has remotely killed software found to be malware using a similar mechanism. Windows has driver signing which has improved driver quality over time, iOS has code signing which has made malware a non-issue, various Linux distros use signing to ensure software is coming from trusted repositories.
But I really can't see how you really need citations (which are embarrassingly abundant and overt) to see how this is beneficial.
Or do you need citation for the fact that it's completely optional? The Mountain Lion coverage is chock full of it. Or for the fact that it always will be? Um, it's impossible to cite the future. It's just absolutely absurd to think Apple is going to make this mandatory. It would break the Macintosh. What makes you think Apple would be so stupid as to do that?
No one is frustrated with Apple about this. The only people making a stink about it are the anti-Apple fanboys,
I've been a Mac user since 1986, and I currently have two Macs, three iPods, a Time Capsule and an AppleTV in the house.
And having black friends doesn't mean you aren't racist.
In this case, you're imagining something that isn't real, isn't on the way to being real, and has zero chance of ever becoming real. You're upset about a beneficial feature, for fear of something that IS NOT real, and there's no reason to think that ever will become real, other than paranoid fantasy.
And I'm upset about the gradual frog-boiling march to locked down OS X.
You are jumping at shadows. You are imaging some Grand Scheme that doesn't exist. Apple has in no way ever implied that they intend to lock down OS X like iOS. They *could* do this, but they *aren't* and *haven't* done this. If they ever do, just switch to Linux, problem solved. But if you do like Apple hardware and software over generic PC hardware and Linux (presumably based on your "I have black friends" disclaimer, this is the case), then why switch before it's even remotely true? And why worry about something that is not *actually* happening and which even if it were, you have absolutely no way to stop, and is completely voluntary that you can easily escape with the download of a single ISO?
Where does it state, imply, or even hint, that this feature has never been used anywhere else?
It's new to OS X. That's all it says. And in fact it's already in Lion, just not enabled by default, and hidden behind a command line utility. Somehow that doesn't scream "hyperbole".
It's a new feature that differentiates Mountain Lion from Lion. That is all.
What's "media consumption device" got to do with anything? It's just a bullshit term used by arrogant nerds to put down other people's computers. It's just a variation on "toy computer". It's pure snobbery nonsense.
Most people's PCs are "media consumption devices". And good for them! Who are you to put down someone for how they want to use their computer? It's theirs, not yours. Why the silly tribalism?
As for:
However, that leaves a lot of us out in the cold.
Or you can just change the setting globally. Or you could use the feature to your benenfit, while still allowing unsigned apps in a cas-by-case basis.
Or you could just bitch and moan like an angry old man about something that is completely silly and has absolutely no impact on you whatsoever.
I'm confused by your response. Besides the fact that Android runs on phones and OS X runs on computers - which I do think is a salient difference - I also don't understand explaining away one company's bad behavior by pointing towards another company that's doing the same thing.
He's pointing out that it's not a bad behavior. In fact, it's a highly beneficial behavior, and one that is completely optional (and always will be).
I don't see what Android does as being at all relevant to people's frustration with Apple and their move towards rigid control of their platforms.
No one is frustrated with Apple about this. The only people making a stink about it are the anti-Apple fanboys, and bringing up Android serves to perfectly illustrate their irrational fanboyism through hypocrisy.
One step closer to all apps needing to come from the app store.
This will never, ever, happen. It's just silly FUD, right up there with using Linux means you will be sued by MS, or that Google is going to close source Android.
Not really. Nobody really wants to run Windows on their tablet or phone, and you won't be able to run Windows programs anyway (what have you been smoking?), so the one short-term benefit of being able to run the same software is meaningless.
As for running the same software, that hasn't been a problem for iOS or Android. Porting software is no problem, and for the software that doesn't get ported, it will just be reimplemented by someone else.
Regardless, this is definitely not MS copying Apple.
As for .Net, you don't have to make it Windows to support it. MS is trying to leverage something that is exceptionally valuable on the PC in a market where it's not only valueless, it's a liability.
iOS is worth more than all of MS combined.
Knowing how to phrase the question is often the most important part of determining the solution.
"How much exercise do we need?" tends to make you look for large and or frequent work out schedules. "How little?" has you looking for the most efficient exercise routine.
They both are looking to solve the same general health question, but they are clearly different enough to lead to different results.
Exercise has almost nothing to do with weight/fat. If you exercise, you work up an appetite and eat more. Study after study has shown that adding exercise rarely results in any significant amount of weight loss unless food intake is also addressed.
Exercise is for fitness, diet is for fat loss.
If you want to slim down, cut the sugars and starches. If you want strong and efficient muscles, exercise intensely once or twice a week. As long as you are getting sufficient protein, plenty of calories (from fat), and vitamins and minerals (from meats and vegetables), you'll do fine.
Just compare that with the average American diet. Loads of sugar and useless carbs like bread, pasta, and potatoes. Tasty as fuck, but horrible for your health.
Used to be a time when everybody knew this. If you wanted more weight, you ate pasta and bread. Now we eat that shit way too much, and now we all wonder how to slim down, because the normal meal for, a fat guy from the 1950s is a normal meal for everyone today.
Exercise is important, but it will never make you slim.
Here we see MSFT vainly believe if they Ape the Apple philosophy they can get Apple iMoney, but its so full of fail its unreal.
If MS were to really ape Apple, they'd drop the Windows UI from the tablet version of Windows, and not put the whole tablet UI into the desktop version of Windows. MS is too insecure about leaving behind their highly successful Windows product when it comes to devices for which Windows itself makes no damned sense.
They are afraid that if they leave behind traditional Windows, they won't be able to compete against Apple and Google. They're probably right, but we'll never know. They are heading down the path to irrelevancy.
A parallel in the Open Source world is Ubuntu. They receive a lot of flak from traditionalists for trying new things, but how else are they supposed to gain market share and promote innovation? By doing what all the other distros have been doing, which is just making their desktop a little shinier and rearranging the buttons? That hasn't worked for the past 20 years, why expect it to work now?
If the iPad was just a tablet Mac, like many Slashdotters wished it had been, it would not be as successful as it is. *That's* the lesson MS should take from this, but they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want to start with something new, designed for the form factor and usage patterns (which is the correct thing to do), but also trying to leverage Windows, where absolutely none of the strengths of Windows brings anything of value!
Gag me with a spoon. FTFA:
chalk another victory for Apple's superior product and unmatched level customer satisfaction. Businesses are just as gaga over the iPhone as individuals -- even archconservative firms such as Halliburton have made the switch.
OK, you like Apple. Next time don't put so much sugar in the Kool-Aid.
What "Kool Aid"? People are buying iPhones! Businesses are buying iPhones! Reporting on the facts doesn't make one a fanatic. Railing against reality does, though.
Basically, he's just wishing that the wireless carriers would just be dumb pipes and let Apple's Goodness permeate the eather unimpaired.
As I said, too much sugar.
And that's exactly what everyone here on slashdot wants, except that since we are supposed to hate Apple (unlike everyone else, because we're soooo much smarter!), we only want that when it's Android phones, and not whatever phone people happen to buy.
Fandroids need to learn to live with the iPhone. It doesn't suck, it's not going away. Android isn't taking over the world. And the reverse isn't true either. Both will coexist for a long time to come.
Buy what you prefer, and be happy that there's a phone out there that you prefer, just like the other way round. And don't get your panties up in a wad because someone buys the phone that you don't like. It just makes you 100x worse than the purported "Kool Aid" drinkers that you imagine others to be.
This is one of the strangest ironies in geek circles, such as Slashdot. There's a whole subcategory of geek who decries things that "you don't need". What *do* you really need? It's not like there's some objective line, past which you don't need something, therefore you shouldn't buy it.
The truth is, those that go off on these tangents are really saying they don't *want* it enough to justify the cost *to them*. That's all well and good, but they then seem intent on telling everyone else that they are wrong for holding a different opinion.
Yes, that's a niche market, and one that the big PC makers are running away from in droves. They are now trying to court it with the "ultrabook", which demonstrates that people don't want a shit notebook.
Or it demonstrates that there is a greater profit margin in selling more expensive computers. My anecdote suggests that a lot of people were happy with netbooks despite being able to buy the faster and equally light Toshiba Portété line for over decade.
I'm waiting for the part where people who need to travel with their computer for work isn't a niche market. I'm also waiting for the part where people wouldn't prefer an "ultrabook" (read: MacBook Air) over a netbook for that role.
I never said there aren't a lot of people who are happy with netbooks. In fact, I'm quite certain there are a lot of people happy with netbooks. That doesn't change their niche status, niche appeal, and inherent inferiority to proper computers better suited for use on the road.
Nice try, troll. I wrote exactly what they worked on for far longer. Voice recognition, speech synthesis, and computer voice control.
Wow, a world where sometimes things are misunderstood? How horrible!!!
Natural language may have its limits, but it's the best we've got, and billions of people seem to do just fine with it.
And no, I wrote exactly what I think it means. I'll save some time and quote the message you apparently didn't bother to read before replying to:
"I don't want it to know that 'show me driving directions to X' is the same request as 'take me to X', 'how do I get to X from here', 'what's the way to X', and instead require me to learn the one, and only one, magical phrase to get the results I want."
You completely missed the entire point of my reply. Natural language is imprecise. Big fucking deal. Better to have something that is likely to know what I mean, then something that will simply error out unless you use some specific syntax. That's why Siri is so successful where most every other such system has been little more than a gimmick.
You are finding something completely different. Google *is* reacting to Apple, but that doesn't mean Apple invented the idea.
Except the "obvious implication" is based on something that doesn't exist.